Chuseok Diary Part 2

Thursday

The weather took a huge turn for the better on Thursday, which was good as this was to be the day I abandoned over-eating and boozing early in the afternoon, and set off on a 120km bike ride. My friend Emily and I had been planning a multi-day bike ride since the beginning of summer, and had only just got around to doing it by the middle of autumn. We were also joined by Tom, a new addition to the Jinbu teachers union.

The day got off to an inauspicious start as I sheered off the valve on Tom's bike tyre trying to pump it up. I had a spare inner-tube, but then we couldn't undo the front wheel nut, and one of my cheap tools died in the attempt to undo it. This meant an emergency call to my friend Ui Chal and his heavy duty adjustable spanner (ooh-err). Finally we got the tube changed and disappeared upstairs to meet Emily and get ready to set off. Five minutes later my phone rings and it's Tom saying that the bike has been stolen. We spend a while trying to find the security guy to no avail, so sadly Emily and I set off without Tom. A mile up the road my phone rings. It's Tom, saying the thief was in fact Caitlyn, the other new teacher who knows the code for the bike lock. She'd borrowed it to go to the bank. We stopped to let Tom catch up, and finally set off on the first leg of our trip, which would take us out to the coastal town of Jumunjin and then down to Gangeung, over one of the higher passes in Korea. If you're interested in our route, look here:

http://www.walkjogrun.net/routes/current_route.cfm?rid=511EDCA1-92F2-1001-13A5F230AD3B4342

Today we got all of the hard work done early. Almost immediately out of Jinbu the road sets out on a 5 mile long, 300m high climb to the top of the Sogeumgang valley. It's a pretty tough ask, especially when your bike's gears aren't too co-operative (Tom). Still, with some puffing and panting we all made it up to the top, where we stopped at a service area for (appropriately enough) mountain vegetable bibimbap.

Having done all of the up for the day, the next part of the ride promised to be a lot more fun. Plunging down almost 1000m to the coast on twisting roads is a much, much better idea than hauling yourself up the hill in hot sunshine. We launched ourselves down the hill, Emily and I in the lead, respectively singing and impersonating Valentino Rossi, and Tom of the one brake bicycle proceeding more steadily behind. The road was amazing - a series of tight U-bends on a steep slope. I'd love to show you photos but I was too busy going too fast and doing things I was taught never to do on my cycling proficiency test. At least I was confident of going faster than any car tackling the hill, so didn't have to look over my shoulder too often.

The only other incident of note was once the road had flattened out and we were cruising along towards Jumunjin. It being Chuseok, drink was still being taken at lunchtime, and we came upon this old fella on his motor scooter. Sadly, I missed the best bit when he was weaving all over the road and holding up a line of ten cars, but still, when you're wobbling home at 3pm on a 50cc scooter being overtaken by crazy foreigners on bikes, maybe it's time to ask yourself if you have a drinking problem.

We were going along too nicely to get my camera out again after that, until we hit the coast and turned south towards Gangneung. We stopped at Sacheonjin beach for a quick Powerade and a clamber on the rocks, before setting off down the network of excellent cyclepaths towards our final destination of Gyeongpo beach.

We got to Gyeongpo Beach as the shadows from the pines were beginning to stretch across the sand. Not an unpleasant sight to greet you at the end of a long day in the saddle. We dismounted, shackled the bikes to a tree and bought ourselves a bottle of Cass. This proved to be a mistake, as despite it being the very sound of vitality, it also becomes pretty much undrinkable halfway through a large bottle. We abandoned it and headed off for Nakji Bokkeum (hot stir-fried octopus tentacles) for dinner, and then for my first ever Jjimjilbang experience.

The Jjimjilbang is a pretty much essential Korean experience. Despite that I'd been avoiding it for a while. It's basically a public baths and sleeping room. They're frighteningly cheap, and, much like the Divine Comedy's National Express, all human life is here. 7,000won (about 4 quid, or $6) gets you a sauna and selection of pools to use for almost as long as you like. The pools range in temperature (though the one we went to only had three, I'm assured that most have more) so you can sweat everything out in the sauna, before jumping into the plunge pool for a few minutes, then climbing into the hot pool, which leaves a strange feeling of wearing your skin like a coat, or at least it did to me. Anyway, this part I really liked, and it soothed the pains built up from several hours on my bike. As long as you can put up with naked Korean men massaging each other you should be fine.

The second part is the one I'm not quite so keen on. After putting on a pair of standard-issue grey pyjamas, which are actually really comfortable, you go into the sleeping room. There's a TV to watch here, but mostly you're just here to pull out a sleeping mat (two if it's quiet) and a horrible, horrible plastic pillow and bed down for the night wherever you can find a space. Now, my experience was actually not too bad. I crawled off into the men-only (ooh-err again) space, which was completely deserted, and managed to catch about 4 hours. I was still woken up by the ceaseless snoring, and interminable comings and goings from the main room, and this was on a quiet night. I also woke up with all of my former aches and pains fully restored from sleeping more or less on the floor. Still, these were eased somewhat by another dip in the hot and cold pools, and left me ready for another hard day on the roads of Korea. I'll tell you all about that next time.

