At 7:30 yesterday morning, Lindie and I embarked on our adventure to find our next scenic sight, Naewonam Valley of Mt. Daeun. We knew that we were going to have to take a bus from here to another bus near the terminal in Samsan, so off we went. I was a total dork and washed my beach towel the night before because I thought for sure it would be dry by the time we left (it wasn't. . .) so we had to make a quick pitstop at Lotte Mart to get new one. But, I thought it wouldn't be a big deal because we had to go right by there to get to the terminal anyway, so it would just put us a little behind schedule. So, at about 5 after 8 we got off the bus and headed to Lotte Mart. For some reason it didn't occur to either of us that it would be closed. . .but there it was without a light on. We went around the corner to get some caffeine as we were both extremely out of practice at getting up (fascinating how things can change so quickly, isn't it?? I spent the last two years getting up at 4am every morning and now getting up at 6:30 requires an extreme effort! :-) amazing.) and got some Hot Six (ps, this is the closest thing to Red Bull that I know of. So, just a little moment to beg if you don't mind, anyone who wants to send Red Bull over this way, EVERY foreigner will love you forever!! :-)) and sat outside for a moment hoping that perhaps Lotte Mart would open at 8:30. Lotte Mart is enormous and has tons of employees and there were basically no signs that it was going to open anytime soon so we got on another bus to get to the bus outside the bus terminal (enough buses for you??)Now, just a little explanation here. Lot of people use the bus system here and it's fantastic. Every bus stop that I've used so far has a computer that tells you every bus that stops there and either what time it's scheduled to arrive or how many minutes away it is. Most of the buses that I use come very regularly (every 20 minutes or so) or there are several different buses that all go to the places that I need to go (like school) but this particular bus that we needed we knew only ran every 72 minutes. The reason we left so early wasn't necessarily to catch the bus on time but because the bus stopped running at 10 to 8 (where most buses run until almost midnight) so we wanted to get in a whole day and not miss our bus (a taxi ride back is always possible but would be very expensive.)
This bus terminal did not have a computer. It did have a sign telling us that our bus stopped there, but we had no idea when it was going to get there. So, we debated taking an express bus that we knew would get us there and then just taking the regular bus home. We walked into the express bus terminal and realized that we had no idea what the name of the place was (because I forgot the bring the book with me. . .lame) but fortunately they had the very book we needed in the terminal! Updated! So, we went up to the counter (here's where I was a total lame tourist. I found where in the book it had the name written in English, and they had an identical book in Korean, so I thought if I found the place in the book where the name was written in Korean, we could totally show it to the person at the ticket counter and it would be easy, right...?) and the very nice lady told us that we actually needed to go into the next building.
Lindie and I had been in one of the bus terminals once before when we went to Busan. But we didn't do anything except take the tickets that were handed to us and follow everyone else to the correct bus. We were in the wrong terminal, we realized once we got into the correct one, but even then we had no idea how to get to where we needed to go, or more importantly, how much it would cost to get there. Since we still had an outside chance that a regular dollar bus would get us there we finally decided to grab some breakfast and hope for the best at the bus stop.
At this point it's extremely important to point out that it was amazingly hot outside. It was an absolutely gorgeous day but we were melting out there. So, breakfast inside sounded like a good plan. In the terminal was a place called Lotteria, a chain restaurant that we've both seen all over the place. It's a type of burger place, but kind of reminds me of a Steak and Shake. So, we ordered some bulgogi burgers (it was 9am, remember :-) but everyone was already eating burgers) and we had a great time chilling in the air conditioning and listening to the very entertaining music that they had (plus, studying the maps that we looted from the bus terminal and hoarded like classic foreigners) We found out that the scenic sight we wanted to go to was actually not close at all to other things we wanted to see that day, and also that a regular bus, according to this updated map, may not get us there at all. So, we decided on Jinha Beach, and walked to the next available bus stop.
