Where has Kyle been for the last few weeks, you may ask? Well, funny story: in what seems to be a necessary part of traveling to a foreign country for me, I was once again hospitalized for severe food poisoning. There is no small irony in the timing of this occurrence, as roughly one week prior the illness I had decided that in an attempt to improve my health and save some money for Seoul, I would significantly cut back on my alcohol consumption, and make an effort to stick to less exotic (and more affordable) foods. I followed this plan, eating a fair amount of western or chain restaurant food during that next week, yet somewhere in the period between eating an innocent bowl of rice and vegetables for lunch and a chicken sandwich later for dinner I apparently consumed an insidious little bit of nastiness that would send me to the emergency room the next day. the other possibility is that I got sick from eating at a Mexican food restaurant here on the island. While I fully realize the parallel here, that after getting sick in a Latin country from eating Oriental food I have now done the same thing with Latin food in an Oriental country, in my defense it was not just a cheap hole-in-the-wall sort of place, and everyone gets homesick for elements of their old life every one in a while.
The ER in Korea is fairly modern (certainly less 70's retro than the one in Ecuador), and the procedure was rather standard, with an x-ray and an IV, then hours of waiting. It took some effort to get to the actual "treatment" stage of all of this, as when I first came into the hospital, hardly able to stand, I was met by two attendants who looked at me, then each other, and began to debate who would try to speak English to the foreign guy. After about 30 seconds of this nonsense, I was frustrated and nauseous enough to simply take matters into my own hands and pick a bed, though it seems that me walking away was the necessary action to prompt them to overcome their shyness and do their job. I find that Koreans are often so hung up on saying things the exactly correct and proper way, that they often will say nothing at all, a problem which as an English teacher is of some concern, but as a distraught and disoriented food poisoning victim who is trying his best not to make a mess in the hospital lobby, it is a much more distressing issue.
Hell, it's better than the other hospital visits I've had, in which while trying to set up an appointment with a physician or ask directions to the pharmacy I am met with naught but giggling nurses who seem to find the idea of a westerner in the hospital amusing and absurd. Anyway...
So, I'm better now, though it's been a long weekend. I had to go back a few days later because the condition I had, enteritis, or the inflammation of my abdomen, had not subsided. This led to a CT scan which, though pricey, was significantly cheaper than in the US, costing only around $130. Perhaps the strangest element of the entire ordeal was the CT scan. Though I had an interpreter who had lived in Baltimore for 38 years, there was little she could do when the technicians were vague in their descriptions of what was going to happen, which happened quite a lot. I was told that following an IV injection of some sort of clear liquid (tracking solution), I "may feel hot, and smell". I couldn't imagine what the last it meant. The heat came quickly after we had begun, and I could actually feel the stuff as it spread through my blood. It was only after my entire body was flush and burning that I realized what "smell" meant. I thought I may have some sort of odor later on. What it actually meant was that there was such a high concentration of the solution in my blood that I could smell it through my own vessels, and for that matter, taste it in my tongue as well. It hit me right as I was supposed to be holding a deep breath, and was almost too much. Then, just as it had come, it seemed to all disappear.
The results showed that whatever it was had made itself at home, and I would be required to take a seven day course of antibiotics and for one week eat only juk, or Korean rice porridge, which is quite possibly one of the most boring foods there is. Christmas was difficult, and I can't say I didn't sneak a few other foods, but the next three days are nothing but juk, juk, juk now. I've got to be recovered for Seoul: we leave on Friday.
A result of this is that I've once again got a bit of a blog backlog, so I'll be trying to post as much as I can once I get back from Seoul. I should have a whole new set of stories by then too. More to come!
And, by the way
Merry Christmas!
Tuesday, December 25, 2007
Tuesday, December 18, 2007
Hold Yer Horses
I'll be back as soon as possible. Maybe tomorrow. I've been busy with Korean taxes, Christmas plans, and an awful case of black mold that's taken over our apartment. Tomorrow is election day, so we have it off, so it's likely that between planning out my winter camp lesson plans, I'll post tomorrow.
Thanks, and happy holidays!
Thanks, and happy holidays!
Sunday, December 9, 2007
From the Stable to the Table: Equine Cuisine Part 2
Last Friday night, a group of nine foreigners descended on the back alleys of Sin Jeju (New Jeju) near Halla Hospital to search for a very special sort of restaurant. After several weeks of attempting to marshal up enough interest from a few of my fellow foreigners, the night had finally arrived, and now, walking through the frigid winter we were wandering through aging blocks of flats, trying to find a place that one of our ranks had been to long before, but apparently forgotten the precise location of. Finally, after asking a number of the locals, we found what we were looking for- Malgogi Chanmun
, a horse restaurant with a specialty in malgogi hoe, that is, raw horse. Since the moment I had heard of its existence, I had wanted to try this. The fact that even the less adventurous individuals who had tried it all agreed that it was delicious made this prospect even more appealing. An unfortunate number of months passed in between, but finally we had settled on a night and gone out for horse sashimi.
The cost of this delicacy (I assume it must be a delicacy, because of the cost) was around $25, which included three courses. Shortly after popping open our bottles of soju and starting in on the standard marinated horse banchan, the first course was delivered to our tables. It was rather thick for raw meat (compared to, say, carpaccio), and was flecked with sesame seeds. The middle-aged woman who owned the place showed us how we were to consume it, sandwiching it between sheets of dried seaweed, and dipping it in a wasabi/soy sauce mixture. She seemed to believe that this demonstration, though perfectly clear in pantomime, required her to lovingly shove it in to our friend's mouth as an example to us. I dunno, maybe she was interested in him. She told us that this course was very much like tuna, and I definitely see the parallels. In fact, just very recently in Japan, a tuna shortage led to the consumption of horse sashimi as a substitute. The dried seaweed laver was a bit overpowering, but without it, the soy-and-wasabi mixture did a wonderful job of bringing out the sweetness of the meat. When eaten completely unaccompanied, it had a very bizarre texture, like wavy fish, that was a little off-putting, but completely masked when coupled with the seaweed or sauce.
The first course.
The first bite.
The next course, the proper horse tartare, usually came with a raw egg cracked into it, but my friend did the best she could to stop this, though I am almost certain that the kitchen didn't listen- it came out fairly sticky. This dish consisted of much more roughly chopped meat topped with poppy seeds, and laid out on julienned Asian pears. The best part about this is that, in something that struck me as belonging much more in Santa Fe than Korean, they brought out a fried egg as a side dish. Without the fried egg, the tartare was very good, and surprisingly a bit more tender than a similar preparation of beef would be. The Asian pears matched quite well with the meat, but I have to say that nothing was as strangely delicious as the mix of the raw horse and fried egg. It was almost like comfort food, something Southern, to be served in a diner.
Horse Tartare
A (Not-Too-Appetizing) Close Up
The Egg 'N' Horse Combo
It was a bit anticlimactic to have begun the meal with the most exotic dish and then proceed to a simple stew, but it was nonetheless delicious. The stew, galbijim, is in my opinion one of the better Korean stews of the vast multitude that exist, as it is light on the vegetables and heavy on the meat and mushrooms. The rib meat used in the dish again defied my previous notions of horse meat being tough and stringy. It had been stewed long enough to give the broth of the stew a shimmering glossy appearance, but not to reduce the meat to stringy ribbons. The meat was lean (presumably due to the amount of fat that had soaked out into the broth), though occasionally I'd scoop a a chunk comprised of more than half horse fat, which I found pretty tasty, but my friend actually spit out after accidentally eating a piece. Once we had picked out all of the meat and the scarce vegetables, the owner poured a bowl of horse bone marrow broth into the remainder, and provided us with a palette of multicolored noodles for it. The noodles were black, orange, and purple, which were made from buckwheat, tangerine, and cactus respectively. Did they taste any different? Not particularly, but they at least looked kind of cool.
The Horse Rib Galbijim
An abundance of horse fat
The multicolored noodles in marrow broth
I really enjoyed the raw horse meat, an opinion which was shared by a great majority of the table. Alicia's reaction was a bit different. To each their own, I suppose. I definitely will be repeating this experience whenever my pocketbook will allow. And as an indirect result of this meal, I have become aware of some substantially more bizarre foods here. When we told a Korean friend of ours about having eaten malgogi hoe, he was able to offer up a few other suggestions. Like fried whale. Or the occasionally deadly toxic puffer fish sashimi (if you watch the Simpsons regularly, you know what I am talking about), which I had been saving for Japan, but now that I am aware that it is offered in Korea, I just might try it here. There are a few more which, in my opinion, are far more strange and horrifying than anything I've eaten so far... but I do need to hold on to a few surprises, right?
, a horse restaurant with a specialty in malgogi hoe, that is, raw horse. Since the moment I had heard of its existence, I had wanted to try this. The fact that even the less adventurous individuals who had tried it all agreed that it was delicious made this prospect even more appealing. An unfortunate number of months passed in between, but finally we had settled on a night and gone out for horse sashimi.
The cost of this delicacy (I assume it must be a delicacy, because of the cost) was around $25, which included three courses. Shortly after popping open our bottles of soju and starting in on the standard marinated horse banchan, the first course was delivered to our tables. It was rather thick for raw meat (compared to, say, carpaccio), and was flecked with sesame seeds. The middle-aged woman who owned the place showed us how we were to consume it, sandwiching it between sheets of dried seaweed, and dipping it in a wasabi/soy sauce mixture. She seemed to believe that this demonstration, though perfectly clear in pantomime, required her to lovingly shove it in to our friend's mouth as an example to us. I dunno, maybe she was interested in him. She told us that this course was very much like tuna, and I definitely see the parallels. In fact, just very recently in Japan, a tuna shortage led to the consumption of horse sashimi as a substitute. The dried seaweed laver was a bit overpowering, but without it, the soy-and-wasabi mixture did a wonderful job of bringing out the sweetness of the meat. When eaten completely unaccompanied, it had a very bizarre texture, like wavy fish, that was a little off-putting, but completely masked when coupled with the seaweed or sauce.