A

Two go to the penis park

So here's another set of my summer holiday photos. I realise I've been shamefully slow in getting these up, but I've been busy, OK? I'm always planning to do some serious writing on here and get right up to date, but I don't know whether I'll ever get time. Anyway, for now here are some of the continuing adventures of Nick and me during his visit to Korea.

Having finished hiking in Seoraksan and popped back to Jinbu for "Hope and Soju", we then set off down part of the east coast of Korea. We popped in on Jeongdongjin, where we looked around the North Korean sub there and had quite a few beers in the revolving bar on top of the Sun Cruise Hotel. We then hopped on the Sea Train down to Samcheok. The Sea Train is an interesting concept: it's a train in which all of the seats are turned sideways, with large windows through which you can enjoy the coastal views. A nice idea in practice, but when the mountainous scenery in the opposite direction is arguably more spectacular, this seems a strange choice.

Samcheok is a small city centered slightly inland. It's quiet, or at least it was when we were there, and relaxed. It has a reputation for excellent raw fish restaurants, which is what we set out to find for dinner. We wandered into a seafood restaurant, but it only did cooked fish. The owner suggested we head to his brother's restaurant instead, and even called us a taxi to get us there. When we arrived we were treated to a wonderful meal, mostly served by the restaurateur's two children, who strived valiantly to tell us what everything was in English and make sure that we were OK. All through the trip I was struck by how kind and helpful people were to us, and it made me very glad I stayed in Korea this summer.

After dinner and some post dinner bottles of soju, we road-tested another brand of hangover drink and went to bed. We awoke to an absolute stunner of a day. Our tourism options seemed to be visiting a cave to mooch about in the damp and cold, or go and look at enormous wooden penises and suffer sunburn and epic back sweats. If you know me or Nick, you can probably guess what we chose. Here are a selection of the photos I'm not too ashamed to put here...

Nick hugging a giant wooden cock. These captions are going to be easy to do. I don't even have to try to be funny, I just say what I see.

A giant, very manly looking woman with a glans for a head. She's pregnant and giving birth at the same time. You can't see in this photo, but the baby also has a large wooden penis. See what I mean about the captions?

This is the reason that the penis park was built, to placate an angry woman's ghost. I'll give you one guess as to what she's holding.

I'm not sure how comfortable I'd feel sitting on one of these. I mean, they're stone so probably not very forgiving.

휴지!

As if anyone could have resisted taking the two photos above.

A giant penis. Designed to look like a cannon. That moves up and down. And has a water feature coming out from underneath it. Only in Korea.

I think what I liked the most about the place was that it was actually an incredibly beautiful park. An incredibly beautiful park filled with big wooden phalluses.

Just hangin' out.

Speechless.

That would surely just be more of an inconvenience than anything else.

The beach. And some penises.

Men and their dogs. And penises.

Yes, I think those really are chaise longues.

I've run out of captions. You can finish yourselves off...

Chuseok Diary Part 1

Last week, after four very hectic weeks of football, studying Korean and extensive lesson planning, I made it to the big week off. The rest was very much appreciated as it felt like I'd been busy from 7am to 11pm every weekday.

Chuseok is usually translated to me as the Korean thanksgiving, though I think it's more like a harvest festival. For one thing, Koreans aren't celebrating giving the indigenous people smallpox. Anyway, it's a big festival of drinking and eating, and seems to be the most important time of the year for Korean families to get together. It's probably more akin to Christmas in the UK than anything else, if you replace the last mince pie that you force down your throat knowing that you really shouldn't, with songpyeong - a kind of sweet rice-cake filled with sesame and syrup or chestnut. Anyway, here's what I got up to over the week.

Monday

Monday was actually a school day, but all of my classes were cancelled for "physical testing day". I popped out occasionally to laugh at my students running around the school track in the rain, but mostly I sat at my desk and groaned. This was due to spending the entire weekend drinking with my new friend Jae Yeong, and particularly the fault of a couple of bottles of mushroom spirit the night before. Probably not the best start to the week.

Tuesday

I got my first taste of a proper Korean Chuseok today. Having spent the morning working (it never stops entirely, even during holidays) I went to spend the evening with my friend Stacy's family in a small town close to here. This is where I developed the idea that Chuseok here is a lot like Christmas back home. We stuffed ourselves full of delicious food (home made bibimbab and seafood patties) and then sat down in front of the TV for an entire Lord of the rings movie, all the while chugging magkoli and munching songpyeon in a vain attempt to find the chestnut ones that Stacy had made.

