Whee...another awesome weekend behind me. On Friday I didn't do much...chatted with Renee, who is still in the States and is about to move to about two hours from me...the usual "bring this, don't bother bringing that" deal... then went home, went for a walk, bumped into Maggie (kinda cool that now I know enough people that I randomly bump into friends on the street), chatted with her and took it easy for the rest of the night.
On Saturday, I got up bright and early and met Maggie, Ross (who, for my Kamloops friends, is a dead-ringer for Colin...about the same height/build, beard, soft-spoken but not shy, into photography, etc...so half the time I kept calling him Colin...), Nicole and Bart and Kim (just met them this weekend, ton of fun to hang out with! Definitely looking forward to hanging with that crowd again.
Anyhoo...we met in Masan, grabbed breakfast and headed to Jinhae for the Cherry Blossom Festival. The buses to Jinhae were packed solid, but through some clever scheming we managed to get seats...the ride out was great, but Jinhae was gorgeous! It's smaller and less city-like (more like a bit town) than Masan or Changwon, and has a certain charm the latter two lack. The weather was perfect, T-shirt weather and sunshine all day long. Ross and Bart are both into photography too, so it was great outing...lots of talk about gear and technique and it's nice not being the only one who lags behind while taking a picture of a flower for 5 minutes.
I haven't gotten around to editing the photos yet, so I'll post a few straight off the card just to get us started (totally at random), but I'll go through the batch, edit them and post up the good ones in the coming days.
Anyway, Jinhae was awesome, tons of street vendors, performers and crowds everywhere (I saw more foreigners in one day than I have the previous 4 weeks put together). We got some local food (it's an egg-based batter with veggies thrown in and then fried like a pancake...delicious and not all that unhealthy), but we decided to pass on the whale fin basket. They were also roasting entire pigs everywhere, and doing their best to just about shove us into their eating area so we could devour them.
Near the centre of Jinhae:
We looked at a TON of cherry trees and it never got old :) They have a main walkway full of little bridges and a little canal lined with trees on either side that's the main attraction there...
There were people with classic film cameras everywhere...Ross says getting a roll developed and put on a CD is less than $4...so I might try to pick up another Canon AE-1 or ask my parents to send one of mine out just for the heck of it...we'll see...I randomly attacked a few shooters as I walked past them...
Blowing bubbles is big around here...pretty much anytime 20 people get together, 3 have to blow bubbles...it's pretty cute :)
We explored quite a bit of the town around the festival, even went up to this little lookout tower...(pano from the top coming soon!)
View from the top:
After walking around all day, we took the bus back home and had Mr. Pizza...salad bar plus a couple of pizzas ended up costing us about $7 each and we were stuffed by the time we left...yeah it was a good time :D
After that I hung out with Ross/Nicole/Kim/Bart for a while and ended up getting home at close to 1 a.m.
On Sunday, I woke up and it was another warm and sunny (but hazy) day...so I decided I wanted to be by the sea. I took a bus to the Masan Intercity Bus Station and took the first bus that went to a coastal city. Random: while walking to the bus station I bumped into Laura, the friend I visited in Jinju a few weeks ago. 50 million people in Korea and by complete coincidence I bump into a friend in a city neither one of us lives in...how weird is that??
That city I randomly happened to be Yeosu (pronounced yosu), the host of the 2012 Korean Expo. The bus ride took about 2.5 hrs and had some great scenery, though after countless roadtrips in Canada and the United States it's weird driving for 2.5 hrs and always seeing other roads, buildings, towns, farms, etc...I'm used to being out in the middle of nowhere, so this is a bit of adjustment.
Anyway, when I got there I chatted up a wicked friendly New Zealander (Richard) who has been in Korea for something like 6 years and teaches at 3 remote islands...on one of them he has 5 students. Pretty crazy.
He pointed me toward downtown and the waterfront and I set off down the road. My initial impression of Yeosu was VERY negative. Even around here a lot of shops are closed on Sundays but there it seemed every shop was closed. Many of them permanently. Smashed windows, peeling paint, and just dilapidated storefronts in general were everywhere. I was a little disappointed, but kept walking, in search of the waterfront.
Soon I found the waterfront and it was a completely different story. There you could tell that they're getting ready for the Expo and there are new parks and buildings everywhere. I also walked to Dolsan, which is at the tip of a pretty big island. I walked up to the top of a lookout point and got some great views of Yeosu which, at times, looked like a classic city on the shores of the Mediterranean.
(Those pics are still on the card, so Yeosu pics will be a few days away yet). I walked all around downtown and onto a breakwater with a lighthouse at the end of it and got my coastal fix.
I miss the ocean and I ended up liking Yeosu at the end of my 5 hour walk, but I'm not sure if I'd want to live there. It is more isolated than where I am (it's on the tip of a peninsula) and in general has a different vibe. I had a LOT more people outright stare at me (adults, kids, everyone), which is something I get every now and again here, but there it was every other person I passed stared at me like I just landed from Mars. However...I'm definitely going to be back in the summer (maybe for a whole weekend so I can explore more...the last bus back to Masan leaves at 7 p.m., so that limits things a little).
But all in all it was an excellent random outing, and not too expensive (including the buses I took to/from Masan, I spent about 28,000 won or $25). Oh yeah, I also got my flight allowance and my settlement allowance, so the ol' bank account is looking half decent (just in time, I have exactly 5,000 won left out of the original $500 I exchanged.
Ooooh yeah, while I was in Yeosu I finally picked up a comforter...found a nice big one cheap...I can finally stop using the one my apartment came with...pics of new blanket later :)
That's it for today, I'm trying to not make these entries too long...I'll have more on Jinhae and Yeosu when I upload the pics in the coming days.
Hope everyone had a great weekend :)
T
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