Ice Fishing...

..at night. OK, maybe not, but it did remind me of this, from John Paul Jones' album The Thunderthief. The piano's nice, but the lyrics are truly awful. Sadly, this isn't even the worst offender on the album.

Moving on, we come to one of the things that defines my little town, the trout festival. I live in a town of around 10,000 people, but one that for two months in January and February attracts visitors from across Korea. The county of Pyeongchang is one of the only places where trout has been successfully farmed within Korea, and so to publicise this, they dam the river, wait for it to freeze over and then dump a whole load of trout in for the public to fish for.

The festival really transforms the lower part of town. A whole complex of buildings gets put up (seemingly just after they were finally taken down after last year's festival) and earth movers work for several months to completely block off the river, save for a small channel running down the side. Then everyone sits and waits for it to get freezing cold, the ice forms and everyone gets their festival on.

The main festival activity is of course, the ice fishing itself. Hundreds of holes are drilled in the ice, and individuals and families come to try their luck, either with their own equipment or the plastic sticks with a metal fish as a lure that are sold at the festival. I felt like the trout may have got wise to this by the time we started fishing, as they'd been swimming through a forest of jiggling golden lures for several weeks beforehand. While we did see some people get lucky, Linda and I's only fishing success was the ice that formed on our line.

Fisherman at work.

The equipment.

The lure. Good for luring, well, nothing.

Popular game, catching ice.

There's only so long you can stand on a freezing river in -20C weather with a very slim chance of catching anything. What the sensible festival goer does is head over to the side-event, the bare handed trout catching, instead. This takes place in a pool away from the river, which is kept slightly warmer (it's water, not ice, but barely). With around 30 others, I head into a warm changing room and change into fetching orange trousers, a grey T-shirt and rubber shoes. We then surround a pool, do some shouting in Korean (I'm not sure what I'm saying yes to here) and then, to the considerable annoyance of 100 or so trout, we leap into the water and try to pull them out with our hands.

Trout catching proves to be fiendishly difficult. The idea is to drive them to the edges and then flip them out on to the edge, where you can stuff your trout in a plastic bag to be carried away later. The trouble is, as soon as you locate one it's slipped through your grasp, and your legs, and headed back to the middle of the pool. The water is so cold it soon becomes painful to put my hands in, and I wonder whether I'll suffer the ignominy of failing to catch a single fish. Then, a gift. Like a big cat spotting one labouring wildebeest, I spot an easy target. One trout is trying to hide itself between two rocks at the edge of the pool, little realising that it's entire rear half is sticking out. Quick as a flash, I reach down, grasp it firmly and lift it out onto the side, to cheers from the crowd. I'm excited as I stuff it into my bag and leap back into the water. My enthusiasm is to no avail though, as the trout continue to evade me. When it's just me and some kids splashing in the pool, I accept defeat and head back to the warmth of the changing room, clutching Barry, my trout.

The pool.

The contestants.

"3...2...1..."

Missed.

"Bloody hell this is cold."

"There was one here a minute ago I swear."

"Yeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeees!"

"No."

The Korean's being a friendly people, my lack of fish is noted and an old man is dispatched to the pool to catch me another one. This is, of course, hideously embarrassing but it does give Linda and I the chance to try two different ways of eating trout. My gift trout is given to an old lady in one tent, and in a matter of seconds it's delicious pieces of sashimi. It's tender and delicious, especially dipped in a little hot sauce. Having eaten half of that, we then headed to the grill tent, where Barry is taken from me, wrapped in foil and plopped on the grill. It's not long before we're tucking in to an even more delicious trout, grilled to perfection, moist and succulent with the subtle flavour nicely preserved. The fact that it was my catch made it all the more tasty.

Where I failed, the old man with waders and a net succeeded.

On the cutting table.

Vicious.

Sashimi.

Barry and I.

Barry and I again.

Barry, you were too dumb to live, but you didn't die in vain.

OK, maybe feeling a little guilty now.

And with that, it was time to get out of the stinking cold, and head home for a hot chocolate. I'm spending the summer working on my trout grabbing technique.

