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After we spent three hours with customs we finally got our bikes. But the fun had only just begun, on our way to Ulsan while we were working our way out of Pusan we lost Ben in the traffic and he was the one with our route in his GPS! Julie and I then spent the next hour lost in the traffic trying to find our way back to our hotel thinking that Ben may go there to wait for us. When we finally made it back Ben wasn't there. So we called our friend Mark in Ulsan and asked him how to get there, thinking that Ben would go there as that was our plan. Mark told us to find route 65 and to follow the signs from there, Mark had already emailed us a map of Ulsan but it wasn't too detailed and we couldn't read Korean. What Mark didn't know and neither did we, was that motor bikes aren't allowed on expressways. We found this out when we wanted to go through a toll way and the attendant came out yelling and waving his arms around, eventually we worked out that he wanted us to use a road on the other side of the toll booth to do a U turn, we did this but it put us on the other side of the expressway and meant we had to go back through another toll booth, so again we had a person yelling and waving her arms saying we couldn't go though! But we couldn't go back either!! She then got on the RED phone to call someone and took our ergo number. While she was doing that a man appeared from a car nearby and tried to explain to us that we weren't allowed on the expressway and that we would have to go down a road off the side and take another road to Ulsan. He could see our confusion so jumped in his car and lead us to the road we needed. We did eventually make it to Ulsan, but not before getting lost again and when we did eventually get into Ulsan we then had to find our hotel where Mark had put us up. After some time stuck in peak hour traffic I pulled over into a side street and in frustration called Mark and told him I could see a Hospital and he asked if I could see the Hyundai Hotel, to which I answered "yes it is right next to us" and he said "good turn in the driveway and you will see Ben's bike parked there". We had found it!! What a day, it had taken three hours to do 116 kilometers. We will be leaving Ulsan on Friday and making our way up to Donghae to catch the ferry to Vladivostok and hopefully a lot less traffic.
- comments
Craig Prosser Ah the frustrations! Good luck with the next stages!
Rod Julie happy birthday for the 6th Ellen and Rod
Janet McIntyre Wow! I felt that as I read it... I hope you did laugh later about all that arm waving at the toll gate.
ANET Ulsan will likely be the worse part of your trip. As you get closer to Daegu, you will see a much better part of South Korea. I lived in Seoul, Daegu and Ulsan. Seoul and Daegu were great. For me Ulsan was hell.