Sunday, July 13, 2003

Visit To Daechon Beach

After last years trip to Haundae beach in Busan we decided to Spend this year's Summer vacation in some beach again and this time the winning candidate was Daechon beach.

About Daechon Beach: Daechon Beach is a large nice beach located on the west coast of Korea, boasting the longest coastline on Korea's west Coast, is not as crowded as Haeundae, and the water is warmer. Daecheon Beach gently slopes for 5 km, and is covered with sand and beautiful sea shells. Made up of thousands of tiny broken shells, Daechon's shore is 3.5km long and 100m in width and extends into shallow waters, which are optimum for bathing.

The Journey: We started early in the morning and our train was around 8 am. We found many passengers on our train were actually going to daechon for spending their summer vaccation.



The kids were jumping and shouting inside the train throughout the journey one could see the joy and excitement in their actions. It took 2 hrs to reach Daechon and the train got almost emptied there. We went to the bus stop to reach the beach but got scared seeing the long queue there. Since lots of buses were there, we could get into one of them within 5 mins. The bus soon was jam packed. Thank god we got seats and the a/c inside the bus was on. Summer is really terrible in Korea. We could get a glimpse of the city on our way to beach. Soon the Bus was rushing through the fields and farms and within 20 min we reached Daechon beach.

Activities around the Beach: We got down the bus and changed our clothes so that we can freely play in the water without the fear of making them dirty. As we were nearing the main beach area we could see numerous events going on. The Mud Festival was on full swing and its said that the black-colored mud that is abundant along the clean and pure beach, is rich in minerals that contain germanium. This mud is well known for protecting skin and curing various skin diseases. There was also an exhibition going on displaying all kinds of beautiful things made out of sea shells and sea produces. We also discovered a special stall showing the making of pearls which is found in abundance in this coastline. They were also selling pearls at very attractive prices and yes we ended up buying a pearl necklace.

Fun at Beach: We headed towards the beach. Since it was only 11 am, the beach was still not crowded and we were lucky enough to choose a comfortable place and settled ourselves down. We went to feel the water. It was warm and very refreshing. The day was very bright, sunny and breezy resulting our decision to visit beach a worthy one. We had fun and played in the water for quite sometime looking around for stones and shells and to our delight we got quite a few very beautiful ones.




Ferry trip to a Island deep into the Sea:
We noticed ferries taking people to some islands located deep into the Sea. As usual we could not resist the temptation to explore what would be there and we decided to go for it. The ferry was ready to start within 10 min . As it started moving we could see the whole beach area which was going far and far from us till it was no more visible. Now there was only water all around. After half hour journey we were dropped in a very small island. WOW!! Sea food restaurants here too!! in such a small island and in the middle of the sea. There was a cliff on the island and Kumar succeed in reaching the peak of that !!!!




We did adventure with the rocks ad Sea. Ferry comes every half hour and takes back those who wants to go back while dropping new visitors. We took the ferry back after one hour and reached the beach again.It was still 4pm only and our train was at 7 pm. So we still had lot of time to explore more.

Short Visit to Daechon City: We then thought of having a look at the city too. We took the bus and got down at the center of the town. The first striking thing of this small town is that there are no traffic signals!!! The pedestrians and the drivers all had wonderful eye communication which helped in running the traffic smoothly . we had a delicious lunch at a local restaurant and We must agree that the price was much reasonable compared to prices in Seoul.