Chris and I have been travelling pretty much every weekend while he works on his book.  This is kind of good, and kind of expensive for me.

This weekend we actually got to four places on Saturday, none of which were really worthwhile.  The Ornamental Knife Museum was interesting enough, though a little too concerned with extolling its own virtues.  The "First Laver Breeding Site" (which I call it because that is the name on the signs and I can't remember any other name) was actually kind of interesting, being just a little property way out in the country; we looked through the entirety of the guest book (just a few pages) and only saw one other foreign name, that of a Cambodian.

Then we went down to Namhae, which should have been interesting being an island with beaches and all, but was in fact pretty lame.  First of all, we thought it looked pretty close to where we already were, so we got a taxi.  Some guy at the bus stop helped us hail what appeared to be the one taxi in the area, which had to drop off three other passengers (a man, a woman and a baby) before us.  Then our taxi cost 45,000 won.  That got us to the garlic exhibition hall, which was quite lame.  Then, as we were out in the middle of nowhere on Namhae, we were unable to find any information about buses, so we got another taxi to the German village, our next stop; this guy drove a taxi decorated all in pink on the inside with crocheted seat covers and a fluffy pillow with a decorative cover.  He gave us his card as we got off.

Once the German village failed me we decided to get some dinner, and were limited to a selection of sushi restaurants and a lone Chinese place.  Finally we checked out one of the cheaper-looking motels in the area and were quoted 70,000 for the night, at which point we decided to go back to the terminal; another 20,000 won taxi ride... if only there had been a taxi.  The last bus had left the area twenty minutes before we did, so that was out.  We called the pink taxi guy, who failed to understand anything and had his son call us back in English.  Once that was all done, we sat down next to the road to wait... and wait...  Then we got another call from the original taxi guy, who said he'd arrived, which he clearly had not; with the help of some Koreans hanging around the hotel parking lot, all was finally settled, and after an hour of waiting, our taxi finally showed up and took us back to the bus terminal, where the only reasonably priced hotel we could find was on the sixth floor of the now closed, locked and utterly deserted terminal.

I must also report that there isn't a single bottle or can of Diet Coke on the entire island of Namhae.  We checked thoroughly.

The next morning we got on a bus to Jinju, the only big destination (aside from Seoul) that you can get to from Namhae.  Since we didn't have time for anything else, we just went to the fortress in Jinju; a little normal for our tastes, but actually a fairly pleasant trip, and I had some fun with my camera.

Then, back to Seoul and real life.  Tomorrow we start the school summer English camp, which I think is a pretty big waste of everyone's time, but hopefully it'll go okay.  I just want it over with as little hassle as possible, really... an attitude which is likely to lead to lots and lots of hassle.