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| Melting. . .but finally on our way!! |
Ironically, the next bus stop didn't have any buses that went to Jinha Beach, so we decided to back track it to one that we knew did have the right buses. In the meantime, we saw this one the other side of the road:
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| Please! Please! Please Lindie can we go over there and see!!!!?? |
Amazingly, it was still closed. But that wasn't enough to get us down! Off we went to find a bus that would work!
This took a lot longer than we thought. . .but FINALLY one came, so we climbed into our first real success of the day
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| Yay! We made it!! (we think...) |
What we didn't realize ahead of time is that this bus left from where we started. . .because it took us nearly all the way back. But, in the meantime we saw a lot of interesting things. One of the most random things of the day was we drove by this lake and every couple of seconds multiple fish would jump out like the water was boiling or something. Everywhere you looked fish were jumping really high out of the water. So strange.
This was our bus initially:
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| Empty! Just chilling in the back seat :-) |
This was our bus a little while later, and all the way to the beach:
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| They all had these boxes with them. . .and all got on together. I felt bad for them, but we were still just chilling in the back. |
Everyone got off. . .like, everyone, but I didn't see a beach anywhere so I convinced Lindie to stay on the bus a little longer. Two seconds later we did see the beach, but the bus stop was way later...like, on the other side of a mountain later. There was a beach there, though!
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| Pretty :-) |
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| Do you see those buildings over there? That's where the beach we wanted to go actually is. But, isn't it pretty?? Time for a hike. |
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| Here we go!! It's a billion degrees, but a gorgeous day!! Lindie and I had gotten ice cream right before this. . .I don't know what melted faster... |
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| From the top of the hill we were climbing. Isn't it gorgeous? |
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| We found a shortcut. . .looks precarious but, let's give it a shot! |
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| From our shortcut trail. . .isn't it lovely? |
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| Is that a dead end? Is this the end of Lindie and Jean?? |
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| We made it!! And were very glad that we saw this. . .memorial? after we made it down the mountain :-) |
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| After we were asked multiple times if we needed tubes or umbrellas, two little kids came up and said "Hello! Try! Very, very delicious!" Since we are here to teach English, how could we refuse?? |
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| It was very, very delicious! Also, I need sunglasses. |
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| Beautiful day at Jinha Beach! |
We spent most of the afternoon in the tubes just chilling in the water. Of the beaches we've been to so far, this wasn't our favorite
but it wasn't bad :-) Tubes area always a good decision, and were very handy for lounging on the beach for a while as we tried to decide what to do next.
AND I got a new towel:
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| Great, right?? |
And then, as we were hanging out on the beach, just chilling and minding out own business, an entire baseball team walked onto the beach. Then, they walked right over to us. And stopped. The whole beach and they stopped right in front of us, so random.
Obviously they were planning on going into the water, but certainly not with all of their clothes on????
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| Or, maybe so. Even their socks. Crazy, huh? :-) That's quite a celebration :-) |
So, we walked through the streets just a little while longer looking for a shower and a bus stop. We thought maybe we would try another beach because it was only about 3. We walked and walked looking for a bus and looking quite lost and then, out of no where, we heard this honk, we looked back and the exact bus that we needed stopped, opened the door, and picked us up. We weren't at a stop or anything. He must have felt bad for us :-)
On our way home we decided that getting something to eat was first on the list. We thought maybe grab a pizza and then head back to Samsan for a movie. We went back to my place, took showers, and decided that by the time we ate we would be way too wiped to head back out. So, pizza and then a movie at home it became.
We went to this cute little place called Pizza Bingo that had really cheap pizzas, and we were so starving we seriously thought about gnawing on the pictures of the pizza. Pizza Bingo's Hawaiian pizza was pretty awesome but contained one interesting surprise: potatoes. On a pizza?? Yes. Lindie's pepperoni had corn. So, I think I'll take potatoes on Hawaiian over corn on pepperoni. We both decided that by the time we got home we wouldn't be able to live without pizza with corn or potatoes. :-)
No Scenic Sight but all in all, really great Saturday. And still one more day of the weekend left! :-) And there's still 11 months left for the rest of the Sights :)
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