Korea Day 2 (Sept 18)

Whew, I'm getting behind already! More to follow at some point.. XD
---------heeere we go

Man, I sure can't sleep in when my time zones are totally hosed . Much to Amy and Mark's sorrow, I woke everyone up at about 6:30 in the morning… then we headed out to some breakfast. Shortly afterwords we picked up Mark's girlfriend Keziah and proceeded to go out to Tongyeon to go check out Yokji Island.

After a couple of hours driving down the Korean highways.. we arrived! After checking the times for the ferry, we headed out to get some food, where we stopped to get some quite mediocre pork stew from a nearby shop. One of the interesting things about Korea is many small restaurants exist right next to each other, a lot of them serving the exactly same menu and each just owned by a particular family that lives in the same building.

Breaking back to the Ferry, we boarded the boat for about an hour ride to Yokji island. The views along the way were spectacular:






Upon arrival we didn't have a whole lot of time, as the last ferry left a couple hours later, but we did get the chance to ride some go-carts around the mountain. This was amazing and fun, but sadly my tallness stabbed me in the back again and no matter how I maneuvered my gangly legs I couldn't drive without pressing them against the steering wheel and drastically impeding my ability to avoid cars, so I became the photo guy.

The views while driving on the island



Riding it up


After the drive we headed back to the ferry where Marks dog got loads attention from the locals (par usual). Really though, everyone LOVES marks dog, Dajong. The 4 of us get constant stares from the natives but marks dog really takes the spotlight (some of the first Korean words we learned were dog, and cute).

Quite a ferocious creature.

When we got back we decided we'd go check out this entire street covered with murals. After navigating through a gigantic local fish market, we headed up a hill to where every single wall on the street was just completely covered in artwork, an Amy's paradise! Needless to say our progress was slow as the girls (Keziah loves taking photos as well) took copious amounts of pictures (luckily for you readers, since I'm a complete slacker). We watched a beautiful sunset on the top of the hill and then headed back to the car for our journey back to Masan.




When we arrived we picked up Keziah's roommate Chris, and then headed to one of their local favorite restaurants, . It was pretty neat, just threw a bunch of veggies and meat into a big pot, cooked it in front of us and threw it all on rice and dug in. Yummah.



Bellies full, we decided to waltz around the town until we decided on something to do, which turned into movie rooms. Holy crap. Movie rooms are freaking amazing. Imagine a theatre, but without all the shitty people, slightly cheaper, and your own private room with a projector and some of the comfiest seating around. If movie theaters back home rocked this style, I would be watching movies daily instead of declining every single invitation I get and generally looking upon the movie scene with absolute distain. Not to mention there were a lot of pretty good Korean movies available. They can be pretty silly, but even the most comedic film seems to end brutally, which is pretty interesting. We watched a war comedy where at the end all of the main characters died horribly to machine-gun fire and bombs. "Welcome to Dongmakgol"
Video room seating... other side was projector screen + wall. Very nice!

Post viewing we briefly pondered the option of going out for drinks, but we were all a bit tuckered out. After dropping Keziah off, we went back to Mark's and passed right out, no waking up early tomorrow for me.