In the middle of our stay in South Korea, we decided to leave the bustling city of Seoul for a few days in the gorgeous seaside city of Tongyeong, located on the southern coast of the Korean pensinsula. Tongyeong only has a population of maybe 140,000 which is tiny compared to Seoul’s ~10 million, but despite its small size, Tongyeong still has a gazillion restaurants everywhere that serve its local specialty of chungmu kimbap, honey bread, and of course seafood. Seafood pretty much runs this whole place, especially this dish called meongge which I still haven’t figure out how it is properly translated (sea squirt?). It’s too bad I’m not more of a seafood enthusiast.
Tongyeong is also the historic site of Admiral Yi Sun-Shin, one of the most beloved figures in Korean history. He's the guy that developed the famous turtle ship, an armoured ship that aided Koreans against invaders.
We woke up to the sound of the neighbour's rooster loudly announcing the coming of dawn. We took a taxi down one of the harbours, where for the price of about five Canadian dollars, you can hop from island to island on a little ferry. For some of the island stops, the ferry doesn’t even fully dock to board or unload passengers. Passengers simply hop off the boat on to land and the ferry keeps moving, barely pausing at all.
We got off at Yeondaedo, a small island with a little traditional fishing village built around the mountain. There are some five hundred islands off the coast near Tongyeong, where the ocean is a brilliant hue of turquoise, like the Caribbean, except nobody really hangs out on the beach in their bikinis here – fishermen spend their days haul in their catch for the day while the little old halmunis lay out seaweed to dry on the docks. Archeologists have discovered evidence of human habitation on the island of Yeondaedo tracing back to prehistoric times. People have clearly been enjoying the waters here for millennia.
Today though, it seemed to a day of rest for the village. We were hoping to grab a bite to eat, but the restaurants (all seafood) were all closed, except for a coffee shop that only served coffee. We hoped we would have better luck elsewhere and set off on a little hike.
We made our way to a suspension bridge that connected Yeondaedo to Manjido, another island close by, where our hiking trail led us to a boardwalk that wrapped around another mountain along the beach.
We eventually came upon another village there, where there were a few more restaurants, all closed except one place that had a table of guests enjoying their meal. It turns out that the restaurant wasn’t actually open; the husband and wife busily attending to the guests explained to us that they were just feeding their guests who were staying at their inn (called “pensions” in Korea) attached to the restaurant. But they were kind to us and let us eat there too. Everything on the menu was seafood, all invertebrate mollusks of some kind or another. I asked ajumma if she would make me plain ramen and she did.
Afterwards we found another coffee shop nearby that served iced coffee and patbingsu – shaved ice with red beans, which we enjoyed while looking out at the village harbour and listening to the music that the coffee shop owner played, all old English songs like Simon and Garfunkel or “Delilah” that I remembered because the Korean adults in my childhood used to sing those songs at karaoke. It all made me feel like I was in a little time warp. I daydreamed about what it would be like to live here in this quiet idyllic village, maybe running a coffee shop for a few hours a day and serving instant ramen. I probably wouldn’t do well myself since I’m not a huge fan of seafood or running a small business. But it still sounds nice.
My spouse was the only white person we’ve seen pretty much since we’ve arrived in Tongyeong. Small children keep coming up to him to say hi. Me, I’m excited about the random cats I keep meeting, napping in the shade of the trees or hanging around people hoping that they’ll drop some food. The crows here sound different, like they’re speaking Korean, or maybe just calling out my husband’s name.
Eventually the ferry came back for us and we hopped on to get back to Tongyeong. We took the cable car up Mireuk Mountain, where we got a breathtaking panoramic view all around the coast. We could even catch a faint glimpse of Japan in the distance. I also discovered that there was a luge course on the mountain, so of course I had to try it. I could never pass up the option to ride down a mountain fast.
In the evening, we went on a sunset cruise on a yacht. It was the fanciest yacht I have ever been on, not that I’ve been on a lot of yachts, since I usually prefer human-powered activities on the water, like kayaking or paddleboarding. But this yacht had four bedrooms (that we didn’t use of course) and two bathrooms and a glorious deck with all sorts of comfortable spots where you could lounge and watch the sun set. The yacht staff played old Korean ballads from the 70s and offered sparkling wine and shrimp ramen, which was my second ramen of the day but still delicious. It was such a blissfully peaceful experience.
I thought about how I used to keep up a travel log when I was younger and mainly stopped because I was traveling too much, mostly for work and couldn’t keep up, and then I wasn’t traveling at all. But I like having records of the places I’ve been and things I’ve seen and I find that unless I write them down, the memories of these places all become muddled up. Maybe I’ll start writing in my travel log again, not regularly but whenever I do make it out somewhere special that I want to try to remember.
After the sun sank below the mountains, the yacht staff anchored the yacht next to a few other yachts and set off a merry storm of fireworks, while blasting cheery upbeat music full of surprisingly expletives in English. After the fireworks ended, and we hailed a cab to go back home, I was tired and ready to head back, but at the same time I was sorry to see my magical day end.
