Chuseok, round 2, Part 2

So because we had a three day weekend, plans were to head out of Seoul. Originally I'd wanted to go down to Busan for a river lantern festival, but most festivals this year have been canceled due to an over-reactive government, and sadly the lantern festival was one of the victims. The other issue was traffic and travelling. I'd also thought about doing a quick Japan trip, but all flights to Japan were overly expensive, and all the flights to Jeju-do (Korea's version of Hawaii) had been booked months in advance. The traffic leaving Seoul the weekend of Chuseok is horrendous (I experienced it first hand last year when I drove to Pyongtaek with my co-teacher - what should have taken about 45 minutes actually took about 5.5 hours.) It's like Thanksgiving traffic on steroids. So - any travel using the road system was out, and all flights were gone. The KTX train was booked as well, which left us with the subway system and...boats! So, that's exactly what we did.

Thanks to the resourcefulness of some of James' friends, we found a lovely little island off the west coast of Incheon (Seoul's main airport). Originally we'd though about Moui-do or Yeongheung-do, but were somehow re-routed to Ijak-do (do - pronounced 'doh' - is Korean for island). Rather than being a problem, this turned out to be perfect.


Once we got to the Incheon area, we had to take a ferry to the island. There were only two ferries a day, one at 9am and one at 2pm. Because I live about a 2 hour subway ride from the ferry, I decided to take the 2pm ferry on Friday. James, Kathryn, Gary, and Juliet all caught the same one. There were about 8 other people that went as well, but they stayed in Incheon on Thursday night, and caught the first ferry out on Friday morning.

Gary, Juliet, Jack (the dog), James, and Kathryn in front of the Rainbow - our ferry to Ijak-do

The ferry ride was interesting in itself. I'd only been on a ferry once before with Steph, but it was more for sightseeing than for transportation. I'm not sure what the ferry is like when the seas get rough, but at one point while sitting on the main level, you would see only the sky, and then only the sea out the window - Kathryn was convinced we were going to pitch over. I actually had an interesting conversation with her about how I've become so nonchalant about so many things. I've heard people say numerous times that I nothing seems to upset me, and I've said to more than one person that I can't remember the last time I was offended. I don't worry that often, and very little seems to phase me, though I certainly get excited about traveling and seeing new places. I'm not sure if it's just the fact that I've been through experiences in my life at a young age that most people don't experience till they're older, or not at all (like divorce or moving to another country), or if it's just that I'm finally growing up.


Anyway, the views were amazing, and I realized that I felt much better when I was on the top deck. I think the combination of the rather brisk breeze and that I could see the entire landscape instead of an alternating sky/water window made for a happier stomach. I convinced the others that the upper deck was more gastronomically friendly, so we spent the last part of the ride on the top deck.


We expected the ride to last for about 2 hours, but it was closer to 2.5, and we were starting to get a bit anxious. The ferry stopped at three ports, and we wanted to make sure we got off in the right place. We made it off the boat just fine, and were told by Jess, who was already at the pension, that a Korean man in a minivan and a bluish-greenish hanbok would pick us up at the port. Well, we disembarked with about half the other people on board, and after about 7 minutes were the only remaining people within sight. Aside from the building near the ferry dock, there was nothing to indicate any other life, or even which direction to take the road in order to find civilization. We waited for about 10 minutes for something - anything to happen. Finally a black minivan drove up with a Korean inside, asking if we were friends of Jess' in broken English. So we loaded up the van and drove about 10 minutes up some really steep roads to a pension near a beach.

I can't read all of it, but the left side says "Stress NO!!"

We unloaded at the top of a hill, where we could barely see a beach down below. After sorting out the accommodations (the five of us were to share a 'big' room - which really only slept 3-4 of us comfortably), we headed down to the beach.




The only people there were friends of ours. There was another group of foreigners staying at our pension, but they were all up in the rooms. Aside from them and the people that ran the pension, we were the only ones in sight. The beach was beautiful, and we spent the rest of the afternoon swimming resting on the sand, playing soccer, and just generally enjoying the restfulness of it all.

One of the people brought his own tent so he wouldn't have to pay for the pension.

We wanted to see the sunset, so we hiked up, and then down the road we came in on, to get past the mountain that was blocking the view of the setting sun.

Sitting on the road with everyone, watching the sun set.

It was beautiful.

We found a lovely spot on the beach to watch the sunset, and camped out there for about 20 minutes and watched it sink down behind the water.

Following in the footsteps of others

There were only 4 other people on the beach besides us.

After getting back to the pension, we ordered dinner from the restaurant - which was more like a kitchen near the beach, and enjoyed the side dishes but practically gagged on the main dish, which had a nice sauce flavor but tasted like it was made from ground up cartilage and low-grade meat. After dinner and several drinks, we decided to join the other foreigners who had built a lovely bonfire on the beach.


The rest of the weekend was spent hanging around the beach; swimming, drinking, eating, relaxing, and just generally enjoying each others' company and the peaceful surroundings.

Eating pasta for lunch on Saturday

The tide coming in

Kathryn and Gary walking along the beach

Making squishy faces from a persimmon

At low tide on Sunday we could see some sort of fishing apparatus on the beach that had been previously covered up by the water, so I went out to get a better look at it.


I'm still not sure exactly what it did, but it was certainly interesting.





And then, sadly, it was time to head back home. So being slightly sunburned, and all covered in sand, we piled into the back of a truck and headed to the ferry dock to go back home.

