Anyway, with our friend Alex kindly covering Ric's late Thursday class, we were able to catch the last bus up to Gangneung and be checked into a motel by the bus station by 10.15. Perfect. To celebrate we sat in a mart drinking beer from paper cups and eating fried chicken warmed up in a mircowave - living the highlife, Korea!
Early the next day we caught the local bus to Odaesan National Park where we set up our flimsy pink tent and ate a late breakfast of greasy pajeon in a restaurant by the river. Although the park has a camp site, it wasn't yet open for the season. For us that simply meant we hopped over the barrier and got to camp there for free. Hurrah.
We hiked up the valley following the river. It was beautiful. The trees are so thick and green, and the clear water of the river was deep enough to swim in. We stopped off frequently to paddle, admire waterfalls, and lie out on the sun-warmed rocks. There was even a temple nestled up in the valley, so we were able to go wish the big man a Happy Birthday.
We walked 8.2km, failed to find nice food in the tiny village and the settled around our camp fire for the evening with a pack of cards and [another] bottle of beer. I LOVE making camp fires, I would definitely have survived natural selection.
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| Ric chilling at our camp at dusk |
The next day didn't go quite as smoothly as the previously one. For starters we didn't sleep well in the tent, possibly because it cost £8 and ripped holes in it after the first use. We got to our next destination, Samcheok, and realised that the infrequent buses meant we wouldn't be able to see everything we wanted to see in one day, so we'd have to stay the night there. It was forecast rain too.
Whilst waiting for our first local bus to take us on our way sightseeing, we took a taxi to Samcheok beach. The beach was golden and the waters were clear and beautiful, but the buildings along the beach were in various stages of decay and we quickly decided we wouldn't spend the night in one of the shabby motels there.
It was about 3 o'clock before we got to where we planned to visit: Daegeugul and Hwanseongul Caves. Hwanseongul is the biggest cave in the country and one of the biggest in Asia, appoximately 8km in length!
Caves aren't really my thing, Ric was the one who wanted to go, but I was so impressed once we got inside. The size is just unbelievable and the weird rock formations inside are spectacular. The photos don't do it justice but they give you an idea of how big it is.
After the caves we took a bus along the coast to the small fishing village of S(h)inan. The next stop on our trip was located in Sinan so we thought we were being clever by taking a late bus down there, staying over, and being the first through the gates in the morning. I assumed that because Sinan was by the beach, there would be at least some neon-embellished love motels that we could stay in...
Wrong, wrong, wrong.
By the time we got off the bus it was dark, the village had probably 100 little houses, only a few with lights on, and the cries, songs and screams of drunk fishermen echoed against the mountains behind us. It was scary, like the beginning to a bad horror film. The further we headed down from the road into the village, the more likely it seemed that we'd be sleeping in our crappy tent in the rain. The few minbaks (traditional accodommation) in the village were closed. Luckily, we found one old lady sweeping her shop and she said her minbak was open.
Eating was another problem. It was after 9, we hadn't eaten and there didn't appear to be any restaurants in the village. Once again our ajuma came to the rescue and lead us to a restaurant... in the fish market!!
Those of you who know me know of my aversion to fish or any type of seafood, so you can imagine the look on my face when I found myself starving hungry, in a fish market looking at a menu with fish as the only option. She offered us raw fish rice or fish stew. After my experience of raw fish in Busan, I chose the cooked option. The stew came, red and fiery hot like most things in Korea, and floating in it were 3 fish heads and one tail. I'm not sure what type of fish it was but I'm guessing it must be some exotic Asian fish... most fish in Europe only have one head.
Anyway, I ate it; cringing at the tiny, lethal fish bones and the judging me from within the broth. I ate enough to get me through the evening and avoid offending another Korean person.
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| The three-headed fish dinner. |
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| Look, I ate it! |
Luckily the village shop sold rain coats and we were able to carry on to the main attraction that drew us to Sinan in the first place... A PENIS PARK!!!
Korea, conservative as it is, has a thing for penises. There a couple of penis parks around the country and I really wanted to visit one before we left (forget rocks and and caves, head to the beach for cocks and waves!!!)
The story goes (in my own words):
A young virgin drowned at sea,
After her death the fishermen were unable to catch any fish,
They realised the girl's ghost must be haunting the ocean,
So what could they do?
How to please a young female ghost who drowned at sea?
...
With dicks of course!
Lots and lots of huge penises looking out to sea.
What else would a virgin ghost want?
So the park was erected and the fish came back. Now it's a tourist attraction. I have to admit, I loved it, it was hilarious. I've never seen anything like it before, it's SO WEIRD. The views along the coast were beautiful from the park and the diverse array of shlongs of varying degrees of offensiveness were highly entertaining. It's certainly representative of the misogyny in Korea.
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| There she is, the dead girl. Behind her, the 12 signs of the zodiac carved into giant granite penises. |
After the penis park we went to jjimjilbang (Korean sauna) to wait out the remaining time before our bus home. We jokingly said this blog title should be Ric's Day of Dick as it started with a park full of penis statues and ended in a bath tub full of naked Korean dudes.
The north-east is really beautiful; the beaches, the mountains and the phallic-centric parks. I would highly recommend it.