A

I'm back

Finally, a post! Christmas break rather messed up my schedule, and knocked me out of my regular blogging routine. This is not to say I didn't have time, I did in fact have more time than usual, but never quite the time to post.

Anyhow, I've now been back in Jinbu for two days, which has been my first chance to pause and catch my breath for some time. Since my last post I've been through Christmas, New Year, three weeks of English Camp and then four weeks in the UK. It seems like a lot, and it was. It's been nice to get back to some stunning, and relatively warm weather, given that when I left the thermometer was holding steady around the -10C mark. This winter was by all accounts exceptionally cold. Too cold sadly for my boiler, which froze up during my absence and spat water all over the floor. Fortunately it's back in some kind of working order, though nowhere near what it used to be. What wasn't good was getting back feeling terrible, and having to retreat to bed for a while. I'm not sure whether it was readjusting to Korean germs, or the collected effects of jetlag and hangover, but whatever it was I didn't feel particularly well. I'm almost back to top form now though. Here's a nice shot of round where I live, seeing this always makes me feel better.

I'm going to try to put up a few posts over the next few days covering my period of absence. In truth they'll probably be photo heavy and text light, but that's probably no bad thing.

I'll start with Christmas. It's not quite the same festival in Korea as it is in the Western world, with just a single holiday falling on the day itself, and even on the 25th a lot of shops seemed to be open anyway. It certainly wasn't much of a holiday "season" as it is in the UK; in fact I had probably my busiest week of the year starting the 27th December. All in all it didn't feel much like Christmas at all.

Linda's birthday falls on Christmas Eve, so we went out until very late and didn't get up until about midday on the 25th. We popped out for a wander around Incheon's Chinatown, and then (having failed to secure a traditional Christmas dinner) attempted to take down an entire duck between two of us. This noble mission was sadly halted when we realised we could get a doggy bag. We did manage about 2/3 of it though, and it was delicious. For those that don't know about Korean duck, it comes part garlic steamed and then you finish it off over hot charcoals in front of you at your table. Then you wrap it in a lettuce leaf with some bean paste, garlic and pickled onions, and eat. Delicious.

After that it was back home for a Skype call with my family (this is the first Christmas I've not been at home) and then bed. Perhaps not a normal Christmas, but a good one all the same.

Linda's colleague Cindy and her husband, whose name escapes me.

Birthday breakfast (well, lunch by the time we got up)

Incheon Chinatown's Mural Street

Me and Incheon

Not sure what this was.

Nor this. I realise that this is not the finest captioning ever.

Cabbage art.

Cool, isn't it?

Douglas MacArthur, whose daring landing at Incheon changed the direction of the Korean War, and thus nearly 60 years later the direction of my career. Cheers Doug.

Confucius. And you wonder why he preached respect for the elderly.

Duckfest: Two people and one duck will enter. Two will emerge feeling bloated, one will emerge in a doggy bag. BUT WHO WILL IT BE?

Grillin'

New Year here is similarly low key, partly because Korea has two calendars and so has two New Years celebrations, with the lunar calendar festival (the Chinese New Year) being the bigger deal. Still, this doesn't stop thousands of Korean's heading to the East coast to catch the first glimpse of the sun on New Year's day, usually after drinking heavily on the beach all night.

We decided that we'd go and try to do similar, braving some freezing temperatures to get to Jeongdongjin, where we'd also been in the summer. The key attraction was the turning of the giant hourglass on the beach there. We were told that the festival was cancelled, but headed down nonetheless. When we got there we saw a suspiciously large amount of sand left in the glass, and having stood for a while in the crowd, realised it was already two minutes past twelve. Happy New Year.

Still, we got some sparklers, and then retired to the warmth of a chicken restaurant. Neither of us fancied staying up all night on a freezing beach in the end, so we caught a taxi back to Gangneung just as everyone seemed to be flooding in to Jeongdongjin. A bit of an anticlimax, but we did get free doughnuts and persimmon from our taxi driver.

All aboard... the night train!

The hourglass.

Jeongdongjin by night.

Annoyed by the hourglass not turning, Alex decided to effect a terrorist attack on it instead.

I'll try to post some more winter activities over the next few days before school starts again. Until then...

A