The House Filled with Hapiness

행복이 가득한 집 (The House Filled with Happiness or more commonly known as the Happy House) is a 1930's Japanese colonial house transformed into a semi-luxurious restaurant cafe.

Information on the Internet is difficult to come by and so far all I've found is this review that talks about both the cafe and the neighbouring Mokpo Modern History Museum. The review is entirely in Korean, but it does have this useful line of information:

행복이 가득한 집 061-247-5887, 11:00~24:00, 차 5000원대, 식사 1만원대

Which roughly translates out to this:

Phone: 061-247-5887
Hours: 11:00 to 24:00
Prices: Tea 5000W & Meal 10000W

The food is an average mixed of western and Korean dishes, but most of the foreigners in Mokpo really dig the place for its cafe decor and its five dollar shakes.

Mokpo Movie Theaters

Searching the Internet for movies in Mokpo will probably lead you to Mokpo Harbor, Gangster’s Paradise, the only film in the world to actually feature (let alone mention) Mokpo. However, a quick search of 목포시네마 (Mokpo Cinema) on Naver gives the following collection of theaters:

Movie Theaters	Street Address
CGV Mokpo	sang-dong 892
Joongang Cinema	namgyo-dong 70-1
Lotte Cinema	sang-dong 1129-6
Mega Line Mokpo	sang-dong 980-1
Primus Cinema	sang-dong 860-1

CGV and Lotte are your best bet for English movies, even though they tend to be of the blockbluster variety that can afford an opening half way around the world.

backword

From the Galbijim forums I discovered Backword, a nifty plug-in for Firefox users that translates an English word into a variety of languages (including Korean) when the mouse cursor hovers over it.

Mokpo to Incheon Airport Bus

Escaping Mokpo by bus often leads to escaping Korea by plane and thanks to the Mokpo to Inchean Airport express bus, it's super easy and confortable.

The bus itself is amazing and is a perfect symbol of Korean Komfort, the Korean desire for comfortable living in all aspects of life. It is a full length passenger bus outfitted with plenty of leg room thanks to the igneous idea to only use 3 seats per row. The seats themselves are comparable to those in first class air travel; all seats are fully reclinable, equipped with foot rest and plenty of space to curl up and fall back asleep.

There are actually two Mokpo to Inchean buses, both operated by Kumho and sheduled on the Express Bus Lines Association's Kobus site:

• The 2:30 am bus.
  
• The 9:00 am bus.
  

As scary as it sounds, the 2:30 am option is extremely popular with both the locals and the foreigners since, all things considered, this is the main artery to Seoul's International Airport and all of its day flights. Purchase tickets well in advance, either by navigating through the Korean part of the Kobus site and using a Korean credit card or by visiting the ticket counter at the Mokpo Bus Station.

If you do find yourself out of luck, your closest option is to catch a cross-country bus to Gwangju and take one of the many airport bus running out of that station, discoverable via the same Kobus trip planner.

Lesson 08 - Greetings

Lesson 08 - Greetings is published over at waygook.org.