Thee East Sea

After our visit to the Penis Park, Jon W., Cassie, Shawna, and I decided to extend our weekend trip to Sunday. We had nothing planned so we decided our best bet would be to head to the nearest large city and see if we could find something interesting. We took the bus an hour north on the coast to Gangneung. Hopped off the bus, went outside the station, and we were on our way . . . but where to go? We started walking . . . and . . . not much . . . more walking . . . nothin'. So we took out our trusty guide books and hopped in the first cab that we could hail. Cassie pointed to an interesting picture of a harbour and we were off. . . in search of fun! About 15 minutes later the cab fare was up around 10 000 Won and we saw a sign for our destination "19 KM". So, Cassie made an executive, on-the-spot decision and we changed our plan before the cab driver could take all of our money. We convinced the driver to turn at the nearest beach on our map, Gyeongpo. . . JACKPOT!! It was an awesome beach-side vacation spot with hotels, restaurants, sand, sea, and lots of happy people (including us).





We had some coffee - found a motel - and built up a serious appetite. We were given a nice preview of dinner when we walked down the main drag. Endless tanks of delicious sea creatures swimming in Purgatory - between the Sea and our plates.




We did a bit more exploring in Gyeongpo - some of us a were little more curious than others, perhaps?


On one side of our motel was the East Sea and on the other was a big lake. We left our hotel for dinner just in time to catch the sunset over the lake. We parked ourselves beside some ambitious amateur photographers with expensive equipment and took some quick snapshots.



What a colourful sunset!!


Our stomachs were growling. We were off in a serious hunt for food. We decided not to heed the advice of this tour bus operator and eat where his group was going. I don't know what it was but something about the whole operation seemed shady. . .


We were on our own so we decided to go back to the main street by the beach and hit up one of the live-seafood restaurants. We'd be fools not to!


Mmm. . . we found a place . . .now we had to decipher the menu. We fancied some BBQ so we mustered up all the Korean/finger pointing/charades we could and got exactly what we wanted.






The chef chooses his victims and scoops them out of the tanks.



Fire's up our charcoal. . .


. . . and the cooking begins (with a little guidance from our waitresses, of course).



Everything was delicious - a few bottles of Soju and a few dozen sea-creatures - who could ask for anything more????

Well, we didn't but we got some more anyway - "I'll have the fish-head soup for dessert, please?"


It was a really neat experience to eat seafood with the waves breaking just over your shoulder.


Now, with our bellies filled, we could commence the partying . . .



. . . more to come from Gyeongpo very soon!! (the night didn't end there!)