The Life of a Millennial Maverick

We spent day 7 on the road to visit an old friend of my girlfriend‘s uncle in a rural area near Daegu. Then we drove about an hour to Boryeong to check out the beaches and to have some fresh lunch. Boryeong is famous for their mud as well as their annual mud festival that attracts foreigners from all over the world.

When we got into town we headed towards the local fish market for some fresh catches. The cool part was that after we bought the fish, all we had to do was take it over to a local restaurant of our choice to have them prepare it anyway we liked for our meal. We got a cuttlefish, a halibut, an earth worm looking thing, and an orange spiky looking thing and some other kind of fish that I don’t remember. We got everything sashimi style like last time… yum… actually, this was the most fearful sashimi I’ve ever had as we were in a pretty rural part of town and I have no idea what kind of good health practices are in place over here. I just hope I don’t poop out any tapeworms anytime in the future.

Boryeong fish market

Fresh catches of the day.

White stuff is cuttlefish, I was scared of the the orange and pink stuff.

Topped everything off with a spicy seafood hot pot.

Walking around town where every fishmonger and restaurant owner was heckling their deals at us.

At the beach.

The town getting ready for the Mud Festival next week.

Enjoying some ice cream at the seaside 7-11.

After a couple of hours in Boryeong, we headed back to the countryside to drop off the old friend and have some tea before we left.

Rice fields in the countryside.

I have no idea what this was, but it was some kind of grain based tea. It was yummy.

Truck Stops and Freeways

Truck/rest stops in South Korea are awesome. I’d say they’re equivalent to strip malls that we have in the U.S. except these are mostly food courts and giant restrooms with some dvd and widget vendors tossed in between. Heck, I even saw a baby bed decked out with baby wipes and all for the little ones at one end of a food court. There were also lounges with big massage chairs to relax the weary travelers.

The freeways actually aren’t free. They are all toll. Upon entering a major highway you go through a toll booth where a machine dispenses a ticket. You’ll need this ticket once you exit the highway as the toll is calculated by the distance you had traveled. I believe we went about 150 miles for about ~$4-5.

A rest stop. The strip is actually 2-3 times as long as pictured.