Friday, October 26, 2007
Korea: A Land of Rolling Fields and Kimchi
Okay, sorry it took so long to put this up. But here's my summary of my trip to Korea:
So on Thursday I flew to Korea. Surprisingly, Asiana Air was pretty nice. Even though it was only a two-and-a-half-hour flight, they served us a meal. And apparently having an iPod makes all the difference when it comes to air travel: when I felt close to panicking, all I had to do was turn up the volume so that I couldn't hear the roar of the engines and I was much less nervous.
After that was a 6-hour bus ride from the airport at Seoul to Mokpo, the little fishing village where my friends Jens and Randi live. Outside of the cities Korea really is a beautiful country, miles and miles of emerald green rice fields and craggy, rock-covered mountains. The houses have bright green or red or blue roofs, so it's quite a change from the subdued Japanese aesthetic. In Korea the temples and houses and stores are all covered in bright red and green and blue paint and gold lacquer and neon signs. This is a stark contrast from Japan's preference for natural colors: dark green and brown and black and pale pink. Personally I prefer the Japanese style (I thought a lot of Korean temples were overdone and gaudy).
Jens and Randi welcomed me into their home. They were wonderful hosts and it was fun to hang out with them. On Friday, they had to work, so I wandered around town by myself, but that weekend they took me around the city and showed me the sites.
On Friday I started by taking a taxi to the bank. Amazingly, taxis were the cheapest form of transportation in Mokpo. It's such a small city that you and three friends could travel across town for less than 3 dollars. When Jens and Randi weren't available, I got around pretty much exclusively by taxi.
When Jens and Randi WERE around, though, I had a much better mode of transport: their scooter. Man, that thing was AWESOME. Why don't we have scooters in America? They're so much fun! I want to get one in Japan...
After the bank, I went to the museum district next. First was the Maritime Museum, which had the remains of various Korean, Chinese, and Japanese shipwrecks that had been dug up from the sea around Mokpo. It was really cool. One ship they'd even partially reconstructed, and you could stand inside it. Next was the Local Culture Museum, where I was clearly the most exciting thing that had happened in a very long time. One of the guards ran down to the local tourist office and got someone who spoke English and they gave me coffee and a guided tour of the rock sculpture collection. The museum was pretty much deserted; I imagine a foreigner stumbling in was the highlight of an otherwise very boring job.
Speaking of foreigners, Koreans aren't really sure how to cope with them. I mean, pick a random Japanese person on the street and they will speak enough basic traveler's English and you will speak enough basic traveler's Japanese to come to an agreement. You try speaking either English or Korean to a Korean person, though, and they will look at you like you're nuts. I dreaded getting lost in Korea because NO ONE spoke English or could decipher my Korean. I'd say a Korean word, they'd stare at me, I'd point to what I wanted, they'd go 'Oh!' and say *the exact same word I just said*. Clearly there was something wrong with my pronunciation but I can't for the life of me figure out what it was.
They also didn't seem to be able to wrap their heads around the concept of a person that doesn't speak Korean. If someone asked me a question, I'd shrug and look confused and say, "Sorry, I don't speak Korean." Now, an American or Japanese or *sane* person's response to this would be to use only one- or two-word phrases, speak very slowly, and gesture a lot. Not a Korean person, though. Instead, they'd just keep talking and talking happily, and I'd sit there and stare at them blankly. Pretty much every taxi driver insisted on giving me a verbal tour of the city, pointing at random buildings and commenting on them at length in Korean although it would have been obvious from the very beginning that I *didn't understand a word he was saying*. Jens and Randi say the phrases "Oh, really?" and "Is that so?" are essential to life in Korea, because people love to explain things to you, and don't seem to care too much if you understand as long as you make happy noises.
For dinner that night Jens and Randi took me to kalbi, which is a kind of Korean barebecue. The table has a charcoal grill set in the center and you're given thin strips of kalbi beef to grill as you like. Along with the beef are three or four side dishes that everyone shares. Helpful hint: don't ever go out to dinner with a sick friend in Korea, as everyone eats out of the same dishes.
