1. ..in theory.

17^C

Sun is shining, but I it's intensity is fading again..

This past weekend presented me with a unique opportunity. Thursday was the day this school opened back in 1939, yep.. that makes my little school 70 years old! Then Friday was the Korean version of Thanks-giving, so I went on a four day holiday.

The plan was simple; we’ve seen most of this province.. time to visit another. We’ve also seen the sunrise many times over, so we thought it best to visit the west coast to watch the sun go down. After talking with some co-teachers, I discovered this place called Taean; a peninsula city, more specifically we were in Anmyeon which is a National Park reserve.

Here’s where we were, just south of Incheon.

In theory this was the perfect weekend. In theory.

I went and surprised Cassie at her place on Wednesday night and then relaxed on Thursday, doing basically nothing at all while she was at work. We left at 10am on Friday morning and it took us just under five hours to get to Kkotji Beach, Anmyeon. Here is what the west coast of Korea looks like. Notice the lack of barbed wire and military personnel?

Along the shoreline there were all these tents, huge red orange and blue tents that were actually seafood restaurants. We decided that we should try one of them out and see how Koreans do fresh seafood.. on the west side! As we sat down and pointed to the prawns swimming in a large tank, she brought us something wrapped in aluminum foil. She placed it on our own personal little BBQ, and told us not to touch it for a while. Next she brought us a kind of soup that was just made of clear broth with green onions in it and some clams. As we devoured those, she came over and unfolded the foil package to reveal this..

We sat there eating fresh seafood for a while and watching the sun go down below the horizon.

That night around 7pm we still hadn’t set up camp and I was starting to feel a little queasy from the prawns. More than anything I didn’t want the hassle of camping that night.. what if late at night I developed food poisoning and had to run to the bathroom ever two minutes? The bathroom was a cool 2km’s away! So, to Cassie’s disappointment we headed to a motel about 5 minutes down the road. It’s ok to do that kind of thing here as fully equipped motels cost less than $30AUD per night. We decided that we’ll get up early on Saturday morning, set up camp and then spend the day on the beach. Everything was going well, the weather was perfect as can be, and we set out a picnic egg salad sandwich for lunch.

I have always wanted to lay a Lovo all by myself and I thought it the perfect time to do it now. So I had got everything ready and gotten extremely excited about the prospect of doing something for the first time ever.. and guess what?

It went off without a hitch! Man it brought back so many memories!! Here's how I did it: First I dug the hole about 50-60cm's down. Next Cassie lit a fire in there with some large rocks at the fires' base. We built up the fire, let it burn for an hour or so (depending on the size of the rocks needed to heat), and then when the fire died down, I lay down some chicken wire. On top of the chicken wire (or mesh), I put some green leafy branches, on top of that more chicken wire, then on top of that I put the food. I covered the food with more leafy branches and then placed a wet towel over that. Tucked in the sides so the sand didn’t get too close to the food and then we buried it. We left it for 3 hours, dug it up and enjoyed the smoked-earthy flavour of our food!

After we dug it up, it was still too early to eat, so we packed it away and went to explore the shoreline. About 3km up the road from where we set up camp was this:

When we finally arrived back from watching the sunset, we looked across the sea and saw lightening and dark clouds. Then when we couldn’t see the squid fishers anymore we knew that it must be a big one. So we tried to set up the tarp over the tent but that really didn’t work. Now we had about 15mins before the storm hit us. We basically ran around like headless chooks for a while thinking of what to do next, and by the time we tried to do anything the storm hit us. We salvaged what we could and put it in the car. Then we sat in the car with the headlights on the tent, watching it be subjected the abusive wind and lashing after lashing of rain. When one of the tent stakes came loose we knew there was nothing left for it.. we rushed over and as quickly as we could we shoved everything in the car. We sat there shivering with the heater on full blast and after a minute had passed, disheartened, we made our way to another motel. So ended our long weekend of ‘camping’.

The next day dawned beautifully! We had a five hour drive home and the weather looked like it would hold up. We went through Yeongwol as well and thought we’d visit Seondol again before heading back to Sangdong.

3. Krazed Korean and the Chamber of Secrets….

19^C

Bright, bright, bright, sunshining day!

Arrived in Korea on the 12th of September, tired, hungry and not knowing what to expect. I had heard bits and pieces from Benji (Krazed Korean), however most of the stories were centered around Soju and I purposely refrained from reading his blog to maintain the “journey into the unknown” effect. As the plane was landing we were both popping are heads up eagerly trying to see what awaited us. For a split second I thought... mmm maybe I should have read his blog and googled a bit…oh well too late now. Our bags took forever to arrive and once they did the only thing I was concerned with was getting my care package of tin mutton, aachar, tim tams, fish masala etc through customs.

After relaxingly walking through customs we met up with Benj. Yay!! Just like old times! My first comment was wow it’s so clean! Benj chuckled and said, “wait til ya see the rest of it.” Nav’s first comment was “wow they have Starbucks”!? I then noticed Kraze burgers, pointing with excitement, then pointing at Benj…”hehe its you”.

