Baeknyeong-do #2: Boat Trippin'

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We woke up late today, the lie-in was lush. We ended up getting up around eleven and it was after twelve by the time we had all showered and gotten ourselves ready it was well after twelve. We were all starving, so we headed into downtown Baeknyeong-do to find some lunch. Most of the places looked seafoody or shut. We decided on a place, it was like a kimbap shop, regular Korean food, and we ordered lots of things to share. We ordered a shrimp fried rice, kimchi jjigae, bulgogi stew, and jaeyuk deopbab. It was all lovely and we scoffed it all down. Feeling full, we left but not before Mel got her photo with the signed Hyun Bin poster on the wall. He'd eaten here when he was staying on Baeknyeong-do, too.

We took a wander around this, the main town on the island. It was tiny, it's mad to think that this is the main town. It is basically two streets with businesses on them and then these roads lead out to small streets with houses. It's so different to the mainland, the vast majority of the buildings are only one or two storeys high, compared to all the high rises that I'm used to being surrounded by. The village was quaint and cute. Some of the walls of the houses were painted with murals that depicted old school village life. We saw the cutest thing ever an old couple riding along on a little tractor. We wandered around the village for a bit longer and Yeri found a small warehouse that sold fish sauce, which the island is famed for. We all wanted to buy some, but the smallest container was about two litres, so we all declined apart from Yeri, who bought a massive container of the stuff.

We headed back over to Dumujin, so that we could take the boat ride around the coast, that we were too late to do yesterday. First, we headed to the souvenir shop, that had been closed when we had arrived yesterday. We spent a while looking around, nothing was locally produced which was a shame. I ended up buying some jellies to take to work as a present from my holidays and some kind of topping stuff to go on rice, like I don't have enough already at home! While we were paying up, Yeri asked the woman in the shop of she knew when the next boat trip would be. The woman was really kind and rang the tour company, one was leaving now, so we had to leg it to the harbour. Haha me trying to leg it. Not a chance! We made it in time, but because we hadn't paid, Yeri had to run to the office and pay, then we were on our way. The boat was pretty empty, there were a couple of couples and a military service lad with his parents. He slept for the whole boat trip. The boat left the harbour and we were out on the sea. It was canny rough and the little boat was rocking a lot in the waves. The captain was giving us a commentary all the way, pointing out the different rock formations and other things, not that we could understand a word of it. The views from inside were okay, but we couldn't really get any photos, so we headed outside. It was so choppy, we either had to sit down or hang on for dear life. However the views made up for it. We went around Dumujin and we could see Elephant Rock, a camouflaged hideout in the rock to check the waters surrounding the island, and the rocks where the seals normally basked in the sun. However there were no seals about, I think it was either too early in the season for them or we were there at the wrong time of day. We reached the end of Dumujin and it was time to turn around and head back to the harbour. The return trip was pretty rocky, too.

Back on land, we headed to the tour office to fill in the passenger manifest. Nice to seeing Korea taking the new safety rules seriously. We headed back to the rocks as it as too cold to go down to the bottom yesterday. Today the weather was warmer and there was no wind. Dumujin is the rocks that are jutting into the sea. The names comes from the Chinese characters of Du meaning head, mu warrior, and jin ferry. This is because the rocks looks like generals putting their heads together for a meeting. Also from the sea we saw Elephant Rock, as you can probably guess, it looks like a elephant dipping its trunk in the water. We walked around the rocks we had yesterday, and then headed down the steps. The beach was all pebbly and a bit hard to walk on. However it looked beautiful, the waves were crashing off the rocks and the sun was shining on the water and making it glisten. A beautiful day! We spent a while exploring the beach, there were lots of little caves and gaps in the rocks to have a nose around. It was fun scrabbling over the rocks. However there was quite a lot of rubbish in the caves. We spied some water bottles and other things with Chinese writing on them. They must of floated down from the North.

We had a couple of hours until sunset, so we explored more of the island's beaches. It took some finding and a few wrong turns, but we made it to Sagot Beach. This is the biggest and most impressive beach on the island, in summer it's popular for swimming. Also it is only one of two beaches in the world that serves as a natural landing strip for planes. The beach is three kilometres long, but we didn't walk all the way along it as part of it didn't look very hospitable with iron girders poking out of the sand and forming big Xs. Yet another reminder that this isn't just a quaint little island. We had a bit of a mooch along the beach. It was quite interesting as it had big murals painted on the wall at the bottom of the beach. We had a good laugh at those as all the people were western and the ladies all had big boobies straining their bikinis.

We drove long to Kongdol Beach, another famous beach on Baeknyeongdo. The name Kongdol means bean stone. If you couldn't guess from the name Kongdol beach is a pebble beach. Yeri was telling us that it's protected by the Korean government in some way, so we aren't allowed to nick the pebbles. You get fined if you get caught. I was sorely tempted, but didn't fancy getting stuck on Baeknyeong-do for life. The beach was cute, but a bugger to walk on as it was pretty steep and not very wide. I don't think the pebbles helping either.

We headed back to the Cheonan Memorial and climbed the hill to watch the sunset. However it wasn't very spectacular. I wished that the sun had lit the sky up more, with brighter colours, and more spread out, but it wasn't meant to be. We still enjoyed it though. When we were walking back down the hill to the car, there were a couple of soldiers coming out form the spot I had seen the others in the day before. We topped to watch where they were going as there was no truck for them to get into. They headed to a bunker just above the beach. I didn't fancy being them and bring on lookout all night or even for a few hours as it was cold and windy. It must be torture to have to do it in the winter. I definitely couldn't hack military life, I'm far too soft.

We headed for some dinner. The downtown was even quieter than it had been during the day. We found a restaurant that looked open. We went in and were directed to the one next door, well actually it was the same restaurant, but this part had seats instead of sitting on the floor. We ordered gamjatang and handmade donkass. The donkass (pork cutlet) was huge and really nice. The gamjatang (potato and pork stew) was alright, but I'm not a huge fan of meat on the bone, it's just too much effort. After dinner we headed to the store to buy some dessert, water, and beers. There were some canny drunk ajjosshis around. We managed to escape before they tried to start talking to us or inquire if we were Russian (being asked if you are Russian for a woman, really means that they are inquiring if you are a prostitute). We headed to the Noraebang, there were a few Noraebangs on the island. We headed to the one that Mel had spied on the internet. We spent a couple of hours singing our little hearts out. The noraebang was canny grotty and stunk of piss. The owner looked like she could have doubled up as a madam. Then it was back to the motel and we watched a movie before bed.

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