Thursday, August 1st,
2013 – Sunday, August 4th, 2013
Another four-day weekend!
I found out that two out of my ten days vacation for the
entire year were chosen for me. I
was also given less then a months notice about this information. The reason we had these holidays were
because the school closed for those days allowing the Korean teachers to take
the only vacation days they get the entire year! I thought I had those two extra days saved in the bank and I
could combine them with the rest of my vacation and possibly take an entire
week off, but unfortunately that was not the case. So of course, when life gives you lemons, make lemonade. I
get 10 days off for the year; I want to make the most out of each one of those
days. Unfortunately, most of the
people I knew, were either still working those days or already had a trip
planned. I was lucky to find out
one other person I know had the same vacation days and was also hoping to make
good use of them!
Kendall and I met on the Thursday morning so we could catch
a bus somewhere in Korea! We made
the decision together to have a very spontaneous trip with little to no
planning in advance. It was a lot
easier to do this with Kendall’s Smartphone involved to help us when we were
stuck! We decided to start with
Boseong in Jeollanam-do province.
Jeollanam province is in the southwest corner of South Korea, whereas Busan
is in the Southeast side of South Korea.
It took us around 3.5 hours to get to Boseong. We choose Boseong because it is famous for producing 40% of
Korea’s green tea fields. It is
also #18 on Korea’s 50 most beautiful places to travel list. We arrived in the small town and walked
with our backpacks to find the closest motel. It wasn’t long before we found the centre of town and the
main bus station, which looked like it was a part of a movie set. One Korean man asked us “ where are you
going?” and we said, “I don’t know.”
Soon after that, we found a motel with all of the necessities for our
one night in this town!
Cool chair that is on the ground!
From there we had a late lunch and headed back to the bus
stop. We ended up taking a cab to
the green tea fields, paid the $3 entry into the fields and set out to
explore. We soon realized, the
fields looked just like the pictures, and as beautiful as they were, it didn’t
take us long to see everything there was to see. We did some more exploring of bamboo forests and walked a
little through unmarked paths to do some extra exploring. Another way we found to entertain
ourselves was playing with our camera settings and taking many pictures! We also saw a squirrel in Korea, the
first one I have seen, I swear it looked different to ours at home and had
longer, skinner legs. I think one
way they could improve this attraction is by providing little green tea samples
of their product! Then I would
more likely buy something and it would have added to the experience. Plus, everyone loves free samples!
After the tea fields, we took a cab to the local beach. The beach was set up with a camping
site in the back. This reminded of
the cottage and it is probably Korea’s version of summer camping and spending
time at a cottage. We ran into a
family that had three very tame dogs and two baby peacocks that were sleeping
on one of the dogs! The girl gave
Kendall one of the peacocks so she could hold it. It was such a rare sight and definitely not expected. From there, we took a local bus back
into town. That night, we walked
back to the bus terminal to see what time we should catch the bus the next
morning, saw the small town, quiet at night with a few town drunks and went to
bed early.
Lucky for us, we found out the best bus to catch the next
morning was at 7:30am. Next on our
itinerary was Jeungdo Island in the same province. We found out about this place through some Smartphone and
motel computer research! Jeungdo
salt flats are #7 on Korea’s 50 most beautiful places to travel list. We took an
hour and a half bus ride to Mokpo, from there we took another hour + bus ride
to a small town just outside of the island, from there we took another bus to
the Island. While we were waiting
in the small town outside the island, we waited on what looked like old church
pews and experienced Korea’s chain of respect which involved the
ajumma’s (older Korean women) literally pushing us, standing two inches in
front of us expecting us to move seats and us eventually migrating to the back
of the pews.
At the back of the church pews
Salt flats
We finally made it to the island, but it turned out the bus
driver dropped us off early so we had to take another taxi to the actual part
of the tiny island we wanted to be.
A nice Korean couple that was also on the bus called the taxi for us, or
else we were pretty much stranded.
We made it to the island’s beach and were treated well when a food
canteen let us drop our bags off in their little kitchen. We explored the beach for the
next little while. The beach
itself was very beautiful, unpretentious and untouched and it had a few
surprises!
