pohang

Beard, Joe and I went to Pohang last Saturday. We were craving the sea. It's so nice just to sit on the rocks or the pier and listen to the waves. Pohang is a nice town. It's a little bigger than Gumi--500,000 people vs. 350,000--and the downtown is almost triple the size.
After we arrived, we walked directly to the water and found a reasonable motel--the OK Motel--for 30,000 won. The rooms were big with round beds, unfortunately non-rotating, and a better bathroom than in our apt (but that's not saying much). After depositing our bags we head out in search of some waves and eventually fish. We walked thru a dead end area that at home would have had bums in it and found the East Sea. It as beautiful, even if the huge steel plant POSCO was taking up a great deal of the landscape/seascape. We walked along and picked up shells, watched fisherpeople and discovered a pier that had at LEAST five trash cans on it. Amazing. Usually when walking around anywhere in Korea, there are no trash cans. Where to deposit trash? Usually someone has started a trash pile and it appears to be ok to put your trash on it and eventually it gets picked up. Apt complexes have dumpsters, but around town...not so much.
Eventually we found seafood, but we were expecting more than our usually raw fish experience and that didn't happen. Probably b/c we stopped at the first place we came to--my fault, I was starving. It was still raw fish and still pretty tasty. We wandered downtown a bit more--it was quiet due to the holiday (Chinese New Year) and found Mr. Pizza for Joe to eat at. He abhors Korean food, though I've never seen him eat it...In Korea, tables share food. When you order something everyone is supposed to eat it. Joe ordered a sprite and Beard ordered us beers, I was in the bathroom playing with the loo loo. I guess there was some confusion that Joe only wanted a glass and not a pitcher for us all to share and the manager had to come over to witness this for himself. After several minutes Joe was brought a glass of sprite...with 3 straws! HA!
While sitting at Mr. Pizza, I noticed a sign for hof (bar) called the Up and Up. In Bellingham there is a bar with the same name meaning that immediately after eating we had to go there. And I'm glad we did. 5 dollar Leffes. Yummy.

Next morning we went to Sunrise Park--very long expensive taxi ride, but worth it. It was a beautiful place. Spent quite a few hours walking on rocks, staring at the sea. Came back into town by bus--(much cheaper) ate at TGIFridays,my first time ever, and took Joe to the station. Beard and I wandered a bit more, and went back to the room early. We hadn't decided exactly what were doing the next day--jim jil pang--aka naked bath--or hiking to waterfalls? Both were equally appealing.
Naked baths won! By the time we got out of the motel room it was near noon and would have taken an hour and a half to get to the waterfalls and our train left at 4:47. The baths were very nice. I like them more every time I go. Very relaxing. After showering and shaving--perfect place for this--I sat in the 46 degree bath. AHHH so nice. I glanced up and noticed this woman coming at me--uh oh, I thought, what did I do wrong? she sat down right next to me and started talking to me in almost perfect English. It was great. We talked for a long time about views on marriage, divorce, children, social issues. Then I went to get dressed and meet Beard in the common room. We ate at the restaurant, and went to separate saunas. He likes the hot hot ones and I like the not so hot ones. We met up again at 3:30 and headed for more bath time before catching a taxi to our train.
Train ride home was sllloooowww. We had to wait for every commuter train to pass and stopped at almost every station. We had books to pass the time. I'm reading The Sun in My Eyes by Josie Dew, a book about bicycling around Japan. Discovered there was a squatter instead of a toilet on the train--super, a work of genius.