Not sure how I managed it, but this picture makes me dizzy.

Don't worry, mom, we were perfectly safe in the back of an open truck with no seat belts.

We made it back to Incheon, and took the subway to Itaewon. Almost everyone I was with also had Monday off, but I had to work. So after a lovely dinner at a Thai restaurant (I think it's the first time I've ever said "wow" after tasting something and really meant it), I headed home.

Weary Wednesday

We decided to rebook our hotel for another night in Yeosu, partly so we didn't have to carry our bags around with us until we got to the next city and we still had a lot to see. We went searching for coffee again, having scoped out some places the night before. One of them had said it was open at 9am, and when we checked it at 9:20 it was dead silent. We did find a hof and coffee place (hof is like bar food), but I could barely pronounce the menu, and I didn't see "kopi" anywhere, so we jsut tried to order coffee. It came black about 10 minutes later (mind you there was one other person in the place). I asked for milk, but didn't understand what she responded with. So we were brought a whole cup of steamed milk. Luckily she didn't charge us for it (milk on the menu was a whopping W3,200 per cup), but it was barely considered coffee

(Side note: if you ever decide to visit Korea and love your morning cup of coffee, don't be fooled by the fact that there are Starbucks here and they serve coffee at bars. A lot of places will serve "kopi", which is really just instant coffee. And yes, there are Starbucks, but be prepared to pay about $3 more per cup for anything you order. The grocery stores really only sell the instant stuff, though they also sell coffee makers. And the places that do sell "real" coffee rarely open before 10am. All in all, be prepared for a less than invigorating cup.)

And because the place we went to was really a bar and not a coffee house, we decided to go to Lotteria for breakfast (It's the Korean version of McDonalds. They have shrimp burgers with avacado sauce, as well as squid rings and a kimchi burger. They also have chicken wings and french fries.). It's just as well, because we did a lot of climbing on Wednesday, and I wouldn't have made it on a pastry breakfast. 

We caught a bus to the island of Dolsando. In both of our guide books, it looked like a small island just a little larger than the one we had walked around the night before. In actuality, it's the ninth largest island in the country, and it took almost an hour to get to the other side via the bus. At the southern tip of the island is a monastery and hermitage called Hyang-iram or Hyangil-am. It's a steep trek up the side of a mountain to get to the hermitage, but there's some amazing architecture there.

 

The temple is situated at the edge of part of a cliff. One building even has 75 stone turtles around it, each with a W10 coin on it's back:

The inside of the temples were covered with lotus images and delicate wood carvings. I wish I knew more about Budhist symbolism.

After looking around at the temple and catching our breath, we made the very steep climb up to the top of Geumosan (323m). We made it to the top of the peak in about half an hour, with a 360 view of the island that was misty and beautiful.

Apparently James and I were the only ones who were in the mood for climbing, and we spent a good 45 minutes by ourselves at the top of the island.

We took another path back down, which was really more of a suggestion of a place to walk amoung the rocks.

We made it back to the hotel after I tried the local kimchi (and needed to buy a bottle of water afterwards. The guide said their gatkimchi has a mustard taste and even if you don't usually like kimchi you might like the mildish ones here. They were wrong.) We found a samgypsal place in town (strips of pork put on a lowered skillet in the table),

that James had been craving, and then wandered around Yeosu for a bit before heading to bed.

Manic Monday

On Monday we woke up early and went in search of coffee after deciding to stay in Mokpo for another night and head for Boseong the next day. We had past a few coffee places that were open the night before, but weren't able to find one open at 9am. Most of the places we saw were open at 10am, some were noon. It still amazes me that you can own a coffee place anywhere in the world that isn't open by 7am - at the latest. Regardless, we decided to head over to Yudalsan Park, which was listed in our guidebook and we both had wanted to see. It was between us and the shore, where we wanted to take a boat out to some of the further reaching islands, so it seemed like a good idea to walk through it.

Now, when I think of a park, I think trees, grass, maybe some landscaping and places to sit and have a picnic. This is probably because that describes most of the parks I saw growing up in the flatlands of Florida. When Korea says 'park', you can almost bet that it's actually a mountain. This one happened to be about 600 meters high. This is the walkway up to the park through the city:

We missed the glass botanical gardens, mostly because when we got there it was blazing hot, and we were really just concentrating on getting up the mountain, and not what the guidebook said to look for.

We saw Madangbawi (great views and two rock carvings) and Ildeung, another peak on our way up.

We must have taken the long way around, because it took us about 3-4 hours to get to the other side to the beach. We wanted to take a boat ride out to some of the further flung islands, but the ferries only run twice a day, and we were a good 20 minute walk from the ferry terminal and only had about 3 minutes before it left. So we took a small boat tour in the bay around Yuldusan.

Then we took a bus to the Mokpo Natural History Museum. Aside from a horribly stuffed taxidermy tiger that looked like a third grade sewing project, it was actually a nice museum.

It took us forever to find a place to eat. Most places won't serve just one person -there has to be at least two people - and the first several that we tried were either too expensive, or wouldn't allow us to share a single serving of any dish (even though some of the dishes started at W30,000 each). We decided to head to bed early since we wanted to be in Boseong first thing the next day. We debated about trying to head out anyway and cancel our reservation, but having a place to keep our bags and a shower, as well as not knowing if we'd be able to find a place in Boseong, was worth staying in Mokpo another night.