One of the sides was ALWAYS kimchi, or spicy pickled cabbage. Korean people LOVE kimchi. They eat it with every meal. They swear it cures just about every disease. Jens actually had a Korean friend tell him that eating kimchi is the reason Korean people don't have AIDS. @.@ Korean people also like to push it on Jens because it is, and I quote, "Good for manpower."
Usually a second side dish was some other kind of pickled vegetable. My favorite was the daikon radish pickled in ginger. It was very sweet and just like pickles in Japan. And maybe the third side dish would be some kind of salad or soup or soybean-y something. The food was very healthy, if monotonous and spicy enough to burn off your tongue. They didn't seem to flavor food with anything but sesame oil and spicy red sauce, which meant that somehow it managed to be both too spicy and incredibly bland at the same time. I'll take Japanese food any day, although Jens and Randi say they've acquired a taste for it.
Saturday Randi took me shopping in downtown Mokpo. Mostly clothes cost the same as Japan, but every once in a while we stumbled across a store with a clearance sale with really cheap clothes. I got a pair of jeans for about $15 and a pretty green lacy shirt for about $6. For lunch we ate mandoo guk, which is basically gyoza in soup. It was quite tasty, if bland.
That evening they took me to P-Club, which is a bar with pool and darts and an egregious amount of red brocade. I had kiwi soju (Korean rice wine, like sake except it kinda sucks) and the Korean version of bar peanuts: freeze-dried squid strips. They were actually pretty good. A little salty, a little sweet, very chewy.
Sunday was a beautiful, clear day, so we spent the morning climbing Yudal-san, the small mountain to the north of Mokpo. From the top we could see a lovely view of Mokpo, the port, and the sea beyond. At the summit was a sculpture garden with bizarre but entertaining modern sculptures and a temple in the gaudy Korean style. For lunch we had duc kalbi, or Korean barbecue chicken. I thought it was way too spicy.
After that we rode the bus for about an hour to Wolchul-san, a tall mountain with excellent climbing and a new temple, Dogab-sa. The main temple building was still under construction, but the bell tower, monks' quarters, and archway were open. It was a wonderful climb.
We finished the day with chuk, which was absolutely wonderful, the one Korean recipe I want to try at home. It was rice porridge, to which you could add strips of meat or seafood or vegetables. The chicken chuk in particular was delicious. Then Jens and Randi showed me the city at night on their scooter. Mokpo really looked best at night, because the crags and islands were lit up with gold and green and blue lights.
The next morning, I bid Jens and Randi farewell and jumped in the bus to Busan, a famous spa resort town on the east coast that's very popular with Japanese tourists, where I would meet my friend Liz. I had high hopes for Busan but was mostly disappointed. Aside from the spas and one mountain with temples, there was NOTHING TO DO. Liz and I actually left Busan a day early to spend more time in Gyeongju, and we're happy we did so. If you ever go to Korea, forget about Busan and head straight for Seoul or Gyeongju.
I had a few hours to kill in Busan before I needed to meet Liz at the airport, so I walked along Haeundae Beach and watched the sunset. I had kimbap for dinner, which is basically the Korean equivalent of sushi rolls. It's little chucks of rice and vegetables and meat rolled up in seaweed. Kimbap was okay, but, as were so many aspects of Korean culture, I thought it was not as good as the Japanese version.
Having said that, I can only hope none of my Korean-American friends read this article, because Korean people are incredibly sensitive about Japan. I can understand why, because of the occupation and all, but I got a little sick of having to listen to "Why Japan is responsible for every problem faced by Korea today, chapter 3, article 5" every time I mentioned that I was living in Tokyo. Every time a Korean person encouraged me to try something new, they'd drop some comment like, "Well, they have something similar in Japan, but of course the Japanese simply stole it from Korea and the Japanese version is clearly a poor imitation."
