Roadtrippin' With My Foodies

I recently went on a spur of the moment roadtrip to an island south of Jinju. Two of my friends (one of whom had just purchased a car) and I decided to head out of town for a little island camping and basking in the sun while the summer season was high.
When we got to Geoje-do it took us a little while to find the beach we were looking for, but with broken Korean and the help of some lovely ajosshies pointing us in the right direction, we finally found our way.


The beach where a typhoon was supposedly going to kill us. That's the fun little fishing boat we swam out to.

 When we got to the beach there was a full-blown company party occurring and all sorts of tents were set up on wooden platforms. The camping tents were set up under overhead tents. Koreans have a very skewed idea of camping.
We set up our tent on the actual ground and headed to the water. There were a few adolescent boys that were basically beach patrol and they were quite concerned for our safety. We were 3 women and clearly not able to take care of ourselves, according to them. In broken English and with the aid of a Smartphone dictionary they informed us that a typhoon was coming and we were going to die (as they made a slitting motion across their necks) if we stayed at the beach. We assured them we were going to be fine, but they were adament we were going to die. We told them if the weather got too bad we would run to the safety of the car. They came back to us three different times to warn us of the danger.
We were sharing the beach with a group of men working for some nondescript Korean company and all their families; lots of noise and children and alcohol was a-flowin'. Oddly EVERYONE exited the water at about the same time, approximately 7 p.m. Koreans are deathly afraid of the ocean so you frequently see them with full life-preserving gear on and they hug the shore like it's their only chance of living a long, happy life. Quite a sight.
My ladies and I jumped into the water at about 7:30 or 8 p.m. and we were swimming around and splashing, having a grand time. Then one of the super-excitable beach patrol boys came full-on running out of his little shack by the beach and screamed at us to get out of the water like Jaws was behind us. He said the beach was closed from 7 p.m. to 9 a.m. and we could come back in the morning.
Are you frickin' serious?
My friend piped up, "Do you own this beach?"
He, of course, said no, but said it was very dangerous to swim after 7 p.m.
Bloody hell.
I swear Korea is afraid of absolutely everything. I certainly wouldn't trust the little she-boy lifeguards to save my life if I was in trouble anyway. They weigh about as much as my left pinky toe.
After a bit more frolicking in the water we begrudgingly got out of the water so as not to give the she-boy a heart attack.
Who closes a damn beach just because a clock hits 7 p.m.? Weird.
After some time had passed and the little adolescent water-nazis had retired to their shack by the sea, the three of us crept out to the water, stopping statue-like when we heard anything from the shack and then swam out to sea. It was lovely and the perfect temperature.
There was a little fishing boat hanging out in the water with nothing to do, so I took it upon myself to swim out to see it and say hi.
After a less than graceful entry into the boat I got pretty cut up from the fiberglass contraption, which was rather painful, but funny. The girls followed me into the boat and we had an enjoyable time chillin' in the fishing boat. One of my friends was convinced we were drifting out to sea, despite the fact that the boat was anchored and we weren't going anywhere. Of course, she was also convinced their were sharks in the water, so her judgement can't really be trusted.
We made the decision to head back to the beach and myself and shark girl were still in the boat. She looked at me and asked which one of us was jumping off the boat next. She asked our other friend, who was already in the water, if there were any sharks in the water and of course there were none. She looked at me wondering who was going next and I asked her, "Do you really want to be the last one off the boat?" She got this look of terror in her eyes and exclaimed, "Fuck no!" and promptly belly-flopped into the shark-free sea.
There was no typhoon that made us "die!" At one point, there was a bit of wind, but then it went away and a tiny bit of sprinkling, but that left after about 10 minutes. It's funny, nobody else got the "Die!" message and the beach patrol only seemed to warn us about the non-existant typhoon. Curious.
On our drive home the next day, the three of us talked about all the food we missed from home for 45 straight minutes, almost the entire duration of the trip. We discussed restaurants, meals we used to make and all the ingredients we miss. We talked about food for so long and then we got depressed and we couldn't even eat to drown our food-missing depression.
I'm going to gain so much weight when I get home.