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| From Canoeing in Chuncheon (춘천에서 카누를 타기) |
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While looking for new ideas for weekend activities, we stumbled across a company by the name of Mullegil (물레길), which offers one hour canoeing trips on Lake Uiam (의암호). This lake is located next to the city of Chuncheon (춘천) and was formed with building of the Uiam Damn on the North Han River (북한강).
After reading the article and heading over to Mullegil's homepage, we were able to reserve 4 canoes for 30,000 Won apiece. According to the information we obtained, the cost of two and three people using a canoe is 40,000 Won and 45,000 Won respectively. Since we didn't know exactly how many people were going to come on this trip, we just paid the 30,000 Won reservation fee and planned to pay the remainder when we got there. Luckily, when we finally went canoeing, they didn't charge us anything more other than the reservation fee which we had already paid.
While there are multiple ways to get to Chuncheon from Seoul, we opted to take the Seoul Metropolitan Subway since it is both convenient and quite a bit cheaper than the alternatives. Of course, the downside is that it does take a bit longer than the ITX train and the express bus, but the subway is still a reasonable mode of transportation for a day trip to Chuncheon.
As usually, when we head off for activities that are in the general direction of Chuncheon, we met up at Sangbong Station (상봉역) and took the Gyeongchun Line (경춘선). An hour and a half later, we were in Chuncheon. However, along the way we did meet some interesting people, including an elderly gentleman who can speak five languages.
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| From Canoeing in Chuncheon (춘천에서 카누를 타기) |
Chuncheon is famous for being the birthplace of Dakgalbi (닭갈비), which is an inexpensive spicy stir fry of chicken and vegetables. This dish quickly became popular with soldiers and college students since they tend to be on a tight budget. While we didn't have the stereotypical stir fry of Dakgalbi at our restaurant, we did have some nice spicy grilled chicken.
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| From Canoeing in Chuncheon (춘천에서 카누를 타기) |
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| From Canoeing in Chuncheon (춘천에서 카누를 타기) |
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| From Canoeing in Chuncheon (춘천에서 카누를 타기) |
After lunch, we walked back to the Chuncheon Station and caught some taxis down to the Chuncheon Sport Complex, where the Mullegil Canoe Tours is located. The last time we came here was for a High 1 ice hockey game during the winter. At that time, the buses weren't running down to the southern shore where the sports complex was located. During the summer, the buses are running more often (though not as often as buses do in Seoul), so there was a second option to get down sports complex.
When we got down to the sport complex, we had to get out of the taxi and walk the last part since there was a festival taking place there. While we didn't stay and watch too much, we saw that there were a lot of different competitions happening, including many extreme sports.
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| From Canoeing in Chuncheon (춘천에서 카누를 타기) |
After taking a brief look at the different events, we made it over to the lake shore to start our canoeing trip. Before jumping into a canoe and paddling off, we had a short class on canoeing. Even though it was all in Korean, those of us with limited Korean language abilities were able to understand due to all of the visual aids. We learned how to get into the canoe, how to paddle and where to go during the excursion.
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| From Canoeing in Chuncheon (춘천에서 카누를 타기) |
Shortly after, we were gearing up with paddles and life jackets and heading towards to the docks to get into our canoes. After a bit of trail and error, we grasped the basic concepts of steering a canoe and were able to head out to the open waters of the lake.
Once on the lake, it was quite an enjoyable experience. The lake was calm and the views of the mountains that lined the lake were amazing. We paddled south for about a mile (1.6km) towards the dam that forms the lake, turned around and headed back towards the docs. The weather was a bit hot, but a slight breeze helped us stay cool. A bit of splashing when we got too close to another boat with people from our group livened up the canoe trip also.
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| From Canoeing in Chuncheon (춘천에서 카누를 타기) |
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| From Canoeing in Chuncheon (춘천에서 카누를 타기) |
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| From Canoeing in Chuncheon (춘천에서 카누를 타기) |
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| From Canoeing in Chuncheon (춘천에서 카누를 타기) |
After returning to shore an hour later, we wandered back through the sports complex and looked at a couple of the competitions before starting our journey back home. Luckily, we were able to quickly catch one of the local buses to take us back to Chuncheon Station.
Overall, this trip was a nice change of pace to many of the summer activities that we had recently enjoyed in Saturdays in Korea. We were able to see a different part of Korea and try an activity that most of us were not very familiar with. Down the road, canoeing is definitely on our lists of activities to do again. However, even at the price of 30,000 Won, it does seem a bit expensive for a one hour trip up and down a lake.
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