We had some dinner in Incheon, which was this Cajun chicken dish. It was so yummy and so fresh. Also had our first shot of Soju. Nav loved it and took to it like mother’s milk. I thought it tasted like Panadol elixir. (sorry soju lovers….guess I’m not a refined ethanol kinda girl).

The next morning we hopped on a bus and headed for Benji’s home town.. Yeongwol. We were so excited by everything we were seeing and busy snapping away like hungry paparazzi. I was really surprised with the sight I was seeing….the clearest blue sky reflecting on endless mountain terrain lined with dense dark green pine trees.. aligning to a base of yellowish green, systematic rice paddies... “Wow this place is beautiful” I said in disbelief of what I was experiencing…..again Benj chuckled and said “wait till you see the rest of it”.

We arrived in Yeongwol and did some shopping. We also went to the market, which again was so clean. (very different from Flemo..flemington market for non Sydney-siders). The produce here is so fresh. Very natural and rustic.. unlike the genetically modified crap we were accustomed to. We picked up some freshly made Korean savoury pancakes filled with Kimchi and another with Wombuk and noodles.

We hopped in the car, which Cassie had kindly let Benji use while we are here (thanks Cassie..I don’t think I could have stomached the 110km round the bend turns on the bus). It was weird seeing Benj drive on the “wrong side” of the road (left hand side drive).
We drove along the winding roads, stereo blasting UB40, with cool fresh clean crisp air blowing in through the windows. The scenery was indescribably beautiful and the fresh air I was trying to describe above is amazingly fresh. Snippets of Autumn were visible along the mountain side as some of the dense dark green trees displayed light gold, amber and warm red leaves. We could also hear the sounds of the river flowing alongside us and see an endless hedge of huge bright canary yellow sunflowers lining the road. Words cannot describe the true beauty of this place.

We arrived at Benji’s house, chucked our bags down and headed for the river. The river was
so clear that it reflected the beautiful mountain terrain and displayed a bed of smooth white and sand stone coloured pebbles. As we dabbed our feet in the river, tiny little silvery fish slowly nicked at our feet. People pay anything around $35-$50 bucks a pop for fish reflexology….here it was freely available to us.

We sat alongside the river bed eating fresh pancakes and taking in our surroundings totally in awe of what we were experiencing. I looked at Benj and was so proud of him…this was the Krazed Korean’s best kept secret by far…….

By Guest Blogger: MousMous & Mousa.

2. More Relo's!

Another amazing weekend just flew by. But first, I have news! Pritika Mousi and Navin Mousa arrived last week on Saturday night (12th)!! I went to pick them up and after the astonished comments relating to how clean everything was and how they never expected Korea to have a Starbucks in the airport, we went to Incheon city to stay the night. On Sunday we travelled back to my place and then after staying there Monday and Tuesday they left for Japan early Wednesday morning.

Anyway, now I’m alone again until tomorrow (Tuesday) when they come back. The plan after that is to leave for Chuncheon for some Ddalkgalbi on Thursday night and then Seoul all day Friday.

Now back to last weekend. Since I have the car now (Cassie gave it to me for a couple of weeks while the Mous’s is here) I drove to Yanggu on Friday afternoon after Korean class. On Saturday we decided to go for a road-trip to the east coast of our province. We’ve seen everything else there is to see on the east coast so we decided to go up north to see what we could find. We had our camping gear packed so there was no need to worry about accommodation or anything like that. Another great aspect of owning a car over here is that we could stop anywhere we’d like. Like the many reststops along the way..

.. and this great little retreat by the highway. One of the most relaxing picnics I've been on!


Then after plain after plain of rice paddy's and a lot of twisties..


.. we discovered Hwajinpo Beach..



..and Aquarium!


Now you might be wondering about the barbed wire and the little bunker and look-out; see, being just 12km away from the DMZ means that all the beaches are secured by the military. Not only that, as far as I know South Korea has barbed wire and posted lookouts all the way across the east coast! It didn’t stop us from setting up camp on the beach though! I remember lying on the beach realizing how far I’ve come from just a year ago.. listening to the waves endlessly crashing, the crackling of the multi-hued driftwood fire, the scent of the salty ocean breeze, and Cassie’s warmth as she lay beside me.. all this under a blanket of a thousands stars. Something that also surprised me was the smell that the fire was giving off.. there were many pine trees around and so we used pine cones and fallen pine needles as fuel.. the aroma was better than any incense stick I’ve ever smelled.

..that, was until 10pm. They chose that time to come and tell us that we couldn't camp on the beach. They didn't speak English too well, so when we played dumb, they pulled out their machine guns pointing and saying "North, South, fighting, HERE". We had to pack everything up and relocate to a grassy area in the carpark. I thought it would be a huge pain, but only 30mins later we were set up at our new location!

The lights you see on the horizon are actually squid fishermen. Hundreds of megawatts of light is used up each night, attached along the trawlers to lure the squid to the surface of the ocean. These lights are so bright that they can be seen clearly from space. In fact, when seen from space during peak squidding season; the sea of Japan is almost as bright as Japan itself!

