May 10, 2009
This might be what they call “Too Many Pictures”
Warning: lots of images ahead!
I thought my blog could serve as an educational tool, too. So I decided to write up a little entry.
“How to Rekindle Love for Korea”
Step One: Have a nice 3 or 4 day weekend thanks to convenient holidays, like Buddha’s birthday (May 3rd) and Children’s Day (May 5th).
Step Two: Choose a location. Samcheok and Sokcho are both nice seaside cities with lots of attractions, particularly of the natural type. Total travel time via bus was about four hours.
Step Three: Use the buses. Nice, clean, cheap, and direct. Enjoy the scenery. The Korean mountains on the way to Gangnung are marvy. Too bad the cherry blossoms are fading.
Yeah, that's right, I take pictures out of bus windows.
The cherry blossoms, sadly, are not so pretty now.
MORE MOUNTAINS!
Step Four: Arrive at your destination! Samcheok is a popular seaside town with lots to do. It advertises itself as the “cave city” of Korea due to its huge limestone caves. I recommend grabbing a hotel first so you aren’t hauling bags everywhere.
Step Five: Choose a strange local tourist gig. For example, the cave museum in Samcheok. Which… happens to be shaped like a gigantic cake. Okay! It’s a nice place to walk through, but there’s little English, so we were left with laughing at the strange mannequins and watching the IMAX movie (The World of Fantasy: Caves).
It's a cave museum! Isn't it obvious?
A giant cake and a giant globe. What more do you need?
Tinkerbell lives in the Korean cave system, didn't you know?
These also live in the caves. Dear god.
Step Six: Go to a … unique local park featuring phalluses. Local legend has it that at Haesindang Park, a young woman died in the sea a virgin and was really, really mad about that. She messed with their fishing until the village people starting putting up large phallic totems, which appeased her.
I’m going to spare you the photos of the, uh, phallic statues. I don’t think my image host would let me keep the photos up, anyways. The coastline at the park was beautiful!
The shrine to the perished maiden.
The large rocks on the beach.
Step Seven: Bus back to town from the distant park. Catch a cab and go for sashimi! Actually, order a nice set of everything on the menu (for 4 people) so you get a taste of all the seafood deliciousness. Explaining each dish would take too long, so just look at the pictures. The vast majority of it was very, very delicious.
Part of the first round.
Still round one.
Probably my least favorite dish, because of the seasoning of the crab.
Round two! The majority of this dish, sadly, was not so good.
The main dish, sashimi. SOOOO GOOOOD.
The final course, fish bone soup.
The true end to any Korean meal: rice!
As a special reward, have a video! We got octopus tentacles that were still moving. They didn’t taste any different, though, so it wasn’t a big deal. There were also some sea anemones, which I ate, too, and they were just bland and chewy. Later, we realized they were also moving.
Step Eight: Sleep.
Step Nine: Get up and go to the actual cave! Oh, BTW, surprise! There’s a 35 minute uphill (STEEP) climb with lots of stairs! Have fun!
More bus pictures! Very rural Korea. Gorgeous.
I don't know... my guess, obviously, is a temple of some sort.
A view outside the cave.
A waterfall outside the cave. "Fairy Falls"
Inside the cave.
Fences? Railings? Nooo, it looks safe to me!
There was nothing under that grate. NOTHING.
Oh, yeah, the picture of the grate. That grate was all that was between me and a black bottomless pit of terror and horror. I should not have looked down until I was off the bridge. 
Step Ten: Bus home, then bus to your second destination (Sokcho)! But this is going to wait for another entry, so check back later. I hope to have it up in the next few days (editting and resizing these pictures takes awhile!).
