This was an opportunity to customize our own trip, see if we could actually save money doing so, and find out how capable we were of navigating in a country where we don't speak the language. Spoiler alert, the trip was a success. We had a great time and successfully found our way around. We did, however, spend almost the entire weekend in one giant giggle fit as we laughed at our own clueless-ness, ran away from ajussi's (old men), and attempted to make arrangements as gracefully as walking through molasses.
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| Planning Your Own Adventure Tip #1 - have the location, dates and times written in Hangul to purchase your bus ticket with ease. |
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| The night before our adventure. All you can eat KBBQ, these little guys came to life and literally stood up when you put them on the grill. Note: I did NOT eat them...actually none of us did after their "standing ovation" :( |
Even getting breakfast, on our first day, caused us some confusion when Jenni ordered a cup of grapes that was thrown into a blender and transformed into a smoothie before we knew what was happening. It was delicious but unexpected and being that it was the very first experience of the weekend - "what the hell just happened?" - was not a good foot to start off on. Still, it gave us a good laugh.
We had arranged to transfer in Daegu on our way to Jinju. All we had to do when we arrived was buy our next ticket to Jinju and get on the bus within 30 minutes. This simple task was as easy for us as trying to nail jelly to a wall. If you could picture one of those black and white, silent movies, where everyone kind of scurries about on super speed, that would've been us trying to find the right building to buy a ticket. We ran from building to building and waited in line after line, only stopping to hold our sides as we could no longer control our own laughter.
When we finally arrived in the right building and at the right line, in this unnecessarily confusing bus terminal, a man shouted something at us in Korean and pointed at the list of departures. "Jinju" we said, assuming he was asking where we were going. (Side note: the ability to read body language and master assumptions helps tremendously when you don't speak the language). We quickly realized that he didn't work at the terminal, he was just curious as to where these two foreigners were off to. For the next several minutes he repeatedly yelled "Jinju, Jinju, Jinju" at us, while we tried to stuff down our laughter. We didn't know if he was agreeing with us, arguing with us, or just making conversation. The last twenty minutes had become such a disastrous comedy routine that by the time we reached the front of the line I was knee deep in giggles and Jenni had to talk for us.
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| Our VIP seating in the back of the bus. |
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| Still can't get used to the amazing amount of foot room on the express bus! |
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| Family photo on a selfie-stick |
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| Jinju here we come! |
We made it on our second bus and not long after that arrived in Jinju. Our first task was to find ourselves a place to stay. The rumor was, most places were booked because of the festival so we had to take the chance of finding a low end motel, staying in a spa, or somehow stumbling onto a place with a canceled reservation. To give you a better idea of what we were working with, here is a brief synopsis on places to lay your head during a weekend stay in South Korea.
- Hotels - you'll find even the classics here, such as the JW Marriot. I don't need to explain what a hotel is to you or that on a festival weekend you can pay a pretty penny for a stay in one of these.
- Hostels - again there's probably no need for an explanation on this either. Dormitory-style, shared rooms essentially.
- Guest houses - converted homes geared towards traveling foreigners, you can stay in them for a couple days or months. Pretty inexpensive option, usually with shared bathrooms and both private and shared rooms.
- Pensions - large shared rooms with lots of mats on the floor to sleep on, pretty common for foreign adventure groups to include as part of the package. Which is why it's preferable to book with a group of people you know so you can request the same room.
- Motels - also known as Love Motels, which are pretty much a bunch of cheap motel rooms usually located in cities for....taking your sweetheart to after a night out? I think that's the best way I can put it. Still, lots of people travel all through South Korea utilizing Love Motels as a super cheap way to get a decent nights sleep.
- Jimjilbangs - these are Korean spas that have so many treatment options you can spend an entire day there. They also have places to sleep in case you want to keep "spa-ing" in the morning. Travelers take advantage of this as a super cheap and easy place to stay. The prices are probably the lowest of all your options. However, the downside is you have to take your stuff and "check out" every time you leave. So they don't really work for more than one day.
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| Pretty Jinju |
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| The lanterns lead the way |
The first place we found offered us a room for 110,000. That's like paying $110 for a room at a Motel 6. No thank you. We decided to get further away from the river to find a place that wasn't trying to take advantage of foreigners. Meanwhile, a South African girl had begun to follow us with the same mission in mind. We walked at a steady pace, slightly faster than our foreign stalker, while still remaining cordial, as if it didn't bother us that we were in direct competition for a place to stay. Luckily, we found a "movie themed" love motel with two rooms available. And since we were able to get first pick, we graciously gave her the bigger room for herself and her two other travel companions.
