Scarecrows

Last time I was out cycling, I noticed these scarecrows from up the road. However it had started to rain, so I didn't have a chance to come check them out.
The weather was great today, though, so I came to see what was going on. Apparently it's part of a "Rural Community Improvement Project" and so they've put up about 40 scarecrows around a couple of the rice fields.
I'm not sure if it's supposed to be a tourist attraction, or if it's just to convince the locals that living in the sticks isn't so bad, and no, they don't have to move to the big city for entertainment.
Notice the one in the middle has a (real) handbag.
This one looked particularly dangerous.

Cycling around Donghae

I finally bought my first road bike in Korea about a month ago. I'd been reluctant because there are so many idiot drivers here, but so far, I haven't been hit. I don't like cycling in town, but within 20 minutes it's pretty easy to get away from all the traffic.
I'm heading to Taiwan at the end of August and I'm cycling up the east coast, so I've been trying to get out at least once a week to get into cycling shape. Yesterday I headed up to what is as close to a lake as we've got in this area (it's a reservoir). The weather was beautiful, but going up hill in this heat is quite tiring.
Further up the "lake" there was a little rest stop with a couple of benches and 2 of these wooden carvings. You see these guys all over Korea, but I can't remember what they're supposed to represent.
On the way back down (which was way more fun than going up), I stopped to take this picture of all the rice fields. Almost every piece of land that you see in Korea that's relatively flat has some kind of crop growing on it. But because the country is so mountainous, they can't use all the big machinery they use in North America, so a lot of it is still done by hand.