Getting to the airport was another miserable mess. It didn't mention in English at the bus station that Gimhae Airport and Gimhae the city are two very, very different places. When I got to Gimhae the city, the last buss to Gimhae Airport had already left for the night. I asked the clerk if she could show me a route that would get me to the airport or at least close enough to take a taxi the rest of the distance, and she basically said, "Not my problem. Next!" and ignored me. So I deciphered the Korean-only bus chart and made my way to a bus terminal near the airport, then took a nastily expensive taxi. When I got there, the airport had already closed and poor Liz had been kicked out of the building to stand on the sidewalk and wait for me to show up. Helpful hint: DON'T get caught out after the last bus in Korea. And by 'last bus' I mean try not to go anywhere after 7 PM, just in case. And I thought it was ridiculous that all the trains in Japan stopped before 1 in the morning...
Maybe I'm just used to Japanese ultra-politeness, but I found many Korean people were incredibly rude. You had to shove and push to reach the counter at stores, because everyone cut in line. If I was doing something wrong, a random stranger would start lecturing me in Korean, and if I didn't understand, they'd grab my hands or shoulders and force me to do it correctly. I was corrected on how to hold my chopsticks, how to buckle my seatbelt, and how to hail a taxi!
Not that everyone was rude. Sometimes the Koreans were incredibly generous. Like the museum guards who gave me coffe and a free grand tour. Or the woman on the bus ride to Busan who offered me half her sandwich when we stopped for a rest stop. And I guess the people that stopped me on the street and grabbed me were just trying to help, even if they were being very pushy about it.
Liz and I woke up bright and early on Tuesday to go to Beomeosa, a Buddhist temple in the northern suburbs of Busan. The temple itself was very pretty--check out my pictures. From there we climbed a little to a remote hut that seemed to be dedicated to women, as about 100 women or so were gathered to chant and burn incense. We could look off the edge of the cliff down into Busan, but as the city was buried under a perpetual cloud of smog we couldn't really see anything. Beomeosa is at the foot of a mountain that my Lonely Planet guidebook assured me had wonderful hiking, so Liz and I geared up and started climbing.
** WARNING!! ** Do not EVER believe what Lonely Planet tells you about a hike. Their 'moderately steep' climb turned out to be 2 hours uphill, jumping from giant rock to giant rock and occasionally stopping to wish we were dead.
When we stopped at the top a man very nicely offered us chocolate, then spoiled it by trying to get our phone numbers. Liz and I were hit on pretty much everywhere we went--apparently Korean men like Western women. It could be worse: some of Randi's friends say they've had taxi drivers proposition them in Korean, and when they weren't understood, said, "You, me, hotel, OK?" Eww.
So, after the Climb of Doom we reached the North Gate of Geumjeong Fortress, which is less of a fortress and more of a very long wall with periodic watchtowers that runs along the peak of Geumjeong. We walked along the wall for another couple hours, cursing Lonely Planet and stopping to take pictures of all the steep hills covered with dangerously loose gravel, aware that the only satisfaction we would get from the climb would be the photographic proof we could show off to our friends and family later.
Finally we reached the South Gate and the cable car that would carry us down the mountain. We stopped for a quick snack of pajeon, what the Japanese call 'chijimi,' a flat pancake filled with green onions and other vegetables and covered in the ubiquitous red sauce, then took the cable car down the mountain back to civilization.
Figuring that we well deserved it after 5 hours of mountain climbing, we treated ourselves to a few hours at a spa. Liz was a bit freaked out about the whole 'naked in a pool with a bunch of total strangers' bit, but I loved it. There were all kinds of pools: hot pools and cold pools and every other temperature in between, pools filled with rose water and apple water and jasmine water and just about any other plant you can imagine, exfoliating mud baths, saunas, relaxation rooms with TVs, infrared rooms, aromatherapy rooms, and even more. After a few hours there, I wasn't even sore anymore. I would definitely go back.
We woke up the next morning to realize we'd exhausted all the entertainment possibilities of Busan already. So we decided to hop on a bus to Gyeongju, which turned out to be the best part of the trip. I'll continue with Gyeongju later, though, because right now my fingers hurt and I'm hungry.
