Trip to Korea and Japan: Day 5 - Cliffs and Beaches

(Click here for first day, yesterday and all trips)

I sat working at my room today, but I did go to Ilsan Beach and the Ulgi Lighthouse (scroll down) on its pine-forested peninsula south of the beach. I really isn't that good at staying long at beaches, but I dipped my feet so I can say I have bathed at both ends of the Pacific Ocean at least. ;-) The weather may not have been the best but there weren't more than a handful of people on this, the closest beach to a 1 million plus sized city, in the middle of summer. Interesting.

Here I have to mention something that you learn early if you read about Ulsan, and that is that the shipping industry is big here, and then I mean really big. South Korea produces roughly 50% of the world ships (tonnage I guess) and the worlds largest shipyard (Hyundai) was just next to the beach. It produces a tanker each  four days! I passed yard by yard with the bus before reaching Ilsan beach. I can imagine this was a little how Gothenburg looked before the Swedish shipping industry crashed.

Looks like Acapulco or Costa Blanca or something but almost all empty

People was setting up tents as their base camps. Interesting. It did blow a little, but maybe it was for the possibility of rain?

The peninsula

Afterwards I strolled all the way out to the cape of the peninsula. Lots of nice views and I got to stop sweating and even freezing for a short time out there when the wind got the chance to blow all the way from Japan to the Southeast.

In both Korea and Japan the parks and other well kept areas I often find beatiful and rather cute signs etc.

Flowers, cliffs, sea and pine trees. Soo nice.

Like a painting.

This got the geographer in me going. Straight cuts, weathering, etc. Classic fun!

Mature ladies donning swimming suits, and I am pretty sure it wasn't for swimming lessons, they looked so cool about it (they had bowls with stuff living in them so you can guess)

And some old school fishermen

Now this dowsn't do the real view justice at all. In the haze there were often fiften gigantic ships, I have never seen anything like it. Quite a view, made me think of those massive sea battles so see on TV even though these ships was doing something much more mundane.

This made me think of Namsan Tower in Seoul last december.

Kawaii!

Bus 401 directly from the city center

And here is a map from the bus stop in the other direction, just close by.

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