A Traffic Nightmare

Forty of us piled into a bus after church on Sunday and battled the traffic, spanning from Seoul clear across the peninsula, to reach the Sea of Japan. A week off for Chusok, Korean Thanksgiving, was a great incentive to head out and do some sightseeing and chillin' outside of the city.

Chusok is the most important holiday in Korea and as tradition demands every family must return to the husbands birthplace and pay homage to the families deceased relatives. Basically ancestor worship. As you can well imagine 22 million people leaving the city on the same evening, let alone weekend, makes for some pretty unreal traffic jams. To put it into perspective, on a normal day it would take about 4 hours to drive clear across the country, but on Chusok holiday it is not unrealistic to get caught in traffic for up to 15-24 hours.

We were so fortunate, we added one hour onto our four hour drive. It does not get any better than that! However, getting back into the city on Tuesday night, or should I say Wednesday morning, was a different story.