We took the subway to Incheon airport and then took a 20-minute bus ride to Eurwangni Beach. The beach was nothing special but a relaxing afternoon by the water was just what we needed. It was scorching out- over 40 degrees with the humidity- so we coughed up the 20,000 won (!!!) for an umbrella and ran into the water. I must have been a little too excited to get into the water because I ran in with my wallet in my pocket at first!!
Mel and I were happy to be beach bums.
There are a lot of things that people do at the beach in Korea that are a little bit different than you'd see at home. Firstly, 95% of the people were wearing clothes in the water. By clothes, I don't mean just a t-shirt and shorts. People were wearing hoodies, cardigans, visors, bandanas over their faces, protective arm sleeves, dress shirts and dress pants into the water! I felt like a tramp in my swimming trunks.
After we'd spent a few hours we decided that we were enjoying ourselves so much that we should spend the night. The beach had wifi so I was able to check the weather forecast on my ipod to see that it would be nice on Sunday as well, so our minds were made up. Check out the beautiful sunset.
The area around the beach is relatively undeveloped, with just one small strip of restaurants and motels surrounding it. When you walk past each restaurant an employee will try to stop you and convince you to eat there.
We learned a new word! The symbol above, pronounced "huhwee" means raw fish. If you enjoy huhwee than you'll love the restaurants at Eurwangni, because every single one seems to sell the same thing.
If you're like us and you'd rather suck on a lemon than eat huhwee then there's a couple of galbi restaurants and some convenience stores to eat at as well. We had an old favorite, samgyupsal and naengmyeon for supper and it was really good.
If neither of those dining options tickle your fancy, then why not eat a dog? After our meal we wandered around price-checking hotels and found this pen full of dozens of crying dogs. Sure enough, when we read the sign on the building it was a dog meat restaurant. We live behind a dog meat restaurant in Seoul but this was the first time I'd ever seen a pen of puppies waiting to be eaten. I don't know if I could eat beef if there were a bunch of cows behind each restaurant, so I'm not sure who this cage full of pathetic pups appeals to.
Hotel prices were ridiculous!! Small, no-name hotel rooms in outside of Seoul rarely cost more than 60,000 Won for a jacuzzi suite, but the prices for standard rooms were averaging around 80,000 Won a night and one was over 100,000 Won. That's what you get for a beach side hotel at high season, I guess. We thought we might be better off just heading home, but we found a place for 60,000 Won and decided to stay there. The room was small! It wouldn't have been worth half that price in any other location, but at least it was clean and the bed was comfortable. No jacuzzi, though :((((
The TV only featured a dozen channels and they all seemed to be trying to teach me English, so we decided it was time to go drink some beers on the beach.
When we got back down to the beach with our mat and some Cass we were surprised to find that it was just as busy, maybe busier, at 9pm than it was during the sunny afternoon. There were hundreds of people digging for clams (the tide had gone out quite far- I took the above picture of the strip from the edge of the tide), shooting fireworks and hanging out.
The beach was full of creatures at night time! Like I said, we were walking across the mud to the edge of the tide when all of a sudden I heard Mel scream and run away from me. When I looked down I saw a huge crab scampering away from us and then realized that I was walking barefoot on approximately one million mudfish (picture above). It didn't take me long to get out of there! Then, when we were walking back up to the sand, we realized the mud that we were walking on was covered in baby crabs running in and out of their little crab holes. It was time to return to the sandy part of the beach.
When we got back to the beach we started the difficult task of finding our beach mat again in the dark. It didn't help that there were hundreds of people on similar mats everywhere. When I finally found the carrying bag to our mat I looked up to see that the three boys in the above photo had taken our mat to use for themselves. They tried to save face by acting surprised that I would ask for it back and I didn't even get a "solly" out of them for their thievery! Also in the photo above you can see a 4-year old shooting off roman candles all by himself at midnight.
Everyone loves fireworks at the beach, and it really felt like the 4th of July that night with all the fireworks that were being shot off. However, most of the people shooting off fireworks were not really doing it in the most responsible way. Minutes after sitting back down on our mat a group of 50-something drunk adjoshis planted a half dozen fireworks in the ground about a meter behind our heads. We thought we were being bombed when they started going off, and quickly got choked out by all the smoke so we moved downwind a bit. A few minutes later they were ready for the next round, but by this time they must have had a few more shots of soju because they hadn't even bothered pointing the fireworks at the sky. They had some of them pointedat us! As they started firing at our bodies we dove down, flat on the mat to minimize the imminent scarring. I was scared to look up because I was sure I'd get on in the face. I saw a guy a little bit down from us on the beach get hit. Then, a completely different group of guys bought some fireworks and just ran around on the beach shooting them at each other like they were guns. Somebody needs to show these fools a safety video.
The next morning we woke up to the sound of the crying dogs from the dog restaurant. Yep, it was time to start another day at the beach. We shelled out another 20,000 Won (!!!) for an umbrella and made ourselves comfortable. The sky started out even clearer and the water even warmer than the day before. Seoul felt a million miles away and we were happy.
It was fun to watch our neighbors cooking their meal. We noticed that most people had brought little burners and charcoal to make their own food and it all looked pretty good. Our neighbors, however, had a little trouble getting their fire going. The solution? One old man found a rusty old oil can and ripped it apart in total disregard of the tetanus he would certainly contract and decided to burn the charcoal in that. The other adjoshis thought that was brilliant and within minutes they had a rusty samgyupsal feast on the go that had us feeling very hungry. Luckily, Family Mart had just gotten a new shipment of ham and cheese sandwiches to tide us over.
After our neighbors saved face by pretending not to notice their granddaughter pulling at our umbrella and spitting up all over Mel's backpack, and another couple saved face by pretending that they didn't just step on my foot with their shoes, we decided to head into the water again, where were joined by a boy in a (what I hope was a rust proof) wheel chair, a million people in sweaters, too many tubes, some mudfish and a hovercraft! We spent hours going from relaxing under our umbrella to swimming in the water and it was a perfect, perfect afternoon.
We took the bus back to the airport, where we hoped to get something to eat before heading home. We had to go with Kraze Burgers because, unfortunately, the hangover soup was all sold out. Guess everyone else had a good time on Saturday night too!A new work week has started but I can't stop thinking about the beach and planning out when I'll have my next chance to go. Luckily, Korea has summer-like weather in September as well so maybe in 2 weeks we'll be able to go. I don't want this summer to end!!
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