Korean Road Trip: Day 6 Jeongdongjin and Samcheok

We had quite a bit planned for today, but thought it would be okay because Samcheok is just over 30km from Jeongdongjin. The day started off badly for two reasons: one is that it was raining again (the entire week it has rained and today it rained continuously for the whole day), and two is that I set my alarm so we would have an early start and it didn’t go off, so we started an hour later than planned.

We first went to a small park right near the hotel (we had actually been there the night before but were not really paying attention, so did not realise what we were looking at). There is an enormous hour glass that is timed to last exactly one year. On the 1st Jaunary each year at 00:00 it gets turned around to start the new year. ( I wonder what they do on a leap year?)

Next we moved onto the Unification Park, which has a decommissioned warship and the North Korean submarine that we wrote about yesterday. The warship was interesting and we walked around it for about an hour. The submarine is really small inside and you have to wonder how it can hold 33 people, where did they sleep, eat and go to the toilet? There was also an old aeroplane, but for some reason it was locked up so we couldn’t go inside. I carried Brandon in his carrier and he slept through the whole thing despite the fact that it was drizzling.

Next we moved on to the Deungmyeongrakgasa Temple. The Temple itself was quite nice, but it was very complicated trying to see it all in the pouring rain (it was really coming down by this time). I had Brandon in his carrier and Carla was carrying the umbrella, trying to keep the three of us out of the rain, sometimes successfully, sometimes not. Brandon had fun though, he is really enjoying being out and about, looking at all the sites.
We drove along the coastal road, the scenery here is really beautiful with green mountains going down to a calm green sea. The only thing to distract from the scenery along coastline is the barbed wire fencing to stop North Korean spies coming in, this also means that there are constant military posts and lookouts all along the coast.

We decided to continue up the coastal road which had some really nice areas, but eventually time was running out and we decided to head down to Samcheok. By now we had been moving back up the coast so had increased the distance to travel. We got into Samcheok around 15:00 and then had some difficulty finding accommodation, where a few places were booked out, one hotel was far to expensive, but we eventually found a nice place overlooking the sea, called Paradise Motel.

We hadn’t really eaten all day, except for a small pastry which we picked up at a local convenience store in the morning. We again did not feel like eating kimchi and fish soup with rice for breakfast. Lunch seemed to disappear with time, so by the time we started out for dinner, we were starving. We headed back to the hotel that we rejected because of their price, we had seen some adverts showing that some food other than sashimi was served there. The hotel is quite large, and we ended up being the only people in the restaurant. The restaurant even called the live entertainment for us and called us their “special guests” for the evening.

We then went to see the Wishing Tower and watching two military guys walking to their posts for the evening. Then we took a walk along the boardwalk, it was a lovely evening and we got back to our Motel about half an hour before Brandon’s feeding time. He was sleeping so peacefully in his pram so we left him in it but by the time we took him out to feed him he was so hot and we were quite worried about him. He had a temperature of 100 degrees Fahrenheit. We took his clothes off and tried to cool him with a wet cloth and after quite some time he started to cool down. He didn’t seem at all distressed by any of this and was smiling away and seemed to enjoy all the attention.