With two children the time to write posts has now definitively decreased. Furthermore at work I have more and more to do. I have taken the main charge of the organisation of the first international conference on geodynamics that will be held in Korea (slab.snu.ac.kr). I am very happy of working on that, it is something new and very interesting, but the obstacles are huge. However I don't want to write about it today. I have instead some photos of our first trip to the beaches outside Seoul.
Since when we went to Japan, at the end of April, we decided that we want to travel more. Big cities in Asia are fascinating and never boring, but we missed the other side of it: if so many people live concentrated in such a small area (half of south koreans live in the metropolitan area of Seoul) it means that the rest of the country must be still under the control of nature. And in part it is really so.
Few weeks ago we rented a car for the first time and we went for a long weekend (Sat-Sun-Mon). The first idea was to take one day off at work and avoid the terrible traffic when returning to Seoul on Sunday. However we did not know that exactly that Monday that we randomly choose was a national holidays: the birthday of Buddha! And therefore this week-end turned into the most dramatic experience in my life of being stucked into a traffic jam. I will not bother you with the details, but I will only say that we have left our apartment at 10.30am and at 3pm we were still only 50 km far from Seoul. A real nightmare that convinced us to change our plans and not to go anymore in the extreme southern region of Korea, until Mokpo as we originally planned, but to stop at only 150 km from Seoul, on what the guide described as the "most famous beach" on the western coast of Korea. Daecheon, near Boryong.
Few weeks ago we rented a car for the first time and we went for a long weekend (Sat-Sun-Mon). The first idea was to take one day off at work and avoid the terrible traffic when returning to Seoul on Sunday. However we did not know that exactly that Monday that we randomly choose was a national holidays: the birthday of Buddha! And therefore this week-end turned into the most dramatic experience in my life of being stucked into a traffic jam. I will not bother you with the details, but I will only say that we have left our apartment at 10.30am and at 3pm we were still only 50 km far from Seoul. A real nightmare that convinced us to change our plans and not to go anymore in the extreme southern region of Korea, until Mokpo as we originally planned, but to stop at only 150 km from Seoul, on what the guide described as the "most famous beach" on the western coast of Korea. Daecheon, near Boryong.
This place is mostly famous for the mud festival, which is in summer and is the most internationally renown event in Korea. When we went it was still low season, in fact while here you can find endless restaurants, bars, cafes, they were mostly half empty, which is just a pleasant feeling if you come from Seoul! We even found some very nice western style cafes, like the one where we went the first morning to get our breakfast.
Not everybody knows that the western coast of Korea is wet by the Yellow Sea, which is not a real sea. It is more a flat flooded continental plateau, therefore the beaches are normally made of a mix of sand and soil and they are very wide and long and regularly covered by tides. They are huge mud deposits and when the water goes away the exposed area can be kilometers wide. Here people use to go to dig into the mud to find precious huge shells, which are then cooked on a barbecue. It is a typical week-end activity for korean families!
However the beach is different in Daecheon because it looks quite similar to the ones that I have seen in Western Australia, near Broome, and in Donegal, in northern Ireland. However, very differently from there, in summer these beaches are crazily packed. We were lucky because now, although quite warm, still they were almost empty, but the hotels were not. We spent two hours, from 10pm to midnight to find a place to stay, and in the end we have gotten the only possible option, a student dormitory where they gave to the four of us a eight people room for the price normally paid by ... eight people! However I have to say that it was really a nice place where one sleeps on the floor, in a traditional korean style and with view on the sea. And the day after they gave us a very convenient and cheap room and they offered an authentic korean breakfast (with spicy soup!).
However the beach is different in Daecheon because it looks quite similar to the ones that I have seen in Western Australia, near Broome, and in Donegal, in northern Ireland. However, very differently from there, in summer these beaches are crazily packed. We were lucky because now, although quite warm, still they were almost empty, but the hotels were not. We spent two hours, from 10pm to midnight to find a place to stay, and in the end we have gotten the only possible option, a student dormitory where they gave to the four of us a eight people room for the price normally paid by ... eight people! However I have to say that it was really a nice place where one sleeps on the floor, in a traditional korean style and with view on the sea. And the day after they gave us a very convenient and cheap room and they offered an authentic korean breakfast (with spicy soup!).
After spending the entire first day in the car we wanted only to rest a little bit, so we went to the beach. That was our first beach day of the year. The beach was different from what the summer standards are:
We have enjoyed our time there
At lunch time we went to a restaurant with a nice view on the coast
In the afternoon we were already tired of sun and bathing, so we took the map of the are and we went to discover the interior of Korea. We did not have to go very far to find some farmers planting rise. They used an interesting machine that was planting all of them in a nice order. That was quick. When we came back in the late afternoon they had finished to seed four large fields!
The next step was a temple, originally a Buddhist school. However while searching for it we found first a closed, but beautiful shrine (yes, we spied over the wall)
and after we encountered the really used temple of the village. Because the following day was Buddha's birthday, they had put a lot of lanterns. It was really nice. They invited us to eat in the temple and specified that this was an offer to the visitors and that they did not want anything from us. Ah, they had fantastic "wild cherries", tiny and delicious.
And they had cats and dogs, for the joy of Marlen and some trepidation for Renee.
Finally on the way back we found the temple that we were looking for. It is a special lonely place, lost in the middle of nothing, with a raised patio several meters above the ground. Dorothea was angry with me because I have parked our car right in the middle of this Eden. I guess she was right.
Dorothea caught the perfect light on the patio.
The place has been clearly abandoned after having been renewed. The locks are rosted. But you can see the elegant original design, and the paper made windows, like the ones that we saw in the tea house in Seoul. Hopefully koreans will find the way to regularly take care of their ancient treasures and in effect I am optimist about it.
I was impressed by seeing this place. I wander how long it will resist. But I felt that it was a privilege to have it only for us. Marlen found a broom under the floor and cleaned around a bit...
On the way back I took this sunset photo on the rise plantation.
Once in the village we went to search some place for dinner. The choice was mostly between seafood and seafood. No choice at all. But everything was really as much fresh as possible, i.e. they were putting alive fishes and shells on the fire and letting them fry...
As usual we have been enthusiastically invited nearly everywhere
Twao calamari's tried to have their last party before dinner...
And Marlen enjoyed a walk before going to sleep, with her Hello Kitty that she won on a shooting air balloons...
It was truly a first byte of holidays, although the day after the weather was not so clement with us, therefore we went for a different adventure that I will describe in another post.
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