"Fishing" Trip at Bangjukpo Beach!

I stayed over night out at the beach on Dolsan island this weekend. Their were about 9 people who stayed over night, and maybe 15 people who came throughout the day. It was a little bit colder than average, especially with that ocean breeze rolling in, but it felt great to be outside all day. We fished off a fishing pier during the early afternoon..... Well, wait let me rewind a bit. Megan decided fishing wasn't going to be her thing, so my friend Ed and I went out to Emart, bought our fishing rods, some cheap-o bait, and got our McD's lunch (Big Mac!). We then started our short quest for fireworks, while also heading out towards Dolsan, Banjukpo beach to be specific. This beach is about 20km from my house, out in rural Dolsand island, on the way to Hyangiram temple. In fact you could see the temple from the beach, especially the path light up at night.


The place we stayed in the red one with "Spanish" looking arches.

We arrived out at the beach at about noon. Rich, our friend from New Zealand made us feel like totally chumps, but helped us get the line on our rod nonetheless, thankfully. This lead to Ed and my fishing, which lasted all of about 30 casts, maybe one or two hours. We fished, chatted, and generally hung out for a while. A few more people arrived, and we decided to check into the beach/cliffside minbok (kind of a Korean small hostel / B&B type place). THe price was kind of high, 50,000 Won per room, but we bit the bullet since the view was awesome. After that we unwisely switched to fishing from the shaded side of the cove, which was absolutely miserable. I personally made only one cast at the time, and mostly hung out and tipped a few back. Finally some wise guys decided we should switch back to the other side of the cove, and eat dinner. At this time we went to the beach side mart and bought about 30,000 of roman candles and bottle rockets (whistlers with report to be exact). Ed and I also did a short jaunt on a ocean side cliff walking path, which was awesome, hopefully he will have some pictures. We eventually made it over their and had a great dinner of samgyubal (Korea grilled pork), Mondu, and a bunch of other GREAT food. It was a lot of fun. We hung out their, and did a few of our fireworks, much to the chagrin of the locals out fishing. We had music playing from the car, I'm sure the locals had never seen anything like it. It felt a lot like being back in Minnesota, good friends, relaxing and having a lot of fun.


Once the sun went down around 7:30PM, two pretty cool things happened. First, a camoflauge jeep showed up full of about 10 soldiers. I thought they'd been called about the fireworks, but they could've cared less. They were actually there for the rotating duty to watch out for spy activity off the cove. It was pretty cool, we talked to them for a bit and they said a beach fire was all good, and out of their jurisdiction. Secondly, all of these mysterious lights popped up along the tidal river from this beach. We thought it was more soldiers checking out... whatever. It was rather a bunch of older woman, shining the light back and forth, over and over again, with a small net in hand. We couldn't spot what they were trying to catch. Ed and I watched for a while, when finally the woman we were observing scooped her net and put something in. We kindly asked in the simplest Korean, (Mua ah yo) what is that, she shined her light and said (Jang-uh Seki) I knew Seki meant animal baby, and we later learned the other word to be eel, pretty interesting, and fun to watch. You just don't see as much stuff like that back at home. Just before sundown the beach was full of the older ladies pulling out the sea weed, which we saw hanging to dry later that night also. Those are some of the things that make living here interesting, and a small reminder of the culture I am surrounded by each day.



At about 11PM or so, we moved over to the beach to start the bonfire. Wood is a bit harder to come by here then it was back in the North woods. We had to "borrow" someones old scrape wood (or so we thought) to get the bonfire going. This was also the time we went crazy and lit off the bottle rockets and roman candles. After the wood adventure, we were relaxing for a while when a group of Koreans came and visited us. I used my Korean (although we had to fluent speakers with) to ask where they were from and what they do, etc, which was a lot of fun. Then, one of their friends was thrown into the ocean, nice guys, huh? They didn't turn down the Soju we offered them, of course. Eventually the sleepy bug hit, and my goal of staying up and watching the sunrise at the Hyangiram temple came crashing down at about 3AM. The minbok offered Korean style bed (a blanket on the floor) and an empty room. We slept 4 people deep sardine style, and I'd guess my roomies didn't like my snoring one bit.


The other room, just to get an idea.

The next day we had another good brunch at the fishing pier. No one caught any fish that day, and only a flounder and a rock fish the first day, so we had to enjoy some chicken, eggs, bacon, and some other treats instead. I headed back to Yeosu at about 12:30PM, marking the end of the 24 adventure. In the end it was a lot of fun, being able to bond with my friends, and enjoy the outdoors.

Anyways, that's my story. Now that I see how long this ended up being I will probably copy it on to the blog. It was obviously the biggest adventure and most fun I've had in a while!! I have hit 8 months today, that means only 1/3 of the time here is left until I come home!