3 days off and no money. Bah!

So, it turns out that my boss only wants to give me 3 days holiday this summer. She told me that 5 years ago, I would have gotten 5 days, but since we are such a busy hagwon, with so many kids, I will only be allowed 3 days now. This is something that I am going to fight, but, seeing as at the moment I am completely brassic, I have taken the three days, like a small whimpering child, whilst whispering 'thanks,' and will resume the good fight next week when I return - hopefully I'll get the extra two days and will be able to head to Tokyo in September time for the changing of the leaves. See, so it'll be worth it in the end.



Wednesday, the first day of my holiday was spent in the best way possible for me - lying in bed! Whoop! I use the excuse that I was completely wiped out and that I needed the break, which is partly true, but it's also that I'm an intrinsically lazy creature and a day in bed appealed to me. It wasn't a total loss though, I did a ton of Korean homework, listened to loads of ace music, read some and generally chilled out. It was great.



Wednesday evening brought the Butcher to my abode. We had decided to dump the original plan of going to Seoul for the evening and instead stayed local so we could join Amy, who's mummy had just arrived for a visit! Faye and I headed to Garten Bier for a quick soju cocktail to celebrate the holidays and then jumped in a taxi to meet Amy at the amazing shells restaurant near her house. A 9,000won taxi ride later and we jumped back out at Garten Bier. Yep, we'd managed to get completely lost and when calling Amy to let her know this, were informed that the shell restaurant, that was housed in a tent, had disappeared. We ended up going instead for shells at a place just across from GB/Now bar, which was barely satisfactory, but hey, introducing Mommy Swanson to shells and watching her using chopsticks made up for that. Good food, good company, good times. After, we left the Swansons to have a sleep, as Lori was rather tired after her journey, and headed to Now bar, to see who was about. There we met up with Trevie and Aidan and had a lovely pint before heading home.



Thursday morning we headed off to Incheon airport to pick up another Butcher! Faye's sister, Claire, was about to arrive for a two week tour of SK! Faye was obviously quite excited about that (as was I), so we ended up getting to the airport pretty early. You know, only about an hour, it was fine! ;) Claire came through the doors and Faye raced off, leaving me taking the photos of the beautiful reunion and feeling a bit like I was in 'Love, Actually'. Turns out though, the photos were shit and you do need a flash in a fully lighted airport. Sorry, Faybe!



Soon as we'd left the airport, we headed the 15 minutes or so, on the number 302 bus, to Eulwangi beach, which is on the west coast of Incheon. Eulwangi is noted as one of the best beaches in Korea, and we weren't disappointed when we arrived. Neither were the 20,000 Koreans that were also present on the beach, dressed in the usual attire of t-shirt and shorts, which made us feel slightly put out - biggest people on the beach and the only ones in swim suits! Once we'd had a quick scout of the area, we decided to find a minbak to stay in (turns out there's none on Eulwangi beach), so had a look around. The Lonely Planet recommended two motels, one of which seemed somewhat defunct and the other, far too expensive. Cost, it turned out, was a bit of a beggar, seeing as it's the middle of summer, so prices have soaaaared. The motel that we finally chose was 80,000 for one night. Cash was paid and we headed out for a drink. Annoyingly, a few hours later, we were accosted by the bloke in the motel across the road, who offered us a room for 50,000. Bugger. Ah, well. Least the room was nice.



The three of us headed to the beach, which was truly lovely. White sand is in abundance and luckily, the sea doesn't recede too far at low tide, unlike many other beaches, that leave huge mud flats that aren't too good for sunbathing! We took a place under one of the many umbrellas and were soon caught by the locals, who asked us for 20 thou for the use of their umbrella!!! To all you UK people, that translates to a tenner! For an umbrella! We decided to move forward about an inch, so we weren't in the shade anymore and told the little dudes to sod off. A tenner. What is the world coming to?! Soon enough we had a friendly young man come over to talk to us, who amusingly hugged himself as close to the nearby umbrella pole as possible, as he in no way wanted to touch the sun. He chatted to us for a while, before getting bored, seeing as we weren't interested in chatting at that point, and wandered off. Later on, we decided on an umbrella for a while and spent the rest of the sunlight dozing, chatting and drinking. Which was generally what the rest of the evening had in store. I was completely relaxed, which Faye and I discussed, was a completely different type to our usual relaxation, you know, the one we feel after climbing a mountain, rafting, biking or being active. Not better, but equally as amazing. Just what the doctor ordered, we agreed.