The first course.
The first bite.
The next course, the proper horse tartare, usually came with a raw egg cracked into it, but my friend did the best she could to stop this, though I am almost certain that the kitchen didn't listen- it came out fairly sticky. This dish consisted of much more roughly chopped meat topped with poppy seeds, and laid out on julienned Asian pears. The best part about this is that, in something that struck me as belonging much more in Santa Fe than Korean, they brought out a fried egg as a side dish. Without the fried egg, the tartare was very good, and surprisingly a bit more tender than a similar preparation of beef would be. The Asian pears matched quite well with the meat, but I have to say that nothing was as strangely delicious as the mix of the raw horse and fried egg. It was almost like comfort food, something Southern, to be served in a diner.
Horse Tartare
A (Not-Too-Appetizing) Close Up
The Egg 'N' Horse Combo
It was a bit anticlimactic to have begun the meal with the most exotic dish and then proceed to a simple stew, but it was nonetheless delicious. The stew, galbijim, is in my opinion one of the better Korean stews of the vast multitude that exist, as it is light on the vegetables and heavy on the meat and mushrooms. The rib meat used in the dish again defied my previous notions of horse meat being tough and stringy. It had been stewed long enough to give the broth of the stew a shimmering glossy appearance, but not to reduce the meat to stringy ribbons. The meat was lean (presumably due to the amount of fat that had soaked out into the broth), though occasionally I'd scoop a a chunk comprised of more than half horse fat, which I found pretty tasty, but my friend actually spit out after accidentally eating a piece. Once we had picked out all of the meat and the scarce vegetables, the owner poured a bowl of horse bone marrow broth into the remainder, and provided us with a palette of multicolored noodles for it. The noodles were black, orange, and purple, which were made from buckwheat, tangerine, and cactus respectively. Did they taste any different? Not particularly, but they at least looked kind of cool.
The Horse Rib Galbijim
An abundance of horse fat
The multicolored noodles in marrow broth
I really enjoyed the raw horse meat, an opinion which was shared by a great majority of the table. Alicia's reaction was a bit different. To each their own, I suppose. I definitely will be repeating this experience whenever my pocketbook will allow. And as an indirect result of this meal, I have become aware of some substantially more bizarre foods here. When we told a Korean friend of ours about having eaten malgogi hoe, he was able to offer up a few other suggestions. Like fried whale. Or the occasionally deadly toxic puffer fish sashimi (if you watch the Simpsons regularly, you know what I am talking about), which I had been saving for Japan, but now that I am aware that it is offered in Korea, I just might try it here. There are a few more which, in my opinion, are far more strange and horrifying than anything I've eaten so far... but I do need to hold on to a few surprises, right?
Sunday, December 2, 2007
Crocodile Town
Still recovering from the previous night, and now stuffed to the gills with yellowtail, we descended from the main road and under an overpass to the parking lot sitting on the side of a rather absurd-looking reptilian head, which given the sort of animals housed at this establishment one would assume to be modeled after a crocodile, yet the presence of horns jutting from it's crown indicated that it was more likely than not recycled from a more medieval-themed venture. Banners clung to the outside of the warehouse-like complex, depicting a Thai girl putting her head inside of a crocodile's gaping mouth. Intrigued, we followed her example and bravely marched through the jaws of the dragon, to a small ticket booth where dropped down our $12 and dashed off to make the 3:30 show which had begun three minutes earlier.
Dashing through corridors filled with objects too blurry to discern at the speed we were traveling, we followed the unique, warbling, and terrible sound of the layered reverb and crooning that is Korean balladry. The act had just begun, we saw, as we walked in on to see a woman wearing a bright red hanbok, or Korean traditional dress, doing her best to sing but still strangling the cat, perched on a platform surrounded by paleolithic killing machines. Thinking that at the end of the song she would be risking life and limb in the maws of these crocodiles, we sat on the edge of our bleacher seats, waiting with bated breath for her attempt at music to end. Disappointment soon followed, as she bowed and shuffled of the stage to backstage safety. Soon enough, a pair of Korean men came out into the enclosure, carrying Mongol spears and dressed in what might have been some sort of traditional croc-wrasslin' attire, but just looked like basketball jerseys and shorts. When they began their hunting dance, both Gabe and I got the distinct impression that we had been ripped off, that the thrills these Koreans were peddling would turn out merely to be "hey, look at these idiots dance in an enclosure of sleeping animals! Exciting!". We were relieved, therefore, to see that once the musical number was done, they ran into the water and began saturating the tile, then proceeded to drag the awakening beasts about the enclosure by their tails. While some may call this abuse, I would guess that would such a sight have ever bothered me, it has been months since that point has passed. They proceeded to try more and more daring stunts with the crocodiles, using wooden wands to seemingly hypnotize them, stroking the inside of their mouths and the tops of their heads in a repetitive, rhythmic fashion. First hovering in the general vicinity of their jaws, the performers became increasingly bold, progressively inserting more and more vital parts of their body into their open snouts and undertaking increasingly difficult stunts, starting with fists, moving to arms, then laying out on their backs. They would get a running start, slide on their stomachs across the smooth and wet tiled enclosure, coming to a skidding halt just within range of the crocodile's mouth to give it a kiss. The advert-promised climax came when they stuck their heads into the (suspiciously lethargic) beast's mouth. But if there was a grand finale, it was certainly this- an event eliminating any doubt about whether these reptiles were on drugs:
Animals and Artifacts
After what we agreed was an amusing but strange show (something about the manipulation of indifferent scaled monsters backed by blaring Korean techno is patently odd), it was time to set out to explore the rest of the CrocTown facility. I didn't know what to expect exactly, though I would have leaned towards 'more crocodiles', but such foolish notions were soon put to rest as I walked through the next door, and came across the BRIGHT BLUE HAND OF SATAN! There, mere feet away from a croc stunt show, was erected a massive fiberglass hand (plus a few extra fingers here and there) clawing out of the ground. As out of place as it already seemed, a survey of the room leading out from it left us in an even greater state of confusion- a swarm of vulture-sized animatronic ladybugs flexed their wings from their mounts on the walls. Around the bend and into the next room, we found a miniature zoo of sorts, lined with glass cages displaying, on one side, numerous small reptiles, and on the other, a collection of small mammals that could very well have been dinner to their neighbors across the hall. Highlights included the Sudan Plated Rizard, and the Ratte (presumably a caffeinated rodent mixed with hot milk). There was what looked like a mix of a porcupine and a possum, the name of which I am sure I would have known when I was a child, but which has been erased by the years in between. My favorite were the panda mice, little furry pets that I found incredibly reminiscent of the dalmatian mice in The Royal Tenenbaums.
The Bright Blue Hand Of Satan
As if trying to top itself in the absurdity of its disconnectedness, the next room we entered was a hodgepodged collage of antique gadgets and furniture, complete with old rotary telephones, cracked and aged Korean movie posters, war memorabilia from the Korean war, and replica of furniture from the thousand-year-old Joseon dynasty period. I have to admit that, knowing the somewhat bitter way that some older Koreans feel about Americans in relation to the Korean War (not to mention the grudge held on Jeju towards America for 'simply observing' during the Jeju Massacre during that period), I did feel a little bad about having a Korean man take our picture as we crouched in helmets behind the plastic battlements, in front of a mural no doubt depicting the sacrifices of the Korean people in that war. This was, however, comparably solemn and respectful compared with the tourist attraction we now spotted in the far corner of the room.
War is hell...
Ghengis Kyle
Nestled back behind a large assortment of recreated royal thrones and gama (Korean litters), we saw a raised platform occupied by what appeared to be recreated scenes of ancient Korean palaces. A large clothing rack next to it held a wide array of costumes. Lingering briefly out of curiosity, we were called up onto the dais by the old Korean man who was in charge. He told us that for 3,000 won, we could have our pictures taken dressed up like important people from Korean history. Not wanting to refuse the old man, we adopted a 'might as well' attitude once again, and were promptly dressed. The only costume large enough for me was a Mongol warrior. My friend was dressed up as either a king or Confucius. The man used our camera to take around 15 pictures, though he was decidedly unhappy later when he turned around to find the king wearing the queen's wig, and the Mongol warrior having unsheathed his sword and swinging it around.
Departing from what we believed to be a dead-end in the exhibit, I caught a glimpse out of the corner of my eye of a shabby curtain hanging on the far side of the war exhibit. We luckily chose to investigate, and found a dark room lit only with blacklights. It seems that, just for good measure, they had also added a haunted house on to the Crocodile Park, whose downright creepy atmosphere it owed as much to its unexpected location as to its actual contents. The contents, however, didn't hurt; styrofoam mannequins of children were painted with fluorescent paint so that in the blacklight, it looked like they were crying blood, others were chopped up and strung across the room. The first room in particular was incredibly disturbing, as we had no idea what the place was, and it was full of cute forest critters smeared in neon paint.
This photo was taken with flash, so you have to use your imagination.
One the way out, still confused and a little creeped out, we passed by the last exhibit before the door: a macaque, who because of the thick glass we were unable to hear. It was by far the meanest monkey I have ever met, as upon seeing us it charged across its habitat and began shouting at us, eerily moving it's mouth like it was swearing at us. We tried to get it to repeat the performance, and that's when it got really mad.
As it cursed and screamed silently at us, we departed from the madness that was Crocodile Park, a place that seemed to be put together from scraps of old theme parks . We can only assume that the reason for the additions was its direct competition with the other crocodile theme park on Jeju, Crocodile World. I can't wait to see how they are competing.