Since this beach is a little bit more secluded and has fewer
visitors then the ones we are used to in Busan, I found some amazing
shells! I was tempted to take them
all home but I settled for just a few small ones. We also found some small sand crabs on the beach. It turned out finding crabs was not a
difficult feat. Once we drifted
from the ocean edge to the mud flats behind the beach, we found hundreds of
crabs! In the sand, they had all
dug little holes and must have sensed our presence because most of them didn’t
seem home. We walked in the mud
and got our feet slimy, it was so gooey and fun, until we noticed the giant
slugs in the mud, then we thought we had enough mud for one day! There was a bridge you could walk on
over the mud. On the bridge, you
could see all of the crabs living in the mud that were not threatened because
no people were around them. Some
families were right in the mud, looking for something or just having some
family mud bonding! It was a
really beautiful setting with the gorgeous beach and mud flats.
We came to the island to see the salt flats, but we soon
discovered that was unlikely to happen since we drove past them on the bus ride
into the island we were nowhere close to the flats, they also looked abandoned
when we drove past. At least we
got to see them. We were a little
frustrated because we didn’t really know how we were going to escape this
little secluded area with no restaurants, shops or motels. Once we finally figured out where we
could catch the bus out of the island later that day, we decided to rent a bike
for the rest of the afternoon!
Kendall and I peddled our little hearts out on our bike and
it felt like we were not going anywhere fast, we had a nice view of fields and
farmland as our landscape on our bike ride. We stopped at what looked to be tourist attraction because
the sign on the outside said 3000 Won but when we entered, nobody could
communicate with us. I was just
fascinated to see a house in Korea that looked Mediterranean! We continued on your bikes and found a
little nature trail and stopped to explore. The trail brought us back to another beautiful part of the
beach! We had a little photo shoot
and enjoyed the view! On our bike
ride back, a cute lady tried to offer us rice cakes and some of the locals
waved at us! We far as we knew, we
were the only foreigners on the island that day. We fortunately had a lot more friendly encounters on the
island then we did on the way to the island. I even met in passing a Korean girl who studies in Canada and
other friendly people!
Cool looking house
Next we waited for our bus to move on to our next
destination around 6:30pm. While
we were waiting, we had the pleasant experience of getting sprayed by some mist
a truck was rapidly spraying on the fields on the side of the road. Our final destination was Gwangju. Gwangju is Korea’s 6th
largest city and it is also in the same province we were travelling
around. We luckily could take a
direct bus there and arrived around 8:30pm. Kendall’s phone research found us an area we should find a
motel and where we could eat dinner.
The restaurant we ate at is a foreigner restaurant called Alleyway and a
Canadian owns it. It is the most
normal, what I am used to at home, restaurant I have seen since I have been
here. The menu is all western food
and the crowd was mostly foreigners too.
We ate, and Kendall ordered key lime pie for dessert. She was in heaven, she fell in love
with this pie and it was the first time she had found this dessert in
Korea. The restaurant also sold
Costco cheese for the foreigners because this city does not have a Costco. They sell it at a whopping $17 for a
block; I buy it for $10 in the Costco in Busan. I am glad I live in Busan! We were very happy with our experience at this restaurant!
Keylime Pie
The next day, we woke up and went out exploring a little
bit. The city is very similar to
Busan, it had a lot of cute shops, boutiques, and food stands in the main area
we were staying. I thought it was
interesting how they had the same type of stores, but there were some
differences in the products they sold, so that was good. We did a little shopping and then
Kendall wanted to find a grocery store.
On our way out of the store, it started to pour and we got soaked. We headed back to the motel to dry
off. We researched things to do
and nothing was really catching our eye.
We decided to take a warm bath, we don’t have baths in our apartments
and this motel had a bath! After relaxing, we watched a movie in our room and had
a lazy afternoon. Sometimes you
need to get away to allow yourself to just to do nothing! We also had already seen a lot and had
spent a lot of time on buses and felt we deserved a lazy afternoon.
Window on the bathroom door
Soaked
Later that night, we went back to the restaurant again and
this time I ordered some of this pie Kendall was raving about! After eating, we ran into some other
foreigners and asked if we could tag along. The foreign community in Gwangju is a lot more tight-knit
and smaller than Busan. They were
extremely friendly and welcoming.
One of the girls went to Guelph and graduated the same year! They were
very good at making introductions, filling us in on what was going on and
making sure we were included! In
Busan, there are more sub groups, although most people are friendly, they are not as inclusive right away and aren’t as surprised or excited to meet new foreigners. We watched some of their friends perform in a band and then
went off and danced the rest of the night away!
Out dancing!
Getting ready
The next day, we took our time in the morning, went to the
bus station and took the afternoon bus back into Busan. We made good time and arrived back
around 5:30pm. It was a good trip,
I am glad we went and saw some more of Korea and made the most out of our
little holiday!
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