Pohang

Friday, June 6th is Memorial Day here in Korea, so I get a three day weekend. This will be my last day off until my vacation in late July, I believe. I had planned to go to an island called Ulleung-do with my friend from the air force. It's off the east coast, and the closest ferry to it leaves from Pohang, which is an hour and twenty minute bus ride from here. Ulleung is supposed to be not extremely touristy, but touristy enough that there are a few places to stay. It's a three or three and a half hour ferry ride from Pohang, depending on which ferry you get (I think only two go per day). There are hiking trails, waterfalls, beaches, rock formations, stuff like that. It's a good place to get away from it all.

We decided to go to Pohang this weekend to get the ferry tickets in advance, because the ferry might be full if we just went on Friday, it being a holiday weekend and all. So we took the bus over there, and got our bearings, sort of, at the Pohang bus terminal. We guessed at the direction the ferry terminal would be in, since the only maps we had were from my guidebook and not very specific. It's hard to read streets maps in Korea, anyway, because their address system is not like ours, nor do they give directions in the same way, so street names are not as important, and many streets aren't labeled.

We knew the terminal was at least two miles away, based on the vague map, but we figured sine it was a nice day and a new place to see, we'd walk it and see how we fared. We started seeing street signs after a bit, so we ended up getting there without getting lost. We walked through a big market with food, clothing, and other wares on the way. It took almost two hours to get there, so even though we weren't walking all the fast, I think it was a bit more than two miles from the bus terminal to the ferry terminal. Good exercise.

When we got inside the terminal, it was like a ghost town. It was a really clean and polished placed, with lots of waiting chairs, nice restrooms, and even a reading room (with a wall of filled bookshelves). But no employees at their posts. And no bells to call them. We kind of hung around for a few minutes looking at the schedules and fares on the wall, hoping maybe someone would come out from taking a break or something, but nothing happened. We thought about calling the number listed on the wall, but I was afraid they wouldn't speak English enough. I had written down a few key Korean words in order to communicate what we wanted and was hoping for the best. I hadn't expected there to be no one around.

Finally I decided to impose on the office I had seen when I went to the restroom. There was a guy in there working on a computer, and it didn't seem like he would be able to sell us tickets, but he could at least go get someone. I memorized the word for "ticketing" from the sign, and went in there and said it with the standard "confused foreigner" look. He got up and brought me over the the counter and went to find someone who could speak English. I asked him if we could buy tickets to Ulleung-do for Friday, and he said, "This Friday, June 6? Oh, no, that's been full since two months ago. It's a holiday weekend, you know."

Thwarted. We have now concluded that Koreans plan ahead. Way ahead. Which means, of course, that pretty much any other place we wanted to go will be full by now, too. We brainstormed for a while and decided that camping might be the only viable option, since the ground doesn't fill up, per se. We ended up choosing Byeonsan Bando National Park to try. That's about a six hour bus ride from me, with two transfers, I think. It's on the west coast, at about the same latitude at Ulsan, but there are no direct roads or train routes. I'm not even sure if that's going to work out, since I don't know if you can buy bus tickets in advance. I'm going to have to check on that.

After we were given the bad news at the terminal, we went out for lunch in front of the beach nearby. Almost all the restaurants were seafood, but I didn't feel like choosing my own fish or dealing with eating fish, or paying too much money for fresh fish, so we went into the first non-seafood looking place we could find. It looked nice, but I was too lazy to really figure out what was on the menu, so I just pointed to some soup and ordered that for us. It ended up being cold soup and wasn't very good. The whole meal was only ten bucks, though, including all the side dishes that are standard. So it wasn't like we wasted a bunch of money.

Then we went to the beach. It had been a hot day, which I was surprised at. If it weren't 5:30 when we finally got to the beach, it might have been hot enough to warrant swimming (we wore swimsuits in case), or at least wading. As it was, we just stepped a little into the water, and it was quite cold, like in Maine. We walked a little, but ended up just plopping down after a few minutes to look at the guidebook for a new idea and to just rest.

There were some windsailers and jetskiers about, and families with kids running around. Those were fun to watch. I made a little turtle sculpture in the sand. We left after like a half hour.

We decided to take a taxi back, since it was such a long walk and we were tired. There was a long line of taxis at the ferry terminal, so we went back there. I memorized the phrase (intercity bus terminal" from the big map outside and went over to the taxi's. The drivers were all out of their cars, playing some game and betting. We asked for a ride to the bus terminal, and we had kind of a mixed language conversation about where we were going eventually. One guy offered us a ride to Ulsan, but when we declined that far a trip, he directed us to the main road where we had seen a couple unmanned taxis and some city buses.

We walked back to the main road, and as we passed the taxis, at this point figuring we'd have to flag one down, a guy absolutely spuh-rinted from a food stand across the street and called "Tak-shi? Tak-shi?" to us. I told him where we wanted to go, and he said okay, so we got in. The guy from the other unmanned taxi came around and talked to our driver for a second and then walked away grumbling because he didn't get the fare. That was funny. Snooze, lose.

On the way to the terminal, the driver asked us where we were going, and when I said Ulsan, if we wanted a ride all the way there. I said no, now just the bus terminal (in my broken Korean). The reaction from this taxi driver and the first one led us to believe that ferry riders are rich enough to tend to just take a taxi from there all the way home, even if it's in another city. Any of the guys at the terminal could easily have taken us, but they apparently wanted to wait for bigger fares. But no way could we take a taxi all the way back home. It cost almost as much take the taxi the couple miles to the bus terminal as it cost to ride the bus all the way home. I can't imagine what the taxi fee would be.

So that was my trip to Pohang. I forgot to bring a camera, but there wasn't much to take a picture of, since the most interesting thing we did was go to the beach. You can see pictures of Pohang, though, at pohangcity.net, if you really want.