Dashing through corridors filled with objects too blurry to discern at the speed we were traveling, we followed the unique, warbling, and terrible sound of the layered reverb and crooning that is Korean balladry. The act had just begun, we saw, as we walked in on to see a woman wearing a bright red hanbok, or Korean traditional dress, doing her best to sing but still strangling the cat, perched on a platform surrounded by paleolithic killing machines. Thinking that at the end of the song she would be risking life and limb in the maws of these crocodiles, we sat on the edge of our bleacher seats, waiting with bated breath for her attempt at music to end. Disappointment soon followed, as she bowed and shuffled of the stage to backstage safety. Soon enough, a pair of Korean men came out into the enclosure, carrying Mongol spears and dressed in what might have been some sort of traditional croc-wrasslin' attire, but just looked like basketball jerseys and shorts. When they began their hunting dance, both Gabe and I got the distinct impression that we had been ripped off, that the thrills these Koreans were peddling would turn out merely to be "hey, look at these idiots dance in an enclosure of sleeping animals! Exciting!". We were relieved, therefore, to see that once the musical number was done, they ran into the water and began saturating the tile, then proceeded to drag the awakening beasts about the enclosure by their tails. While some may call this abuse, I would guess that would such a sight have ever bothered me, it has been months since that point has passed. They proceeded to try more and more daring stunts with the crocodiles, using wooden wands to seemingly hypnotize them, stroking the inside of their mouths and the tops of their heads in a repetitive, rhythmic fashion. First hovering in the general vicinity of their jaws, the performers became increasingly bold, progressively inserting more and more vital parts of their body into their open snouts and undertaking increasingly difficult stunts, starting with fists, moving to arms, then laying out on their backs. They would get a running start, slide on their stomachs across the smooth and wet tiled enclosure, coming to a skidding halt just within range of the crocodile's mouth to give it a kiss. The advert-promised climax came when they stuck their heads into the (suspiciously lethargic) beast's mouth. But if there was a grand finale, it was certainly this- an event eliminating any doubt about whether these reptiles were on drugs:
Animals and Artifacts
After what we agreed was an amusing but strange show (something about the manipulation of indifferent scaled monsters backed by blaring Korean techno is patently odd), it was time to set out to explore the rest of the CrocTown facility. I didn't know what to expect exactly, though I would have leaned towards 'more crocodiles', but such foolish notions were soon put to rest as I walked through the next door, and came across the BRIGHT BLUE HAND OF SATAN! There, mere feet away from a croc stunt show, was erected a massive fiberglass hand (plus a few extra fingers here and there) clawing out of the ground. As out of place as it already seemed, a survey of the room leading out from it left us in an even greater state of confusion- a swarm of vulture-sized animatronic ladybugs flexed their wings from their mounts on the walls. Around the bend and into the next room, we found a miniature zoo of sorts, lined with glass cages displaying, on one side, numerous small reptiles, and on the other, a collection of small mammals that could very well have been dinner to their neighbors across the hall. Highlights included the Sudan Plated Rizard, and the Ratte (presumably a caffeinated rodent mixed with hot milk). There was what looked like a mix of a porcupine and a possum, the name of which I am sure I would have known when I was a child, but which has been erased by the years in between. My favorite were the panda mice, little furry pets that I found incredibly reminiscent of the dalmatian mice in The Royal Tenenbaums.
The Bright Blue Hand Of Satan
As if trying to top itself in the absurdity of its disconnectedness, the next room we entered was a hodgepodged collage of antique gadgets and furniture, complete with old rotary telephones, cracked and aged Korean movie posters, war memorabilia from the Korean war, and replica of furniture from the thousand-year-old Joseon dynasty period. I have to admit that, knowing the somewhat bitter way that some older Koreans feel about Americans in relation to the Korean War (not to mention the grudge held on Jeju towards America for 'simply observing' during the Jeju Massacre during that period), I did feel a little bad about having a Korean man take our picture as we crouched in helmets behind the plastic battlements, in front of a mural no doubt depicting the sacrifices of the Korean people in that war. This was, however, comparably solemn and respectful compared with the tourist attraction we now spotted in the far corner of the room.
War is hell...
Ghengis Kyle
Nestled back behind a large assortment of recreated royal thrones and gama (Korean litters), we saw a raised platform occupied by what appeared to be recreated scenes of ancient Korean palaces. A large clothing rack next to it held a wide array of costumes. Lingering briefly out of curiosity, we were called up onto the dais by the old Korean man who was in charge. He told us that for 3,000 won, we could have our pictures taken dressed up like important people from Korean history. Not wanting to refuse the old man, we adopted a 'might as well' attitude once again, and were promptly dressed. The only costume large enough for me was a Mongol warrior. My friend was dressed up as either a king or Confucius. The man used our camera to take around 15 pictures, though he was decidedly unhappy later when he turned around to find the king wearing the queen's wig, and the Mongol warrior having unsheathed his sword and swinging it around.
Departing from what we believed to be a dead-end in the exhibit, I caught a glimpse out of the corner of my eye of a shabby curtain hanging on the far side of the war exhibit. We luckily chose to investigate, and found a dark room lit only with blacklights. It seems that, just for good measure, they had also added a haunted house on to the Crocodile Park, whose downright creepy atmosphere it owed as much to its unexpected location as to its actual contents. The contents, however, didn't hurt; styrofoam mannequins of children were painted with fluorescent paint so that in the blacklight, it looked like they were crying blood, others were chopped up and strung across the room. The first room in particular was incredibly disturbing, as we had no idea what the place was, and it was full of cute forest critters smeared in neon paint.
This photo was taken with flash, so you have to use your imagination.
One the way out, still confused and a little creeped out, we passed by the last exhibit before the door: a macaque, who because of the thick glass we were unable to hear. It was by far the meanest monkey I have ever met, as upon seeing us it charged across its habitat and began shouting at us, eerily moving it's mouth like it was swearing at us. We tried to get it to repeat the performance, and that's when it got really mad.
As it cursed and screamed silently at us, we departed from the madness that was Crocodile Park, a place that seemed to be put together from scraps of old theme parks . We can only assume that the reason for the additions was its direct competition with the other crocodile theme park on Jeju, Crocodile World. I can't wait to see how they are competing.
Sunday, November 25, 2007
A Fish This Big
Early one Saturday morning several weeks ago, I managed to drag myself out of bed like a corpse from the grave following a rather over-enthusiastic Friday night of celebrating the work-week's end. Early, when taken in the context of my Saturday mornings, is 10:30, but it may as well have been the crack of dawn; I awoke squinting at the world in an early morning misery I very rarely subjected myself to on my precious days off. This morning, though, there were plans: another festival, of course, this one for yellowtail fish. After arriving on the tail-end of several festivals in a row, me and my friend Gabe decided that we needed to get a headstart on the day and make it out to the events earlier to see anything worth seeing at all. Thus it was, with no small amount of effort, that I pried myself out and got dressed, fighting off the advance waves of nausea heralding a full-blown hangover, and crept down to the car waiting to take me to the far side of the island.
The Yellowtail (or Bango) Festival is one of the more popular festivals on Jeju Island, and after last year's it is perhaps the most infamous. Last year, the weather was much worse this time of year, but those in charge of the festival did not think that a little choppy water should stop the festivities from taking place; they loaded (or rather, dreadfully overloaded) a fishing boat with a number of festival-goers and dignitaries, only to have it sink in the rough seas, killing around eight people, including the mayor of Seogwipo City. This would be the first occurance of the Bango Fest since that time, surely relaunched with new safety measures.
We were hoping that no such disasters would disrupt our morning as we arrived at the outskirts of the seemingly-enormous tent grounds, packed with shops selling everything from medicinal herbs to knock-off North Face jackets to back-flipping robot dogs. On the way in, we passed by a what was possibly the least safe carnival ride I have ever seen, which I gave wide berth to even in taking a photo of it, lest the ride come undone and fly off, crushing me. As if trying to top the shock of the truck-back disaster-waiting-to-happen we had just witnessed, a food vendor perched right outside the entrance to the actual festival grounds had a steaming bowl on his cart, right beside the rather common snails, of what appeared to be roaches. It was days later that I found out that these were actually silk worm pupa shells, which I suppose is better than steamed roaches, but I imagine if I had known, it would have still been disgusting to watch the lines of smiling kids shoveling these crunchy brown insects into their mouths.
As we arrived, we saw a crowd gathering at the foot of a group of what looked like raised platforms in the center of the docks where the festival was being held. Men in green neoprene waders were marching to a shallow pool constructed within steel barriers which were full of yellowtail, and being steadily stocked by fisherman carrying net-fulls of the fish from nearby fishing boats. After an endlessly long introduction (though I suppose every speech I have to listen to here seems to take ages, since I cannot understand a word of it), the large group of men plunged into the pool of fish, and began a race to see who could catch the most fish by hand. It was clearly a skill which must be acquired, as the younger men and sole child who participated ended up missing far more than they caught, the child falling face-first into the water as he was bested by one particular quarry. The fish, now caught for a second time since they had been snatched from the ocean, were taken over to long white tables, where burly fishmongers filleted them, and I, who was forunate enough to have obliviously wandered over to exactly the right spot before this occurred, was first in line for what I had been praying for since arrival- free fresh fish. It was a matter of minutes between the fish being knocked out and it being laid out on a plate, and as a result it was some of the tastiest raw fish I've ever had.
The fishermen's prey.
Moments after the scramble began.