Anyway, I had an awesome evening. Stacy's family were lovely to me, despite a fairly significant language barrier. In Korea, food often seems to take the place of speaking anyway, and an appreciation of Korean food, particularly someone's home cooking is often enough to seal good relations with people. Anyway, thanks Stacy and your family for a great evening.

Wednesday

Wednesday was another morning of lesson planning (I'm working on a series of lesson based on the movie Up!) before I had lunch at another Korean friend's house. Once again, the entire family was there, including, to her obvious dismay, one of my students, who is my friend's niece.

Once again, the food was excellent. The entire table was covered in various kinds of food, including galbi ribs, steamed pork, battered shrimp, mushrooms and many different mountain vegetables, which are particularly prevalent around here. At the same time, the honey licqeur, berry wine and good old soju began to flow. I left for the slowest game of futsal I've played in a while, with every player severly encumbered by food and alcohol. There was still time for beer and snacks during and after the game, before I came home for a long nap. See now why this seems a lot like Christmas?

I'm going to post at this point, so that this post gets broken up. Part 2 covers my cycling adventures and will be up very soon.

Odaesan Camping Trip & Other Stuff

Over the past few years I've been convincing myself that I don't really like camping. I mean, what's the point in sleeping in a tent on a yoga mat, when you have a perfectly decent house and bed at home. I think this opinion was informed by festival experiences, where you go to bed damp, shivering and blind drunk, and wake up three hours later feeling like death, having sweated all 18 pints of cloudy cider you put away back out into your kecks. Cue a few days of smelling awful, feeling awful and risking trench-foot / polio.

It's been a few years since I went camping just for the sake of it, rather than for the sake of seeing some bands I wouldn't really remember. However, recently I started to feel strange pangs of desire to head out into the woods and get back to nature. Well, not really, as what really inspired me was the food here. Korean barbecue, unsurprisingly, translates very well to the outdoor environment. Be a proper Korean and grab yourself a portable gas stove (complete with handy carrying case), a couple of pounds of pork, a tub of soy bean paste, some garlic and a handful of lettuce leaves and you're good to go. That's what we did, and here's how it turned out:

This was our chosen spot. Stacy and I had managed to acquire ourselves what turned out to be kids' tents (hers is the pink one, in case you were wondering), lending our campsite an air of healthy familial fun. That's not really how it turned out, unless you spent your childhood playing an amalgamation of at least three drinking games with your parents and sinking corn wine at an alarming rate, but there you go.

Avian visitor. Not easily scared off either. I guess he was in the market for a tasty pork rind.

Odaesan stream. Ain't nature wonderful?

And again.

We took a stroll up to Sangwonsa, and stopped at the tea rooms. Here's an omi tea, a pumpkin soup and two tree teas, not to be confused with tea tree, which was what I ladled onto my face for most of my pimple pocked youth.

Tea room interior.

Some of the art at temples here is really spectacular. Far more so than the buildings themselves in my opinion. This piece in particular I really like. I've not seen the musicians motif anywhere else around, and the fact that this is painted on the ceiling makes it doubly impressive, though harsh on the neck.

We were up at Sangwonsa just as the sun began to go down. Once it dipped behind the mountain the pines took on a slightly surreal blueish tinge, and everything felt a bit strange for a moment. My camera didn't do a very good job of capturing it sadly.

View out from Sangwonsa over the park. You have to hand it to the Buddhists, they know how to pick a spot. Also, every temple I've been too has satellite TV. Maybe this is my new religion. I could go hiking during the day, and watch live premiership football at nights. Throw in a bit of meditation (read: sleeping) and the odd mountain vegetable bibimbap and I'd be a happy man.

This was us discovering a fun new game of hide the coin in the big rock pile. Not as easy as Stacy is making it look above. In order to get the coing properly wedged in, it's necessary to actually tilt the rock pile (which is chuffing heavy by the way) and then let it drop back down on your coin. All of this at the risk of causing "a scene" in a haven of peace and reflection.

Temple bells are awesome. If you're into drone then they're pretty much a must. Boris have nothing on a monk bashing the crap out of one of these.

And here we are, living off the land, killing what we eat, unplugging from the grid. OK, we bought everything from a supermarket, but hey ho. This was absolutely delicious. Big pieces of succulent, fatty pork, soy bean paste and garlic wrapped up in a lettuce leaf. It's probably fair to say that none of us smelt too fresh by the end of the night, but this was one of my all time favourite meals. So good, in fact, that I photographed it twice.

"I look nothing like a crack-head." Her words, not mine.

Morning: If I was more awake I'd be worried that my new burner and the frying pan have changed positions overnight.

More morning: I'll leave you guys to make your own caption here.