I
suppose a short prologue is in order here to explain exactly how and
why
I wound up taking a weeklong vacation in Korea.
I
lived with my parents in Incheon and Seoul back in the early 1970s when
my
father was working for Fluor International, building an offshore tanker
pipeline
and oil refinery on the Yellow Sea. I was a spoiled little American
brat,
and refused to have anything to do with Korean food or culture. As I've
matured
somewhat since then, I've had a hankering to return and sample the
things
that I deliberately passed up during my misspent youth.
In
the late '80s, I got the opportunity to briefly return to Seoul in my
capacity
as a technical support engineer for Cray Research. I only spent two
days
there, most of the time trapped in a hotel attempting to engage in
productive
dialogue with the local service manager who was far more interested in
drinking
OB Beer and ogling Phillipino strippers, than talking shop with a
newly-minted
technogeek like me.
This
year, my current employer decided to force all of their employees to
wipe
some cash off the books by taking several days of mandatory vacation
during
the Memorial Day week. I had 90,000 frequent-flyer miles to burn, and
an
old college chum living in Daejon who was more than happy to put me up
in
his apartment during the week. The rest, as they say, is not worthy of
even
a minor footnote in the history of the world as we know it.
Having
failed to secure an upgrade to biz class, I arrived at Incheon airport
after
two miserable flights lasting a total of 14 hours, crammed into cattle
class
with screaming brats, while trying to digest largely inedible airline
meals.
As if that weren't enough fun, our plane was hit by lightning during
our
landing approach. Lovely. I'm already a nervous flyer, and my meds had
worn
off hours before.
Once
I got my feet on the ground, however, things got rapidly better. I'd
made
a reservation at a nearby hotel, and they sent a shuttle out to get me
post-haste.
My room was quite spacious and very cheap. SARS has done wonders for
creating
travel bargains in Asia. After a quick check of my e-mail (the whole
country
appears to be wired for broadband) I was soon comfortably snoozing my
jet
lag away. I got up early the next morn, and got shuttled back to the
airport
where I caught an early bus to Daejon. It was raining buckets and the
driver
barreled down the expressway like a maniac. I constantly hear people
poking
fun at overly-cautious Asian drivers here in the US, believe me, none
of
those drivers are Korean.
The
bus deposited me in front of a Daejon hotel and I gave Mark a call. He
picked
me up at the bus stop in his dilapidated little Hyundai and took me
back
to his pad. His job at the local university provides him with a
luxurious
(by Korean standards) 3-bedroom apartment in a huge block of ugly
concrete
towers, all of which appear to have been modeled after the style of
former
Eastern-bloc socialist countries like Romania and Eastern Germany. His
apartment
was nice, but extremely noisy. The family above him has two totally
sugared-up
little sprogs who spent all day and much of the night jumping up and
down
on their floor (his ceiling), and banging away tunelessly on the family
piano.
Good thing I had earplugs.
After
depositing my luggage and having a bite to eat, we drove out into
downtown
Daejon to see what there was to see. The city itself has little to
offer
in the way of culture, and functions mostly as a sort of Silicon Valley
for
various tech industries and university research centers. We spent an
hour
or so at the site of the '93 World's Fair which is a sprawling
collection
of weird, run-down and rusting hulks of international pavilions that've
been
turned into a kind of fun-fair now known as Expo Science Park. It was
quite
a surreal atmosphere, sort of a cross between Disneyland and Logan's
Run.
We wandered around the grounds trying to locate the North Korean
pavilion,
I had visions of it containing a fabulous, informative exhibit
illustrating
how Kim Jong Il's offical hairstylists create that unique "shaved duck"
look of his, but it was closed, sadly.
After
that, we drove around looking for a currency museum indicated on our
official
Daejon tourism map. We eventually located it hidden behind the local
mint
(go figure). It was actually quite interesting, full of exhibits of
paper
and metal currency dating from feudal times to the present. Somewhat
incongrously,
there was also a special photography exhibit dealing with Korean
pottery.
The photographer himself was present and insisted on giving us a
picture-by-picture
guided tour in his
broken, but charming English. Afterwards, he presented us with a couple
of
custom-made postcards with his photos printed on the front which we
accepted
gratefully.
At
this point, I just want to stop the narrative for a moment and mention
the
incredible kindness and friendliness of the Koreans that I met, they
were
all helpful and open to a fault and did everything within their power
to
try and communicate with us if we demonstrated even the slightest bit
of
interest in their culture. Unfortunately, many of the children appeared
to
be unbelievably spoiled and reckless little monsters, especially the
males,
but that appears to be something of an Asian cultural phenomenon that's
not
limited to Korea.
