Korea from a coastal perspective

So, this was how we spent Saturday at Song Jeong beach... getting tossed, worked over, and destroyed in some waves larger than our previous visit... The waves ranged in size this day from 1m to 2m (2m when the tide was in, bigger than in these pictures).

This made it a lot harder to catch the waves, as they moved a lot quicker, requiring a lot more paddling power and better timing to catch the wave, stand up, and stay up!

Needless to say, we caught some of the smaller ones, but mostly tumbled in to shore in the larger waves.

BUT, we are making progress! So maybe by the end of the summer we can put some actual surfing pictures on the blog, not just cheezy pictures of me standing in front of the wave!

Surfing is, without a doubt, one of the most amazing sports I have ever tried. I would recommend trying it to any of my friends or family, it is such a healthy, natural, difficult hobby. Like climbing, surfing has been a great escape from our city and its noisiness!

A while back we visited the coastal region of our city, the area called 'Bangojin'. It had a very different feel from the rest of the city. Bangojin is oceanside, and is largely made up of the factory and offices for Hyundai industries. If you own a Hyundai vehicle, it was likely built here... or if you own anything else Hyundai for that matter (computer stuff, appliances, etc...).

So Hyundai occupies a lot of this area, but there are many regular apartments, and many people live down here too. This area has one of the countries larger ports, too, not as big as Busan, but very large, I beleive.

On this weekend we checked out the Hyundai cultural center, then made our way to the beach, then to the point adjacent to the beach to see the lighthouse and park.

The cultural center has a sport climbing wall, a big gymnasium, bowling alley, art gallery, cinema, and coolest of all, a skating rink in the basment (bad joke...by bad I mean great!). This is the place to be if you are bored, I suppose.

Korea was taking on Japan for bragging rights in a major badminton tournament when we made our appearance in the gym, and the skating rink was packed with people skating in figure skates... it was strange for us not to see a single pair of hockey skates on the whole ice surface!

We then made our way to the beach and the light house... It was a very nice day, the sun was out, the wind was down, and the waves coming into shore were quite relaxing.

There was a nice park set up around the point where the lighthouse was. Here we walked to the lighthouse, then crossed a bridge to get to a small rocky island with a nice viewpoint. It was interesting to see so many ships in the water, they were all so massive, a big contrast from the boats I am used to seeing...Spooner's 16 foot aluminum boat that we used for tubing, ... Yup, big changes for both of us, from Lac La Ronge and Katepwa...

On the other hand, as the port was to the right of us, and we were walking distance from the hyundai factory yard, I wasn't too eager to dine at one of the many picnic tables (see the bottom picture) set up by wetsuit-clad elderly Korean women who were collecting shelfish and serving them to people visiting the lighthouse!