The next morning we headed to the beach again and decided to stop pretending that our pasty skin didn't need an umbrella and shelled out the 20 thou for the priviledge of not getting skin cancer. Yey! Again, the day was spent relaxing, drinking and chilling and we were joined, finally, 7 hours after they'd set off (can I just point out that Eulwangi beach is only about 1 and a half hours from YoungTong), by Amy and Lori. Amy had somehow gotten more lost than anyone could ever percieve and took her mom on a tour of the upper Western part of SK. Well done, Ames! We spent the evening eating more shells than we ever thought possible (if you ever go in the day, it's the restaurant on the Carib hotel side of the seafront, with the rainbow umbrellas), which were astoundingly delicious and then heading to the beach to play with fireworks, meet a whole group of Korean men and generally have an excellent time. Especially Amy, who I think shocked her lovely mother with her flirting antics - that's our girl! We headed with our bags (we'd checked out of the expensive place that day, seeing as 160,000 for two nights was way out of buget) to the jimjilbang across the main road set back from the beach and paid 12,000 for a shower and a room to sleep in - there were no baths at all. Massive rip off and we were all a little mad that Lori and Claire's first jim experience was so bad. Ah well, there's always a next time!!!!



Saturday was spent travelling back to Incheon airport and picking up more of Faye's UK clan, this time, her friends Abby and Maddie. We all hopped on a bus, and the girls departed at Suwon in order to pop home and then take a trip to the Folk Museum, which is definately worth a look. Faye and I have been before however, so I headed straight back to YoungTong for another lovely day of chilling out and blog writing.

I woke up early Sunday to meet Amy and Mommy Swanson for a rather long journey to Sangbong (where we met Faye, Claire, Abby and Maddie) and then to Inje-gun (where we met Panda and Mike). Inje-gun houses the Naerinchon river, which in turn hosts many world rafting competitions and although is not amazingly dangerous in terms of white water, it is very beautiful and worth heading to just to take in the views, despite the amount of time it takes to get there. Not only does Naerinchon offer rafting, but also bungee jumping and a host of other extreme activities too, whether winter or summer. We had decided to raft again, this time with a company whos name I forget, though I'm sure I will be informed by Panda in no time. We were picked up from Inje station by a driver and ferried to the river, where we were quickly put into those lovely lifejackets with the ass strap once more, told to put on our helmets and then got the cool flourescent jelly shoes. Man I love rafting outfits!!!
After we had done this, we were driven by minibus to the start of the course, where a guy who spoke ok English went through the safety briefing with us and then broke our hearts by splitting us into two groups. Faye, Claire, Maddie and Abby were put in one raft, with a bunch of Korean guys and the rest of us stuck with the original instructor with another group of Korean guys. Turns out that the instructors felt that as there were so many girls, we'd have to be placed with men as, you know, they're stronger and all that. Hmph. Not sure that was true, but anyway. We started off nice and slowly, which was good for Amy, as she's a little scared of the water and therefore was a bit nervous. This wasn't helped by watching Faye and Maddie slip quickly into the water and have the raft ride over them! Luckily no one was hurt, which was a good thing and Anda and I were splitting ourselves with laughter the whole time and generally jeering. Heehe. The course took about two hours and during that time there was chance to swim, have water fights, rock the raft, spin, go through the rapids (of course) and generally get wet and have an excellent time. I really do enjoy rafting, specially with the amazing views and the chance to swim in a gorgeous and very clear river. Sometimes I forget how lucky I am to live in such a beautiful place!
After rafting we all had a few beers and headed to the bus station (annoyingly by taxi, the woman decided she was too busy to transport us back, so we had to flash the cash - not part of the original deal). The buses weren't that frequent and the one that we got, to DongSeoul took bloody ages. I think we left at 7.30pm and didn't get in until 11.30pm! We did however, manage to get the bus with our rafting instructor, which was very cool, however, he was of no help at all when Amy, who was rather wasted, needed the coach to stop so she could pee - however I was very proud of using my pidgin Hangeul to get him to stop and explain that she needed to urinate. When we finally got back to Seoul we said bye to Anda and followed the instructor who attempted to put us on a bus back to YoungTong, stuck us in a queue and then left. Despite his best intentions, we realised that the bus had actually stopped running, so, although we were going to take the subway to Gangnam we were taken in by another Korean guy, who told us it'd be easier to get a taxi there. Cue much faffing, missing the bus, finally getting to Gangnam, getting a different bus to Suwon and then having to get a taxi from Suwon to YoungTong. Pain in the ass. Still, turns out the 112 bus from YT goes to Gangbyeon though, will save me hours in terms of getting there for future trips. Bonus.