magnetonic

Anyway, I went on a road trip starting early Thursday morning, early meaning up at 6 on the road by 7 am. No major wrong turns this time, not like 거제도 (Geoje Do) (twice even). We went north-east straight to the beach. We passed by fairly popular 울진 (Uljin) and went a bit north of there to a very nice, quiet, off-the-beaten-track spot called 후정 (Hujeong) where we stayed in a crappy 민박 (Minbak; a homestay- or hostel-like place) for ₩40,000 a night. Basically it was a room with a fan. It had no washroom (we used the public one about three minutes' walk from the room through countless tents) and a crap shower which was actually a shack disguised as a shower stall.

The beach, however, was amazing. The southern area was busy with families, babies and grandparents. Needless to say we stayed away from there, in the northern end. The sand was mostly soft and pretty white, but the water... oh, the water was sparkling clean. You could see the bottom in about a metre or more. As clean as or cleaner than at Candlelight Beach, Ko Samet.

We swam. And burned. And ate 라면 (lamyun; noodles). And swam and burned. And ordered fried chicken (delivered right to our umbrella. And swam. And burned. And ate 회 (hwae; raw fish). And burned. And swam. And had watergun fights. And burned. And swam.

After two days of that, our skin was red and itchy and so we drove south down the coast, on good 'ol highway 7, all the way down to 화진 (Hwajin) beach. Actually we didn't stay on the beach but off it, in a white hotel overlooking green-as-green rice paddies divided by throngs of bamboo. The hotel wasn't that nice, but it was air-conditioned, and the sun was fierce and scorching with a purpose. We didn't go out until after the sun went behind the tropical storm clouds. The temperature dropped and the wind picked up. The hotel was at the edge of this tiny sea town, the kind you see in movies. Laundry and fish out to dry. We ate a big crab that was quite expensive. Then the storm came. Well, the edge of it. I could hardly sleep, as I was too itchy. We took off the next morning in the wind and rain, down highway 7.

This roadway is beautiful. It hits the coast at times but is mostly nestled in the mountains, where you can see farms of corn or rice, or rivers and canyons. We booked it down to 경주 (Gyeongju), which was the ancient capital of the Shilla Dynasty in Korea. We saw lots of traditional tile roofs. It's probably some sort of law that you must put a traditional tile roof on your building. And (just like Troy, NY, where everything is Uncle Sam's This or Uncle Sam's That) everything in Gyeongju is Shilla Dry Cleaners and Shilla This and Shilla Bakery and Shilla That. But it's a beautiful city, with lots of mountains and history. We saw lots of artefacts and a couple of temples. One has a giant Buddha statue inside of a giant grotto up the side of a mountain. We stayed one night and took off the next morning looking for another beach or something.

We looked at the map, but nothing caught our eye. So we came back to 대전 (Daejeon) Monday afternoon.

I've been vegging since then. A little shopping here and there. Registration of the car under my name. A little DOA Extreme Beach Volleyball. More sleep.

No burning.