South Korea Pt.4 "Mokpo"

  After a great three days on Jeju-Do, we were ready for Mokpo. When arranging the transportation and itinerary for this trip, we knew that holiday time meant tickets and modes of transportation were crippled with over bookings and what not so we also decided to book ahead. When booking we did not anticipate the possibility of missing the Hallasan Hike, so we needed to rebook in the next 24 hours. Aferry.com is currently the only English speaking booking agency for foreigners. They are also located in England with no after hour service. All interactions with Aferry.com were extremely late Skype calls or delayed emails.    However easy and simple the site is to manage through it is not very equipped for travelers going to countries where language barriers exist. We needed to exchange our tickets (within our right as customers) but the company told us to go check if we can simply do it ourselves at the ferry port. The management office didn’t speak English and was not clear on everything entailed in the process of exchange or even if the company was going to give us a hard time about it. Management at Seaworld Express was extremely helpful though by just putting the paperwork through and instructing us to make our way to the international port (Terminal 6) where we found ourselves in line waiting for 4-5 hours trip to Mokpo.
  We left around 3pm and arrived around 7:30pm. It was dark and busy with many people coming and going but we made our way to meet our friend. We spent the evening eating delicious foods and checking out a couple bars. Our friend had described Mokpo as a small fishermen village with no much to do. I sincerely beg to disagree. Our friend introduced us to a boardwalk onto the water on the way to a park. The boardwalk was beautifully lit and extremely peaceful. There were people fishing off the boardwalk as well as fishermen on small boats not far from the shore bringing up nets of what looked like Calamari or Squids.

  It is not difficult to get on the Korail and head to another part of Korea (Specifically Seoul). The difficult part was not ordering the tickets, arriving on time or even getting the seats we paid for, but anticipating what kind of snacks we would like for the trip to Seoul. It was a relatively short and cheap (50$) ride to Seoul Station where we transferred to Line 2 (green line) and departed at Hongik University. We made our stay relatively close to Hongdae without being in the heart of Hongdae. The Hostel we had chosen to stay in for the duration of the trip was called “Orange Guesthouse”. The owner and manager Mr. Kim was very kind and accommodating. We spent very little time at the hostel as we were all always running around Seoul seeing the different parts of what we could while there. Seoul was the part of the trip that people broke off to do their own things and find their own way to the airport at the end. 

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