I tried out the app for the first time when arriving in Jeonju station, and thankfully - it worked! It grabbed me a taxi in about three minutes (and avoided me waiting in the breathlessly long taxi queue) and took me to my destination - the first hike of the trip up to the Dong-Su temple (which has a great lookout of Jeonju as well). The hike was tough, mainly because while the weather was a calm, sunny 80 degrees, it was still roughly 90% humidity, and the hike was fully uphill for way too long. The temple at the top was nice, even better that from its perch you had a great view of the more sprawling city than you would think. The walk down was a bit harrowing as I took it straight to ground level, walking from there about 40 minutes to the Nambu Market wher I was planning to get lunch. The walk took me in a parallel route from one wall of the Hanok Village - Jeonju's main site. The building were ornate and delicate, the shops I walked past enticing. I plan to get lost in there tomorrow.
From there, I did finally reach Nambu Market. It isn't a true food or shopping market, and half of it is only open on the weekends, so parts of it were a bit empty. But it its center was a nice collection of stores selling the normal tourist wares (I avoided), some pretty fancy looking coffee shops, and a set of restaurants that were all filled with koreans. That all appealed to me. I ended up sampling two spots, having probably in total 1.5 meals.
First was a hand-cut noodle place, where I got a noodle soup (which is basically what it seems, a ton of these pretty thick, really tasty noodles in a pretty sweet tasting broth, As with all Korean meals basically, it came with a series of small plates holding various kimchis and other nuggets. The second place was a bit more off the beaten path and pure 'Jeonju' with a place that specialized in Korean Blood Sausage. I probably made a slight mistake getting it in a soup form - though the soup itself was quite good, spicy, and flavorful. Two soups though in a row was probably a bit much. The soup itself was better in teh blood sausage place, but the various kimchis were worse - so it evens out I guess. In the end it was a fulfilling two meals - even if I'm leaving Jeonju's greatest specialty - bibimbap - for tomorrow and day after.
After my time in the market I did a mini walking tour of central Jeonju, past the "Gate", which is basically something of a temple built over an old fortress wall, that now stands alone in a central circle within the town. Next to it was the Jeonju Cathedral, this being one of the main strongholds of Catholicism during a brief period of time in Korea when the Christians tried to grab a few folks. The cathedral was surprisingly crowded for a tourist attraction, with well maintained grounds, a few statues, including of the initial Korean missionaries that were largely killed for not conforming to Confucian ideals (as the plaque read, at least). Inside, the cathedral was a bit sparse, reminding me of similar churches in Goa or Mangalore, or other common Indian Catholic strongholds.
From there I went for a bit to a coffeeshop oddly run by and situated over a bank - called JB Cafe (JB being the bank). It was beautiful on the inside, had fast working wifi (I banged out the first half of this there), and really nice coffee. On the whole, Korea seems to take their coffee extremely seriously. There are a bunch of cafes here (and in Seoul) that are just excellent in terms of decor, quality of coffee, and none are too expensive.
The next stop was my biggest test of my newfound taxi app, taking a journey out of the city proper to the Korea Expressway Corporation Arboretum. Why the mouthful of a name you may be wondering? Well, the Korea Expressway Authority (basically the entity that runs the highways) was pressured to do something about pollution and decided to just fund (and potentially run?) a botanical garden carved into a random slice of a corner of Jeonju. Weird reason for it existing aside, the place is just about the right size. Not too large to be overwhelming, but large enough to let you escape a bit in it. A good comparison (for the probably zero people that are part of this intersecting venn diagram) would be the Parque Terra Nostra we went to in Ponta Delgada a few years back.
Some particular favorites were the large lilypad area, a bamboo garden with 15+ ft tool bamboo shoots, and a series of flower and tree areas built into a makeshift fortress wall. On the whole, the Arboretum was a great hour or so, and I now have full confidence in the Kakoa app, as I was able to get a taxi in about a 5-min wait to take me from there back to Jeonju station to pick up the bags I had left in a locker there.
The AirBNB was the next stop, in a residential part of Jeonju - this being a city that has about 4-5 fairly busy commercial areas strewn out around its limits with sleepy residential neighborhoods in between. I don't often talk about my AirBNB accommodations here but I do want to call out this place. After a few nervous minutes messaging the host trying to figure out how the cieling AC (think of one of the AC machines often found in stores) worked (and boy damn did it work), I was able to actually take stock, and the place has some incredible features. First, it has a whole almost fridge-like device that is used to steam and/or hot-press clothes. It has a cool little tap water contraption that I was able to figure out to use despite it being in Korean. It is a truly modern abode.
After some R&R (still fighting off the last vestiges of jet-lag, which I'm sure would have been a whole lot worse if not for the first class flight...) I headed back out to central Jeonju, to Nomadic Brewing. This place is owned by an American beer lover who came here many years ago. He's from Michigan, which I love given my own love for Michigan-based Breweries (e.g. Founders). The American wasn't there today, but the place left an impression. First off, it had by far the best beer I've had so far in Korea. Yes, it took an American expat to do it, but after a so-so start yesterday at Namsan Chemistry, this renewed my faith in Korea being able to match up to Taiwan or Vietnam in terms of best craft beer outside of USA (admittedly, haven't really tested this in Europe).
For dinner, after a spree of last minute googling, I decided to go to Heugism, which was a Korean Tonkatsu restaurant. Tonkatsu is very much Japanese - the famous sliced pork deep fried with panko. I'm not exactly what makes this a "Korean" version of it other than using local pigs - apparently their specialty here was the tenderloin cut, which is generally not used in the classic version of what people think of when they think of tonkatsu. Anyway, the place was pristine, the food was excellent. Their sauces, including a "curry" that was positively Indian in its taste, were excellent additions.
The food was great, even if their menu was all in Japanese. I guess the local understanding of Japanese is a lot better than I would have expected, as they didn't even have a second version in just Korean for people. Anyway, after dinner I walked back around to Nomadic brewing, passing a few cocktail and wine bars that were just opening up with the dinner crowd wrapping up. On the whole, I've seen a few foreigners and clearly toursits around today but Jeonju - at least during mid-week - is very much a local's town.
Nomadic was a bit more crowded, still with mainly locals (seemingly - for all I know these could be people from other parts of Korea). But the vibe, from the great selection of beers, to the music (a whirlwind of 70s-90s Americana), to the setting and it was all great. Truly, if I ever could, I would want to just open a series of places like this (or the place in Granada that was run by a guy from Denver) in my favorite random smaller towns globally. Sign me up for the Menezes Brewing Company - locations in Punta Arenas, Cusco, Calgary, Cape Town, Luang Prabang, and Jeonju.
After Nomadic, I went to a place whose name in Google Maps shows up in just Korean, but outside they had a sign saying "Cocktails | Wine | Beer" and a classy looking interior - not to mention fairly good reviews in both Google and Naver. I should pause for a second to talk about Naver - basically Korea's version of Google. It has the same basic interface, with the one issue of me not being able to figure out how to turn it on English. Anyway, it has been a lifeline for driving and transit directions. In the end, my first half-day or so in Jeonju was quite good, but to be honest figuring out Kakoa T and actually feeling like i can get around this wide world of Korea on demand again is a lifesaver worth more than another great day of being a tourist.
