Eric... : 무의도

May 16/17
무의도 (Muuido) Island adventure.
So we woke up on our day off, Thursday. We went to 이태원 (Itaewon) to have breakfast. There is a place called the All American Diner. Ama had been there, and we thought it would be a great way to start off our 2 day adventure. The had chicken fried stead and biscuits and white gravy and sausage. Not anywhere near as good as the food back in in the states, but for what it was, delicious. Expensive. I do have to say it is better than the chicken fried steak in NY. But Oklahoma has it beat by miles. I do not think they were expecting anyone to come on Thursday morning, cause everything took a long time to get.
Ama, Hudson, Rob and I then hit up the subway to Incheon Airport, we took a bus to a ferry, we took a ferry to the island, we took a bus on the island to the beach. In all about an hour and forty five minutes to get there. We were thinking there would be a decent number of other people there. Nope. Empty. There were 4 other people there.
The beach is cool. The tide goes out half a mile. So when we get there, we walk out to the edge and we can actually see the tide coming in. It is extremely flat.
The restaurants all closed early. There was a general store that closed at 8. So we bought a lot of 삼겹살 though it was frozen. We had no way of cooking it. Luckily of the 4 people there, we made single serving friends with 2 of them. 2 girls. They were staying in the quasi hotel, we were staying in a beach side bungalow. They had a grill. One of the girls ended up cooking out samgyeopsal for us. They even had homemade sauces that they shared with us. Just listening to music, drinking, eating, then shooting off fireworks. Yes fireworks. The general store had fireworks for sale. I bought a lot of them. I love fireworks.
The bungalow was pretty small. The four of us fit, but it was tight. If the weather had been a little warmer I think we may have just slept outside. I think it helped that we all had a few drinks in us, so sacrificing a little comfort just to sleep was perfectly acceptable. The four of us woke up and were out of bed by 7:30. Pretty amazing.
We had a seafood jeon (like the Kimchi Jeon I spoke of in a previous post). So basically a seafood pancake for breakfast. Using locally caught seafood. Then after that Ama and I both has clam ramen. Delicious. People started coming in and the beach started filling up. Foreigners and Koreans. So we sit on the beach and drink some. Koreans are not keen on going into the water and swimming at a beach. Its interesting. Ama was saying that his girlfriend was afraid he may drown. The only people that were going in the water (all in) were foreigners. there were some Koreans that were in the water up to the mid-shin, but no deeper than that. Also the Koreans that were sunbathing were completely covered. They were laying in the sun, but were totally clothed and had a towel on their heads. They do not like tans. For them, being lighter is better than darker. I had never seen so many clothed people at the beach. The only people in bathing suits were the foreigners.
Swimming was difficult because the water was shallow. So, I guess not really swimming was possible, but we were still able to lay down and be fully submerged. As the tides rolled out, the Koreans were all on the beach digging for clams (or something). It is like the reasons they were at the beach was not to be in the water, but to find food. It was cute though. A family adventure of digging for clams. Entire families had buckets and shovels and were just digging together. So instead of everyone splitting off to swim, they all stayed together to clam.
We all were feeling kinda pooped and sunburnt and much much poorer. We were thinking it was going to be cheap. Well it was not. We thought about bringing our own food and drinks... we did not. Big mistake. So instead of staying the next night, we decided to head home. We stopped by Taco Bell to get some good cheap unhealthy food in our stomachs.
We took a cab from TBell to home. We were expecting to all go out at night. Instead we all went home and passed out.