Day 463: Escape From Seoul

Last night Michael and I drove out to Incheon to meet up with Nick and Angele, and Pauline and Tim, cause this weekend we decided that a getaway was long overdue. The last time I left the city for a weekend was months and months ago! Time to Escape From Seoul! Seoul's a great city but living in a megalopolis gets to you after a while. The traffic, the noise, the crowds, the pollution....a small-town Canadian boy like me sometimes just needs to get away from all of that!

After spending the night in a very cheap and dirty motel we woke up early today to catch a ferry to Jawoldo. Jawoldo is an island off the coast in the Yellow Sea. I had never been there before and was looking forward to the quiet and fresh air. It was a cloudy, misty weekend but somehow the atmosphere seemed really appropriate. Jawoldo is very rural with rice paddies and small homes strung out along its coast - a mix of rising hills and sandy beaches. It's also very green and lush and covered in a blanket of thick forest. Very beautiful.

We checked into a pension (small 'cabins' for rent) and then decided to go for a bike ride. Our pension provided us with free bikes and so we biked along the island, cruising up and down the gentle curves of the island, gazing out towards sea, and taking in deep breaths of cool, fresh sea air. Ahhhh.... This is so what the doctor ordered!

After our bike ride the sky actually cleared up a bit and got sunny. We decided to go hang out on the beach with our towels to soak up the rays and read some books. I read my Lonely Planet: Thailand, and then Nick and I went for a walk around a small island that actually becomes a peninsula during low-tide. After an afternoon outdoors we went back to make some dinner and relax indoors. Michael cooked up some delicous Thai curry and then we played Scattergories. The boys played "Shithead" (a card game) after dinner and engaged in some consumption of soju. I wasn't feeling up for either so I chilled with my book.

We had quite the funny incident after dinner, though, with the pension owners... Around 10pm we thought it would be cool to have a bonfire on the beach, but we didn't have any wood... Well we noticed that the owners did so Michael thought he'd go over and ask them if we could buy some off of them. Well quite the misinterpretation occurred between Michael and them! Michael was speaking to them in Korean and when they said we couldn't have any wood, Michael asked why. Well they tried to explain it in Korean but Mike didn't quite understand the reasons. Asking again, the owners replied rather loudly in English, "Bitches, shut up!"

Naturally feeling angry, Michael replied with (in Korean) "Did you just swear at me?!?!" They said no and then explained again in Korean, and this time it all became clear. What they had actually said was "Beach is shut up", meaning that the beach is closed *down* for the night.. Ahhh.... That's much better! Wow, you gotta watch it with that one conversation/two languages thing sometimes! haha! We opted for a walk on the beach instead and then after that went to sleep.