The Ice Fishing Festival

Snowed in the face during a group photo. So mean >_>

Only 2 days after Everland I took off to the Ice Fishing festival with more scholarship friends. I had in mind we'd be having a great time fishing on the ice all day, but after an hour of standing in nasty wind over a lake that wasn't yielding any fish to any of the 100 people fishing on it, we decided to try out the other activities.



Well the first thing we did was get to the festival, some 3 hours out of Seoul.

Bus stop in heaven! Or just a badly over-exposed photo.

The last photo above was the bus stop arrival. Quite a creepy place, kind of like the bus stations you see in ghost movies. We went straight to a restaurant just outside. Though I was disappointed we didn't go in search of fish already, it was a fun place.

 Actually, I'm not so sure it was a restaurant. More like someone's house. Notice the stacks of toilet paper in the room we ate? What? Anyway the lady was nice, and on the menu which was very typical Korean, there was one interesting item: 소머리 국 (Somori-guk). Now that literally translates into Cow head soup, so we asked what it was. And indeed it was, Cow head soup. Well I was the only one with the balls to try it and it was alright. Honestly it just tasted like Korean soup.

No eyeballs, sorry ):

Moving on to our fishing attempt.

I bet the fish were all gone, the only people who were pulling anything out where a small group of old men in the corner, but they had their own equipment (not the cheap crap we bought) and seemed to know what they were doing, unlike us. Luckily they were giving away fish to people who bought entrances to the fishing area, but you had to trade your ticket that included all of the other activities so we waited until evening (and prayed there'd still be fish)

These fish belonged to the old men.

So we started out with the sleigh/tube thingy again. But this one was much steeper than Everland. Rode it like 5 times.

I realized that for some stupid reason I didn't take a picture of the whole thing though....

See that one-wheeled bicycle-like contraption on the right? Well it doesn't really work like you'd imagine. To turn, you have to lean, which turns the wheel. It really just makes you start spinning uncontrollably in the ice until you stop or fall over, which I saw tons of other people doing.

Anyway we also attempted skating. Haaaaaaaaa.... I spent so much time in 11th grade PE learning how to roller skate to discover that it's nothing like ice skating. I used them for about 30mins and gave up. There were other contraptions to get around the ice anyway, for example a "traditional sled' which was just a piece of wood with rails and two sticks with nails at the end to propel yourself. It's fun but rather slow and quickly tiring.
We then moved on to this:

Now the photo doesn't really seem really intense, nor did watching it. It was just an ice bike dragging a big tube, however it was actually pretty fun. He drives in a circle and it's bumpy so you have to hold on, but if you're stuck in the back snow hits your face. We rode it twice. The second time there were no other people waiting so the guy went an extra circle. I, having lost a round of rock-paper-scissors, had to ride in the back and though I attempted to cover my face, the bouncing forced me to have to grab the edges and pretty soon my face was being blasted by ice. I was laughing the first 2 laps. The third lap I was trying to laugh but I couldn't move my face. I went from "Ha-ha-ha" to "UHUHUHUHUH"

So after messing around, another snow fight, slipping and falling on piles of snow, came my most anticipated part of the day. DINNER

We picked up our fish and decided to have one raw, and two roasted. You take them to a restaurant nearby and they cook them up for you. The raw fish was good, but I think it would still be better right after catching the fish. The roasted fish, however, was the best fish I've had in Korea. Now I'm not sure if I've ever had trout, but I remember 3 of us, upon taking our first bite, let out a soft "wow". It was good (but I won't say the fish we ate at the beach in Guatemala wasn't comparable) and we devoured the animal. What I liked is that it wasn't cooked in any way too Korean, like sweet or over fried, like I've had many fish here. It was grilled in foil and properly seasoned (another issue I have with food here sometimes, seasoning not going beyond salt, sugar and chile). I think we could've handled another fish, but it was still satisfying.

Anyway here are a few other photos

I have NO idea what this is supposed to be. A shrimp? Fish?

None of us could skate actually. Singapore, Thailand, Malaysia, Guatemala... Not really ice countries.

 And another fun sign! This is a restaurant, but I wonder what kind of food they sell... I bet they thought BoobiBoobi sounds cute but...

And that's the ice fishing festival! Cost me a bit, but it was fun!