Jinha Beach

This weekend ended up being a pretty fun weekend. It consisted of showing some of the Greenpeace folks around the city at night, checking out some local foreigner (isn't that an oxymoron?) sports action and heading to Jinha Beach for some nice scenery, some live music and an international windsurfing competition.

There's not too much to talk about with the Greenpeace folks. Basically I took them, via cab, to a couple of the foreigner bars in the old downtown area. It was good fun with some good people. The same thing basically happened on Saturday night.

On Saturday, the foreign ESL community sat up a large "triathalon". It consisted of three sports: soccer, rugby and American football. There were seven teams: Eastern Canada, Central Canada, Western Canada, England, Ireland, USA, Australia (which the writer of the score tables spelled "Austrailia"), and New Zealand. There were two divisions, with each team playing the other teams in their division three times; once in each of the three sports. The top teams in each division played off, with Western Canada taking the championship. They seemed to be the top team in every sport, save rugby. New Zealand owned everyone in rugby. The scores were in the range of 12-0 to 7-1.

I represented the entire country of Canada by not playing on a team, but by helping to serve the beer! "One for you, one for me", was my motto. As usual, this was not a good idea. I quickly had to give up on that idea, changing my motto to: "one for me, and screw you". Heh heh.

Sunday turned out to be really cool. If you're expecting a "drunken Blake tries to pretend he's Tucker Max and buggers up", look elsewhere. As fun as it might be to be him, I'm not Tucker. I'm Beer Bong Blake.

After waking up on my kitchen/bedroom/living room floor at 2pm to the sound of a t-shirt octopus and vegetable market being set at the base of my apartment building (as they seem to do to me every weekend), I decided that this was the day that I was going to go to the beach to see some windsurfing. I threw on some clothes, put a bandana that I'd bought in Daejeon over my still greesy-from-hairgel-head, grabbed my bike helmet and headed out the door. After ten minutes of wondering why my bike wouldn't start, I headed back to the second floor of my apartment building to grab my keys. Motorbikes start much easier if you have keys to start the engine with. Within a half hour, I was on my way to Busan/Pusan (same place).

Huh?

Why does that road sign say "Pusan 45 km"? Apparently Ulsan is closer to the second largest city in the Republic of Korea than I'd remembered from my last visit to Busan. Much to my relief, since I really didn't feel like getting lost in Busan, the next road sign read something to the nature of "left: a dozen huge industrial complexes... and Jinha beach". After passing at least four dozen huge industrial complexes, I found myself riding though some really beautiful looking rice fields en route to the small town of Jinha.

Jinha beach is actually part of Ulsan. A few years ago, Ulsan ate up and incorperated all of the small towns around it into "Ulsan". The town of Jinha is now the southernmost part of Ulsan. It's surrounded by the East Sea (*cough* Sea of Japan *cough*) on the, well, east side and by trees and rice paddies on the other sides. The Ulsan international windsurfing tournament, a week-long extravaganza, was being featured. I went to the tournament website and this is what it gave me:

From Asianwindsurfingtour.com:

Ulsan is a major port city on the eastern edge of Korea, 50km north east of Pusan, facing the East Sea and the coast of Honshu. Its function as a port and its outward looking nature has always made Ulsan a gateway to the country – and so it continues.

Ulsan has a population of over 1 million and it’s a busy metropolis symbolic of the industrial and economic growth of Korea. A green belt divides the metropolitan area from the fishing and farming villages and here too is Jinha Beach, site of the AWT event.

Jinha Beach is a 2km long white sand beach blessed with clean water and backed by a pine forest. Wind speeds are expected to vary between 10 and 20 knots out of the north-east. Expected air temp is 18 degrees C and a 2-3mm shortie is recommended for sailing.

The “main event” will be a downwind slalom event and there will also be a speed course and a freestyle windsurfing competition. There is no windsurfing equipment rental shops on Jinha Beach so competitors must bring what they need. A “wide style” board of 140 litres is recommended together with sails of 8 / 9 / 10 meter sails.

I had a great time just wandering around the beach and checking out the action. They had a stage set up with live bands from all over the world playing. When I sat down and watched, there was a South American style band playing. After their set, I had a chance to chat with one of the guys and find out a bit about them. They were a group from Equator that is touring around Asia. They've been in Korea for three months now. The guy that I was talking to didn't really speak any English, so I had a chance to practice some Spanish. He was pretty happy that I could speak some Spanish to me, so we had a nice basic conversation; "where are you from, where did you learn Spanish, what are you doing in Korea, etc.".

Some of the other acts included a Korea rock band, who kicked some ass, and an interesting Japanese group. The Japanese group consisted of a pretty girl on keyboard, a Mr. Fuji look-a-like on the flute and a girl telling a story to the music. I was really surprised to recongize some Japanese words in their story, since I was expecting it to be in Korea. It was a really awesome atmosphere.

Following that, I just wandered around the beach and the town. I made sure to get my feet wet in the ocean. It was quite cool. Those windsurfers definetely needed their wetsuits. I walked along the street which boarders the large sand beach, checking out the various restaurants. Most of them featured small aquariums in front of them, showcasing the soon to be eaten live food. Most streets in Korea seem to feature aquariums in front of restaurants, but being right on the ocean these were much more prevalent. I must've stood in front of one of the aquariums for a good 10 minutes, just watching some squid repeatedly run into the glass walls. Poor, strange looking, things... I kind of felt sorry for them.

About that time, I decided that I was a bit hungry. I ran into a few of my white devil peers, who were also looking for food. After they couldn't decide what to do, I got bored with them and entered into a random 7-Eleven type store. What did I buy? Dried squid.

I guess I didn't feel too sorry for the poor and tasty creatures that I was just watching...

After filling my belly with a multi-tentacled creature, I hopped onto my bad motor scooter and I was heading out to the highway. Before heading back home, I dropped by Benchwarmers bar and had a nice chat with Troy, the owner, about nothing in particular for an hour or so. Then I went home.