Jisan Valley Rock Festival is a 3 day music festival held annually at the end of July in Icheon, South Korea. We decided to go on Friday July 30 with the hopes of seeing Belle & Sebastian, Vampire Weekend, and Massive Attack. We arrived later than expected, partly because we were exhausted from the night before, partly due to the horrible directions on the festival's website. We took the Subway to Suwon station, exit 1 and got on the 60 bus to Ori station that took over an hour. From Ori there was a 30 minute shuttle bus to the festival for 3,000 won organized by Jisan. We arrived, got our wristbands to go in, and caught the end of Belle & Sebastian's set before eating some samosas and exploring the festival.
There were many tents with different products and food, some of the most popular being the Mexican food and the Turkish Kebab tents. There was a tent that sold cocktails in plastic pouches meant to look like IV bags, a Jägermeister tent with bean bag chairs and cool music playing, as well as a booth that sold Miller (the only beer at the festival).
After watching Vampire Weekend and Massive attack (both amazing!) we hung out at a drum circle and watched some fire dancers.
Massive Attack:
Overall, the music was great but the festival itself was frustratingly unorganized. We bought tickets to stay in a Jjimjilbang (bathhouse with floor space to sleep) and a bus was supposed to pick us up at 1am. Only two buses showed up at 1am, leaving over half of the people waiting another hour for the buses to get back from dropping the first load of people off. After less than 5 hours of sleep on a hard wood floor with no blanket or pillow, we had to take a bus back to the festival at 9am. From there we kept asking the security where the bus back to Ori station would be, and no one knew! We even asked in Korean, so I know it wasn't just a language barrier. We waited for over 2 hours before a bus finally came, a block away from where we were waiting, and took us to Ori Station. At that point we were not looking forward to the 2 hour+ journey back home so we said, "Screw the bus!" (who said that?) and took a taxi to Suwon station. We overestimated the distance and agreed to pay the taxi driver way more than the meter price... (you live, you learn).We canceled our plans to go to Seoul that night and had a lovely night out in Songtan playing shuffleboard at Osan Lounge followed by some epic Noraebang (Karaoke).
Randy trying to figure out which Ace of Base song to sing next:
Randy left with a bang by making a vegan dinner Sunday night of Indian food and frozen bananas covered in a clove caramel sauce with cashews for dessert. Sweet!! Have I ever mentioned I have the best friends in the world... all over the world? :)
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