Koreans can never just relax. Every park has workout equipment, although I'll admit that they do a really good job of making it look like it belongs there. This is supposed to be used for sit-ups but I had other ideas... like napping :P
Katie showing me how to use this one. I'm still confused
A small section of Tongyeong has its walls painted. Apparently a famous painter from Tongyeong started the trend and comes back every now and then to add to what he started. The paintings are well done, but the best part in my opinion is the use of real objects. It's hard to see in this picture, but those are real paint brushes hanging down from the top of the wall, and that's a real bottle of soju on top of the wall.
One section of the painted walls was an underwater scene. I'm pretending to be a blowfish
An old stereo system placed at the end of the painted wire coming from the painted headphones
This is fake Buddhist money that you can buy at Buddhist stores. It's cheaper than offering Buddha real money, I reckon, lol!
This is a "mall" but I think it's more like an indoor market. There's nothing special about this picture. I just thought it would remind Heath and Andy of the outdoor markets in Ghana, with all the tiny stalls on either side of narrow aisles.
This is the entrance to a military compound set up by Admiral Yi Sun-Sin during the Japanese Invasion. It is currently under renovation, so we were only able to see a small portion of it.
Some artwork within the compound. Koreans are big on the lotus flower, and so is Katie!
Yes! Even military compounds have amazing artwork within their walls.
A dragon
The main building in the complex. Katie is using it as her personal yoga room.
This is the same building as in the picture above. It is where Admiral Yi Sun-Sin met with his commanders. It looks like it has no walls or windows, but there are big wooden planks that swing down and partially enclose a small section of the building.
We found this new restaurant on its opening day. We were taking a shortcut on the way home and we noticed it and didn't remember seeing it before so we checked it out and we were glad we did. Besides the food being really good, we impressed our co-workers by knowing of a new restaurant in town before they did :D
This is not the new restaurant (we had salads there). This is the first picture from Sunday the 10th. Every Sunday that we find ourselves in Tongyeong, we eat pizza at Mr. Song's. It's not quite like the pizza back home, but it's close enough. The key differences are the absence of tomato sauce and the addition of unorthodox toppings like corn. Also, pickles come on the side because pickles come on the side with everything in Korea.
A cool area of Tongyeong we hadn't seen before. We found it on the way to Yi Sun-Sin Park (if Yi Sun-Sin is beginning to look familiar to you, it's because we see him everywhere we go: he is the most famous Korean, especially in the southeastern province where the naval battles that he is famous for were fought).
silly
Admiral Yi's Park - we had to trudge through a rundown industrial area of town to get there, but it was well worth it.
I forgot to mention that the park is right on the water. There are some rocky areas that are fun to walk around on. The receding tide created some pools of water trapped among the rocks where a few little fish and crabs dwelt.
Katie doing her best Yi impression
Later on we went to the Tongyeong History Museum. We saw a few cool things including some paper currency that has since been relegated to coinage as inflation sometimes dictates over the years. The coolest thing, though, were these rice cake stamps, haha. The only English in the place was on the signs, so we knew what we were looking at but we couldn't read the explanation of anything in the museum. I would like to know if these stamps were used by businesses as logos, or if people just enjoyed decorating their rice cakes.
We had a lot of fun in our little Korean town. I think we can safely say that we have now been to all of its major attractions, but as we found out at the sculpture park, return visits are sometimes more satisfying than the original.
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