Weekend in Daegu - Part 3 - Muju and Yeongdong

After the park we decided to drive on to Muju. Jeff had Monday off and was planning on skiing at Muju. There is a large resort there and decent skiing/snowboarding. It is also somewhat between Daegu and Jeff's house. I decided to go with him since I didn't have to work on Monday until 3, although I wanted to be back around noon so that I could get dressed and finish some work. I had heard there was a bus from Muju to Daegu and thus I would be able to get home. We took one of the back roads (but not like a country road or anything, more like a state road v. an interstate) instead of one of the major highways. It was very twisty because we were driving through the mountains (although 80% of Korea is mountains anyways).

View from highway 30

View from road to Muju from Daegu

We passed through a few small towns, but didn't stop. There are multiple stations where you have to drive over a speed bump then wait while your car gets misted like a car wash. This is to prevent horse and mouth disease. Over the course of the afternoon we probably got misted about 10 times.

Horse and mouth car wash

Muju itself is divided into 3 seperate parts - Muju proper, Muju resort, and a village outside of the resort. We knew there wouldn't be buses from the resort, but thought there might be buses from the village. Nope. So we decided to eat dinner at the resort because the afternoon ski session had just ended and traffic down the hill was pretty bad. There was a Domino's at the resort and we decided to split a pizza. I told Jeff he could pick as long as there was no fish on it. He chose a Swiss fondue pizza. It had cheese, ham, mushrooms, these long potato strips that we somewhat sweet and, of course, corn. It was also served with pickles. It was pretty tasty.

Swiss fondue pizza - the yellow stripes are like mashed potatoes but kind of sweet



Muju ski slope


Then we drove to Muju proper, which took about 30 minutes. We drove around the town trying to find the bus station. We finally decided to try a main building and pushed the doors open. It was the building for local government workers - the library, attorneys, civil works etc. There were people in cubicles and we asked one how to get to the bus. They wanted to know where I was going and I said Jinju and they freaked out and started speaking rapid Korean to each other. Jeff and I tried to tell them we needed to know where the terminal was, not how to get to Jinju. Finally a guy who spoke some English came in, walked outside with us and offered to give us a ride to the terminal, but we declined. Directions included going over the rainbow bridge which was a bridge that lit up in various colors. It was the most interesting part of Muju. We found the terminal and found out they no longer provided bus service to Daegu. Rats.

So we went on to the next town, Yeongdong. This is where I have to say how awesome my brother is. While he can annoy the crap out of me sometimes, he was willing to drive another 30 minutes out of the way so that I would be able to get to work on time in the morning, and he didn't complain about it. We found the train station at Yeongdong and assumed there would be buses nearby. Nope. So I bought a train ticket to Daegu leaving just before 7 am, so that I could then take a train to Jinju. They did have a train to Jinju, but it didn't arrive until 4:30 and I would have missed work. We booked a room at the Hotel Dubai. Nothing says class like hot pink and zebra stripes.

Hotel Dubai room

This room was about half the price of the room in Daegu, but in my opinion was just as good. They gave us an amenities bag and drinks etc. There was a dirty glass in the fridge, but otherwise it was pretty good. We had already eaten dinner, but decided to go out to the GS 25 (convience store) to get some drinks and snacks. Jeff got some beers and I got a vod/ice - like a wine cooler. It tasted like grape soda and vodka - very sweet. The guy at the counter was using his limited English and Jeff was using his limited Korean to have a coversation about numbers and where we were from. He gave us free candy - chocolate bonbons. We walked back to our room, drank, watched some Rocky V and Jeff watched his "stories" (he still hasn't told me the name of the show) on his computer while I took a bath. Then we went to bed because we were waking up so early the next day. We got up, Jeff dropped me off at the train station and went skiing. He said it was pretty good. I caught the sunrise, took the train to Daegu where I met an army guy going to Seoul, got on the correct bus home (sitting across the aisle from a monk) although I almost missed it because it was going to "Jinjoo" not Jinju, and caught a local bus home to my house. All in all it was a fun weekend, even though what we mostly did was drive. At least we like the same music and Jeff's Ipod was charged.


Sunrise at the Yeongdong train station