A $130 Bus Ride

So this weekend, I was pretty excited to be heading to Jindo on the southern tip of Korea for the Sea Parting Festival. As the name suggests, for one night, the tides do some funny things, and as if straight out of the Bible itself, a 40-60 metre wide path is cleared from the shore straight out to Modo Island almost three kilometres out.

The story, as I learned, was that long ago, a family had fled from Jindo on a raft to Modo Island due to a high population of killer tigers in the area. Unfortunately, they left poor sweet old Grandma Ppong behind, like a geriatric Kevin McCallister. Grandma missed her family dearly, so she prayed to the Dragon King of the Sea to help reunite her with her family. Eventually, the Dragon King appeared to her in a dream and told her to cross the water on the rainbow road that he would provide for her. Grandma Ppong managed to make it all the way out to the island on her own, but sadly, the journey proved to be too much for her, and she died just as she was reunited with her family. Not exactly the happiest ending ever, but that's how the story goes.

Anyway, since the tour bus was set to leave for Jindo from Busan at seven in the bloody morning on Saturday, I headed over to my favourite Korean city on Friday night to meet yet two other awesome Californians in Nate and Kirsten, along with their crew, which included Scott, the birthday boy. After a rousing round of Cards Against Humanity, we headed out for a night on the town.

At midnight, I told Nate and Kirsten that I'd only be out for one more hour, since I had to be up at six to get to Seomyeon Station on time to catch the bus. In return, they suggested that I just try to stay up the whole night and sleep on the way to Jindo, since it would be a long five hour bus ride. Seemed like sound logic to me at the time. As always, a grand ol' time was had whilst dancing to noise.

We didn't quite make it through to the whole night, though, and at 5:15--a measly 45 minutes until I had planned departure time--my head hit the pillow for what I told myself would be just a little resting of the eyes, but the next time I opened them it was 8:00. I had missed my bus. Sadly, it was not the first time this happened to me. You'd think I'd learn my lesson.

After calling the 1330 tourist helpline, I found out that I could get to Jindo on my own and it would only cost $30. Considering that I already spent $100 on the tour, I wasn't about to head home just yet. I bid Kirsten and Nate a goodbye and headed out with my conciliatory bottle of soju.

Several hours later, I arrived in Jindo and caught up with my group, having missed a dog show that I wasn't really keen on seeing anyway, along with a traditional Korean performance of some kind. We got to our hostel, were assigned our rooms, and went down for dinner. This was also breakfast for me, as the only thing I'd had to eat all day was an apple that a roommate in the hostel had offered me shortly before dinner.

Afterwards, we went back to our room to commence with the drinking. One of the girls pointed out that it sort of felt like camp--we were sticking to a strict schedule that was assigned to us, eating dinner in a giant mess hall, and bunking with a group of people.

After a while, the music outside was calling us, and we made our way down to enjoy the festivities. It was basically just five Korean dudes dancing onstage like your typical boy band. We met the most awesome elderly couple while we were down there, though; they were totally feeling the music, and the guy was getting his groove on with the pretty young ladies.

Another highlight of that part of the night was the unexpected sighting of schwarma! I was in Heaven.

We eventually made our way back up to the room to wile away more time until the sea parting, which was set to take place at 5:00. (It looked like another sleepless night lay ahead.) After a while, though, I got antsy and made my way downstairs to see who else was milling about. I basically spent the rest of the night mingling here and there.

Eventually, I found myself in the lobby of our hostel with a guy who called himself the gatekeeper. We were joined by two others, and things quickly escalated to tomfoolery and drunken pictures until somebody came out to tell us we were being too loud.

At that point, I wandered off with another friend and, long story short, we ended up getting the times confused for when we were supposed to meet up with everybody else for the festivities. Crap.

I found some solace the following morning in hearing that the tide actually wasn't that low, and nobody had been able to make it out to the island because the tide was waist-high. Some turned back only a third of the way there.

Still, I imagine the sight of a mass exodus of people carrying torches as they marched out to the sea must have been one hell of a sight at five in the morning. I'm going to regret that one for a long time.

There was a bit of a morning-after festival going on Sunday morning, so we meandered about, listening to live music and buying things to nibble on along the way. We strolled through the streets as we waited for the parade to kick off. The parade ended at a gorgeous amphitheatre that was situated with the sea as its backdrop. Viewers sat on benches up on a massive hill and took in one hell of a view. It was probably the most beautiful concert venue I've ever seen in my life. The highlight of the entire weekend turned out to be a drum performance immediately following the parade in the amphitheatre. At least I got something for my money.

Very colourful afros?

It's Grandma Ppong!

No words...

Jammin to some pan flute action.

I would kill to see Metallica or the Foo Fighters here. The sea is right there!

The balloons represent wishes. Unfortunately, some balloons got caught in the trees. Sucks for those people.

Just look at this venue!