Day 78

The Penis Park: Revisited

Well, wouldn't you know it, I just found some more photos from Samcheok!  This is what happens when you depend on three separate cameras to capture your special moments.

Apart from the Penis Park, most of the town is devoted to fishing tourism.  There's lots of fresher-than-fresh seafood restaurants, where the meal is actually still alive and swimming around in a tank when you get there.  Souvenir gift shops, all selling the exact same dried fishy goods, are literally everywhere.  I tried to get a picture of the street to show just how ubiquitous they are but photos couldn't do it justice.

Dried squid are super popular here.

Live squids are pretty popular too.

Sea squirts!  They actually squirt when you bite into them.  Like a Gushers fruit-candy, but alive and salty.

Flatfish are mostly too ugly to live.

Fresh filefish!

Noooo you're too pretty to get eaten!

Here's what every single shop looks like:

Literally.  Every.  One.  They're all identical.

Dramatic little dried things.

Saw this by the water, it's terrifying:

A bit exaggerated, perhaps.

And I saw a wedding group!  The girl in the dress is the bride, and I think the dude in the ripped up pajamas is the groom?  My Google searches have been unsuccessful in explaining this traditional Korean car chase/drag.

Don't flirt with me, man, your new bride is right there, LITERALLY.

Run, Forrest, run!

Keep running!

Another gem of the day was this little pagoda-thing on the water.  The pagoda itself is boring but I loved the people inside.  More specifically, the BABY.  I love love love Korean babies, they are so cute.  They have chubby little round faces, they rarely cry, and they're left unattended so often that it's tempting to just grab one and walk away quickly.  Fortunately I didn't have to take a sneak-photo this time because they wanted my picture with the baby!  YESSSSSS.

I MUST GET THE BABY.

Sadly they didn't let me hold the baby, but look at him!  He loves me!

HE LOVES ME.

One of my students keeps asking me if I'm going to "make a baby in Korea."  Not planning on making one but I might kidnap one from Costco soon, nobody would notice.

Not sure how I missed this one last time around, but here's me with another older Korean gentleman:

This guy later cornered me at the bus stop and after about 4 awkward minutes, I
gathered that he was just excited about how many cameras I had.  I carry my DSLR,
a point-and-shoot, and my phone camera, and I use all three.

I estimate that about 75+ people took pictures of/with me at the Penis Park.  But that's cool, because I definitely take sneaky pictures of Koreans.

Lady, what are you wearing?

I've also been taking random photos of weird things I see.  Here's a small list of them.  First up is a concoction that Koreans at Costco seem to love: onions mixed with ketchup, mustard, and relish.  That's it.  It looks like barf.

If this guy noticed I was photographing his food, he didn't give any indication.  This looks gross.

Here's an enormous live crab (possibly King?) sold at the local grocery/department store:

The eyes kinda freak me out.  Also, who has a pot large enough for this?  And why don't they band the claws?

Here's a meal I had recently, some kind of rice porridge?  I got a spicy seafood flavor, and it was actually super delicious.  It was about 11,000W ($10) which makes it pretty expensive (I love how cheap food is here!) and it's also apparently a 'diet food.'  Who cares, it's yummy.  Definitely going to be a winter staple.

There's some side-dishes at the bottom, and a delicious juice of some kind on the far left.

I didn't eat alone.  My spicy seafood porridge is on top, on the right is a pumpkin porridge (also yummy) and I
think on the left is spicy... well, I know it was spicy.

In other news, Mattel apparently sells hair dye here...

These colors are fabulous, it says so on the box.

 ... and the Tigers are popular?

One of my students wears a Tigers cap every day.  I don't think he knew what
the D stood for until I told him the Tigers were my team.  Oh well.

And last but not least, here's a dog in a pet shop taking a dump on the floor.  In my defense, I didn't realize that's what he was doing until after I had taken the photo.

The poop is under the brown one's right foot.

 And that about sums it up!  Coming up: photos from Halloween.  Korea on the whole doesn't celebrate but my school does, and I must say, some of the teachers really outdid themselves.  I also spent a solid hour at a stationary store this weekend and mailed out a bunch of letters today.  It's so cheap to mail things here, even if it takes 3 weeks to get there.  For those whose addresses I don't have, give me your address and I'll mail you something cute to put on your fridge!  :)

Till next time,
Ashton