A professional at work
Seaside sashimi
Not content, however, with the measly mouthfuls I was given for free at the chopping blocks, I traipsed (or I suppose that I traipsed; having perhaps never seen a clear example of traipsing, I cannot be sure that such an action occurred) over to the food tent, where I used the one useful Korean skill I have achieved, that is, reading hangul characters, to order a $20 platter of yellowtail for myself and my friend. I soon learned that he did not in fact enjoy eating raw fish, which raised the question in my mind as to why one would attend a festival celebrating one of sashimi's (using the term both loosely and transculturally) most celebrated fish breeds if not to consume said fish raw? I stuck to my order, however, and soon received a massive plate of sliced yellowtail, which I consumed in its entirety, all the while being covertly filmed by a cameraman for the local news station, whom I pretended not to notice. I suppose footage of foreigners doing Korean things, like eating a whole raw fish, for example, is a novelty; this was neither the first nor last time I have been filmed in Jeju doing something which undoubtedly, and perhaps unnecessarily, surprises the locals. I do not, in this instance, know if I made the cut and was featured on air.
Before (after having a few exploratory bites)
After (chopsticks added for size reference)
The day had only just begun, and soon got even better, as we, in our travels homeward, glimpsed a gaping dragon head emerging from a roadside building. We stopped to investigate, and learned that we had found the Crocodile Park. It was indeed a crocodile park, yet so much more... well worth the admission price. But that's a whole new entry.
The Yellowtail (or Bango) Festival is one of the more popular festivals on Jeju Island, and after last year's it is perhaps the most infamous. Last year, the weather was much worse this time of year, but those in charge of the festival did not think that a little choppy water should stop the festivities from taking place; they loaded (or rather, dreadfully overloaded) a fishing boat with a number of festival-goers and dignitaries, only to have it sink in the rough seas, killing around eight people, including the mayor of Seogwipo City. This would be the first occurance of the Bango Fest since that time, surely relaunched with new safety measures.
We were hoping that no such disasters would disrupt our morning as we arrived at the outskirts of the seemingly-enormous tent grounds, packed with shops selling everything from medicinal herbs to knock-off North Face jackets to back-flipping robot dogs. On the way in, we passed by a what was possibly the least safe carnival ride I have ever seen, which I gave wide berth to even in taking a photo of it, lest the ride come undone and fly off, crushing me. As if trying to top the shock of the truck-back disaster-waiting-to-happen we had just witnessed, a food vendor perched right outside the entrance to the actual festival grounds had a steaming bowl on his cart, right beside the rather common snails, of what appeared to be roaches. It was days later that I found out that these were actually silk worm pupa shells, which I suppose is better than steamed roaches, but I imagine if I had known, it would have still been disgusting to watch the lines of smiling kids shoveling these crunchy brown insects into their mouths.
As we arrived, we saw a crowd gathering at the foot of a group of what looked like raised platforms in the center of the docks where the festival was being held. Men in green neoprene waders were marching to a shallow pool constructed within steel barriers which were full of yellowtail, and being steadily stocked by fisherman carrying net-fulls of the fish from nearby fishing boats. After an endlessly long introduction (though I suppose every speech I have to listen to here seems to take ages, since I cannot understand a word of it), the large group of men plunged into the pool of fish, and began a race to see who could catch the most fish by hand. It was clearly a skill which must be acquired, as the younger men and sole child who participated ended up missing far more than they caught, the child falling face-first into the water as he was bested by one particular quarry. The fish, now caught for a second time since they had been snatched from the ocean, were taken over to long white tables, where burly fishmongers filleted them, and I, who was forunate enough to have obliviously wandered over to exactly the right spot before this occurred, was first in line for what I had been praying for since arrival- free fresh fish. It was a matter of minutes between the fish being knocked out and it being laid out on a plate, and as a result it was some of the tastiest raw fish I've ever had.
The fishermen's prey.
Moments after the scramble began.
A professional at work
Seaside sashimi
Not content, however, with the measly mouthfuls I was given for free at the chopping blocks, I traipsed (or I suppose that I traipsed; having perhaps never seen a clear example of traipsing, I cannot be sure that such an action occurred) over to the food tent, where I used the one useful Korean skill I have achieved, that is, reading hangul characters, to order a $20 platter of yellowtail for myself and my friend. I soon learned that he did not in fact enjoy eating raw fish, which raised the question in my mind as to why one would attend a festival celebrating one of sashimi's (using the term both loosely and transculturally) most celebrated fish breeds if not to consume said fish raw? I stuck to my order, however, and soon received a massive plate of sliced yellowtail, which I consumed in its entirety, all the while being covertly filmed by a cameraman for the local news station, whom I pretended not to notice. I suppose footage of foreigners doing Korean things, like eating a whole raw fish, for example, is a novelty; this was neither the first nor last time I have been filmed in Jeju doing something which undoubtedly, and perhaps unnecessarily, surprises the locals. I do not, in this instance, know if I made the cut and was featured on air.
Before (after having a few exploratory bites)
After (chopsticks added for size reference)
The day had only just begun, and soon got even better, as we, in our travels homeward, glimpsed a gaping dragon head emerging from a roadside building. We stopped to investigate, and learned that we had found the Crocodile Park. It was indeed a crocodile park, yet so much more... well worth the admission price. But that's a whole new entry.
Tuesday, November 20, 2007
Pepero Day
There is a certain marketing genius to be appreciated in convincing an entire nation of people that, for one day a year, they are only truly loved if they are given boxes of chocolate-dipped cookie sticks. And not just any sort of cookie sticks, no, only Pepero-brand confections will do. In what can only be compared to a brand-centric version of Valentine's Day, November 11 is known all over Korea as Pepero Day. It's namesake is a brand of snack cookie, owned by the mega-corporation Lotte, which is little more than my above description: pencil-thin shafts of rather disappointly bland cookie, dipped down to the hilt in milk chocolate. And Koreans buy boxes and boxes of the things every Pepero Day, including often-ridiculously elaborate premade Pepero baskets stacked outside of convenience stores. It's silly, cutesy things like this that it makes it apparent that the Koreans aren't really as different from the Japanese as they would like to think.
The 'legend' behind the holiday is that four schoolgirls, hoping to make their friendship last forever, pledged to send each other a box of Pepero's once every year to stay in touch. (Well, I suppose it's better than a magic pair of blue jeans.) Anyway, they laid out four skinny Peperos on a desk, an thus the date "11/11" was decided on. Somehow, Lotte's lies stuck in the public consciousness, enabling street vendors to sell baskets of cookies and stuffed bears at prices occasionally surpassing 500,000 won (or $500, but I though the won value sounded more impressive).
The least welcome aspect of Pepero Day, and one which I had no warning of, was the greed it seemed to engender in my students. Now, it would seem to go without saying that as I have more than 800 students (around 1400 if the students I teach only once a week are included), there is no way I could afford to give them all Peperos on this holiday. They were of a different mind, however, and when I told them I was in fact Peperoless they all, with very few exceptions, punched and slapped at me as if I had insulted them. They, for some reason I cannot understand, have always believed that I am a magic Westerner with pockets full of candy, and there is nothing I can do but disappoint them. The reaction on Pepero Day was much more extreme than ever before. How could I hold out on them on Pepero Day?! What kind of monster was I?! Maybe they will one day understand that I am not Willy Wonka, and give me a break.
Well, Pepero Day may be silly scheme by a cookie conglomerate... but in the end, though, I can't say that I was above it all.
---------------------------------------------
Happy Thanksgiving!!!
More later... busy week.
The 'legend' behind the holiday is that four schoolgirls, hoping to make their friendship last forever, pledged to send each other a box of Pepero's once every year to stay in touch. (Well, I suppose it's better than a magic pair of blue jeans.) Anyway, they laid out four skinny Peperos on a desk, an thus the date "11/11" was decided on. Somehow, Lotte's lies stuck in the public consciousness, enabling street vendors to sell baskets of cookies and stuffed bears at prices occasionally surpassing 500,000 won (or $500, but I though the won value sounded more impressive).
The least welcome aspect of Pepero Day, and one which I had no warning of, was the greed it seemed to engender in my students. Now, it would seem to go without saying that as I have more than 800 students (around 1400 if the students I teach only once a week are included), there is no way I could afford to give them all Peperos on this holiday. They were of a different mind, however, and when I told them I was in fact Peperoless they all, with very few exceptions, punched and slapped at me as if I had insulted them. They, for some reason I cannot understand, have always believed that I am a magic Westerner with pockets full of candy, and there is nothing I can do but disappoint them. The reaction on Pepero Day was much more extreme than ever before. How could I hold out on them on Pepero Day?! What kind of monster was I?! Maybe they will one day understand that I am not Willy Wonka, and give me a break.
Well, Pepero Day may be silly scheme by a cookie conglomerate... but in the end, though, I can't say that I was above it all.
---------------------------------------------
Happy Thanksgiving!!!
More later... busy week.
Wednesday, November 14, 2007
The Food Chain
I suppose that my blog entries have been getting progressively longer and longer, so to avoid becoming a JK Rowling, here's a short(er), but hopefully interesting, entry on a couple of Korean... um, experiences I have had in the last two weeks. In terms of trying diverse and exotic foods, I've been doing my best, trying a couple undeniably Korean foods. Here we go.
Up The Hill
On the Wednesday after I arrived back from Daegu, I was taken with the entirety of the school's teachers to climb an oreum, the parasitic volcanic hills that litter the island. According to my students, this particular oreum was a piece of cake, and I should have no trouble. It turns out that my students were a bit more generous in appraising my level of physical fitness than they should have been. After a short walk in the woods, the trail shot up at a dramatically steeper angle, and for the next 2 miles I found myself climbing up stone steps and rubber matting. None of this would have been much of a problem if 1.) I was in better shape, and 2.) my shoes didn't have a hard-plastic sheet in the middle of the sole, causing me to slip of the slick stone stairs and the folded rebar holding down the matting. This stumbling happened enough times for me to eventually sprain my kneee, an injury which didn't truly manifest itself until the next day. Making it to the top after around 45 minutes of climbing, I met up with the teachers who had beat me to the top (only about half made it, in the end), and saw that the view was wonderful, though the crown of the ill was exposed enough to force me back into the sweater I had removed during the climb.