Love you all!
|
So on Thursday I flew to Korea. Surprisingly, Asiana Air was pretty nice. Even though it was only a two-and-a-half-hour flight, they served us a meal. And apparently having an iPod makes all the difference when it comes to air travel: when I felt close to panicking, all I had to do was turn up the volume so that I couldn't hear the roar of the engines and I was much less nervous.
After that was a 6-hour bus ride from the airport at Seoul to Mokpo, the little fishing village where my friends Jens and Randi live. Outside of the cities Korea really is a beautiful country, miles and miles of emerald green rice fields and craggy, rock-covered mountains. The houses have bright green or red or blue roofs, so it's quite a change from the subdued Japanese aesthetic. In Korea the temples and houses and stores are all covered in bright red and green and blue paint and gold lacquer and neon signs. This is a stark contrast from Japan's preference for natural colors: dark green and brown and black and pale pink. Personally I prefer the Japanese style (I thought a lot of Korean temples were overdone and gaudy).
Jens and Randi welcomed me into their home. They were wonderful hosts and it was fun to hang out with them. On Friday, they had to work, so I wandered around town by myself, but that weekend they took me around the city and showed me the sites.
On Friday I started by taking a taxi to the bank. Amazingly, taxis were the cheapest form of transportation in Mokpo. It's such a small city that you and three friends could travel across town for less than 3 dollars. When Jens and Randi weren't available, I got around pretty much exclusively by taxi.
When Jens and Randi WERE around, though, I had a much better mode of transport: their scooter. Man, that thing was AWESOME. Why don't we have scooters in America? They're so much fun! I want to get one in Japan...
After the bank, I went to the museum district next. First was the Maritime Museum, which had the remains of various Korean, Chinese, and Japanese shipwrecks that had been dug up from the sea around Mokpo. It was really cool. One ship they'd even partially reconstructed, and you could stand inside it. Next was the Local Culture Museum, where I was clearly the most exciting thing that had happened in a very long time. One of the guards ran down to the local tourist office and got someone who spoke English and they gave me coffee and a guided tour of the rock sculpture collection. The museum was pretty much deserted; I imagine a foreigner stumbling in was the highlight of an otherwise very boring job.
Speaking of foreigners, Koreans aren't really sure how to cope with them. I mean, pick a random Japanese person on the street and they will speak enough basic traveler's English and you will speak enough basic traveler's Japanese to come to an agreement. You try speaking either English or Korean to a Korean person, though, and they will look at you like you're nuts. I dreaded getting lost in Korea because NO ONE spoke English or could decipher my Korean. I'd say a Korean word, they'd stare at me, I'd point to what I wanted, they'd go 'Oh!' and say *the exact same word I just said*. Clearly there was something wrong with my pronunciation but I can't for the life of me figure out what it was.
They also didn't seem to be able to wrap their heads around the concept of a person that doesn't speak Korean. If someone asked me a question, I'd shrug and look confused and say, "Sorry, I don't speak Korean." Now, an American or Japanese or *sane* person's response to this would be to use only one- or two-word phrases, speak very slowly, and gesture a lot. Not a Korean person, though. Instead, they'd just keep talking and talking happily, and I'd sit there and stare at them blankly. Pretty much every taxi driver insisted on giving me a verbal tour of the city, pointing at random buildings and commenting on them at length in Korean although it would have been obvious from the very beginning that I *didn't understand a word he was saying*. Jens and Randi say the phrases "Oh, really?" and "Is that so?" are essential to life in Korea, because people love to explain things to you, and don't seem to care too much if you understand as long as you make happy noises.
For dinner that night Jens and Randi took me to kalbi, which is a kind of Korean barebecue. The table has a charcoal grill set in the center and you're given thin strips of kalbi beef to grill as you like. Along with the beef are three or four side dishes that everyone shares. Helpful hint: don't ever go out to dinner with a sick friend in Korea, as everyone eats out of the same dishes.
