August 14, Wensday: Limestone cave, Archery, and a Korean beach

Annyeonghaseyo!  That is hello in Korean ;P  So today, we woke up to go to a limestone cave somewhat near the Korean border.  During the war, nearby people went up and lived in the cave to hide from all the fighting.  It's a nice cave because it manages to stay very, very cool all year around, something like 9-11 C.  It had been recently "renovated" for tours into the cave, and is now protected by the government.  One interesting thing about this save is that they created an entire network of walkways and even put in a water feature in the center of one of the ponds.  I thought it was strange because in America,  I don't think people would mess with the cave in any way, they would just lead guided tours and you would have to struggle through the save by yourself.  I guess they wanted to make it more accessible to tourists.  It was pleasant, since is was super hot outside, and pretty interesting.

From here, we went onto an archery class!  Korea has a very good archery heritage, with the most gold medals in archery out of any country.  Most people who go to this archery center would have about 2 weeks of training before they actually used a bow, but they made a special exception for us.  The masters there were very good; they hit the targets all the way at the end of the range 4/5 times.  They also had bows that they would pull without looking strained at 70+ lbs.  Everyone got 3 arrows, and we also pulled a bow that was around 25 lbs.  It was a lot of fun, I would love to do that kind of thing again.  In between all of these events, we rode a bus for about an hour an half.  There was quite a lot of bus riding...  These areas are on the east sea of Korea, up somewhat close to the border.

After this was a beach trip.  I don't have too many beach pictures because I didn't take my camera with me, but we swam for about 2 and a half hours, and everyone also got to ride on a banana float, which is a long inflatable that looks like a banana, which someone on a jetski pulls.  It looked like a beach from California, mostly, and the water was brisk.  Also, the shower room was similar in concept to a spa's sauna, in that mostly everyone is completely naked...

For dinner this evening, we had mud roasted duck, I believe.  It was actually quite good.  It was similar to kalua pig in that it was buried to be roasted, which makes it very tender.  One thing that is somewhat common in Korea is to take a piece of lettuce or seaweed, put some rice, meat, flavoring and maybe some kim chee in it, and the wrap it like a roll and eat it.  It tastes really, really quite good.

At this hotel, I believe I went to the fitness center at one point, and there was what looked like a fully function climbing wall with hooks and harness's behind a glass wall.  I asked if we could use it, and the employee managed to tell us that is was just a MODEL of a climbing wall.  That was really weird.  A model!  Very disappointing...  Tomorrow, the DMZ!