Korea trip: Day 2, Inje

We went for a short walk in the morning in Chuncheon, but it started to rain so we headed back to the car and headed out of town to Inje. The motel didn’t serve breakfast, so we were starving and were looking for a coffee shop or a Paris Baguette. We found a small bakery and had some muffins and other strange rolls, which seemed to be egg, ham and cheese cooked in a roll, sounds nice (at least to me) but it didn’t taste like egg, ham and cheese.

The drive to Inje took about two hours, with us stopping to feed Brandon at a roadside stop. The road heading to Inje mostly followed a river with really nice scenery. Inje is known as a town with adventure activities, so there is bungee jumping and white water rafting, paragliding, … sounds like fun.
We arrived at Inje and missed the turning into the town and carried on down the road where I took another offramp. I decided to follow a small road which followed another stream into the mountains. This area was really beautiful and as we wound our way further into the hills, we came across a nice looking pension overlooking the stream. We decided we would stay there for the evening but carried on to see more of the mountains and general scenery and then head back into town for some lunch and to try and find some maps of the area.

We settled for a place called “Burger & coffee” and Brandon got lots of attention from people, he was even given a sucker (not open and Carla ended up stealing it from Brandon, now I know where the saying came from “it’s like taking candy from a baby…)
We headed back to the pension and found the owner who said we could stay the night. The room was traditional Korean ondol (heated floor), so there are no beds, you sleep on the floor on a mat with a blanket. It was very nice and there was also a kitchenette , TVn and rice cooker.
We were wondering what we would do for dinner, so I asked the lady if they had anything to which she replied no, but we could either head into the town or just up the road to some traditional Korean restaurants. We were tired so didn’t feel like going out, so I decided to quickly go back into town and buy something easy to cook. I found some pasta and a pasta sauce, so settled for that.
When I arrived back, I headed down to the river for a swim, which got the lady who owns the pension really nervous (most Koreans cannot swim, so she thought I would drown). Carla and I were sitting outside when we noticed another car pull in, and the people seemed to be some family members of the owner. The pulled out a braai (barbeque) and started to set it up. Then another car arrived followed by another. We were starting to get suspicious (since we know a thing or two about Korean hospitality) and thought this may be for us. Turns out it was, the owner invited the whole family and some friends over for a braai (barbeque) and we had chicken, eel (fresh from the river, actually pulled out of a bucket there, killed and then cooked) It was a really great experience, we were offered lots of food, drink (beer and soju) and had a really nice evening despite only two of the people being able to speak some English to us. I had cooked the spaghetti and taken it down because we didn’t want to arrive empty handed and this was called Bladely’s spaghetti (Blad –a -lee being the way they pronounce my name) and they thought it was very funny that we wanted spaghetti.. We had quite a laugh afterwards as to the panic the owner must have gone through after I asked her about dinner earlier, she must have thought the crazy foreigner wanted a meal and quickly called everyone she knew to come over.

If anyone is going in that direction, I can recommend that pension. It is one of the only ways I can repay their hospitality (they wouldn’t accept payment for the dinner and drinks) So I hope more people will visit, the name and details are:

Name: (to be updated)
Ph(to be updated)
GPS coordinates (to be updated)