Ice Fishing Festival, Hwacheon

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5th Jan: Up at 6. Showered, layered up, and had brekky. Skidded down the road to get a taxi. One came pretty quick. Taxi driver was chatty, sad face, I can't be arsed to make conversation in broken English first thing in the morning. Got to Suwon station by about half seven. Went and got a coffee at Maccy Ds in the station and then headed out to the subway exit, where the bus would be picking us up. Chain smoked, while waiting. The bus turned up about ten to eight. We all got on. Bloody hell, it was freezing on the bus. We waited for a bit and then drove into Seoul to pick up the people there, at the Express Bus Terminal and Yongsan. My God I was bursting for the toilet. Tried to read my kindle to take my mind off it. We finally stopped at a rest stop at about half ten. Made it to the toilets, there was no way I was gonna use a squatter. I would be peeing for ages, and I don't have thighs of steel, only flab.

Back on the bus we drove for another hour and a bit and then we arrived at the pension, where we would be staying that night. The bus couldn't make it up the hill because of the snow, so we took a different route to get there. We dumped our stuff. The rooms weren't ready so we just put our stuff anywhere. Then we headed back up to the bus and got a peanut butter and jam sandwich. It's the first time I've ever had one, and that's quite bad considering I'm almost thirty. The reasn being I am not a big fan of jam, however I did enjoy it. We drove for about 40 minutes and arrived at the festival area.

The bus drooped us at a random corner and we had to walk up a street lined with tented restaurants. At the end of the street, there was a noraebang corner set up with a load of grandmas and grandads rocking to Gangnam Style. We then walked under a tunnel and came out in the festival area. It was mad to think that we were standing on a big frozen lake. I would love to go back in summer and see what the area is like, I imagine it would look totally different. We wandered for a bit and found the tent where we got our fishing poles. We were in the special foreigner section, which was nice as it meant we had a better chance of catching some fish. Although there was quite a few Koreans gatecrashing the area.

I spent ages bobbing my fishing rod up and down in the hole, and nothing happened. I was quite pissed off with all the people who had caught numerous fish. However it was nice, because it was snowing and that added to the wintery atmosphere. after about an hour and a half I managed to catch a fish. I couldn't pull it off the hook as it was still alive and kept jerking, and I am far too much of a girl for that shit. However a nice volunteer did it for me and even went and got a bag for me to put my fish in. Then within a few minutes I caught another one. There was no one around to pull it off the hook, so the fish had quite an inhumane death with me twatting it off the ice and trying to rip its head off, do that it would die and I could get it off the hook. However an old man came and did it for me, eventually.

Then I went off to get them cooked. That was a bit of a gyp, as you just swapped them for already cooked ones. We all stood around outside eating our fish. They were deliciious. Some people gave us some sashimi, too. That was delightful. Then we went inside the tent as some of the girls had ordered their fish to be cooked in a different way. The fish were lovely, too, as they had a nice sauce and veggies on them. Afterwards we spent the next couple of hours wandering around the festival area. We went in the ice castle and looked at some exhibits of other ice festivals around the world. I would love to go to Harbin ice festival in China. We headed to a tent and got some snacks, hoddeok mmm and washed it down with some maekgeolli. It was freezing at this point and we had about an hour and half until the bus came to pick us up, so we headed to a tented restaurant and had some beers and some spit roasted pork.The pork was a bloody rip off 40,000 won for a small plate shared between five of us. We stopped off at the shop to get some more booze and then got on the bus and drove back to our pension.

Back at the pension we all got sorted in our room. There was a party going on outside, but it was too cold, so we stayed in the room, drinking, chatting, and listening to music. We went to bed not long after midnight.

6th Jan: Well I felt a bit rough when I woke up this morning. After showering I headed next door for breakfast. I had a bit of a hard time trying to get my burrito down but managed it in the end. Then I went back to lay on the bed until it was time to leave. The area around the pension was gorgeous, next to a frozen stream. It looked like a real winter wonderland. We got on the bus at half ten but the bus driver got lost, so we didn't end up getting to the festival until gone 12. We were meant to leave at 2:30, but because of the cock-up, we would now stay until 3:30.

We had a wander around and went to check out the bare hand fishing. Bloody hell, those people are brave. There is a small pool outside and the organisers fill it up with fish. The people, who areparticipating in the event, go to a tent and get changed into shorts and a t-shirt. I really do not know how they did it, as it's about -15C outside. I felt really cold just watching them. Some of them had turned blue just sitting on the ice, that was before they even got into the pool. Also another reason why I couldn't do it, once you caught a fish you had to put it down your top to keep it safe. Urrgh! Having a live fish hitting off your belly no thanks. There was also this random camera thing flying around, it was like something from the future. Maybe it was remote controlled. However, this is the funny part, once the action was over and the camera was flying away it crashed into a lamp post on the bridge.

We spent the rest of the afternoon wandering around the festival area. It's massive and just filled with people ice fishing. Some had even brought chairs and one bloke a heater. I'm not sure that's too safe briniging the heater onto a frozen lake. We stopped off for some more hoddeok and finally found the place, where we could spend the vouchers we had been given the day before. Got some honey and I only had to pay about 60p for it. Then at 3:30, it was back on the bus to return to Seoul and Suwon.

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