The tale of Ice Fishing

The terrifying thing about blogging is that if you are trying to keep your posting up to date, you want to get more then one event behind. I went ice fishing three weekends ago, and this coming weekend I am going to Seoul so my motivation to write this post is pretty high.

Alright! So there is this great guy Pedro. He is a Korean man and he runs a business where he sets up trips to get foreigners to different amazing places in Korea. He'll take care of transportation, accommodation, and have a loosely structured schedule and you pay an incredibly cheap flat price. Our friend Kezia found a trip for an icefishing festival, and six of us decided we were in!

We woke up at the freaking crack on dawn on Saturday to pile into a very warm bus with 35 other foreigners (it was the most non-Koreans I have seen since coming here). Since it was 6am almost everyone promptly fell asleep (except for some truly terrible evil morning people who were loud and God forbid CHIPPER. Yuck.) After a 5 hour drive WAY north we stopped for our first days adventure: Nami Island. Nami Island is supposed to be the most romantic place in Korea. It probably would be if it were covered in snow like the pictures showed. But it was certainly lots of fun. There were all sorts of silly things like the first kiss bridge and big hearts made our of recycled soju bottles. It was wildly eclectic, and definitely a blast to explore. After a decent amount of wandering and snacking we headed back to the bus for our meet up time.

Next we headed to the place where we would be staying. It was a little imitation French village in the middle of Korea. Let that idea mind boil for a second. The drive was through a lot of hilly ups and downs, and by the time we got there I was feeling pretty nauseated. The room distribution took a while, but in a lucky switcheroo me, Ben and our friends Jack and Kezia ended up sharing a four person room instead of being smooshed in a room with 8 strangers.

There was the option to get back on the bus and go to botanical gardens about half an hour away. Buuuuut Jumanji was on TV and none of us really wanted to get back on the over-heated bus. It was fortunate that we didn't because about two hours later the bus returned, having fought through traffic to get a few kilometers away, only to be told it would be an hour and a half wait. That group returned and dinner was served. We knocked out for another very early morning.

On Sunday we woke up at 6 once again. We had a quick breakfast and hopped back on the bus to go the last two hours to the festival. When we arrived we were given passes and shown the area specifically blocked off for foreigners to fish. Our early arrival and the sectioned area ended up being really great. Korean festivals have a reputation for being really great, except that so so so many people come to them that they can be ruined by crowds.

ANYWAY, we stepped onto the ice after being handed things that look sort of like twirly fly swatters with a line and bait rolled up on them. There were some lovely Korean guides there to show us how to use them. I was the LAST of my group of friends to get a trout, but I did indeed get one! Well, two.

I was enthusiastic. After a decent amount of time fishing, we handed our fish off to some military volunteers and were told to come back at 11:30 to eat them on the grill. We wandered around and did some other ice activities, like sitting in a giant inner tube while a dude on an ATV flung us around the ice, and going down a slide coated in ice on a tube. 

When we returned, our fish were all cooked up and FREAKING DELICIOUS. We ate them off the grill with chopsticks.

After lunch we did some more wandering around. We headed into the actual town to go to a place called the Illumination Palace. This was pretty sweet. It was giant room willed with ice replicas of famous architecture from around the world. Most of them you could walk through and climb. All of them had lights of different colors built into them. There was everything from igloos to the Coliseum to the giant Buddha.

After all that we had to head back to the bus. We braved the 5 hour trip back and knocked out once we got home. It was a great weekend and I look forward to taking more trips with Pedro soon! 

 Here we have from the left: Nate, Cheryl, Jack, our fisher-guide, Kezia, me, Ben