Natures Pharmacy

Natures Pharmacy
Daegu, Korea Rep.

Daegu, Korea Rep.

Daegu was one of those places that you head to when you are traveling just out of convenience of where we were headed from and to. We knew that we could get a flight to Jeju Island from Daegu and Lonely Planet had a great write up about the local Medicine Market that made it sound unmissable.

Like many of the less touristy towns in South Korea there were no hotels, hostels or motels that we could book (or afford to book) before we arrived so we had done our research and knew which Love Hotel we planned on heading to. One amazing feature of South Korea is that at every bus station, train station, airport and central city location there is a Tourist Information Centre with English speaking staff just waiting to hand over maps, bus time tables and anything else you need.

Within minutes we had a map, directions and were on our way to the Hera Motel. Tim had had a wobble in the day and questioned my planning refusing to believe that there were no hostels in Daegu with it being the 3rd largest city in South Korea, once he had done his research and confirmed what I had already told him he agreed that a slightly more expensive love hotel was the right place for us to be staying. Had Tim had any doubts prior to our arrival they immediately vanished when we got our room. It was huge, we had a cinema screen for a tv, we had 2 computers (not sure why), a huge bathroom with a hi-tech toilet, a shower that turned into a steam room and a Jacuzzi bath. Oh yes, I am so pleased that Daegu has no ratty hostels, Love Motels are the best. I even had a dressing table with his and hers toner and moisturiser, hair gel, hair spray and of course the obligatory love motel pack with tooth brushes, a razor, a face pack, a hair band and condoms.

We headed back to the train station as we had seen a few places for dinner and found the most amazing restaurant. We have no idea what it was called or what we ordered and we just pointed at the pictures and hoped for the best, but it quickly became our favourite Korean restaurant. The only problem was that there were so many dishes on the tray that we actually had to google how to eat it. It turns out that we had ordered Bibimbap which is a hot pot of vegetable and or meat which you stir your rice into and eat the soup, kimchi (spicy veg) and pickles separately. How cool would we have looked pouring our soup into the mix! Thank you Professor Google for saving us again.

With our maps at the ready we headed into the town to check out the much awaited Medicine Market. We headed to where it was meant to be and looked around for a while lost. Thankfully we found one of the many Tourist Information booths and asked them for directions. They seemed quite used to tourists who have seemingly been completely misled by the idiot who wrote Lonely Planet as there is no Market, but there is a row of shops that sell herbal medicines. Thankfully we are not too fussy as to what we see so we took a walk down the street to see what they had on offer. Lonely Planet was not completely wrong as the shop windows were full of taxidermy animals advertising the medicines they had on offer, it seems that deers, turtles and ginseng are the favourites along the street.

We were happily taking photos of one shop windows and the lady inside was waving and smiling so we went into her shop and despite our lack of Korean and her lack of English we had a conversation, she showed us around the shop, gave us a cup of Korean Tea and had us posing for an array of photos with her and her friend. This is the sort of experience that we love about traveling to random towns, interactions with absolute strangers that leave us all with smiles on our faces at the sheer randomness of it all.

Next to the ‘Medicine Market’ was a little museum which we decided to skip but in the garden was a herbal foot bath which I could not resist. My trainers and socks were off in a flash and before I knew it I was sitting amongst the Korean oldies having my feet warmed then cooled by the Oriental Medicine Footbath. When in South Korea and all that…. Although I think I will be sticking to my Western medicine for the time being whilst I am fine with roots and sticks, reindeer horns just don’t really do it for me.

So with not much else to see or do in Daegu we spent a good amount of time getting value for money from our hotel room, steaming, Jacuzzi bathing and moisturising as much as was possible.

Our last day the rain was torrential, so we were not too sad to be headed to the airport to fly to Jeju Island.

Usually we would be seeking out the cheaper option of a boat to take us to Jeju, with the South Korean Ferry Incident fresh in our minds we thought we had better research where it had been headed and we were shocked to discover that the tragic sinking of the MV Sewol in April which left over 300 people dead was actually bound for Jeju so we opted to fly instead. This tragedy has left a huge impact on South Korea with yellow ribbons tied across every city and many protests happening around the country as the locals are so ashamed that such an incident could have happened. It was difficult not to have a heavy heart arriving in Jeju thinking about all the poor children and adults that perished and never made it on that fateful journey.

All we could do was thank our lucky stars that we made it safely despite a somewhat turbulent flight and landing!!