Walking the crest of the hill. The entire island is covered in this eulalia grass.
The view from the top (yes, I know I need to pull up my pants, and get a haircut).
The descent was much easier, and it was after a seemingly short amount of time that we were hiking out of the forest that skirted the mountain. While crossing the plains back to the bus we ran into a band of horses blocking the roadway. My co-teacher was afraid of it, and warned me to be careful as I approached it to pet it's nose. These were the same short-legged Jeju horses I had seen at the racetrack weeks before, and looking into their sad eyes as they gazed at us while we passed, I almost got the impression that they knew what the teachers and I were doing next, where we were eating dinner.
The rogue horses.
The Famous Mr Ed-ible
The horse, quite aside from being a sturdy work animal and an excellent means of transportation for cowboys, Mongolians and the like, is in fact one tasty animal. I have to say, malgogi (horse meat) is one of the better meats I have had on the island so far, if only for the diversity of preparation showcased in the meal that night. That night, the main course was maltang, which literally means horse soup, a clear broth with leeks and a nice amount of horse meat, which in this dish tasted very much like pork, with a tasty thin layer of horse fat lining the bigger pieces. Horse soup was in no way the star of the show, in my opinion. The first course served was steamed horse slices, something alone the lines of a tenderloin, which was good, though it too tasted like gamey pork. I had the opportunity to try a piece of the more expensive horse tripe (it was only brought out to the prinicipal, who offered me a piece). It was one of the better types of tripe I've had, chewy and thankfully lacking the awful sewage flavor found in chitterlings.
Malgogi kui, or horse barbeque, is among the top three most tasty things I have eaten in Korea. It was cut into tiny morsels, and marinated excellently, the end result tasting very close to beef fajitas from Goode Company Taqueria back in Houston. If there was one thing that sold me on eating horse again, it was this; with malgogi kui, horse went from being a novelty to a legitimately tasty meal.
The Horse Restaurant. I don't know what it's name is, though if I owned one, I would name it "HorseShack".
Horse tenderloin, maybe, and one piece of horse tripe left on the plate behind.
Horse barbeque, or malgogi kui. Tasty.
Catholic Camp
The very next day following the hike up the oreum, I went away with my 6th grade students and teachers to an overnight sleep-away camp, run by the Catholic church through a handful of Korean nuns. Now, being so used to the utter division of church and state in America, I found it quite strange that they would choose a Catholic center to have a camp for a public school, but it was justified to me by the teachers, who said it was meant to teach them about ethics and such, and that it didn't involve religion. I can only imagine the uproar that a plan like this back home would cause. The ACLU would form a human wall to prevent it. Not that it mattered to me either way, but it was, in the end, a seemingly secular affair (though not knowing the words for salvation or transubstantiation in Korean, I can't be sure). The camp for me, as well as the rest of the teachers, involved sitting in a break room, reading or watching TV. I finished about half of the Harry Potter book I was reading. The night ended with the kids performing dance routines to Korean pop songs, which was cute, though around the end of the first of two hours, I was sick to death of K-pop. That night was my first time to ever sleep on a Korean yeo, or floor-bed, which did little to help my sprained leg. I woke up the next morning to another first- it was the only time I had ever been around Koreans this early in the morning, and thus was the first time I had had a real Korean breakfast of fish and rice. I just don't know how I've lived so long without experiencing the appetizing wonder that is scraping flesh off of a soggy fish at 7 am. Ugh.
My favorite dance skit. Look at that kid dance!
The next week, after a brief weekend trip to Seogwipo for a pub crawl, I again settled back into my job, where each week has been getting progressively busier. Sometime in between the construction of powerpoint presentations on Halloween (a week late) and various bodily ailments, I found time to research a plan that me and friend had been discussing for a few weeks at that point. Everytime we had seen each other, we had proposed that we should go and get a certain meal, yet after half a month of inactivity, it was time to make it happen.
Man Bites Dog (or, Oh, Kae!)
A Korean-speaking friend of ours polled her office coworkers for their suggestions of a good restaurant to get boyangtang, a (somehow) euphemistic name adopted around the 1988 Seoul Olympics for bosintang, though both terms mean exactly the same thing: "invigorating soup". Bosintang is itself a euphemism for kae jang, which literally means "dog stew". We were given directions to a restaurant named Giwachon, which we found to be little more than a converted house sitting in the shadow of a massive apartment highrise building. A family both lived and worked in the restaurant, with the spare bedrooms being used as dining areas. Both Alicia and my friend's girlfriend had accompanied us, and were relieved to see that the restaurant also served samgyetang, a whole boiled chicken filled with rice and ginseng.
The kids serving us were a bit shocked when two westerners ordered bosintang, and came back to double-check with us a minute later. After what seemed like mere minutes, our soups arrived, still boiling in their black pots. We were provided with a number of seasoning ingredients including ginger and pepper oil, which I decided to wait to add until I had tasted the actual dog meat as it was. It turns out that it is not too different from beef, tasting very similar to a good pot roast. The meat was actually incredibly tender, if occasionally stringy, and had just a bit of fat left around the edges of some pieces (in lesser amounts than the horse meat). The really suprising thing was the sheer amount of the dog meat that they added to the soup; I had eaten all of the large pieces floating in the broth, and scraped the bowl's bottom with my spoon to find a whole trasure trove of kaegogi still waiting for me.
I must say I was lucky. My friend Gabe got a lot of meat, but he also got a bit of bone, and a bluish, tough patch that looked like skin or ear. Though he was perhaps less enthusiastic about his meal, we agreed that it was good enough to try the steamed dog meat we had heard of, but been unable to find on the island (I have since been informed of its whereabouts). For such a rarely-eaten delicacy food, it was surprisingly cheap, at only 7,000 won (roughly $7) a bowl. I managed to get Alicia to try a small piece, though as she put it into her mouth and chewed it she nearly choked. She said she kept imagining a wet dog smell as she ate it.
Perhaps the greatest part of this was returning to class the next day and telling my students that I had eaten "mongmongijjigae", which translated to "bark bark soup", but comes across as "puppy soup". They either found it hilarious or horrifying, and while some kids have in fact tried it, giving me a thumbs up and shouting "very good!", the bulk of the class had not, especially the girls, who in some cases looked as if they might throw something at me.
The converted bedroom/restaurant at the Dog House.
Testing the waters...
My first time eating dog.
There was a whole lot of meat. It was great.
----------------------------------------------------------------
Oddly enough, this was not the strangest thing that we did that week; the upcoming weekend held many strange surprises. We found out, for instance, that though Jeju Island is a pretty small place, only 15 X 30 kilometers, it has not one but two Crocodile Parks. And whatever we might have thought a "Crocodile Park" would be, there was nothing that could prepare us for the truth. All this and more, next time I can get a break from my classes.
Up The Hill
On the Wednesday after I arrived back from Daegu, I was taken with the entirety of the school's teachers to climb an oreum, the parasitic volcanic hills that litter the island. According to my students, this particular oreum was a piece of cake, and I should have no trouble. It turns out that my students were a bit more generous in appraising my level of physical fitness than they should have been. After a short walk in the woods, the trail shot up at a dramatically steeper angle, and for the next 2 miles I found myself climbing up stone steps and rubber matting. None of this would have been much of a problem if 1.) I was in better shape, and 2.) my shoes didn't have a hard-plastic sheet in the middle of the sole, causing me to slip of the slick stone stairs and the folded rebar holding down the matting. This stumbling happened enough times for me to eventually sprain my kneee, an injury which didn't truly manifest itself until the next day. Making it to the top after around 45 minutes of climbing, I met up with the teachers who had beat me to the top (only about half made it, in the end), and saw that the view was wonderful, though the crown of the ill was exposed enough to force me back into the sweater I had removed during the climb.
Walking the crest of the hill. The entire island is covered in this eulalia grass.
The view from the top (yes, I know I need to pull up my pants, and get a haircut).
The descent was much easier, and it was after a seemingly short amount of time that we were hiking out of the forest that skirted the mountain. While crossing the plains back to the bus we ran into a band of horses blocking the roadway. My co-teacher was afraid of it, and warned me to be careful as I approached it to pet it's nose. These were the same short-legged Jeju horses I had seen at the racetrack weeks before, and looking into their sad eyes as they gazed at us while we passed, I almost got the impression that they knew what the teachers and I were doing next, where we were eating dinner.
The rogue horses.
The Famous Mr Ed-ible
The horse, quite aside from being a sturdy work animal and an excellent means of transportation for cowboys, Mongolians and the like, is in fact one tasty animal. I have to say, malgogi (horse meat) is one of the better meats I have had on the island so far, if only for the diversity of preparation showcased in the meal that night. That night, the main course was maltang, which literally means horse soup, a clear broth with leeks and a nice amount of horse meat, which in this dish tasted very much like pork, with a tasty thin layer of horse fat lining the bigger pieces. Horse soup was in no way the star of the show, in my opinion. The first course served was steamed horse slices, something alone the lines of a tenderloin, which was good, though it too tasted like gamey pork. I had the opportunity to try a piece of the more expensive horse tripe (it was only brought out to the prinicipal, who offered me a piece). It was one of the better types of tripe I've had, chewy and thankfully lacking the awful sewage flavor found in chitterlings.
Malgogi kui, or horse barbeque, is among the top three most tasty things I have eaten in Korea. It was cut into tiny morsels, and marinated excellently, the end result tasting very close to beef fajitas from Goode Company Taqueria back in Houston. If there was one thing that sold me on eating horse again, it was this; with malgogi kui, horse went from being a novelty to a legitimately tasty meal.
The Horse Restaurant. I don't know what it's name is, though if I owned one, I would name it "HorseShack".
Horse tenderloin, maybe, and one piece of horse tripe left on the plate behind.
