Trip to Hwapo Wetlands

On the morning of our third day we took a break and piled into buses for an excursion to Hwapo Wetlads Centre and Junam Wetlands centre. Sorry pictures are in reverse order as the first pictures below are us at lunch, will come back to that. 

As is their way they had a welcoming committee waiting for us at Hwapo, the older version of the boys dancing troupe, same outfits, similar dance, quite amazing to see these older fellows throwing their bodies around but very magical to see it outside. Dr Joo, our host, said they were local residents. You will see in one of the pictures a banner announcing our meeting, which was prepared and hung just for our visit!

The place is supported by the government but run by an NGO group and they were lovely. You can see in one of the pictures a Hwapo Guide trying to teach a Tricky Korean word to Aziza from Omani. We had a short inside tour and a short outside tour here before doing the group photo on the stone steps.

Next stop was Junam Wetlands which is surrounded by rice paddies and great areas of lotus plants, Some of the lotus areas are grown for the flowers and other areas are harvested for the roots or rhizomes which are good eating. Along the road there were small stalls selling produce and this lady was cutting and selling the lotus rhizomes, she was quite happy to be a star in our photos. next it was off to lunch and you will see that we LL sat at the tables for short people. We also had to take out shoes off so in one of the photos you will see the shoes on a shelf by the door. We each had to nominate rice or noodles and that determined the dish we were given. I chose the rice and you will see the dish in a big silver bowl, egg on top and you add in all the different kim chee and sauces to your liking. There were also some dumplings to follow, don't remember running into dumplings in Korea on my first two trips here but these were yum, with a darker dough, very delicious.