Mr. & Mrs. Vandebilt + kids

When Jacob and I lived in Korea we met our South African family – we spent almost all of our time with these wonderful people and made some really great friendships. One of those co-teachers was Liezl who has ended up owning and running her own hagwon after meeting and marrying a Korean man. When she realized we were back in Ulsan she reached out for us to connect, and we are so glad she did!

We got to spend the day with Liezl, her husband JiHwan and her two kids, Hailey and Ian. They picked us up from our hotel in their bright yellow hagwon bus and we set off for Gyeongju. This was actually a first for me and Jacob – we had never traveled anywhere by private vehicle when we lived there, relying only on public transit. It was a completely different experience to see Korea from the highway and navigate the traffic and parking. I was very glad it was JiHwan and not me!

Our first stop was Bulguksa temple. It’s a particularly famous temple in the area, although there’s some debate amongst the Bachs as to why. It’s possibly the oldest, or biggest. Either way it’s set up on the top of the mountain and is quite lovely. We toured around amongst the crowds, saw the statues, and the lanterns for buddha’s upcoming birthday and made statues out of wishing rocks.

After the temple we grabbed some of JiHwan’s favourite red bean paste buns. Apparently the best (and only) way to have them is chased with a glass of milk. Jacob and I were skeptical, as we never really caught on to the sneaky bean, but it turns out we had just been doing it wrong all along and that the milk really was the secret all along.

After our little snack we toured around Hwangnam-dong – a new little area in Gyeongju where people have gentrified the old buildings and turned it into a shopping district. They’ve kept the original architecture which has made for a lovely little neighbourhood. The kids had fun poking their heads in all the shops and grabbing some tanghulu and ice cream.

We wrapped up the day with one last coffee at this gorgeous coffee shop and another visit to Art Box in Seongnam-dong. It was a really special day to get to reconnect with Liezl and her family and I’m sure it will be a highlight of the trip for everyone.