We would like to let all our friends, family, and strangers who are viewing our blog that we love reading everybody’s comments. We are always looking forward to the next time we can check our blog and read what people have to say. You can also feel free to ask us questions on our blog and we will try to answer them whenever we can.
Day 3
I woke up feeling like poop. Kyle went off in search of some food for me, and to request a late check-out, as I was not ready to get up. We had decided to head off to the beach. It said it was the best beach on the West coast of Korea so we thought we would check it out. Daechon Beach was compared to Las Vegas architecturally. I guess there are a lot of hotels with interesting names or themes, but otherwise it is a dingy beach town, that looks like it was bombed several years ago and no one ever cleaned up the wreckage. Kyle kept saying he felt like he was in Mexico, that it reminded him of the resort towns, where you walk just a little ways away from the resort and you are in the middle of a poverty stricken ghetto.
When we got off the train, I of course had to use the restroom, and as I walked to the bathroom I saw a man approach Kyle. He wanted to provide us with a free ride to his hotel, if we stayed there. Kyle thought this was great but I said no right away. All the guide books say you should find your own accommodations and never go with the “sales” guys at the station! So even though I said no, Kyle decided that we should. The hotel was fine, but it was a 15 min walk to the main, happening part of the town.
The hotel was called the Blue Motel and it is located in an area of Daechon that looks like it used to be a popular tourist area, but is no longer. There were many buildings falling apart and there was trash everywhere. So yeah. Definitely not the touristy part of town. But the hotel was nice on the inside. It looked fairly new and was clean. The room had a nice bathroom and an ocean view which wasn’t that great because it was very foggy out. The room was very unique. Everything was controlled by a remote. It controlled three different sets of lights, the air conditioning, an of course the television. It had a cold and hot waster tap for drinking water in the room too.
We left our bags in the hotel and went exploring. The streets were lined with these little seafood shops, they all had tanks with fish and clams in them outside their restaurants. The smell was horrible at times. So far Korea is an awful smelling country and especially for me when I was hung-over, it was almost unbearable!
We found a restaurant that actually served a hangover soup, which sounded quite appropriate for Angy, but it was bland and fishy. We also got a dish that comes in a hot stone bowl. It had rice and veggies in it and on top was a healthy heap of little fish eggs. This was much better than the soup. Of course, just like any other Korean meal it came with 4 or five different dishes of kimchi, or pickled vegetables. To drink, we had a bottle of raspberry soju, which is a Korean alcohol. It’s kind of a mix between Japanese sake and vodka.
*After that we walked around the town a little bit and eventually made our way down to the beach. It was a nice day out with the exception of the hazy and overcast sky. We walked down and got our feet a little bit (that way Angy could say she has been in the Yellow Sea) and then went to sit down and do a little bit of people watching. We have noticed that about half of the people in the water kept their shirts on, and there were even a lot of people with pants on in the water.
(Angy) We decided to go back to the hotel room to put on something a little warmer, and then find a restaurant for dinner. Kyle discovered that the hotel room came equipped with free Asian porn. That was worth a few laughs and then it was time to find dinner! We walked over a mile back to the main part of the beach, and went into a restaurant with the standard fish tank outside. We again had a little trouble ordering, but eventually we had a feast in front of us of shrimp, grilled fish, rice, veggies, kimchi, steamed blue crab, and especially for Kyle a large plate of live, wriggling octopus! Which he slurped up as it tried to hold on for dear life to the inside of his mouth, yuck! Not for me!!
After dinner we went down to the beach where everyone was setting off fireworks. We set off a few, they were like long tube-like sticks and a spark would shoot out of the end wherever you were aiming. This seemed dangerous to me as everyone had some and were running around with them! A group of about 10 young Korean men were sitting on a blanket at the edge of the beach. The looked like they were having such a good time. On their blanket they had a ton of food spread out, and a cooler. They were laughing and goofing around with each other. Kyle went off to buy more fireworks. I was sitting there alone, just watching everyone when all of a sudden there was a hot spot on my leg. I looked up at this giggling girl that was handing me a lit firework!! I quickly grabbed it, as it was dropping little sparks onto my pants. Now the only pair of long pants I brought has a little burn hole on the right thigh! Kyle came back, and I told him all about what happened, of course he just laughed! Then we lit off a few more. Kyle had a large sparkler, and he was twirling it around. A large burning hunk flung to the ground. I warned him, saying that he should not do that because a large piece could fly off and hit someone! Well he didn’t listen, and the next thing I knew a burning hunk hit me right in the face. I freaked out and ran up the stairs to find a bathroom. In the freak out and chaos Kyle lost track of me. I was looking at my face in the mirror in the bathroom, and we got separated. I know all of our real mothers and our mothers from other states will be very mad at me for this. Espeacially Carol! I promised you I wouldn’t run off like that, but I really thought he was following me. Finally after about 20 mins we found each other, Kyle was really mad that I ran off, and he yelled at me, and I just cried, because my face was burnt and then he was yelling. We probably looked very crazy to all the Koreans who had no idea what we were saying to each other. Just this large blonde guy yelling at the little crying girl!! Anyway, I am a drama queen and the burn is not that bad. It is to the right of my right eye and looks like it will heal nicely and not leave a scar, but I was so scared. After getting over that we made our way back to the hotel. We both needed a good nights sleep!
