Muui-do Island :)

On Friday night after work, I rode the bus to Shannon's place to hang out and spend the night. We ate snacks and watched "Nanny Diaries"-great movie!! We were leaving for the island in the morning, so we had to go to bed at a decent hour. :)

On Saturday morning, we met Reuel, Mattania, and Michelle near the bus stop to buy last-minute snacks and supplies and head to the island!! We were going to Muui-do Island, a very popular beach spot for foreigners. It took us a few hours to get there: we rode a bus to the subway, the subway to the airport, a bus from the airport to the ferry, the ferry to the island, a bus to the beach. Whew!! We didn't have any problems getting there at all! We just went from place to place until we ended up on the island. The ferry was HUGE!! There was a line of cars waiting to drive onto the ferry, along with a crowd of people. It was only a 3-minute ferry ride, so it didn't take long at all. It was a pretty cool experience though.

When we got off the ferry, we took a bus for about 20 minutes to the other side of the island where we were going to be staying. We got off the bus and bought two huts for the weekend: one for the siblings, Reuel and Mattania, and one for Shannon, Michelle, and me. The huts were right on the beach, about 50 feet from the ocean!! The huts were small, room enough for 4 people comfortably. They were up on stilts, had sliding doors and windows, and there was a pillow and blanket for each person. The best part?? There were heated floors!! We definitely took advantage of this because the weather has been cooling off a lot!

We were hungry from all our traveling, so we went to a BBQ place on the beach, where you cook your own meat over a fire. SO GOOD!! After that, we decided to take a walk on the beach, where we ran into Tommy and his friends!! No way!! Tommy had come to the island with his two friends, Johnny and Lisa. So, we met some new friends! That's always fun. We found out they had arrived right after us. We had gotten huts #18 and #19, and they were in hut #20! :) Awesome. We walked down the beach a ways and climbed some big rocks and took pictures. Shannon was the most daring out of the group, so she climbed the tallest one! We headed back to hut #18 (the party hut!!) and played cards and hung out and talked. We stayed up pretty late that first night.

On Saturday morning, we woke up, (found coffee at one of the shops on the island!), and went out to the beach to walk around. One of the greatest things about the morning is waking up on the beach and having a beautiful view of the ocean!! You just can't beat that! The tide goes way out on this beach, so you can walk REALLY FAR and collect shells and find crabs in the sand. Pretty cool. We went to a small seafood restaurant close-by to grab some lunch. While we were finishing up, Arri arrived!! (She was planning on coming with us on Saturday morning, but was moving into a new apartment. She had to wait until Sunday morning to meet us.) We did some hut-swapping after lunch. Michelle moved into hut #19 with the siblings, and Arri moved into hut #18 with Shannon and me. Our whole group, including Tommy, Johnny, and Lisa, went hiking up the mountain. We saw some incredible views and took some great pictures!! About halfway through the trail, the girls decided to bail on the hiking and walk back home. The boys continued on the trail, and the girls went out to the beach to walk home. We didn't anticipate running into MUD on the way home! It was low tide again, so we thought we would just be walking across sand....boy, were we wrong! We were up to our calves in mud, so it took us about 20 minutes to get back to the huts.

We were exhausted by the time we made it back, so we all took naps in the huts. We opened the windows and let the breeze roll in. Hearing the sound of the ocean is so peaceful. It's so wonderful to get away sometimes and just relax. This weekend was the perfect time to do that! We went back to the BBQ place for some dinner, and took pictures of the sunset. After dinner, we ran into a foreign couple who told us about a karaoke thing going on that night. A Korean company was setting up on a stage near the beach. They were having a karaoke night with prizes. Apparently, they were looking for foreigners to participate. Our group decided to sign up and sing a song. We chose a Journey song, "Don't Stop Believin'." We knew it was a Korean favorite, so we signed up. Shannon, Arri, Tommy, and I went up on the stage and made complete fools of ourselves!! The crowd loved it, so it was a lot of fun! We did some dancing, too, and we even had some little kids come up on the stage and dance with us. :) Our group ended up winning a prize!! Free rides on dirt bikes on the island! :) Karaoke wasn't what we planned on doing on Sunday night, but it ended up being wonderful! We all went back to hut #18 and hung out for awhile longer, and then headed to bed.

On Monday morning, there was complete chaos. Hundreds of Koreans were showing up with their families to go fishing. Apparently, there was a huge fishing festival that day, and it was really popular! We didn't find out about this until Monday morning. Korean families had already set up their tents in between each hut. The island was packed, and we could hardly move around at all. Tommy, Johnny, and Lisa headed out pretty soon after we woke up. They were ready to get home. Our group stayed for another 45 minutes or so, and then headed out. We turned in our keys and started walking to the bus stop. There were maybe 100 cars lined up outside trying to get onto the beach. We knew there was no way the bus would make it through to pick us up, so we started walking. We walked and walked....and walked for about 30 minutes. It wasn't too bad because the weather was really nice and our backpacks weren't too heavy. We FINALLY saw the bus and jumped on. We rode it for about 2 minutes, and up ahead, there was Tommy, Johnny, and Lisa, sitting on the side of the road!! They had been walking, too, and had gotten tired. We took the ferry together, and rode the bus back to the airport to catch the subway. That's where we parted ways.

This was definitely an incredible weekend for sure!! I couldn't have asked for a better group of friends to go with or more perfect weather. What a great way to start October! :)