Horse barbeque, or malgogi kui. Tasty.
Catholic Camp
The very next day following the hike up the oreum, I went away with my 6th grade students and teachers to an overnight sleep-away camp, run by the Catholic church through a handful of Korean nuns. Now, being so used to the utter division of church and state in America, I found it quite strange that they would choose a Catholic center to have a camp for a public school, but it was justified to me by the teachers, who said it was meant to teach them about ethics and such, and that it didn't involve religion. I can only imagine the uproar that a plan like this back home would cause. The ACLU would form a human wall to prevent it. Not that it mattered to me either way, but it was, in the end, a seemingly secular affair (though not knowing the words for salvation or transubstantiation in Korean, I can't be sure). The camp for me, as well as the rest of the teachers, involved sitting in a break room, reading or watching TV. I finished about half of the Harry Potter book I was reading. The night ended with the kids performing dance routines to Korean pop songs, which was cute, though around the end of the first of two hours, I was sick to death of K-pop. That night was my first time to ever sleep on a Korean yeo, or floor-bed, which did little to help my sprained leg. I woke up the next morning to another first- it was the only time I had ever been around Koreans this early in the morning, and thus was the first time I had had a real Korean breakfast of fish and rice. I just don't know how I've lived so long without experiencing the appetizing wonder that is scraping flesh off of a soggy fish at 7 am. Ugh.
My favorite dance skit. Look at that kid dance!
The next week, after a brief weekend trip to Seogwipo for a pub crawl, I again settled back into my job, where each week has been getting progressively busier. Sometime in between the construction of powerpoint presentations on Halloween (a week late) and various bodily ailments, I found time to research a plan that me and friend had been discussing for a few weeks at that point. Everytime we had seen each other, we had proposed that we should go and get a certain meal, yet after half a month of inactivity, it was time to make it happen.
Man Bites Dog (or, Oh, Kae!)
A Korean-speaking friend of ours polled her office coworkers for their suggestions of a good restaurant to get boyangtang, a (somehow) euphemistic name adopted around the 1988 Seoul Olympics for bosintang, though both terms mean exactly the same thing: "invigorating soup". Bosintang is itself a euphemism for kae jang, which literally means "dog stew". We were given directions to a restaurant named Giwachon, which we found to be little more than a converted house sitting in the shadow of a massive apartment highrise building. A family both lived and worked in the restaurant, with the spare bedrooms being used as dining areas. Both Alicia and my friend's girlfriend had accompanied us, and were relieved to see that the restaurant also served samgyetang, a whole boiled chicken filled with rice and ginseng.
The kids serving us were a bit shocked when two westerners ordered bosintang, and came back to double-check with us a minute later. After what seemed like mere minutes, our soups arrived, still boiling in their black pots. We were provided with a number of seasoning ingredients including ginger and pepper oil, which I decided to wait to add until I had tasted the actual dog meat as it was. It turns out that it is not too different from beef, tasting very similar to a good pot roast. The meat was actually incredibly tender, if occasionally stringy, and had just a bit of fat left around the edges of some pieces (in lesser amounts than the horse meat). The really suprising thing was the sheer amount of the dog meat that they added to the soup; I had eaten all of the large pieces floating in the broth, and scraped the bowl's bottom with my spoon to find a whole trasure trove of kaegogi still waiting for me.
I must say I was lucky. My friend Gabe got a lot of meat, but he also got a bit of bone, and a bluish, tough patch that looked like skin or ear. Though he was perhaps less enthusiastic about his meal, we agreed that it was good enough to try the steamed dog meat we had heard of, but been unable to find on the island (I have since been informed of its whereabouts). For such a rarely-eaten delicacy food, it was surprisingly cheap, at only 7,000 won (roughly $7) a bowl. I managed to get Alicia to try a small piece, though as she put it into her mouth and chewed it she nearly choked. She said she kept imagining a wet dog smell as she ate it.
Perhaps the greatest part of this was returning to class the next day and telling my students that I had eaten "mongmongijjigae", which translated to "bark bark soup", but comes across as "puppy soup". They either found it hilarious or horrifying, and while some kids have in fact tried it, giving me a thumbs up and shouting "very good!", the bulk of the class had not, especially the girls, who in some cases looked as if they might throw something at me.
The converted bedroom/restaurant at the Dog House.
Testing the waters...
My first time eating dog.
There was a whole lot of meat. It was great.
----------------------------------------------------------------
Oddly enough, this was not the strangest thing that we did that week; the upcoming weekend held many strange surprises. We found out, for instance, that though Jeju Island is a pretty small place, only 15 X 30 kilometers, it has not one but two Crocodile Parks. And whatever we might have thought a "Crocodile Park" would be, there was nothing that could prepare us for the truth. All this and more, next time I can get a break from my classes.
Sunday, November 4, 2007
Daegu Part Deux
Our first night out on the town in Daegu, we were introduced to the major difference between our small Jeju Island and the big cities of the Korea mainland: the overabundance of foreigners, and the lack of hospitality from the locals. It is probably safe to assume that the first of the pair causes the second, as I cannot imagine the large presence of American military in the town can help- the few groups of GIs we saw wandering around gave off the impression of muscly street gangs. The result is that, unlike Jeju, being a foreigner does not evoke interest from the locals, indeed in some cases earning scorn.
The first bar we went to was called Commun, which was another example of the vinyl-only music bar. They had Guinness on draft, which was beyond incredible, priced at only $7 a pint (I would have scoffed at paying that much a few months ago, but was by this point actually relieved to hear it was so affordable, and not the $12 Seoul pint I had heard of). The bar was choked with foreigners, which, as I stated before, was a bit of a drag- I think we all experienced a bit of culture shock, and were as a result huddled into the back corner of the large basement room the bar occupied. Seeing the album cover of Captian Beefheart's Trout Mask Replica hanging on the wall behind the bar, I tried talking to the older Korean owner about it, only for him to respond "So what? Everyone knows that album, it's common, I mean, if you actually like real music." I don't think that's the case, and certainly not in 2007, in Korea. Nonetheless I, a scolded country mouse in the big city, sat quietly finishing my seven dollar Guinness. The other bars were unremarkable aside from their utterly Western atmosphere, with American bartenders and, in one case, a kid belting out Arcade Fire covers on a small stage. I've got a video of Alicia singing along with the song 'Wake Up', but I think she'd kill me if I posted it. She might kill me for even mentioning it.
The night went on until far later than it should have, failing to keep in mind our goal to wake up early the next morning to explore the city. The night ended in an intoxicated, and therefore infuriating, session of crane game outside a convenience store. Our friend won a butane lighter on his first go, which set the hook in us to keep trying for far too long. Maybe an hour.
No Lures, Just Light
The next morning we awoke somewhat later than we had anticipated (around 11:30), and it took more than an hour to get everyone out of the hotel and into a cab for lunch. Our friends, during their extensive wandering while trying to find us the night before, had seen an Outback Steakhouse tucked away in the shopping district of downtown, on the second story of a building on top of a McDonalds. Agreeing that after a few months of fatty pork and kimchi there would be nothing better than a rare steak and a bloomin' onion, we made our way to the restaurant (telling the cab driver "Outa-backu Steaku-housa", which is apparently correct). And get a rare steak I did, perhaps one of the rarest steaks I've ever eaten. It was amazing, though even at lunch special prices, it was still $25... and it took about 2 hours or more to get back on the street.
Fighting the urge to go back to the Love Motel and take a nap, we soldiered on; My friend Gabe and I set out for a traditional Korean medicine market, while Alicia and his girlfriend went off shopping. But before we had left the main road, we found the Halloween store we had been hoping for. Quite different from the meager selection of Halloween goods found in Jeju Si, this was an entire store devoted to costumes. After considering the oversized mascot heads (see below), I settled on a cheap rubber chicken mask which, being designed for a much smaller head, I would later have to modify (as in, rip the face out of, and sloppily tie the shreds of the beak into a mask.)
A glimpse of what could have been.
Doctor, Doctor! Gimme The Newts!
Soon thereafter, we came upon the medicine district, full of ginseng peddlers and shops stacked to the ceiling with dried herbs and various animal bits. The first store that we stopped in, of the many dozens on that street alone, happened to be owned by a young English-speaking couple. It is perhaps for this reason that they were able to sell so much of their merchandise to us; they had to do little more than say "oh, that is ginseng whiskey" for us to have purchased a fifth of the liquor, and after another ten minutes of questions about the assorted wares, we came away with some red ginseng (the area's specialty) and a spicy black tea made from roughly ten different herbs. We learned that in addition to ginseng, the antlers of deer are incredibly popular as a medicinal food, boiled and eaten for a variety of ailments. We had considered buying some at a later store that seemed to specialize in them, but they are by no means cheap, and apparently are rather foul; we asked the shopkeeper, using the tiny bit of Korean we knew, if the antlers were delicious, and he nearly laughed us out of the store.
Rather inexplicably, there was an entire block of this medicine market area that was dedicated not to remedy but to... fake food displays. Groups of older women in nearly identical shops were toiling away making elaborately ornate representations of Korean foods, using a pasty substance that looked enough like dough to fool us into thinking that they might be fancy cakes, encourage us to, once again, inquire in Korean as to whether these things were delicious (really, it was the closest we could come to 'edible'). We received the very same reaction as before. These creations, made from what appeared (after a reinspection) to be the same inedible hard sugar stuff that the Mexican Dia de los Muertos calavera sugar skulls are made from. I suppose they are for restaurants to display their speciality in a window front, though I have yet to encounter a restaurant that serves entire full-grown octopus platters, or prawns larger than a baby.
The fake-food district
A particularly fine example of quality octopusmanship.
