Chaos and Korea: ROAD TRIP!

Over Memorial Day (for Korea) we had a three day weekend, in which we went for a road trip with some friends! If any of you have spoken with us about how crazy driving here is in Korea, rest assured that neither of us drove on this road trip!

We started our adventure on a Friday morning. Leaving town proved to be more difficult than we had planned (it took us almost an hour!), which should have been a warning to us about the rest of the trip. Navigating in Korea is an interesting experience. There are very few road signs until you get on to the interstate system. The problem often is just that, getting on the interstate. We drove around our little country area trying desperately to find an on ramp, which we later found are pretty sparse. Once we found our way onto the interstate we had to pass through a toll booth to get our toll ticket. This should have been easy, I mean the hard part was finding the on ramp, but we made a minor mistake. We entered the toll through the "Hi-Pass" only lane, and the sirens began to sound. We were going to stop and admit fault for choosing the wrong lane, but there were too many cars behind us to stop in the middle of the interstate. So even though some Korean road worker was running behind our car while the sirens were still blowing, we just kept going. Don't worry though, we explained our situation when we got off the toll road and payed the appropriate fee, so we really didn't cheat the Korean toll system.

Our first stop on the trip was Namhae Island, the home of the "most beautiful" bridge in Korea. This bridge (there is a picture below) is supposed to be the "Golden Gate Bridge" of South Korea. Well, we will let you be the judge of that one...but we should mention that everything in Korea is famous when explained by a Korean person.

After seeing this amazing bridge we did a lot of scenic road tours to see the beauty of the island. While cruising around we stumbled upon the "Garlic Land of Treasures", an odd museum dedicated to garlic. This area is "famous" for garlic and apparently really proud of it. The museum was something to see, but still pretty strange. The building itself was shaped like a garlic bulb! Well, now we know more about garlic anyway.

That night all of the hotels were booked up at Yulpo beach (our stop for the night), so our friend suggested we stay at the Jimjilbang. A Jimjilbang is a popular spot in Korea and can best be described as a bath house where you can also spend the night. Of course when you spend the night you sleep on the floor in extremely hot stuffy rooms. But it only costs about $7.00 a night, so it's a cheap fix to a lodging situation. The bath house portion of the Jimjilbang is just that...a public bath. Yes, for only $7.00 you get to sleep on the floor in a hot room, and bathe NAKED with a bunch of other people! It is a pretty cool experience though all in all. There are all different kinds of baths at the Jimjilbang. They have a bath of all different temperatures and steam rooms, and even some mud baths at this particular one. At first Shawn was terrified of the idea of being naked with all of those men, taking a bath and a shower...but after he tried it, it really wasn't so bad.

The next day it was a sleepy start and on to the Green Tea Plantation (you can imagine we didn't sleep too well on the floor). The Boseong Green Tea Plantation is definitely something cool to see. There is row after row of green tea bushes and the smell is amazing. To top it all off there is all the green tea products you could want to buy there. Seriously, if you can think of it these people make it green tea flavored. Everything from our favorite of green tea ice cream to green tea noodles and rice. It is crazy, but delicious.

After the Green Tea Plantation we were off to the Celadon Museum. This is a museum that is built on the site of the famous Goryeo Dynasty's Kilns. This dynasty was famous for the Celadon Pottery that was produced during their reign. The kilns were huge, the art work was amazing, what else can we say?

After the Museum it was on to Mokpo, a coastal city on the southwest side of Korea. Here we enjoyed a little pizza and R&R for the night. The next day we took a stroll along the water front and hit up a museum dedicated to the maritime history of Korea. It was an interesting follow up to our other stops as most of the artifact were found from the Goryeo period of Korea (kinda their "Golden Age" I guess). After the museum it was on to a long trek back to the other side of the country to return the rental car and prepare for Monday....BOO! Enjoy the pics below!