This was my last company tour as a dancer. I’ll surely miss doing these tours together with my wife, who said that she was not just jet-lagged this time, but also “food-lagged”. I love kimchi, bibimbap and Korean barbecue, but in the end nothing beats cooking at home.

After our two performances of Carmina Burana in Daegu, my wife and I used our two free days to see a bit more of South Korea. We travelled to the nearby city of Gyeongju, which used to be the capital of the ancient kingdom of Silla. Here we stayed at a lovely little traditional Hanok guesthouse. Nearly all of the Koreans we encountered were polite, hospitable and would go out of their way to help us with any query we had.

We visited the temple of Bulguksa and the Tombs of the rulers of Silla, which look like giant mounds, followed by the Gyeongju National Museum. The next day we headed to Seoul on the super-fast KTX train, where we hiked along the Seoul City Wall, followed by a stroll through the beautiful Bukchon Hanok Village.

South Korea is truly a technologically advanced country, with more selfie-sticks and tripods per capita than I have seen to date. Locals hire Hanboks (traditional Korean dresses) and have their photos taken in every direction. A tripod is the last thing that I would want to be lugging around with me.

I have always tried to travel as light as possible, this time with only one camera, one lens and a few batteries. Recently I acquired the Fujifilm Fujinon 16mm f1.4 R WR lens and wanted to use it to force myself to think “wider”. I find it much easier using a longer lens, as it creates more separation and isolates your subject more. So the wider angle of view demands of me to think more about composition and placement of my subject. I can also isolate my subject by getting really close and making it appear much larger than more distant objects. (Not very flattering for portraits)

This lens is on the wide end with an equivalent field of view of 24mm on a 35mm SLR. Although it is much bigger than the little 18mm lens I have, the picture quality is outstanding (it will literally make any pixel-peeper drool) and it can also focus as close as 15cm. I loved the experience of using this lens, and it turned out to be great for shoot-from-the-hip street photography.

Disclaimer: Neither Fujifilm, South- or North Korea paid me to write any of this.