Distance Traveled Today: 86km
Distance Traveled Total: 86km (it’s day 1!)
Outside of the wonderfully short seasons of spring and fall, you’re unfortunately at the mercy of the weather when it comes to travel in Korea. From the snowy season to the current torrential storm season, you have to kind of amend your plans accordingly. While I would have liked to have headed east towards Chuncheon for some delicious dalk galbi, it was less likely to rain west, so I headed to the island of
Ganghwa. Despite being part of Incheon city (connected by bridges) and basically adjacent to Seoul, its infrastructure is actually very undeveloped with inner buses taking 2 or even 3 hours between routes. For this reason, I have always hesitated exploring this area, but here were are!
West of Ganghwa is another island called Kyodong-do, notable mostly for being wrapped around by the North Korean border. A bridge build in 2014 now allows cars to enter freely, but expect to be stopped at a military check point or two. While there wasn’t much to do, there was this school that I found rather interesting. Public school ended its first semester about a week ago which was the perfect time to explore the surroundings without looking like a creep. The school itself is rather normal, but there are tons of paintings the surround the school like this one:
Directly in front of the school are even more murals which were rather fascinating. From what I can tell from a few inscriptions, it was a relatively new addition to the school and adjacent areas, which I must say, was worth the trip out here.
Other Stops – Ganghwa Dolmen Sites + previously unknown dolmen hike (I think I just missed it the first time around). It was nice but bring bug repellent.
Other Notes – I ate samgyetang for the first time. It was just ok. Maybe I need to try a better place.
See you tomorrow.
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Korea Seems so mysterious would love to experience it someday