first, we woke up at 5.30am (overslept) and rushed to catch our 6am train to Andong... we reached the train station (at Gangneung) at exactly 6am and the station officer was nice enough to walkie talkie the train not to go off before we got on... haha... sounds familiar right? just like us in Singapore... :-)
anyway, Andong turned out to be a really nice place... it's supposed to be a very traditional place and we visited the Andong Folk Village and the Andong Folk Museum... the Andong Folk Village was the shooting location for one of the Korean dramas we watched and Wen liked the film set alot... on the way back to the main road, we walked on Korea's longest walking bridge which was 300+m long and which was over a very nice and scenic river...
our original plan was to take the 12.15pm train from Andong to Gyeongju but we did not manage to get a taxi... there were no cabs in sight for quite a long time! so we decided to go eat and chose a restaurant where we saw some MBC (Korean TV station) crew walking out... we figured if that restaurant was good enough for the stars, it was good enough for us! :-)
and guess what, it turned out that the Korean crew was shooting something (we guess it's a travelogue) and they filmed us too... they posed for photo with us and asked us where we are from and where we are headed to next... so fun! Wen was in her ming xing mode for quite a while after and even jokingly suggested going to look for them in the Folk Village (where she wanted to take more photos)... 
instead, in the end, we cabbed to Hohoe Folk Village... it was quite expensive but worth the trip as the scenery was very nice and it was a real village with real villagers staying in there (buildings preserved by the Korean government)...
and we caught the 5pm train to Gyeongju...
checked into a place called Sarang Chae at about 7+pm... it's a cool guesthouse where we met a Singaporean lady travelling on her own (she works for an insurance company too and we swopped work stories and travel tales with her), a Japanese lady with her 2 year old (very cute and friendly) daughter and a Belgium lady...
oh yes, then we went to the Tumuli park... the attraction there was grassy mounds like little hills which were supposed to be the excavated tombs of some dead kings... there were exhibitions on what the diggers found in those tombs...
overall, travelling has been fun with some unexpected moments (like missing our train but then meeting the MBC filming crew, etc)... but we have met many nice people who have really gone out of their way to be nice to us...
like the old couple, especially the auntie, at the motel we stayed in last night who helped make calls to find out what time our train to Andong would depart... this is even though there was a big language barrier...
like the train officer at Gangneung who made the train wait a minute for us...
like the taxi uncle who drove us to Hahoe Folk Village and took the initiative to do a free guided tour for us...
like the Sarang Chae lady owner who went out of her way to show us directions on the map and give us travel tips when we just wanted to tell her that we would be going out...
like the Singaporean lady traveller who shared her travel stories freely with us...
and like our dear parents who are reading this right now and thinking what their kids are up to... but still give us their blessings to go and experience life outside... :-)
tomorrow, we will explore more of Gyeongju (which used to be a Shilla kingdom) then go to Busan to take a flight to Jeju...
hope all is well at home, cheers! :-)
p.s: weather here is ok, can be chilly outside sometimes but we are well prepared with our thick clothes... and the insides of all buildings and transports are all warm...
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