The very last store we came upon in the medical district was an old traditional Korean doctor's office, and inside we found the most wondrous things. Lining the walls were animals (or rather, parts of animals) of all shapes and sizes. Inside, we were ushered around by an elderly Korean woman, who claimed (we gathered, from her long string of Korean words peppered occasionally by an English one) that her son was a doctor in America. Starting with a large and authentic stuffed sea turtle, she showed us the doctor's menagerie of fragments, which included reindeer antlers, ox horns, mice pelts (to make you rich, she said), sea horses, and jars full of fish, scorpions, salamanders, and cockroaches. The two things that we actually tried to buy were both suspended in alcohol: white snake whiskey, and dog penis vodka. They were, unfortunately, very expensive and rare, and thus not for sale. At the very least, it was amusing to watch the old Korean woman use a stiff forearm to forcefully demonstrate the virility one would gain from drinking these liquors.
Cockroaches, for swelling and bone problems:
Newts, for the legs I think:
White Snake Whiskey, which sounds more than a little like an 80's hair band launched a liquor brand... hell, it's a better name than Cabo Wabo.
Dog Potion #9:
One-Stop Shopping
Departing from the medicine market, we caught a cab to the area around the massive Seomun Market. It is one of the three largest shopping areas in Korea, and dates back to the mid-1600's. On the way there, we walked through the red light district (the Lonely Planet guidebook recommended it), but apparently the trade is slow at four in the afternoon. Seomun market loomed ahead, and we could just begin to see how massive it is. Half and hour later, after walking through stall after stall of bootleg clothes and food vendors, we realized that we would never see all of it that night. I bought an awesome watch for around five dollars, and tried a delicious green tea pancake stuffed with cinnamon and syrup. After passing another few streets, we stumbled into the meat section, which I'll dub Animal Alley.
Cage upon cage of animals (including one obnoxious cat that would not shut up) lined the streets, either being sold for meat, or in the case of the puppies and cat, for pets (not good economic sense to eat something with such little meat, I'd think). The seafood section was impressive, with massive shark fins, skinned and dried rays, and a myriad of other strange aquatic beasts. I also got my first look at kaegogi, or Korean dog meat, seeing a half-slab of Rover laid out in a freezer, tail nub and all. We took a photo of the puppies for sale as pets, and took photos of a few hanging beef cuts, and later managed to convince our girlfriends that they were puppy fillets. They were not so happy when they learned the truth.
The entrance to a vast network of market stalls.
Animal Alley, with everything from pheasants to puppies.
These hideous monsters are called monkfish, or anglers, or (in Korean) agu, and they are, as I found out later that week, a bit on the chewy side.
What time is it? DISCO TIME!
Halloween Night
After a few hours of rest, we outfitted ourselves in our costumes, and headed out for the Thunderbird Lounge, the bar at which a large Halloween party would be held, forgoing dinner as we were all still full from our Outback excursion. The party itself was nothing too remarkable; we had attended the same bar the night before after leaving Commun, and aside from seeing a lot of familiar faces from the EPIK orientation in August (many EPIK teachers from all over Korea had come), it was quite similar to the night before... except the Korean girl tending bar had an Afro and a moustache.
Alicia and I had to do the best we could on such short notice, settling on a retread of our costumes a few years ago, though I am sure I was a much shabbier chicken this time around, with my ripped face mask. We actually came in second or third in the couples costume category, though there was only one prize, and it went to a pair of mimes. Our friend, who had made a ballerina costume from scratch, won the grand prize, though I really like another teacher's interpretation of an aggima, old Korean women who sell fruits and various other things, and can be quite rude and pushy (and spit a lot). He had the squat down exactly- they perch like that for hours at a time. We left the Thunderbird around 2am, and wandered from bar to bar until around 4:30am, then, utterly exhausted, made our way back home. The bars close at five in the morning in Korea, but I have never, even on a good night, been able to make it that late.
Cat and Chicken, The Sequel
Aggima
Pump You Up (Or, T-shirts In The Wintertime)
Departing Daegu after a rushed trip to Burger King, we arrived back in sunny Jeju Island around mid afternoon. Looking forward to a quiet afternoon of relaxing, we wheeled our suitcase out into the airport lobby, where we set eyes on a banner that immediately dismissed all of our previous plans for relaxation. The International Federation of Body Building was holding their World Championship in Jeju Stadium. Within an hour, we were at the gate of the stadium with our friend Doug, paying the nominal fee to see what promised, judging from the spectators walking around the grounds alone, a very amusing Sunday afternoon.
We found ourselves seated front-and-center, directly behind the American team. It was too late when we realized that sitting behind these hardcore bodybuilders would leave us very little room to make jokes about the proceedings, but thankfully, after an hour of struggling to keep a straight face, they departed. The opening ceremony involved a Parade of Nations, as the weightlifters from each of around 70 nations paraded out onto the stage, accompanied by a man or woman in a suit, presumably their trainer or assistant. All were not so lucky, however, including the poor little Chinese Taipei contestant who, aside from being remarkably scrawny and sporting a weaselly mustache, had no one to carry his sign.
Poor old Chinese Taipei
The competition consisted of nine weight classes with six contestants each (we only made it through the fourth round, with both hunger and antsy boredom overtaking us by that point, 3 hours later). Each contestant had an individual floor routine, consisting of freeform posing, with musical accompaniments that ranged from the overly-dramatic to the silly (see videos below). The six were then lined up side by side and made to perform mandatory poses, and then came the Pose Down. The Pose Down is the bodybuilding equivalent of a dance-off, with each contestant trying to outdo each other, often stepping in front of others, or bumping them out of the way. They are called back out, and ranked from 6th to 1st place.
Weightlifters:
Despite his cocky pose, he was in fact last place in his category.
A group of burly Brazilians were sitting above our head, and were by far the noisiest of any of the spectators in the arena. When a Brazilian contestant was on the stage, they would yell obscene cheers in Portuguese and cheer endlessly. The Koreans sitting around them often looked terrified, having no idea what these large tan beasts were capable of.
Here are a few videos:
Livin' on a prayer
Pose Down!!! (a tamer one, but the only one I've got)
The Brazilians cheering for their teammate.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
After such a busy weekend, I was ready to have a relaxed, calm week at school. I realized that this was too much to hope for on my first day back; as I walked into work on Monday morning, I was told by my co-teacher, "On Wednesday, we will climb a mountain. Get ready."
The first bar we went to was called Commun, which was another example of the vinyl-only music bar. They had Guinness on draft, which was beyond incredible, priced at only $7 a pint (I would have scoffed at paying that much a few months ago, but was by this point actually relieved to hear it was so affordable, and not the $12 Seoul pint I had heard of). The bar was choked with foreigners, which, as I stated before, was a bit of a drag- I think we all experienced a bit of culture shock, and were as a result huddled into the back corner of the large basement room the bar occupied. Seeing the album cover of Captian Beefheart's Trout Mask Replica hanging on the wall behind the bar, I tried talking to the older Korean owner about it, only for him to respond "So what? Everyone knows that album, it's common, I mean, if you actually like real music." I don't think that's the case, and certainly not in 2007, in Korea. Nonetheless I, a scolded country mouse in the big city, sat quietly finishing my seven dollar Guinness. The other bars were unremarkable aside from their utterly Western atmosphere, with American bartenders and, in one case, a kid belting out Arcade Fire covers on a small stage. I've got a video of Alicia singing along with the song 'Wake Up', but I think she'd kill me if I posted it. She might kill me for even mentioning it.
The night went on until far later than it should have, failing to keep in mind our goal to wake up early the next morning to explore the city. The night ended in an intoxicated, and therefore infuriating, session of crane game outside a convenience store. Our friend won a butane lighter on his first go, which set the hook in us to keep trying for far too long. Maybe an hour.
No Lures, Just Light
The next morning we awoke somewhat later than we had anticipated (around 11:30), and it took more than an hour to get everyone out of the hotel and into a cab for lunch. Our friends, during their extensive wandering while trying to find us the night before, had seen an Outback Steakhouse tucked away in the shopping district of downtown, on the second story of a building on top of a McDonalds. Agreeing that after a few months of fatty pork and kimchi there would be nothing better than a rare steak and a bloomin' onion, we made our way to the restaurant (telling the cab driver "Outa-backu Steaku-housa", which is apparently correct). And get a rare steak I did, perhaps one of the rarest steaks I've ever eaten. It was amazing, though even at lunch special prices, it was still $25... and it took about 2 hours or more to get back on the street.
Fighting the urge to go back to the Love Motel and take a nap, we soldiered on; My friend Gabe and I set out for a traditional Korean medicine market, while Alicia and his girlfriend went off shopping. But before we had left the main road, we found the Halloween store we had been hoping for. Quite different from the meager selection of Halloween goods found in Jeju Si, this was an entire store devoted to costumes. After considering the oversized mascot heads (see below), I settled on a cheap rubber chicken mask which, being designed for a much smaller head, I would later have to modify (as in, rip the face out of, and sloppily tie the shreds of the beak into a mask.)
A glimpse of what could have been.
Doctor, Doctor! Gimme The Newts!
Soon thereafter, we came upon the medicine district, full of ginseng peddlers and shops stacked to the ceiling with dried herbs and various animal bits. The first store that we stopped in, of the many dozens on that street alone, happened to be owned by a young English-speaking couple. It is perhaps for this reason that they were able to sell so much of their merchandise to us; they had to do little more than say "oh, that is ginseng whiskey" for us to have purchased a fifth of the liquor, and after another ten minutes of questions about the assorted wares, we came away with some red ginseng (the area's specialty) and a spicy black tea made from roughly ten different herbs. We learned that in addition to ginseng, the antlers of deer are incredibly popular as a medicinal food, boiled and eaten for a variety of ailments. We had considered buying some at a later store that seemed to specialize in them, but they are by no means cheap, and apparently are rather foul; we asked the shopkeeper, using the tiny bit of Korean we knew, if the antlers were delicious, and he nearly laughed us out of the store.