One of the sides was ALWAYS kimchi, or spicy pickled cabbage. Korean people LOVE kimchi. They eat it with every meal. They swear it cures just about every disease. Jens actually had a Korean friend tell him that eating kimchi is the reason Korean people don't have AIDS. @.@ Korean people also like to push it on Jens because it is, and I quote, "Good for manpower."
Usually a second side dish was some other kind of pickled vegetable. My favorite was the daikon radish pickled in ginger. It was very sweet and just like pickles in Japan. And maybe the third side dish would be some kind of salad or soup or soybean-y something. The food was very healthy, if monotonous and spicy enough to burn off your tongue. They didn't seem to flavor food with anything but sesame oil and spicy red sauce, which meant that somehow it managed to be both too spicy and incredibly bland at the same time. I'll take Japanese food any day, although Jens and Randi say they've acquired a taste for it.
Saturday Randi took me shopping in downtown Mokpo. Mostly clothes cost the same as Japan, but every once in a while we stumbled across a store with a clearance sale with really cheap clothes. I got a pair of jeans for about $15 and a pretty green lacy shirt for about $6. For lunch we ate mandoo guk, which is basically gyoza in soup. It was quite tasty, if bland.
That evening they took me to P-Club, which is a bar with pool and darts and an egregious amount of red brocade. I had kiwi soju (Korean rice wine, like sake except it kinda sucks) and the Korean version of bar peanuts: freeze-dried squid strips. They were actually pretty good. A little salty, a little sweet, very chewy.
Sunday was a beautiful, clear day, so we spent the morning climbing Yudal-san, the small mountain to the north of Mokpo. From the top we could see a lovely view of Mokpo, the port, and the sea beyond. At the summit was a sculpture garden with bizarre but entertaining modern sculptures and a temple in the gaudy Korean style. For lunch we had duc kalbi, or Korean barbecue chicken. I thought it was way too spicy.
After that we rode the bus for about an hour to Wolchul-san, a tall mountain with excellent climbing and a new temple, Dogab-sa. The main temple building was still under construction, but the bell tower, monks' quarters, and archway were open. It was a wonderful climb.
We finished the day with chuk, which was absolutely wonderful, the one Korean recipe I want to try at home. It was rice porridge, to which you could add strips of meat or seafood or vegetables. The chicken chuk in particular was delicious. Then Jens and Randi showed me the city at night on their scooter. Mokpo really looked best at night, because the crags and islands were lit up with gold and green and blue lights.
The next morning, I bid Jens and Randi farewell and jumped in the bus to Busan, a famous spa resort town on the east coast that's very popular with Japanese tourists, where I would meet my friend Liz. I had high hopes for Busan but was mostly disappointed. Aside from the spas and one mountain with temples, there was NOTHING TO DO. Liz and I actually left Busan a day early to spend more time in Gyeongju, and we're happy we did so. If you ever go to Korea, forget about Busan and head straight for Seoul or Gyeongju.
I had a few hours to kill in Busan before I needed to meet Liz at the airport, so I walked along Haeundae Beach and watched the sunset. I had kimbap for dinner, which is basically the Korean equivalent of sushi rolls. It's little chucks of rice and vegetables and meat rolled up in seaweed. Kimbap was okay, but, as were so many aspects of Korean culture, I thought it was not as good as the Japanese version.
Having said that, I can only hope none of my Korean-American friends read this article, because Korean people are incredibly sensitive about Japan. I can understand why, because of the occupation and all, but I got a little sick of having to listen to "Why Japan is responsible for every problem faced by Korea today, chapter 3, article 5" every time I mentioned that I was living in Tokyo. Every time a Korean person encouraged me to try something new, they'd drop some comment like, "Well, they have something similar in Japan, but of course the Japanese simply stole it from Korea and the Japanese version is clearly a poor imitation."