The next morning we woke early to see the sunrise. We were still really drowsy and bloody freezing, so we got up and sat in the car with the heater on full blast to watch the sun come up. Finally at around 6:30am, it showed up. Here are some pictures I took after I worked up the courage to get out of the car..



We had nothing at all planned for the day so after waiting for the sun to dry out the tent, we packed up and went for a little drive. We saw a brown sign with the words Unific Ovserv. on it.. as in Oz, brown sign’s usually mean tourist attractions.

After finding the place we acquired permission (10,000won) to go up to the North/South Unification Observatory.



Once we got there we saw these gigantic statues. One of Bhudda and the other of Mother Mary.



North Korea itself really just looked like the rest of Korea. Except for one thing.. the mountains we saw looked dry and desolate. I have a theory that before the Southerners agreed to the unification observatory, they bombed the living hell out of those mountains to make it look as though North Korea is really a third world country full of nothing beautiful. That’s just my own mini conspiracy.. If you would to read more like more, such as: North and South Korea: allies against the world! Please subscribe to my newsletter.

Here is the view into North Korea..



To top it all off, we went to war memorial type place at the foot of the observatory. After guiding us through the many faceless people who had died in wars and how many nations united together for the Korean War.. we found this solemn room.. It made our day!

That's all for now.. Hope all is well with you, where ever you are!

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1. Camping!

20^C
Overcast, still, and muggy. Feel’s hotter than twenty.

It’s safe to say that last weekend was the second best weekend I’ve had in Korea. I went camping for the first time in my life! I’ve been before but that was with school where we’d go out to the bush, light a bon fire and tell stories of who kissed who during the night. But I mean roughing it, like we did this weekend.. it was quite refreshing!

Since this was the first time camping in Korea, we really didn’t know what to expect so we ended up going to a camping ground 10 minutes away from my house. It’s in a beautiful valley with a river of fresh mountain water running through it. We got there at around 11am and started unpacking. There was so much stuff to carry, we had: one eski for the cold foods, one for the cold drinks, one bag for the dry foods, one full of sleeping bags and my tripod, and another full of utensils, one tent with air-mattresses, two backpacks full of clothes, the night lantern with gas included, a blanket from my place, and the BBQ with coals and grilling stuff. That was all the stuff we had, but we had to go back for the BBQ and blanket later on.

Once we got unpacked and set up the tent (which apparently needs to be staked taut), we tested it out and made sure that we’d fit in there with some of our other stuff that we didn’t want the animals getting to (‘cos you know Korea is full of huge bears and tigers that love to forage through food packs). After that we decided that we should go and explore the riverbed and wore away the afternoon sleepiness by taking an invigorating dip in the icy cold water. We felt quite hungry after splashing around and though that we’d go and have some duck at a place down-river. The teachers once went out to a restaurant where the specialty is duck and you eat it on Korean style tables right by the river, it was a stunning place, though alas, it was closed. So we went to good ole 맛 동산 (Mak-dongsan which the restaurant opposite to my apartment) and had some duck there. The dish, as Taji would tell you, was magnificent!

Belly filled and ever-so slightly tipsy, we returned to our camp just as the full moon was rising above the mountain peaks. It was such a beautiful sight that I almost regret not taking some pictures of it. The whole valley was draped in the moons’ light as though someone had shone a giant torch at us. We were the only ones in the valley that night and while listening to the river splashing to our right, the rustling of leaves on our left, and the numerous insects chirping here and there, we could only stand in awe, forgetting where we were and why.

The next morning we woke at 7am and had a bite to eat on one of the giant rocks by the river. We went for a morning swim where the water was even colder than the previous afternoon and then we sat in the sun doing nothing much but working on out tans. A fisherman walked by and told us that the valley is famous throughout our province for fly-fishing, we had a nice little chat and he was on his way. It was only then that we realised that the poor guy mustn't have been catching anything down-stream because of us. See, we were bathing in the river with soap and shampoo.. I'm sure he was wondering why such a famous place has no fish! Made hungry again by the swim, we lit the BBQ and grilled some chicken and potatoes for lunch. By this time it was getting a little hot so after lunch we ‘tested’ the tent one last time and fell asleep. We woke just before 4pm and started packing up. Arriving home from one of the most relaxing and care-free weekends in Korea, just before 5pm.

To be honest, I didn’t think I’d like camping very much; I thought I’d need my creature-comforts like a hot shower and a toilet. Nonetheless I thoroughly enjoyed camping in the Korean mountains, I found that there is something liberating about it.

Here are the pictures:

This thing was HUGE! It was about the size of my thumb!!

Cassie's fire..


My gas lamp!

Saturday afternoon..

Sunday Morning..

We had to cross this flimsy little bridge to get to and from the camping grounds.

Getting to Seoul: 20,000won

Hotel for the night: 40,000won

Aqua Reflexology at a boutique: 80,000won

Walking in a river down the road: Priceless!

I made some of Baldy's Banana Cake, which turned out quite well.. and some greek style lamb which I made in my new Earthernware pot. It was so good I think I'll make it a K-series!