East Coast Vacation part 3: Sokcho and Seoraksan

part one - part two - part three


SOKCHO:

We didn't stay in this motel in Sokcho. It's just a little taste of the classy architecture that Korea's booming motel industry has to offer. Barf!

We were right by the sea so we headed down to a rowdy pojang macha for some seafood. We ordered a big plate of shells and prawns.

Neon Prawns

Face of despair on the Samsung rice cooker. Never buy Samsung, even their appliances are unhappy.

What's that stylish fire escape bag? This shot is for my friends back in the UK. Take a look at the photo below...

That's right, the fire escape is IN the bag. You can climb down the side of the building with a rope. Oh Korea, you do try. I'd like to see a Granny trying to abseil down the side of a hotel from the 6th floor with nothing but a rope. Actually, sod that, I'd like to see anyone attempt that! Come on Korea, give us a chance at living!

Beach House (Konglish)

SEORAKSAN:


Finally I made it back to Seoraksan after 3 years. I really wanted to hike the whole mountain this time round, but the tumble that I took in Gyeongju left my right knee really bruised. Once again I would have to take the bloody cable car. Well, at the the flowers were blooming and there was some visibility! On my previous visit the clouds were so thick that you couldn't see a thing.

This chipmunk knew what it was doing - working for food. He was working the poses in return for snacks.

Up on the mountain somebody carved a penis onto a tree branch, keeping the penis theme of this holiday alive. I spotted this on my last visit and it hasn't disappeared!

I love this hat. It's pure redneck trash and it has a strange spelling error. At first glance it looks fine, but actually it says "fushing". Who ever designed this must have made the effort to place a dot over the "u". What a buy! The peak is so huge on this cap it almost rivals an ajumma visor.

That's all for my east coast vacation. I'll leave you with this daytime shot of Sokcho's finest architecture.

part one - part two - part three

East Coast Vacation part 2: Haesindang Penis Park

part one - part two - part three

Our second stop on our trip up the east coast was Haesindang Penis Park. There's a regular bus that runs up the east coast to Sokcho stopping at many towns en route. we paid about 23,000 KRW for a ticket from Gyeongju to Samcheok. In the end we jumped off the bus early at a fishing village called Imwon and took a cab to the park from there.

Imwon


Haesindang Penis Park

This park is a difficult one to explain. It's located above a village called Sinnam a short while south of Samcheok. The coastal views from this park are stunning and that's before we throw the hundreds of penis carvings into the mix. Some of them are funny, some a bit weird and some are just straight up disturbing.

Here's the "legend" of the park as written on the Korean tourism website:

There once lived a young maid who was engaged. One day, the maid took her husband’s boat out to sea to harvest seaweed. Her husband dropped her off at a rock that was at a distance from the beach. After promising to pick her up later, he returned to the beach to do his work. Later, the weather changed, and brought with it strong winds and pummeling waves. The man couldn’t rescue his wife and she ultimately drowned. Since then, the village people caught no fish and some said that it was because of the dead maid. To soothe the spirit of the dead maid, the village people made several wooden carvings and held religious ceremonies on her behalf. After a while, the fish slowly returned and the villagers were able to live comfortably again. The place where the maid died was named Aebawi Rock and the building where the religious ceremony is held twice a year was named Haesindang. The ceremony is still honored today as a traditional folk event.

They must have dumbed down that version of the story to avoid freaking potential tourists away. The version I heard is that the husband urinated into the sea to appease his wife's spirit. That still makes little sense to me unless the couple liked to indulge in water sports. You see the sculptures here are very unusual. You will notice that some of these sculptures don't seem to have any relation to the legend at all! Pregnant women with raging hard ons and penises growing out of there heads? It all gets a little too wild. Enjoy!


I'm easing you into this with a pretty ordinary wooden nob.

Err, okay.

Dicknose.

This is just disturbing. Wonderful blossoms though.

The cock cannon

Some admirers of fine artillery.

A proper dickhead (the sculpture, not Jenny)

I'm not entirely sure what this is, but it looks like a fella sucking himself off.
In fact I think it must be based on Dalharubang - the famous statues on Jeju Island.

Anyway, enough of that sexy stuff. Here are some more blossoms to clean your palate...


part one - part two - part three