Asia Song Festival

It was time again for the Asia Song Festival. Every high school girl and K-Pop fan getting exited - with no reasons. They organization given free tickets to everyone who managed to obtain one either from an organization like ourself from KNU or over the internet. The line up included Miss A, Beast, Super Junior, Girls Generation and many more.

These are top idols in Korea - like Westlife in the UK taken for an example. Thousands of people across S Korea come and join us in Daegu Stadium for this event. We arrived at 1pm to the stadium and doors open for around 530pm. We arrived that early as we did not knew that our tickets are already tickets - as no security seal or any ID code on the ticket. It must mean Korean would not photo copy this tickets and hand them out their friends or will they?

In overall we just waited around the stadium until 5pm, and supported our friends who did not yet had a ticket to stand with them in the short but long waiting queue to obtain a ticket. I guess it token that long as the member of staff needed to do everything by hand to check the validly of the paper conformation as it did not had a bar code or any other identification on the conformation. 

The performance had been very great which we had seen inside - I would recommend everyone to try to obtain a ticket next year again for Asia Song Festival here in S Korea.

Gyeongju

Today was rice cake and liquor festivals in Gyeongju. I went with my two Korean friends to the city of the old capital of old Korea.

When we had arrived we joined up the queue to try various alcoholic beverages from tomato wine to Soju. It was an interesting experience to try different kinds of alcohol for just only 1.000 Won (>£1). Some alcohol had been very strong other once soft and easy.

As you can see from my writing I am not an expert in alcohols therefore lets skip it before I embarrassed myself more.

We had continue along the event and come by to the rice cake - on where had on hand activities to make yourself rice cake and a few vendor had allowed to try some rice cake. The other once needed to be purchased to try them - not free as alcohol.

We had reached now the mid day and wanted to go the lake. As we are not familiar with the bus lines in the area and we are three people. We decided to take the taxi to the lake. When we reached the lake we had first some traditional food in one of the nearby resorts.

After the meal we had borrowed each a bike to cycle around the lake - as we did not had much time anymore to walk.  We had set of our journey and come across a stand on where we could do a mission. We found out that at this side of the lake had been eight mission to be done to have a chance of winning an iPad 2. So we just did the one mission and received a stamp and tried to look out for the second mission. The first mission was just to take a picture, the second mission was a bit harder - but not hard. It was to memorize a text on a memorial wall and speak it out in front of the staff. We memorized the text and gone back to the staff - they just given us the stamps with out proofing to them we memorize it.

The third station had been easy - just find them. The time was now also running short and we just visited the fourth station on where again a picture needed to be taken - but she wanted to go home therefore it was not required. It was also not a good spot on taking a picture. The lake side was much nicer - maybe there is just something in the house that they like to advertise.

We token a small ride further along the lake but could not complete the full circle due to the mission we had done. Therefore we needed to return to the main station to give back the bicycle. We had also now the opportunity to win the iPad 2 but we let the chance to someone else. We had been on our way back home to Daegu.

It was a nice weekend, with Andong Mask Festival and more culture today of alcoholic beverage and nature aspect to go around the bikes.

40th Andong Mask Dance Festival

Today we had gone on a trip with the university to Andong. There is now held the traditional mask dance festival of South Korea.

The university therefore has organised an event for International students to go along there.

It was really a great event - we have watch one performance (one hour) which told a story of a married couple or what could be understood by it. As they spoken in Korean. Even though I could not understand on what exactly had been spoken from the actions the characters did and the type of dance they perform it could be understood.

It was not only one story, but many different kind of stories been told in the one hour of program. It was a great experience to see traditional dances from South Korea. In the end also a Thailand group had perform in the show.

If you are planning on travelling Korea in October time - I recommend to visit Andong for the Mask Dance Festival which is held right in the city centre behind the train station.

You may shall do some research before coming as there might be some cultural performance - such as a Korean weeding. We could not watch it as we already needed to leave - this is a disadvantage to come with a tour. Therefore come by yourself rather then on a tour.

We watched a few performance outside the main theatre, a few high school girls given a performance. It was easy to understand as no sounds had been used just acting and music. I could get the point on what they wanted to show us - but on other time it was hard to understand on what they had been showing with their hands. It might be just a Korean thing and not common for myself.

The day was really amazing and I was glad that I managed to sign up just in time to go to this event. As it was quickly booked out as only 40 places been available.