The weekend followin the Busan trip I decided to try a little bit of solo traveling. I decided to go west this time, I didn't have any specific destination, I had some ideas, such as Mokpo - small city on the west coast, Wolchulsan National Park, Gwangju or Jeonju - but they were all 'soft destinations'.
I had a quick breakfast in the morning, packed my stuff - I was struggling as always, I didn't know if I should take large backpack and tent or just my small gi bag, with essential stuff like tshirt, underwear and toothbrush - this would mean a night in jjimjilbang or couchsurfing. Eventually I decided to take the bigger backpack. I prepared the sign, saying Gwangju and Jeonju and headed to west tollgates of Daegu.
The tollgates were quite tricky because there were two parallel tollgates and I was on the less crowded side of them, but after 10 minutes of waiting, an e-mart(local supermarket) truck stopped. I asked where he was going and he said something that sounded pretty much like Jeonju so I hopped in and we left. Soon enough I realized that the guy was going to Jinju not Jeonju - completely different direction. I checked on a map where it was, I also remembered that some Koreans actually recommended me to visit this place so I said to myself, let's go to Jinju instead.
My driver didn't speak any English, I had my little notebook with all my Korean language notes with me, so I figured it would be a perfect opportunity to practice my Korean. We exchanged few phrases. I told him that I’m polish, that I’m an exchange student at KNU in Daegu, that Korean was very difficult for me - simple stuff like that. I believe he understood everything I said, but unfortunately it didn't work the other way around…
In the meantime he explained me that he will drop me by the famous Jinju fortress, I liked the idea.
After around 1,5 hour in the truck, we arrived in Jinju, the guy dropped me by the main entrance to the fortress and went to local branch of e-mart which was right behind the corner.
I dropped by the tourist information booth and got all the information I needed about Jinju. Then I decided to visit the fortress. The tickets were around 2000KRW, but I have this rule of always showing my local student ID, because they often offer students discounts. When the guy saw my ID, I heard 'No charge' and got in without paying.
The fortress was nice, I walked around the area for a while, took some pictures, visited the museum located inside and then decided to head towards downtown. I walked around the city, grabbed some kimbap, but nothing spectacular happened so I decided to try to get out of that city. I figured that there was this beautiful island called Geoje not far from Jinju, so I searched for a spot to get a ride and went there right away.
It was already quite late, around 16.30 or 17, so i said to myself that if i get a direct ride to Geoje within 30-40 minutes I was gonna go and if not I would get back to the city and seek for more adventures there. To be honest I didn't really believe that I would get a ride. But soon after I was proven wrong. I’ve been standing with Geoje sign just before some tunnel for like 15 minutes when I heard a horn behind me. I turned around and there was car waiting for me. I ran really fast, asked if they where going to Geoje and in response I heard, 'my home Geoje'. Nice! It was a Korean couple, they didn't speak English neither. They asked me where exactly I wanted to go. I tried to explain them that I didn't really care and I just wanted to get to the island but they didn't get it so eventually I pointed at some random beach on the map - it turned out to be an awesome choice - Hakdong pebble beach. I'm not even sure if it was on their way, I’m actually pretty certain, that they took a big detour to get me there, but I will never know for sure.
After 1,5 hour we arrived at the beach, on the way I’ve seen several town but they were not nice at all so when we arrived to Hakdong I was really impressed, it was a beautiful small town. I decided to take a walk along the beach to find a spot to pitch my tent and then go to town to eat something. I walked to the end of the beach having one spot in mind but then I found out there was another beach a little further. When I got to the other beach I saw plenty of camping cars and one tent on the beach so I figured camping must be legal there, it's always nice to pitch a tent somewhere where you don't have to worry about a ranger waking you up early in the morning saying you can't sleep there.
I found a very nice spot to pitch my tent, but it was quite close to a group of Koreans having their traditional pork BBQ (samgyupsal), so I thought that it would be nice to ask if they don’t mind if I pitch my tent next to them. What happened next? Of course they invited me to join them. They didn't really speak much English except for one guy, who turned out to be a marketing director for some big oil and gas company. I sat there with them for few hours, had a lot of grilled pork (samgyepsal), egg rolls, noodles, eggs and of course soju.
We had a nice chat and before midnight we decided to call it a night and went to our tents. They invited me for a morning hike, which I thought was an awesome idea and asked them to wake me up. Sleeping on a pebble beach wasn't the most comfy night ever but fortunately I borrowed a nice foam mat from my Bhutanese friend, Sangay just before leaving the dorms - it saved my life that night.
I spent the next few hours walking around the town, I had a breakfast on the beach, searched for a shower, but it seems like they open the public showers at the beach only the 1st of April (two weeks later), the same for the campings. So I just brushed my teeth, made a Busan/Daegu sign (with a spelling mistake - I wrote Buson instead...) and went to the spot. There were two options, either to go along the coastline or through the center of the island. I decided to try the coastline, but after 20minutes and little traffic I decided to change the spot, which was a good decision because 10 minutes later I was sitting in an Audi a4 going to Busan with another Korean couple.
The couple
didn’t really speak much English neither, so we just had a very basic conversation.
They dropped me off by the Busan train station, not far from route 55
which goes straight to Daegu. I took a short walk and got on the spot. The spot was
quite bad, not too much space to stop and cars were going really fast. But
luckily, 10 to 15 minutes later I got a ride. It was already 4th
driver this weekend, but the first with decent English. He was a hydraulics
engineer. We talked throughout whole ride, I actually got to learn quite a lot about
current trends in Korean economy. And surprisingly he didn’t only know where
Poland was, but has also been there several times – he had some business
partners in Poznan.
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