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| Our room was the "Sleepless in Seattle" Room This is the extent of the themed decor. |
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| Our itty bitty love room |
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| Selfie with the wallpaper |
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| Some amenities - others included some "unmentionables" that you would expect to find in a place called a love motel. |
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| The view of champions |
Feeling super proud of ourselves for accomplishing every task on our list thus far, we dropped our backpacks in the room and made our way to the festival. We walked among rows of food vendors selecting our lunch then crossed the river on a shaky bridge that was essentially a serious of flat buoys tied together. The bridges terrified Jenni, especially when I began bouncing along the buoys like the child I secretly am.
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| Jenni calls this chicken kabob, I call it shwarma. Who really knows what the right answer is? (mine) |
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| Fresh squeezed lemonade and cider, yum!! |
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| And this, ladies and gentlemen, is why foreigners get food poisoning. Uncooked chicken, hanging around for hours. Korean stomachs are hardcore. |
We were attracting a lot more stares and glares in Jinju than we were used to in Cheongju. The smaller the city (or village) you're in, the more attention you draw. We were glared at, gawked at, laughed at, and even slightly assaulted on this weekend trip. An old man, called an ajusshi (아저씨) drunkenly stumbled towards me, said something and slapped me on the arm. Not too hard but just enough to make me feel super uncomfortable and accosted. He was smiling while he did it, so I assume he meant no harm? We found ourselves ducking, running and hiding from other drunk or otherwise creepy ajusshis the rest of the day.
For the record, Jinju is not just full of perverted old men. A very nice man directed us to the festival for blocks. When he realized we were a bit lost, he pointed to a picture of the festival on his newspaper and then rolled it up and waved us along like an airplane coming in for a landing. An experience like this one is far more common in SoKo than being slapped by an ajusshi.
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| Tofu lady |
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| Cassette tapes...? |
The lanterns were incredible in the day time and even more amazing at night. The river was full of large lanterns representing every country with lantern tunnels to walk through where Jenni could practice using her new selfi-stick. It was truly one of those, "do not miss" events that I'm glad we took the time and effort to get to. We eventually met up with our friends from the organized trip, exchanged the positives and negatives of our experiences thus far, then parted ways as they went off to Namhae for Oktoberfest.
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| Lantern tunnel in the day |
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| Lantern tunnel at night (wishes are attached to each lantern) |
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| Dried squid |
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| Ice cream being eaten by child being eaten by tiger. |
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| Cotton Candy!!! |
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| Cleanest portable bathrooms ever. And it turns out the woman's bathroom has a line in every country. |
The next day Jenni and I got on another bus towards Seoul. Our plan was to go see the International Fireworks show happening there that night. We set off to find a place to stay in Hongdae, high-fiving ourselves for mastering the Seoul Metro system. Our sense of pride was quickly thwarted when we stepped out of the subway exit and realized we had no clue where to go from here. Finding a love motel on foot in Seoul, a monstrosity of a city compared to the little town of Jinju, would be a much more difficult task. We took a break, sat down for some Koreanized Chinese food, and discussed our options.
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| Chinese with an apron. |
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| Hey, I'm butter. (no idea) |
Seoul represents shopping to us foreigners who do not reside in the city. We can find all the comforts of home in this huge metropolitan area that we could never find in our own province. Like the spices we bought on our previous trip. As we sat there slurping up our 자장면 we began to discuss the option of clothes shopping in a store with western sizes and the idea became too seductive to pass up. We were also admittedly over crowds, knew finding a place to stay would take up most of our limited time and had found more interest in shopping than in fireworks. So we ditched our fireworks plan, spent a tad too much shopping (we regret nothing), then headed back to the bus terminal to exchange our tickets.
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| We couldn't figure out what they wanted to happen here. Feed your baby before entering the subway? |
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| Yay. Just...yay. |
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| Pork stew at the bus terminal |
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| Recuperation meal - haemul pajeon |
Sunday was a day of recuperation. I did as much "nothing" as possible, thrilled with myself that I had made haemul pajeon just before leaving for the weekend so I didn't have to cook. I snacked on leftovers for lunch and dinner and enjoyed some lazy time.
Overall, the weekend was a grand success even if we did learn a few lessons along the way. Jenni was a fantastic travel buddy. We had matched energy levels, sleep requirements and tenacity for an adventure on our own. And hanging out with a Brit all weekend gave me a cool new lot of words and expressions to play with. I thoroughly enjoyed saying "Right" (with determination in my voice as Jenni taught me) every time we set out for a new mission, from finding the closest convenience store to figuring out the subway system in Seoul. I also noticed I've been saying "lovely" a lot more since hanging out with my European buddies. I'm hoping to pick up more cause it makes me sound all cultured and whatnot. ;)
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