Getting to the airport was another miserable mess. It didn't mention in English at the bus station that Gimhae Airport and Gimhae the city are two very, very different places. When I got to Gimhae the city, the last buss to Gimhae Airport had already left for the night. I asked the clerk if she could show me a route that would get me to the airport or at least close enough to take a taxi the rest of the distance, and she basically said, "Not my problem. Next!" and ignored me. So I deciphered the Korean-only bus chart and made my way to a bus terminal near the airport, then took a nastily expensive taxi. When I got there, the airport had already closed and poor Liz had been kicked out of the building to stand on the sidewalk and wait for me to show up. Helpful hint: DON'T get caught out after the last bus in Korea. And by 'last bus' I mean try not to go anywhere after 7 PM, just in case. And I thought it was ridiculous that all the trains in Japan stopped before 1 in the morning...
Maybe I'm just used to Japanese ultra-politeness, but I found many Korean people were incredibly rude. You had to shove and push to reach the counter at stores, because everyone cut in line. If I was doing something wrong, a random stranger would start lecturing me in Korean, and if I didn't understand, they'd grab my hands or shoulders and force me to do it correctly. I was corrected on how to hold my chopsticks, how to buckle my seatbelt, and how to hail a taxi!
Not that everyone was rude. Sometimes the Koreans were incredibly generous. Like the museum guards who gave me coffe and a free grand tour. Or the woman on the bus ride to Busan who offered me half her sandwich when we stopped for a rest stop. And I guess the people that stopped me on the street and grabbed me were just trying to help, even if they were being very pushy about it.
Liz and I woke up bright and early on Tuesday to go to Beomeosa, a Buddhist temple in the northern suburbs of Busan. The temple itself was very pretty--check out my pictures. From there we climbed a little to a remote hut that seemed to be dedicated to women, as about 100 women or so were gathered to chant and burn incense. We could look off the edge of the cliff down into Busan, but as the city was buried under a perpetual cloud of smog we couldn't really see anything. Beomeosa is at the foot of a mountain that my Lonely Planet guidebook assured me had wonderful hiking, so Liz and I geared up and started climbing.
** WARNING!! ** Do not EVER believe what Lonely Planet tells you about a hike. Their 'moderately steep' climb turned out to be 2 hours uphill, jumping from giant rock to giant rock and occasionally stopping to wish we were dead.
When we stopped at the top a man very nicely offered us chocolate, then spoiled it by trying to get our phone numbers. Liz and I were hit on pretty much everywhere we went--apparently Korean men like Western women. It could be worse: some of Randi's friends say they've had taxi drivers proposition them in Korean, and when they weren't understood, said, "You, me, hotel, OK?" Eww.
So, after the Climb of Doom we reached the North Gate of Geumjeong Fortress, which is less of a fortress and more of a very long wall with periodic watchtowers that runs along the peak of Geumjeong. We walked along the wall for another couple hours, cursing Lonely Planet and stopping to take pictures of all the steep hills covered with dangerously loose gravel, aware that the only satisfaction we would get from the climb would be the photographic proof we could show off to our friends and family later.
Finally we reached the South Gate and the cable car that would carry us down the mountain. We stopped for a quick snack of pajeon, what the Japanese call 'chijimi,' a flat pancake filled with green onions and other vegetables and covered in the ubiquitous red sauce, then took the cable car down the mountain back to civilization.
Figuring that we well deserved it after 5 hours of mountain climbing, we treated ourselves to a few hours at a spa. Liz was a bit freaked out about the whole 'naked in a pool with a bunch of total strangers' bit, but I loved it. There were all kinds of pools: hot pools and cold pools and every other temperature in between, pools filled with rose water and apple water and jasmine water and just about any other plant you can imagine, exfoliating mud baths, saunas, relaxation rooms with TVs, infrared rooms, aromatherapy rooms, and even more. After a few hours there, I wasn't even sore anymore. I would definitely go back.
We woke up the next morning to realize we'd exhausted all the entertainment possibilities of Busan already. So we decided to hop on a bus to Gyeongju, which turned out to be the best part of the trip. I'll continue with Gyeongju later, though, because right now my fingers hurt and I'm hungry.
Love you all!
|
