The first weekend back from chilly England and Korea was still a blazing 24 degrees, which leaves nothing better to do than spend the weekend on one of the West Sea Islands! With over 4000 islands to choose from, some of which have still rarely seen westerners, we took our Korean friend Jinny's advice and headed for the tiny Seongmodo Island.
Oepo-ri resembles what I imagine 1970's Korea to look like - low rise hanuk style buildings, seafood resturants and a small fish market. We tried to find somewhere that sold anything but seafood and failed. So we sat ourselves in a rather questionable drinking establishment, where the elderly owners were knocking back soju, falling over, and then trying to force apples/peanuts/snacks onto us. They seemed gobsmacked to have western customers and let out huge howls of amusement each time we were able to oder our beers in Korean. We were probably getting it wrong and tellng them we were teapots.
The next morning we took the short ferry ride to Seongmodo Island....short, but made memorable by the hundreds of seagulls which flock around the open ferry and swoop directly at the wooping Koreans all throwing snacks into the air for the Seagulls to catch mid-air. These birds fly right at you. It's terrifying...and quite amazing at the same time.
Seongmodo Island is beautiful. It's very small, so small that we rented a retro style scooter from an ajima and zipped around the entire island in only an hour or so. It's not so much beaches, as you find in Jeju or Deokjeok-do, but beautiful mountains and scenery, and just the escape from the chaos and architectural monotony of the mainland.
On the Island is the 1400 year old Bomunsa temple, with it's own version of the terracota army....over 300 stone monks sat together beside the temple.
This was by far one of the best temples I have seen in Korea as it had lots of character and was very well presereved. the temple itself is set a small walk from a huddle of shops and restaurants...and be warned...there are adjima's poised and ready to try and hand (force)-feed you lots of tentacly seafood. So if you see them, run.
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