Gone to the beach!

This post is about last Tuesday's epic adventure to the Sogi beach. I know I'm a few days late writing this one, but it was such a crazy day, I think we all needed some time to process it. And classes started this week so I've been super busy! Okay, let me set the scene: It's last Monday evening and Rosie, Samantha, Jim, Steve, Andreas, Jason, Felix, and Andrew and I are all sitting in the common room and we're considering what to do tomorrow, on Tuesday, our last day before classes start. We looked into going to the Everland Waterpark but after we realized that admission to the park was 55,000W (roughly $50) we nixed that idea.

Our next idea was to go to the beach, and this was a winner. Relaxing and free, except for transportation costs. We researched a semi-popular beach destination that was close to Seoul called Sogi beach. It's on Sodu Island which is part of Incheon. We knew it would be a trip getting there, but we all decided it was worth it. We jumped on the subway a little after 8am and took it all the way to Incheon, which is a couple transfers and about 26 stops later. We arrived at Incheon and were told by the people at the tourism information desk that we could take the city bus which would make many stops, or take the Incheon City Tour coach bus which would only be a few dollars more and take us straight to the ferry port. The city tour bus took us ALL over Incheon, every port, historical site, and bridge; we saw it all! Well an hour and 55 minutes later we managed to get to the ferry!

By the time we go to the dock, the ferry was just about to leave so the officials waved us on quickly and we ended up not having to purchase ticktets! The ferry was very quick, only a 7 or 8 minute ride to the island. Once we reached the island of Sodu we hopped on a bus which was to bring us into town, where we could rent bikes from the community center. The bus driver did not speak any English so we were not sure at first if we were going to right place. The island was very small and after about 30 min we did indeed arrive at the community center!

The community center was merely a small shack in the middle of a deserted island. One restaurant, but it was closed, no stores and very few makeshift cottage-like houses. We all rented bikes for only 2,000 won, which is about $1.80 for the whole day. Some of the guys even tried renting the two-person bikes, but later traded them in for singles. These bikes were slow, dirty, broken, and none of the gears worked. Also, I later found out that my brakes did not work. But it didn't matter! We were happy to get to the island and very anxious to find the beach.

We biked up a hill and down some dirt roads for a bit until we found the resort that we were looking for. The resort was closed and completely deserted! Also, THERE WAS NO WATER! The beaches were dry and barren just about as far out as we could see. So basically now you have a big group of foreigners, standing at the top of this hill overlooking an empty resort and a dry beach, scratching our heads and wondering what the heck is going on?! So thankfully this man comes out of his house across the street, and in very broken English tells us that it's low-tide and the resort is closed for the season (Mind you, we DID research this place, but Korean websites are sketchy at best, who knew it'd be closed?). So perhaps at this point we could've headed back to the bus, defeated and beach-less, but instead we decided to embrace the situation and make it an adventure!

We knew that a famous landmark on the island was an old house that used to be the film set for a Korean drama series called "Full House" (not to be confused with the popular American sitcom, Full House, a.k.a. my favorite show ever!). We biked up a big hill and eventually stumbled upon it and it was pretty cool. The house was huge and it had many windows that we could see into. Inside it looked like a normal house, furniture and paintings, and even a flat-screen tv on the wall! Outside the house there was a small, elderly man just taking a nap on a bench outside the house. And he didn't even wake up when we approached the house and walked around!

By this point in the afternoon we were starving, so we looked for some type of restaurant or cafe but the only thing we could find was this little convenient store. It was basically a shack alongside the road, and there was a just one man running it. He seemed a little annoyed when we first walked in, he was counting money so maybe he got distracted and lost count when about 12 white people walked in. Eventually he started to smile and help us, probably figuring that any business was good business. We each bought a few beers and an instant noodle bowl (basically like the ramen we have here, very popular lunch food in Korea) and some cookies and chips. All very cheap by our standards, but we probably fed his family for a month! We sat outside and ate and talked and laughed. It was such a silly sight, us looking for a beach and now just hanging out on some random island. About every 30 min a car or moped would go by and they would always wave or honk. At one point this old VW-style van drove by and stopped, the windows opened and a bunch of small Asians stuck there head's out and started pointing and giggling at us. So strange! But we just laughed and waved back.

We then decided since we had the bikes that we should at least see the other parts of the island. We biked around and eventually crossed a bridge which brought us to a different island. This was one even smaller and less populated. We walked down to the beach at this point, still no water, although we did start to see it coming up a bit. We looked down and there were crabs running around all over! We tried to catch some, but no such luck. The water was continually getting closer, but this still wasn't the beach setting we had in mind. The sand was more of a gritty mud, and the water was grey and murky. Yuck! But some of us daredevils did decide to go in. Felix, Rosie, Ariane, and Jason all got in the water. They actually swam out to this deserted raft that was a few meters out. I just couldn't do it though, the water looked too gross! Those of us that didn't go in hung out on the cement steps that led down to the beach, and we even played the role of the medics when Ariane and Jason got cut up on the barnacles that were in the water. The cuts bled at first, but after they were cleaned and bandaged they weren't so bad.

By now it was about 4:30 and we knew the bus stopped running around 6:30 so we decided to head back. This was the part where I learned that my brakes really didn't work (Up to this point, I knew they were faulty, but optimistically told myself they would be semi-functional). We had to bike down this big hill as we were approaching the bike shop and convenient store and my brakes were not slowing me down! I screamed at first because I was going fast! But before I knew it we were on flat land again and I slowed myself down. Nothing like a little adrenaline to get your heart pumping! We returned the bikes and the old men were really grateful to see us again. Probably because we were the only people on the island!

We caught the bus back to the ferry and this time we actually bought tickets and paid. It was raining a lot at this point so we headed to the downstairs part of the ferry, and to our surprise there were very comfortable seats! We ferry ride was quick and then we got back onto the city tour bus, which was waiting for us a few blocks from the ferry dock. No tour this time, thank gosh, and so getting back to the rail station only took about 25 minutes. After what felt like a million stops later, we finally were back in Sinchon. Once again starving, we stopped at this all-you-can-eat buffet before heading back to campus.

And it wouldn't be the adventure it was if we hadn't stopped there. The food was pretty decent, pork and beef that you cook at your table, along with some other sides such as vegetables, dumplings, rice cakes and some soup. We were informed that if we took any food from the buffet and didn't finish it (i.e. it was left on your plate when the wait staff removed your plates from the table) that we would be charged 5,000 won for each plate. That's about $4.80 USD, which can really add up! So being the innovative foreigners that we are, we ended up taking the meat scraps and fat that we obviously weren't going to eat, but nor did we want to get charged for it, and putting them in our napkins and making trips to restrooms to dispose of them. It was quite a sight. But we managed! Also, they charged us for NOT ordering alcohol! How crazy is that, we were each charged about an extra 80 cents because we did not purchase the $4 bottle of Soju! Needless to say, we will not be returning there again.

We were all wiped out when we got back to campus, since relaxing the beach turned into biking around an island all day and running after ferries. However, all in all, it was an awesome day and quite the study-abroad adventure!

The first picture is all of us, minus Felix who was taking the picture, on our way to the island on the ferry. The second picture was taken by Rae from the bridge that overlooked our little swimming spot.