Summer 2012

This summer vacation, Jeong Hoon and I decided to go down south. We went  to Geojedo on our first day. Geojedo is the second largest island of South Korea and was recently connected to the mainland by a bridge - before the bridge, you'll have to take the ferry to get to the island.

Geojedo is beautiful and I bet it is even more beautiful in the fall and spring. The weather was sunny and HOT in the day but nice and cool at night. Jeong Hoon and I left Seoul around 3 AM. Our first intention was to take the toll-free route, which we were going to arrive at Geojedo around 1 PM but Jeong Hoon got tired 1/3 through that route and went on the express highway, of course we had to pay and the tolls here are not cheap I'll tell you that. We arrived at Geojedo around 9 AM, that is a big arrival time difference, about 4 hours!

Panorama shoot of Geojedo botanical garden

We went to the ferry terminal to hop on a ferry to Oedo, a small island near by. The whole island is a botanical garden and it's a place you must stop to see if you are ever in Geojedo. You can access Oedo from multiple ports now that are near by to it.

Google image

After the Oedo, we were hungry so we stop by a restaurant that specialized in spicy raw crab called 게장/게젓 (gejang, gejeot) in Korean. A dish that Jeong Hoon absolutely love and because we are by the sea, I decided to go for it because I thought 'near the sea = freshness?!?'
The restaurant we went to was jam packed and we figure it was a good eat place but boy were we wrong! Every dish we had was sweet, even the spicy raw crabs.
Jeong Hoon and I were disappointed, Jeong Hoon more so than me. I had this dish before and didn't enjoy it, actually, I forget why I didn't like therefore I was willing to eat it again but after a few scoops of it with rice, my throat began to swell up a tiny bit and then I remember that this happened before, too.

We were able to camp near the sea so we had close access to the sea and swam in it after we finished setting up our tent -- it felt so good because we were drench in our own sweat and felt so gross.  The side of the sea that we were near are pebble beaches, so it's a good idea to wear your shoes all the time. Sorry, no pictures of our site and the beach near by, I was too busy and tired to think about pictures.

On day 2, we drove up to Daegu and stayed at  Novetel Hotel in Daegu. The hotel was good and Daegu is bigger than I had expected. Since we had only one day to spend in Daegu -- as we also did for Geojedo, I wanted to do so much there. Go to the amusement parks, look at the hotspots, etc. We headed to Seomun Market (서문시장). This market is the second largest in South Korea and wanted to check out Daegu local food from the market. 

 We were walking around for a bit looking at food vendors and checking out which ones look the best.  Our first food stop was a spicy fish cakes stall that also sells dumplings but we only ate the spicy fish cakes. It was good but not as spicy as I would like it to be. Our next stop was a stall that sells flat dumplings (a specialty of Daegu), soondae  (순대; a blood sausage mix with clear glass noodles), dokkboki (spicy rice cakes snack), pindaedok (a kind of Korean "pancake"), and karkusu bibimmyeon (wheat noodle).
We had the dukbokki, soondae, and flat dumplings at this place. Our last stop was a noodle shop, we had bean noodles there and it was my first time having this noodle. It was like having noodles in a cold peanut-tofu broth, sounds delicious?

It was all good until it started pouring like cats and dogs, and so our visit and hope of touring Daegu ended like this.

Next time, I will surely spend more time and longer days in one place rather than make a short visit. There's just too much to see and do in these two places. I'm making future plans to visit Geojedo very soon ^^