In the last weekend of September Korea celebrated one of its “biggest and most important” holidays, Chuseok (click on the word Chuseok to the left to learn more about the holiday). For this holiday Koreans from all over the country flock back home to be with their families and almost all businesses are closed. As a foreigner this can make the three day weekend a rather boring affair, but in order to take advantage of the extra long weekend some friends, Kurtis, and I set out on an adventure to Tongyeong.
Tongyeong is a wonderful coastal city on the southern most tip of Korea, about an hour bus ride away from Masan. Speaking of riding the bus, I have just got to say that one of my favorite things about living in Korea is definitely the public transportation. Having a more condensed population may make public transport a more practical option than back in the states, but I still will dream that one day USA will step their game up.
Anywho, once we had arrived in Tongyeong our group split into 2 cabs and headed for the hotel (side note: without any request or encouragement from us, our cab driver put together that we were with the people in the other cab and took it upon himself to make it a race… For anyone who has ever taken a cab in Korea you know the
life endangered feeling it can provoke, so you can only imagine how this added ‘Fast and the Furious’ component increased the typical insanity. Luckily, we made it safely to our destination and happily discovered our hotel exceeded all of our expectations and was very beautiful.
The rest of the afternoon was filled with adventures which included eating eyeballs, discovering a circus, exploring a sea side trail, and enjoying the view of ocean and mountains from our big rock. That night we decided to check out the circus we had found earlier in the day, and it was everything I’d hoped and more! Afterwards, we grabbed a bite to eat, had some drinks, and then called it a night so we’d have our energy for the next days activities.
After a building wide 8 am wake-up call, we were on our way to explore more
of the city. Most of this time was spent taking in a hill side of murals that lead the way up to a beautiful overlook of the city. At the top of the hill we enjoyed the beautiful lookout, watched some kite flying, and had coffee. It was such a fun experience and we had a blast just walking around and taking pictures with our friends.
We concluded our hilltop fun, and having had a wonderful weekend Kurtis and I ended the day with a purchase of some of Tongyeong’s famous honey bread, known as kkulppang, and boarded a bus back to Masan.
This was our first time traveling outside of Masan and it was such an easy, affordable, and fun trip, I have a feeling we’ll be going on a lot of weekend adventures :D.