Donghae: Weekend at the East Sun

Summer weekend at the beach! Or at least we thought until we saw the weather forecast a few days before leaving to Donghae. Even after hearing about the typhoon alert we left with hope that it would somehow improve over the hours.

We took the express bus from Seoul’s Gangnam Terminal, but soon discovered that the bus was not express at all. It took us 5 hours to get to the coast. The driver left the highway a couple of times to escape the traffic jams and ventured in the hilly countryside, through roads where I thought impossible to maneuver with a bus.

An overcast sky welcomed us to Donghae. We took a taxi to the hotel, which was located in Mukho. I was planning to get a lot of information from the hotel’s front desk but soon realised that I was not going to speak any English there. As our Korean is limited to say the least, we resigned to communicate via Google translate… or not at all.

The Donghae Beach Hotel is misleading in many ways: it’s not located in Donghae but Mukho; it’s at the seaside but not at the beach, and resembles more a typical Korean motel than a hotel. It was in desperate need of renovation. I’m almost tempted to forget the writing for the web guidelines and write “desperate” in red, capital letters and underlined.

There were two pieces of cloth and a plastic basin in the bathroom which puzzled me (!) and the hotel’s towels were charmingly drying in the hallway, in front of the lift. However the highlight of this hotel was actually cute in a very twisted way: the “punk little creature” that was guarding the entrance.

Funky Yorkshire terrier at the reception

We grabbed our flip-flops and left to the beach. We kept on walking along the coast until Mangsang, one of the most popular beaches in Korea. On the way we learned about the beach habits of Korean families and what they need.

1. Tents – either the family tent to spend the day or the store tents, to buy all the forgotten items:

"Living area"

"Shopping area"

2. Life-jacket – in case one forgot, they were also being sold a few meters away, in the main street:

Life-jackets for sale!

3. Food – very important and we should actually thank the kindness of the lady who shared with us a steamed corncob. The friendliness of Koreans doesn't cease to amaze us!

Barbecue time!

4. Floating tubes and various water sports, including surf:

Tubes away!

Surf class

Koreans protect themselves from the sun and many of them go to the water fully dressed. We were probably the only cowards who didn't wet more than the feet because we thought the water was freezing (it was! I come from Porto, remember?).

What should be written in many websites about visiting Donghae is that a big stretch of Mangsang beach is a military area and cannot be accessed. Signs are only in Korean and if it wasn't for the surf instructor warning us, we would have caused a big hassle among the young Korean military playing water polo!

Our dinner was in a fish restaurant. Our hotel was located in the so-called “sashimi town” and we just entered one randomly until we realised that nobody spoke a word of English. Fortunately there was a customer in the restaurant who spoke some English and helped us with the order. We had: fried mackerel, seaweed soap, banchan, sashimi plate and fish soup at the end.

Masit-sseoyo!

Our plan was to go to Mureung valley the next day but as soon as we woke up we saw the rain pouring down non-stop. We decided to change our tickets and take the bus back to Seoul earlier than planned. We thought that we would avoid the traffic by leaving early in the afternoon.

Our learning curve in Korea is quickly accelerating: it took us 7 hours to reach Gangnam. We have definitely parted ways with express buses in Korea. Annyonghi heseyo!