Mark
had to work half-days most of the week, so after Sunday I was largely
on
my own. I managed to get around well by taxi, although the drivers
usually
scared the bejesus out of me with their unbelievably aggressive driving
habits,
and made it out to several sites of historic interest and/or natural
beauty
outside of the city. One morning, I went hiking in a huge park called
Bomunsan
which featured a stone fortress situated on top of a mountain that was
also
dotted with lovely little shrines and temples.
I
also journeyed a bit farther afield to the towns of Gongju and Buyeo
where
there were ancient tombs from the Baekje Dynasty, old palaces, and yet
more
elaborate Buddhist temples. The hill fortress of Gonju is famous for
its
legend of the 3,000 ladies of the court who leapt off a cliff rather
than
submit to the impious lusts of the Chinese and Silla kings who pillaged
their
city.
When
not traveling about via psycho taxi, I entertained myself by watching
Korean
soap operas dubbed helpfully in English. The plots invariably revolved
around
scheming mother-in-laws and ungrateful children disappointing their
noble,
self-sacrificing parents by refusing to adhere to time-honored
Confucian
principles.
Mark
and I also did a lot of dining out in the evenings. The food was
unfailingly
delicious and unbelievably cheap. All meals featured an appetizer
course
consisting of several varieties of kimchi, followed by a main meat
dish,
typically marinated pork or beef, broiled over a grill in the center of
our
table. The meat could then be wrapped in fresh leaves, topped with
radishes,
sprouts, and other veg, and eaten with gusto.
After dinner, we usually stopped in the local bars for a beer. The
patrons
were mostly college kids who all wanted to practice their English with
us.
Very few foreigners besides us were in evidence.
On
Wednesday, Mark had the day off so we drove out to a nearby national
park
called Gyeryongsan which is sort of a nexus of Korean Buddhism. There
was
a large network of trails that wound up to the top of towering granite
ridges,
passing by numerous shrines and temples. A beautiful stream filled with
tiny
rainbow-colored fish and white star-shaped tree blossoms floating along
the
surface trickled down the mountains along the main trail.
We
hiked first to a Buddhist nunnery called Donghaksa where we found
ourselves
surrounded by nuns wearing baggy gray robes and sporting shaved heads.
Many
wore wide-brimmed straw hats. Quite a few religious ceremonies were in
progress
during our visit so we stopped often and listened to the ritual
drumming
and chanting. The whole experience would've been very relaxing and
meditative
if not for the hordes of Korean housewives swarming over the trails
yakking
loudly and getting drunk off of soju, a rather nasty, brown, vodka-like
beverage
made from rice, or yams. Korean culture is very much stuck in the
1950's.
Women are expected to stay at home and raise the kids, so you run into
herds of these asiatic June Cleavers everywhere you go. Despite the
relative ease
of the trails, everyone was decked out in extreme hiking gear topped
off
with a pair of white gloves. Weird.
We
wandered farther up the trail which became increasingly steeper. The
weather
was gorgeous but quite humid, so we were rapidly becoming soaked with
sweat.
Eventually we wound up at the foot of a series of long wooden ladders
set
into the mountainside that led up a very steep cliff face to the top of
the
ridge. On the other side was a temple called Gapsa. At that point we
were
winded and starving, so we decided to turn around and head back down
the
mountain to get something to eat.
Back
near the trailhead, we found a small restaurant with a deck right over
the
bubbling stream. Mark ordered a dish of pickled vegetables mixed
with chili paste, meat, and rice called Bi Bim Bbap, and I had a plate
of
fried potato cakes with scallions and squid filling. We washed it all
down
with a delicious folk liquor made from Chrysanthemums. We knew that we
were
drunk when neither one of us could say "Bi Bim Bbap" properly any more.
Feeling
pretty stuffed (and buzzed) at that point, we spent some time relaxing
on
a boulder in the sun next to the stream and watched the little fish
darting
around in the cool water. The banks of the stream were dotted with
little
man-made piles of stone, their purpose unknown to us, but probably
spiritual
in nature.
Eventually,
we returned to the car and drove back into Daejon. Later, after
sobering
up somewhat, we located a restaurant that specialized in Samgyetang, a
particularly
wonderful dish featuring a whole chicken stuffed with glutinous rice,
ginseng,
chestnuts, and deer horn which was then chopped up into a kind of
porridge
and fed to us by our gracious (and rather randy) hostesses. I don't
know
why being hand-fed is such a turn-on, but dammit, it is.