Another way that I can determine that I've been here a while is that now both of my week-long vacations are over. I have only the occasional 3-day vacation to look forward to from here on out. The vacation was good and I got to spend a lot of time on the beach and in the sun, enough that today some students told me I looked like I was black.
Here's where I went, and how I got there:
Train to Daecheon beach
Ferry to Iwindo island
Train back to Daejeon
Train to Mokpo
Ferry to Jeju
Ferry to Mokpo
Train back to Daejeon
With a few dozen taxi or bus rides in between.
Daecheon beach was nice, not too many people (no other foreigners other than my friend Adam and me), and great weather. We spent all day on the beach or in the warm Yellow Sea, and caught a nice sunset.
After a day there, we went to Iwindo, which is an island a two hour ferry ride away. Birds chased our ferry the entire time, catching snacks that Koreans through to them.
There was not much on the island, so we went exploring for a few hours, climbing the rocks along the coast.
We saw a big jellyfish which chased us out of the water.
After exploring for a few hours we were about to head back when a group of Koreans spotted us. They yelled "hello!" to us and waved us over to them. It was a group of six middle-aged Koreans sitting on the rocks next to the water, eating a freshly caught fish and drinking soju. They could speak very little English, while we could speak very little Korean, but we managed to communicate okay. They poured us a lot of soju, and the man sitting next to me pleaded that I eat some of the fish, because the fish, as he put it, "make penis stamina strong!" So that was strange.
After sitting on the beach for a while they invited us back to their house, to eat and drink some more, which we did. Back at the house we met one of the couple's children, who could speak English surprisingly well and served as effective translators. They invited us back to their house the next morning, where they served us breakfast: rice porridge with abalone. The food was great, surpassed only by their seemingly boundless generosity.
At 9am we caught our ferry back to the mainland, and from there headed back to Daejeon. We met up with Jose and Justin, and caught the train to Mokpo, where our ferry ride to Jeju departed from the next morning. The ferry was huge and luxurious, and we passed the time drinking soju on the deck.
Upon arrival in Jeju, we immediately headed to the nearest beach and spent a few hours in the Pacific. At night we drank some more, and then spent the night, as we would the next two as well, in a jimjabang. Jimjabangs are all over the place in Korea. Essentially it's a big spa house where you can sleep in a big room on the floor with about 50 or so other people. There's no privacy (in the spa area you even have to walk around naked), it's not terribly comfortable (a blanket and a slab of wood for a pillow), but for 7 bucks a night it serves its purpose.
We spent the next day on the beach again, and the day after that we saw some sights that Jeju island has to offer. They were things I saw back in December as well, but this view just doesn't get old:
The second night we were there, we came across a sight that nearly brought a tear to my eye: a Mexican food restaurant. When people back home ask me what I miss about the States, one thing I tell them is Mexican food. It's not that I ate it all the time back home, but you go 8 months without a burrito and tell me if you notice it. Eating one for dinner on back to back nights might be enough to hold me over until I get back.
All in all it was a great week, and went by too quickly, as vacations tend to do. Check flickr for more pictures.
re: stamina
ReplyDelete