Incheon Beach Trip

In Korea, resorts, or condos, or beach houses, or whatever are called pensions. I don't know why and can't explain it, but that's just the way it is. It's essentially a beach house with nice accommodations that are fairy cheap to rent. We had five adults split a one night room for around 30,000 ($25), so yeah, pretty great option for trips.

The weather report said rain all weekend, but we had already booked the place (with no refund), and had gone shopping for food and drink. We decided to just let the bones fall where they may (Willow reference). Incheon is about an hour outside of Seoul and also located along the Western coast of SK.

As it turned out, the weather was fantastic.



Annyeong. Enjoying the cool breeze and nice weather.



Hangul for 'hello'.


Hae-min vs. wind. Wind:1, Hae-min: 0.



My co-worker's daughter, Hae-bin. SO photogenic rocking the stunner shades.



Some fisherman along the jetty. The tide was very low when we were on the beach.


An old, haggard boat waiting for the tide to return.


Our view from the room. This is where we were pounding samgyeopsal 20 minutes later.



Another view of the water from our room.


Beach shot #1.

Beach shot #2.


Beach shot #3.




Late-night shenanigans after teaching the gang Kings.

Vacation: Part I

Ahh, summer vacation. I had a week off from work last week and tried to put it to good use. Had a good friend fly in to visit so I tried especially hard to make the most of it. There are still so many areas in Seoul I haven't been to, and each time I find a new place it just leads to more cool locations. Bottom line: this city is BIG.

I finally got around to going through my photos. There's a lot to post and write about so I'll break this into two parts. Part I:



My friend and co-worker offered to drive to the airport and pick my buddy up with me. After picking up my friend from Incheon we headed straight out to dinner. Tonight's main course was dak galbi. Everyone at work wanted to meet my friend so we had close to 10 people at dinner. This is the restaurant we ate at. Very good.



Soju turns Clark Kent into Superman. After dinner and drinks we went walking to the second place and saw this. You basically pay $5 to crush plastic plates with your fist. I've tried it a few weeks ago and got through about 7 plates. If you get over 10 you win a stuffed animal, or some other random thing.



The street right by my house in Sincheon. It basically looks like this every night. This is also where my co-workers and I eat lunch each day. If you don't feel like taking the subway anywhere and are in this area, this is where you come to enjoy the evenings.



Inside the ubiquitous noraebang. I've written about this many times before so, yeah. This is the inside. Some of the more ambitious non-Koreans attempt to read/sing in Korean but is often hard to keep up.




The spread at my favorite galbi restaurant near my house. My friend really enjoyed it, too. The two ladies that always work there are sooooo nice. I try and converse in my kindergarten Korean and they love it. They tell me to call them 'e-mo', which means aunt.


Same restaurant. I probably eat here once or twice a week.



On Sunday we headed to Jamsil Stadium to watch some KBO. There are few Seoul teams but some of them share the stadiums and trade off games. Which team you cheer for decides which side of the stadium you sit in.



Doosan Bears section. Fans here are rabid and cheer after every pitch as if they had just won the World Series.

After a 30 minute rain delay (still monsoon season) it was back to ball.



My co-worker's daughter, Hae-bin. This is her first baseball game and she had a good time. So cute.




Seoul Tower sits on the top of a large hill/mountain thing right downtown. You take a cable car to the top and then enjoy the view. It's similar to the Space Needle in Seattle. They have a restaurant, gift shop, teddy bear museum, bench presses (not kidding) up near the tower.


About a billion locks with notes attached to them. It's a tradition with the youngsters to write a love note and then lock it to the fence by the tower.



A shot of the city from one of the decks. I guess you can see most of Seoul from up here.



There is a light show at the tower that runs nightly. I thought this was a cool effect.



After the tower it was back down to the city for some drinks. This area is called Myeon-dong and is one of the better-known shopping districts. It gets very busy during the day but thins out at night because most of the places here are clothes shops.

The next day we headed down to Haeundae for a few nights. I will post those pictures in the next few days.

I heard it was 107 F in Portland right now. I will gladly trade that for this sticky, hot, humidity that makes you sweat buckets within 2 seconds outside. Deal?

Boseong Green Tea Festival & Naganeupseong Folk Village

The weather has been fantastic the last two weeks here. Clear blue skies and warm weather makes for good site-seeing on the weekends. Left Gyeongsangnam-do on Saturday and headed west to the Jeollanam-do province for the annual green tea festival in Boseong. I was told this location produces over 80% of the green tea consumed in Korea. I wasn't too big into green tea before coming over here but it has really grown on me and is a great alternative to the insanely huge amounts of instant coffee consumed here. They even had green tea frozen yogurt, which was surprisingly VERY good.

Boseong was beautiful. No other way really to describe it but to just show the pictures.





This was taken outside of a tea shop up in the mountains.

Same location. If you look closely you can see people working in the tea fields.


Same tea shop, different view.


The rows of tea leaves were very symmetrical.







They had a bamboo forest nearby as well.


When the wind blows through the bamboo the moving stalks make very cool sounds.


The lighting inside of this area was great.





We stopped in Suncheon on the way to the tea festival at an old folk village called Naganeupseong. The entire village is enclosed by city walls that were constructed to ward off Japanese pirates. I think it may have worked, the city is still standing and I dropped by on Saturday.








I wonder what his crime was?


I wish I had more information on this gem, really. This adds a whole new level to corporal punishment.




I bought some tea at Boseong (it's really good). If anyone wants a box, let me know!