Visit to Dongtan Park

Dongtan Central Park is located in Dongtan City.Its just a few km from Suwon.
We first visited this park in Autumn.Its a very big park with lot of outdoor sport facilities.
It has a artificial Mountain climbing facility and yes a big Inline skating rea with different types of curves.Bicycle etc are available on rent.

The below 3 pictures are from our 2010 Visit to the same Park.

Muju trip .

Pre Travel Expectation:
1. Muju is a natural place with mountains and mountains all over.It takes around 3hrs to reach Muju from seoul.Visit the official website for detailed information on Muju (MUJU Home Page).
We reserved a ilsung condominium for 2 days.(Ilsung Muju Home Page).

Travel Story: 5 families, 2 days to spend together in Muju.We started our journey with lot of excitement.We left Suwon at 5 pm and reached our destination at around 10pm.After reaching we had dinner and spent time chatting with each other till early morning. Check out the below photos of all the places that we visited during this trip.

In and Around Condominum:

View from our room. The beautiful mountains in the morning.

Chandra in front of Condominium during morning walk.

Early morning yummy sandwitches by Anjali .

Its celebration time.Nirupam and Kalyan and Anjali's Birthday celebration.

Our group in front of the condominium.

Jumping souls.

APPLE Garden Visit:
Kunjal plucking apples.

Posing with the apple trees.
Busy choosing the juciest apples.

Group photo along with the owner of apple garden.

Kids posing in Apple gardens owners truck

BANDI LAND Visit:

All fingers point towards the King of MUJU

At Bandi land.

Visit to Anguksa temple.

This board describes the history of the temple .

The buddha idols inside the temple.

Visit to Dogyesan National park.

Kids busy picking along the trail.

Entrance of Dogyesan national park.

Kumar and Rakesh taking rest.

The water fall inside the national park.

Post Travel Views:

Beyond Expectation:

We visited the Apple garden and pluck apple ourselves.Kids really enjoyed it.It was not in our original plan.We happened to notice the Apple Garden sign board near our condominium and curiosuly visited there and then we made a call to apple garden owner.He cam efrom home and allowed us to pluck Apples.10 000 per basket of 10 apples.

Below Expectation:

Nothing in this section.We returned happy happy jolly jolly from the trip.

Tips:
You may like Visit MUJU Resort if you plan MUJU Trip.One of my friend stayed there and really liked the place.

Muju Bandi LAND <- Site is in Korean

MUJU RESORT <-Click on 'English' on the top right side of the Korean home page to see the english version of this website.

Soraksan Trip

Naksan Beach Trip On 15th August.

About Naksan: Naksan beach is located near to Yangyang town in Gangwon-do province. The beach is very picturesque with dazzling white sand and the sea water is clear and deep.

For detail information check the VisitKorea Website below:

Naksan

The importance of 15th August: Coincidentally 15th of Aug is celebrated as Independence day in Both India and Korea. We decided to go for outing on this occasion and what better idea then beating the heat by dipping into the Sea.

We were in dilemma whether to go West coast beaches which are nearer compared to the beaches in East. But we voted in favour of East Coast beaches since the water there is much cleaner compared to the West Coast beaches.

Transportation : In Korea it is easy to rent a BUS.We need to a search in Naver.com with following word in Korean(버스 렌트). So many website shows up.Pick one of them and call them and reserve it. In peak season it is better to book the BUS a week ahead of schedule. Usually they provide you the BUS driver's phone number a day ahead of your journey date. The driver receives the BUS rent in Cash.

We hired a 45 Seater BUS and started early in the morning from Suwon.To be precise 8.30am, we left Suwon.The traffic was really bad and it took us around 6+hrs to reach the beach.Being a bright and hot day, every one seemed to be moving towards the beaches.

Inside the Bus. All set for Naksan beach. Amay posing with Papa for the shot.

Sharing Cola together.Navodit,Kunjal and Nirupam.

The Beach: The beach was jam packed. For a moment we thought may be we won't get any space in the sea to dip. Any way, who cares, we changed dress and jumped into the sea immediately.Even though it was one of the hottest day of the year, surprisingly the water was cold.The beach is sloppy and not flat like the one in Busan.So people cannot go deep into the sea.

Beach volleyball .

Well Well Well !!!! ultimate fun.Vijay will agree for sure. But did yo uask Kumar?

Tip: If you plan to visit beaches often then it is advisable to buy the tubes, life jackets etc instead of renting it on the spot. Rent charges are very close to actual Price most of the times.

Our group posing together in the water taking a break from the beach volley tournament.

Floating around is fun

Time for a family photo.

Partha and Maidul busy with sand sculpting.Partha is a master in this Art.

Papa and Kunjal with A Korean ajashi.

Info: Unlike other beaches in Korea which are usually open till late, Naksan beach gets closed by 6pm. Security officials makes it sure that every one is out on the shore by 6.30 at max.

Way back home. Little tired ??Gautam, Kunjal and Navodit.

Having dinner(cup noodles) inside the bus.

We played a lot of interesting games inside the BUS.Games like Antakshari, Dumb charad, Housie Housie etc.Vijay was our MC of this trip.He really kept people on toes throughout the journey.

Fun Inside the BUS

Group Photo on our way back. The full gang. Names not as per standing location.

(Vijay,Namrata,Kumar,Chandra,Kunjal,Dhinakar.Anu, Gautam, Maidul, Bimol, Geetika, Mahesh, Savita,Amay,Prem,Shailu, Nagamalleshwara rao, Shashi ,Gopal,Mrs Gopal,Gopals father,Gopals mother,Partha,Nilanjan De,Kasturi De,Kaushani,Prabhat Mandal,Sugat,Ali Ahmed,Srinivasa Reddy,Nandan,Astha,T K Parasu,Ashutosh,Mrs. Ashutosh, Vinod, Diana, Naveen, Nishi, Navodit, Nirupam)

We reached back Suwon after 12pm midnight.The return journey was smooth. We took a half hour break in between and yet it took only 4 hrs to reach.There was no traffic at all.

The Prediction: Nostradamus of our group, Nilanjan had predicted ahead of the journey that we would reach by 4pm to beach and while returning there would be no traffic.Even though we did not believe initially but the predication came totally true.