Vacation Day 1

(I've split this up a little. Click on the title to see pictures!) Saturday we woke up bright and early so we could catch the 8:00 bus to Seoul. Once in Seoul we stopped at Dunkin' Donuts for some sugar, grabbed some genuine club sandwiches, and found the bus to Sokcho. Unfortunately, it seemed like the entire country had vacation the same time we did. What we were expecting to be a 3.5 hour bus ride turned out to be a 6 hour bus ride! The scenery wasn't bad though. Once we got out of Seoul there were more and more mountains. The highway went right through many of the mountains. Those were the longest tunnels I've seen, I think. There was no way to hold your breath through the whole thing :). When we finally arrived in Sokcho, we found and information booth very close to the bus stop where they spoke English. They directed us to the local bus stop where we caught a bus headed North to a beach called Samp'o. When we first got off the bus, it seemed like we were relatively in the middle of nowhere. We didn't see much of a town there. There was, however, a campground, which is what we were looking for. So, we payed our 5000 won for the night, set up the tent, and took off down the road toward what looked like might have restaurants. We found a regular Korean restaurant that I was happy to see served nyangmyon (cold noodles). They really hit the spot on a hot day! I'll miss them when they're out of season :). After eating, we walked around outside to discover some sort of summer festival that was taking place. There were carnival games set up, fireworks you could buy, outdoor restaurants, and entertainment. We looked around for a bit, and then Tracy decided to get a henna tattoo. Meanwhile the entertainment began. It was some sort of clown show involving traditional Korean drums as well. They would do the drums accompanied by modern, upbeat music. We stood off to the side for awhile, but when they noticed us, they dragged us to front and center and made some kids give up their stools! It was obvious we were the only foreigners around. Then they tried talking to us in Korean and stuff. The humor started getting a little sketchy (we could tell just by the body language) and eventually we got sick of not understanding what was going on, so we left. From there we bought a couple fireworks and lit them off on the beach. Then we walked down the beach to the campsite. The sea sounds so neat, but is a little spooky to me at night :). In the distance there were bright beacons all around the perimeter of the bay. We decided to go to bed early (10ish) because the sun was down and we knew it would be up early. However, people around our tent didn't quiet down until 4am or so and started up again at 6am. Not the most restful night of sleep ever...