Had the greatest weekend away. Namhae is the most beautiful spot I've seen in Korea, I think. The beach we were on was fantastic; nice and sandy and totally secluded. The pension was right on the beach and really nice for a Korean pension house, not that it mattered too much to us because we were camping in a tent, but it was nice that it was so modern.
We were supposed to meet on Friday morning at the train station and meet Annie, who was coming from Seoul, but when I arrived at 8:50 there was nobody from the group there. By 9:10 I was sick of waiting and called Ron to see if I had confused the meeting time, and I was a little dismayed to find out he had slept through his alarms. Harsha also wasn't there because he had heard from Annie that she was late coming in from Seoul, which left me the only one who was up and raring to go. Finally by 3:30 we all managed to meet up and get to the bus station only to find out that there were only two seats on the bus left, which meant that we had to take two different buses to get there.
The ride there was actually pretty fun though. We had a few games of categories, a deck of cards, and a few beer. It was when our bus was nearing the rest stop that I realized I've been in Korea far too long when we were debating whether the rest stop would sell beer or not and it took a few minutes for it to sink in that selling alcholic beverages at rest stops is probably not the best way to prevent drunk driving. No worries though, Ron had gin and whiskey in the luggage part of the bus which we were able to access during the stop.
By 9:30 or so we were in Namhae and it was a little too dark to fully appreciate it, but we managed to get our tent set up and meet the other 30 or so foreigners that were around the campfire. We stayed up for a few hours, had some bbq, and drank a little more. Someone had brought a funnel and somehow I got coerced into funneling a beer, which was my first time ever, but regardless I think at 26 I should be far past the age of funneling beer.
On Saturday Harsha, Ron and I headed into the town of Namhae to see if we could rent some scooters to explore the island. I had to gear myself up to think about getting behind the handle bars of a scooter but by the end I was pretty excited for it, unfortunately none of the shops in town would rent to us, despite the rumors that there was a rental shop around.
Later in the afternoon we got back to Namhae and enjoyed the weather. I almost went swimming but decided against it as the wind started to come up a little. By 5 or so Harsha, Annie, Ron and I broke out the cards again and started playing 7 card, which is a lot like euchre, unfortunately we had a bet that the first team to lose 7 games had to funnel another beer and Annie and I lost. I think that part of the day (the card game, not the funneling), was the best part of my weekend. It was so picturesque, sitting at a picnic table on a patio, on the ocean, with a group of people playing beach volleyball, another group at the bbq, and a few randoms scattered around sun bathing, it couldn't have been more perfect. After that, poker broke out among ten of us and that took the better part of the evening. I was doing pretty well until I got pushy with my chip stack and made a few bad calls and ended up just out of the money position. After that it was onto dice where I managed to make my money back from the card game. Another hour of campfire songs or so and it was time to head to bed.
Yesterday the weather held up despite grim forecasts and Annie and I walked around the bay and I think I even got a bit of colour on my arms. Around 2 we had packed up our things and were waiting for Chris to come pick us up because he happened to be in the area with his car. We had a touristy stop at a butterfly conservatory and after that we were headed back towards Daejeon. Was totally wiped by the time we got back to Daejeon and ten minutes into choosing a (horrible) movie, Conspiracy, I was asleep.
My next day off is at the end of July and that is a week long vacation, haven't decided what to do with it, seriously considering Singapore or Malaysia but nothing is concrete yet. Better start planning it soon though!
