All-You-Can-Eat Korean BBQ & ATVing!

This past weekend, we we went out to dinner with our friends, Cory and Rachel - they took us to one of their favorite restaurants in Okpo called Dino. It is an all you can eat Korean BBQ buffet so you sit on the floor at a table with a grill and then you can go up to the meat counter and load your plate up as many times as you want. As always, we had an awesome timel! :)

There are many different options for meats and you can have as much as you want for 16000 Won (~$15)

You have to take your shoes off before you come in - this place is packed as you can see from all the shoes...

Cory & Ryan are loading up for Round 1

This is what Ryan came back with for us to grill...

BBQing it up! 

As we were leaving the restaurant, we heard a loud noise and looked up to see fireworks! We had forgotten that it was the anniversary of the Okpo Daecheop battle against Japan (Korea was victorious) and they have an annual festival to commemorate it. We stopped to watch the fireworks - it was a great addition to a great evening!

Fireworks for the Okpo Great Victory celebration! 

The next day, we got up and met some friends to go ATVing on the other side of the island. There were 6 of us and our guide took us up through the mountains and along the coast of the island - it was a lot of fun! I was a bit of a novice on a four wheeler but I did okay and Ryan was owning the course!

The group of us at the top of our mountain ride! 

Enjoying the ATV Adventure! 

Ryan getting a little flashback of four wheeling in New Hampshire :)

After a long day out in the sun, we had a lazy Sunday afternoon napping which is just what we needed! :)

Oedo Island

Last week, there was a Korean holiday in the middle of the week and so we got the day off from work. After sleeping in (apparently we really needed this because we slept for 12 hours), we made breakfast and decided to take the ferry to one of the near-by islands. On one of my business trips to Korea last year, I had arranged to do this tour with a big group of colleagues and we had a great time - I had been told by many Koreans that this was a beautiful place to visit and one of the best things to do in Geoje Island. Since I had so much fun visiting there, I really wanted to take Ryan. We ventured out after brunch and drove to the ferry dock. On the way there, we discovered that we had forgotten our camera battery, but we were close so we decided to get tickets in case it was crowded with visitors. After several minutes to trying to describe what we wanted, she finally showed us a price on the calculator and we paid her for it. The tour was at 1:00 PM and she wrote on our ticket that we needed to be on the ferry at 12:45 PM. Well, we still needed our camera battery, which was about a 35-40 minute round trip, so we started running to our car to hit the road so we could make it back as quickly as possible.

We were in such a hurry that we hit EVERY red light...of course. We got all the way home, I ran upstairs, grabbed the camera battery and some snacks, and ran back in the car. By this point it was 12:45 PM (the time we were supposed to be getting on the ferry) and we started to think that we might not make it, but we wanted to try anyway. Luck was on our side on the way there, because we didn't hit any red lights...and then we ended up behind some slow cars on a one lane road. All of a sudden, another lane opened up (it's there for the hill portion of the roads so you can pass the slow cars) and we gunned it past all of them. Luckily for us, in Korea, they do not have police officers pulling you over for speeding - instead, they have cameras that track your speed and take your picture if you are speeding - they give you plenty of warning that they're coming so Ryan did not get caught driving too fast.

We pulled into the parking lot for the ferry at 12:59 PM - Ryan slowed the car down a little bit and I jumped out and started running to the ferry. The man taking tickets was laughing at me and gave me a smile that told me they would wait and it's okay as I franticly tried to tell him my husband was still coming and not to leave. We strolled onto the ferry and sat down in the last 2 remaining seats. Not even 2 seconds after we sat down, the ferry pulled out to begin the trip. The captain came on to talk to everyone (in Korean, of course). Everyone giggled at the beginning so I'm pretty sure that he started out by saying, "We're sorry that we're leaving a few minutes late...these silly Americans don't know how to be on time." We just smiled and nodded, having no clue what he actually said for the remainder of the tour.

The ferry took us out into the National Park called Haegeumgang which are a bunch of rock islands near where we live. The ferry driver drove us right into one of the big rock islands which was great! I had never seen islands like this before!

In the crevices of the rock island 

The boats going through the rock island

The ferry ride around the island was really beautiful and the water was surprisingly  green!

Seagulls on the rocks

As we got close to Oedo Island (pronounced kinda like "way-dough") the captain was pointing to his watch and talking about time - we still don't know the vocabulary for time so we weren't sure when we were supposed to head back, but luckily for us, the boat captain was nice enough to write the time down on a piece of paper and gave it to us. We got off the ferry and we started walking up around the island which is a huge botanical garden. It was great!

Ryan posing with one of the Greek god statues! 

Posing with one of the Greek statues

Lots of colorful flowers

The flowers were so bright and beautiful! 

They had all kinds of funny statues all over the place

We thought these flowers looked a little Dr. Seuss style...

After we walked around the island, we grabbed an ice cream...they only had one flavor which was light green and it turned out to be melon flavored which was pretty good. 

On the way home, we took a detour and drove around some of the rice fields that were newly planted and took a few pictures. They actually plant these things with machines...which is how they get the lines so straight. They can plant a whole patty in like 20 minutes. 

The photographer at work

Anyways, it was a really great day! :)

Road Trip to Busan!

We recently got a GPS for Korea which translates into English - thank goodness because driving here is a crazy experience! I'll let Ryan write a post about that later because he graciously does most of the driving. We wanted to test it out so we went to Busan for a day trip last Sunday.

