beyond many seas: A Journey Out West

This past week we celebrated lunar new year here in Korea -- aka: 설날. aka: 3 days off of work

The original plan was to head down to the Japanese friends. Unfortunately ferry fares were quite pricey leaving me and my budgeted self with Korea to travel. At first, I was not all that pumped. Thankfully, though, my fabulous friend (friend in korean is 친구 -- pronounced chingu) Krystal who came to the rescue. She whipped out the Lonely Planet on Korea (our BFF) and we conceived a general plan. We would gather a group (Me, Krys, Jay, Jon, and Zach) and we would have an adventure.

So the plan went as follows:

1. Bus to the Western area of Korea, the city of Gwangju first.

2. Now over to Yeong-am to hike up to a spectacular bridge we saw a picture of in our BFF book

3. Finally to really go coastal and hit up Mokpo, about the opposite side of Korea of Busan

It was super fun. We took an unreal amount of bus trips, had some great accommodation, loads of beautiful Korean views, happy Korean families staring at us, and an excessive amount of norae-bang fun.

Below you will find some of my favorite photos from the trip.....

Jay on the bridge we hiked to. We certainly underestimated the hike. It was quite snowy/icy. We were not wearing the appropriate hardcore snow-hiking shoes nor did we have emergency supplies. Let's just say we basically slid our way back down the mountain before the sun went to bed.