Korea.......catching up

First thing to our continuing tale of travel is .....yes we are still alive..
Its been a while since Pohang in April. Our mission was to go from Pohang on the east Coast to Tando Port near Incheon on the west coast. Not far really as the crow flies but we thought taking Charioteer around the coast would be easier. (She seems to prefer travelling in the water !!!!)
On the way we visited our friends at Power Marine again, then ventured on mostly island to island. There are thousands of islands around the south west coast.
South Korea has so many many police and craft...from ocean going armed ships , hovercraft and samall day boats, we were seldom without an escort."For your saftey" they say.......
On one day of misty rain, they 'lost' us, but a day or two later in comes a helicopter and it does a couple of circles and then flys off. A few hours later in comes an approaching police boat....with a man in front vigorously waving a flag...'where are you going etc etc'
Told of our intention to anchor and where, their reply is "one moment please" then they come back with..."follow us, we know a better place"
Off they went at ten knots, off we went at five knots. We rounded an island and there they were waiting. Fenders out and roped along side we spent an hour on their ship...coffee, cake...english practice then time for them to go.
They quickly attached our ship to the mooring and off they went.
Normally we prefer to anchor but we remained on the mooring. Somehow an extra rope on this mooring found itself well wrapped around the prop. Next morning at 6am Brian is in the dinghy off to a nearby fishing boat. Sign language to explain our problem and they eventually understood and called coastguard on their cell phone for us.
A ship was dispatched and on arrival quickly proceeded to take us in tow whilst we were still attached to the mooring. After much shouting and waving that brought to a stop so we could cut the mooring line.
Okay we are now off, towed at nine to ten knots, with our dingy being towed behind us.Seven miles later we are in a bay being attached to another buoy, with a small KCG craft standing by with a diver onboard.
Soon pieces of rope were drifting away. Once the diver had done this we needed him to carefully check the prop to make sure it was okay as it is a folding type.All was okay...hooray.
Caryying on we had little wind so relied on the current to make progress. The reason we were going to Tando Port was to view a national boatshow.
Fish farms in Korea are like nowhere else we have encountered in our travels. Spying a blue police boat we headed in its direction and they obliged us by leading us through the maze into port.
The boat show was huge, but different to what we are used to. Hundreds of food stalls and thousands of people.
Racing was also taking place here for the World Match Race circuit...so there were plenty of Kiwi sailors here.
We have spoken of the generosity of the Japanese people and this can be said of Koreans as well.
A korean we had met in the Philippines, drove for an hour from his city to collect us. He showed us around Suwon and its tourist sights including the castle with its 5.6km fortified wall. That evening we had dinner with several of his friends before being delivered to a very upmarket hotel.
Oh my god, do we have enough money???????.....but oh no our friend has paid for this himself.
Next day he took us to a world heritage site we where learnt about ancient living conditions and customs. One building that was run by two elderly twins in which they forged traditional eating spoons, a process of heating and shaping eight times to the finished product.,On seeing the price of these we shied away, only to see our host purchase a set as gifts for us. We dare not look at any thing else after that.
Near the exit was a photo studio with a variety of tradional and very colourful dress wear. We were outfited as nobles and had our photo taken. Again not cheap and also once again our host paid before we had the chance.
Another meal with our friends and this time we bedded down at our expense...budget love hotel.
The next day we were driven back to Charioteer.