Luckily for us, they built a bridge within the last couple of years between Busan and Geoje Island, so it takes about an hour to get to Busan rather than the 4 hour drive around. The drive on the bridge is really beautiful - there are islands along the coast which make it a very scenic drive.

Several friends gave us some Korea travel guides and so we took it with us to Busan and planned to hit a few of the hot spots. The first stop was the Jagalchi Fish Market which is the largest fish market in Korea. We walked around the area and saw a lot of dried fishes hanging out to be sold, along with several of the little guppies that we saw the woman drying a couple of weeks ago when we were exploring the island!

Boxes of dried fishies 

We think those are dried frogs???

We continued walking and found the main fish market which is a multi-story building and is full of stalls with fish tanks/open baskets full of plenty of live fish! It is a unique cultural experience to walk around and see the tanks of fish jumping around, eels slithering on top of each other, and even some octopuses stuck to the sides.

Flounder splashing around - we had really never seen anything like this before!

Eels in a big tank

These guys were cutting up & gutting some fish for a customer!  They take freshness to a whole new level! 

This lady's stand had all kinds of interesting items - we didn't know what half of them were

See the octopuses stuck to the side?! The mollusks are stuck to the side there, too! She has her little scooper to get any of them out if someone wants to buy some of them to take home. Yikes!

We wanted to continue our cultural experience, so we walked upstairs which is where the "restaurants" are. There were many "restaurants" serving seafood, primarily sashimi. I call them "restaurants" because it was a raised platform with tables and then small open kitchens nearby where they were funneling the food from. It was certainly unlike any food court or restaurant that I had ever been to before and we were the only non-Korean people there. We got the sashimi plate and we tried the first fish - It was not what I was expecting...I can only describe the texture as gooey and I did like it very much. The second fish on the platter was okay...not as good as I was expecting, but we munched on that. The waitress kept telling us that soup came with the sashimi so a few moments later, a burner showed up on our table and then they brought out a big pan full of soup. We looked a bit closer and saw a fish head...yup, they had brought us fish head soup. It wasn't strictly fish heads - they had basically chopped up an entire fish and put it in the soup. Being the open minded type, we gave it a try. The fish had a lot of bones, making it super hard to eat, and the broth was very spicy. It was certainly an interesting experience, but it was not our favorite meal here yet.

The "restaurants" all looked like this - a raised platform and each person left their shoes by the side and sat on these mats; there were rows and rows of these which were all different "restaurants"  

The Sashimi - the one on the left was the gooey one that I wasn't a big fan of but the one of the right was okay

This is the fish head soup; unfortunately our fish head pictures came out blurry, but it's in there, I promise. You can also see some of the different kimchi side dishes on the side that they gave us 

Ryan enjoying our meal...his face says it all

This guy walked around with this over his shoulder and he had sweet rice cakes as desserts

Rows and rows of more dried fishes inside the market

Our final view of the market - a guy in a big truck dumping a fresh fish into a bucket - priceless! 

There were also some more fish markets outside of the main fish market building. These were a little more aligned with what we would expect for a fish market because the fish were cut up and on ice rather than swimming around still in tanks. 

Woman selling some of her fish outside - we think these may be a type of swordfish

Ryan at the outdoor fish market; there is a guy chopping fish under his umbrella right behind him. 

After that, we walked around some of the other markets and grabbed a smoothie. The main observation we had while walking around was just how many people there were! Every where we went, there were seas of people! We continued our walk through Yongdusan Park. We went to the top of Busan Tower and scoped out the view.

Ryan and I in front of one of the statues in Yongdusan Park

View of one of the largest ports in the world (Busan) from the top of the Busan Tower

Ryan at the top of the Busan Tower

Big Bell in the Park (we really like the Korean buildings - neat architecture and so colorful!)

The last place on our list for our trip was to go to a temple outside of the city. It is called Yonggungsa Temple and it is nicknamed the "Temple on the Sea." We drove out there and it was extremely crowded - it took us some time to find parking and then there was a 2 hour line to get into the temple. I should have guessed that I wasn't the only one who wanted to see this beautiful temple with all of the lanterns for Buddha's birthday! We didn't really have time to wait in such a long line because we had to head back home, but we couldn't see the temple from the outside. So...being the adventurous and determined couple that we are, we started hiking around to find another way to see the temple. We noticed that some Koreans jumped over a fence and were walking along a ledge. We followed suit and walked out along some of the rocks and there was the view that we were looking for!! The temple was filled with colorful lanterns and it looked incredible!

We thought this guy was quite intimidating! 

They had all 12 zodiac statues lining hte walk-way to get to the entrance of the temple area; Ryan is with the Goat! (Go WPI! ;) )  

Great picture of one of the Buddha statues! 

On the other side of those cliffs is the temple; we spent some time hiking around trying to get a good view....this was the first one that we got, but the temple was blocked. We persistently kept looking around until we found what we were looking for. :)

Ryan and I celebrating our find with the great view of the colorfully decorated temple behind us! 

Temple decorated with many colorful lanterns for Buddha's birthday! 

Buddha Statue 

The temple is right on the water...it's really neat! 

The 12 Zodiacs Lined Up

With the Tiger (Zodiac for our birth year!)

On the way out, there are several food and souvenir stalls - we saw some fresh dough cakes being made and they smelled awesome! A bag of 10 of them was only 2,000 Won (almost $2), so we grabbed a bag. They were awesome! They were cakey donut type of treats that had red bean paste in the middle. I'm not sure what they are called, but we will certainly be getting them again if we see them somewhere else.

All in all, we had a great day trip to Busan!