Hakampo

Two weekends ago Brady and I went to Hakampo, which is a beach on the western side of Korea.  It was Brady's first weekend off after working three Saturdays in a row, so we wanted to do something fun outside.  We had heard that Anmyeondo is a nice island, so we called the tourist hotline to ask which beaches near there allowed camping.  They mentioned a few beaches, and Hakampo was the easiest to get to.  We took a bus there (we take buses everywhere, unless one of our friends with a car is going.)  It only took about 3 1/2 hours to get there.  You never know, with Korean beaches, how many people are going to be there.  In a country of 50 million people, things get crowded.  But there were hardly any people there.  When we first arrived it was low tide, and the water was really really far out.  And there are several small islands.  One of which you can walk to at low tide, but the bridge disappeared when the tide came in.  

We found a camp spot in the shade and put our stuff down, then went exploring around the beach.  There were a lot of people there digging for clams and mussels.  There were no other foreigners there, which makes me think that it's more of a locals beach, which is nice.  I don't know why, exactly, there were so few people there.  I guess others beaches, like Daejeon and Muuido are considered "the" beach to go to, and people don't branch out much.  Anyway, we pretty much had the beach to ourselves, so we lay down and promptly fell asleep and got sunburned.  We had sunscreen on, but the sun was much stronger than we were expecting.  When we woke up the tide was coming in, and another couple's stuff was about to be washed out to sea, so we pulled it up the beach.  They were off walking, I think.  The tide was coming in aggressively, and they were nowhere to be found, so we had to save their stuff again.  When they got back another Korean guy told them what had happened, and we were rewarded with two beers and a package of imitation crab meat.  Because that's the kind of thing they bring to snack on at the beach.

Later that evening we played cribbage, then cooked dinner on the beach.  We bought a small stove and pot here so we can cook when we camp.  We just made Ramen, and watched the sun set.  That evening we walked around the town.  It's a small town.  There were mostly hotels and vacation rentals, and a lot of families.  I liked it because Korea/Koreans can be very ostentatious, and this place was pretty mellow.  There were families setting off fireworks and flying lanterns by the beach.

The next day we hung out at the beach for a while.  It was misty in the morning, and some of the islands were obscured, which looked really pretty.  Then we packed up and headed to the bus stop.  There's no bus schedule, and buses aren't very frequent, but we found a picnic table in the shade near the bus stop and played cards there till the bus came.  It was a very relaxing, nice weekend, and we'll probably go back to Hakampo again.