Rather inexplicably, there was an entire block of this medicine market area that was dedicated not to remedy but to... fake food displays. Groups of older women in nearly identical shops were toiling away making elaborately ornate representations of Korean foods, using a pasty substance that looked enough like dough to fool us into thinking that they might be fancy cakes, encourage us to, once again, inquire in Korean as to whether these things were delicious (really, it was the closest we could come to 'edible'). We received the very same reaction as before. These creations, made from what appeared (after a reinspection) to be the same inedible hard sugar stuff that the Mexican Dia de los Muertos calavera sugar skulls are made from. I suppose they are for restaurants to display their speciality in a window front, though I have yet to encounter a restaurant that serves entire full-grown octopus platters, or prawns larger than a baby.
The fake-food district
A particularly fine example of quality octopusmanship.
The very last store we came upon in the medical district was an old traditional Korean doctor's office, and inside we found the most wondrous things. Lining the walls were animals (or rather, parts of animals) of all shapes and sizes. Inside, we were ushered around by an elderly Korean woman, who claimed (we gathered, from her long string of Korean words peppered occasionally by an English one) that her son was a doctor in America. Starting with a large and authentic stuffed sea turtle, she showed us the doctor's menagerie of fragments, which included reindeer antlers, ox horns, mice pelts (to make you rich, she said), sea horses, and jars full of fish, scorpions, salamanders, and cockroaches. The two things that we actually tried to buy were both suspended in alcohol: white snake whiskey, and dog penis vodka. They were, unfortunately, very expensive and rare, and thus not for sale. At the very least, it was amusing to watch the old Korean woman use a stiff forearm to forcefully demonstrate the virility one would gain from drinking these liquors.
Cockroaches, for swelling and bone problems:
Newts, for the legs I think:
White Snake Whiskey, which sounds more than a little like an 80's hair band launched a liquor brand... hell, it's a better name than Cabo Wabo.
Dog Potion #9:
One-Stop Shopping
Departing from the medicine market, we caught a cab to the area around the massive Seomun Market. It is one of the three largest shopping areas in Korea, and dates back to the mid-1600's. On the way there, we walked through the red light district (the Lonely Planet guidebook recommended it), but apparently the trade is slow at four in the afternoon. Seomun market loomed ahead, and we could just begin to see how massive it is. Half and hour later, after walking through stall after stall of bootleg clothes and food vendors, we realized that we would never see all of it that night. I bought an awesome watch for around five dollars, and tried a delicious green tea pancake stuffed with cinnamon and syrup. After passing another few streets, we stumbled into the meat section, which I'll dub Animal Alley.
Cage upon cage of animals (including one obnoxious cat that would not shut up) lined the streets, either being sold for meat, or in the case of the puppies and cat, for pets (not good economic sense to eat something with such little meat, I'd think). The seafood section was impressive, with massive shark fins, skinned and dried rays, and a myriad of other strange aquatic beasts. I also got my first look at kaegogi, or Korean dog meat, seeing a half-slab of Rover laid out in a freezer, tail nub and all. We took a photo of the puppies for sale as pets, and took photos of a few hanging beef cuts, and later managed to convince our girlfriends that they were puppy fillets. They were not so happy when they learned the truth.
The entrance to a vast network of market stalls.
Animal Alley, with everything from pheasants to puppies.
These hideous monsters are called monkfish, or anglers, or (in Korean) agu, and they are, as I found out later that week, a bit on the chewy side.
What time is it? DISCO TIME!
Halloween Night
After a few hours of rest, we outfitted ourselves in our costumes, and headed out for the Thunderbird Lounge, the bar at which a large Halloween party would be held, forgoing dinner as we were all still full from our Outback excursion. The party itself was nothing too remarkable; we had attended the same bar the night before after leaving Commun, and aside from seeing a lot of familiar faces from the EPIK orientation in August (many EPIK teachers from all over Korea had come), it was quite similar to the night before... except the Korean girl tending bar had an Afro and a moustache.
Alicia and I had to do the best we could on such short notice, settling on a retread of our costumes a few years ago, though I am sure I was a much shabbier chicken this time around, with my ripped face mask. We actually came in second or third in the couples costume category, though there was only one prize, and it went to a pair of mimes. Our friend, who had made a ballerina costume from scratch, won the grand prize, though I really like another teacher's interpretation of an aggima, old Korean women who sell fruits and various other things, and can be quite rude and pushy (and spit a lot). He had the squat down exactly- they perch like that for hours at a time. We left the Thunderbird around 2am, and wandered from bar to bar until around 4:30am, then, utterly exhausted, made our way back home. The bars close at five in the morning in Korea, but I have never, even on a good night, been able to make it that late.
Cat and Chicken, The Sequel
Aggima
Pump You Up (Or, T-shirts In The Wintertime)
Departing Daegu after a rushed trip to Burger King, we arrived back in sunny Jeju Island around mid afternoon. Looking forward to a quiet afternoon of relaxing, we wheeled our suitcase out into the airport lobby, where we set eyes on a banner that immediately dismissed all of our previous plans for relaxation. The International Federation of Body Building was holding their World Championship in Jeju Stadium. Within an hour, we were at the gate of the stadium with our friend Doug, paying the nominal fee to see what promised, judging from the spectators walking around the grounds alone, a very amusing Sunday afternoon.
We found ourselves seated front-and-center, directly behind the American team. It was too late when we realized that sitting behind these hardcore bodybuilders would leave us very little room to make jokes about the proceedings, but thankfully, after an hour of struggling to keep a straight face, they departed. The opening ceremony involved a Parade of Nations, as the weightlifters from each of around 70 nations paraded out onto the stage, accompanied by a man or woman in a suit, presumably their trainer or assistant. All were not so lucky, however, including the poor little Chinese Taipei contestant who, aside from being remarkably scrawny and sporting a weaselly mustache, had no one to carry his sign.
Poor old Chinese Taipei
The competition consisted of nine weight classes with six contestants each (we only made it through the fourth round, with both hunger and antsy boredom overtaking us by that point, 3 hours later). Each contestant had an individual floor routine, consisting of freeform posing, with musical accompaniments that ranged from the overly-dramatic to the silly (see videos below). The six were then lined up side by side and made to perform mandatory poses, and then came the Pose Down. The Pose Down is the bodybuilding equivalent of a dance-off, with each contestant trying to outdo each other, often stepping in front of others, or bumping them out of the way. They are called back out, and ranked from 6th to 1st place.
Weightlifters:
Despite his cocky pose, he was in fact last place in his category.
A group of burly Brazilians were sitting above our head, and were by far the noisiest of any of the spectators in the arena. When a Brazilian contestant was on the stage, they would yell obscene cheers in Portuguese and cheer endlessly. The Koreans sitting around them often looked terrified, having no idea what these large tan beasts were capable of.
Here are a few videos:
Livin' on a prayer
Pose Down!!! (a tamer one, but the only one I've got)
The Brazilians cheering for their teammate.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
After such a busy weekend, I was ready to have a relaxed, calm week at school. I realized that this was too much to hope for on my first day back; as I walked into work on Monday morning, I was told by my co-teacher, "On Wednesday, we will climb a mountain. Get ready."
Tuesday, October 30, 2007
Daegoween
Halloween in Korea is much like the Fourth of July in Korea. Outside of the transplanted expats, very few people find any reason to celebrate October 31st. Our plans were therefore somewhat subdued, deciding to go out to the foreigner bar, the Blue Agave, for a Halloween party being thrown by the bar staff. Our plans made, we set out to scoure the tiny bins of Halloween merchandise at EMart (Walmart's Korean equivalent) to try and find some manner of a costume. It was quite late in the game when Alicia and I were informed about a massive EPIK first-years party being thrown in Daegu. So late in fact that every flight out of the city was booked, not only to Daegu, but also to Ulsan and Busan, the two nearest major cities. Aside from flying to Seoul and taking a 4-hour bus trip (the express trains were also booked), there was no way we could make it. We therefore once again resigned ourselves to staying in town, and commenced planning our weekend out.
That is, until Thursday, the day before we would have to leave, when we once again decided against all advise to go to the airport and try to get a standby seat. Hastily packing our bags, and, at least in my case, half-expecting to be coming home the next night, we agreed to leave work early and arrive at the airport at 3:30pm, an hour and a half early.
Alicia met me at my school at 3, just as the kids were getting out of school. Chaos ensued. While she was waiting on me outside, a girl asked her if she knew me. She said, "yes, I'm his girlfriend", and soon had a group of sixth grade girls swarming around her. By the time I arrived, a throng of students were shouting Girlfriend! Girlfriend! Pretty! Pretty! and mobbing us as we walked down the street. A little girl gave Alicia a stuffed animal as a gift. It was very cute pandemonium.
Arriving at the airport, we learned that we had dramaticaly overestimated our chances of getting on the 5:05 to Daegu. Korean Air was so overbooked that even standby was closed. The thought occurred that we hadn't tried Asiana Airlines, so with little hope in our hearts we approached the counter, and succeeded in securing a set of standby tickets. We were numbers 12 and 13, and were informed that there would probably be 5 people let on, though we could wait if we wanted. Wanting to say that we had at least tried our best to take this trip, we waited the hour and a half until we were to return to the counter.
When we came back up, a small crowd had formed, and a man was reading information off a sheet, in Korean of course. Just as we were panicking, we saw that the Jeju Education Director (our bosses' boss' boss) was standing in front of us, a man who could speak English much more successfully than we could speak Korean. We tapped him on the shoulder, and he, though taken off guard, agreed to act as an interpreter for us. Soon thereafter, we were told that they would begin announcing standyby ticket numbers for the Daegu flight.
Two people were allowed to board. Only two. Dejected, we walked over to the counter to get a refund for our unfulfilled dream. We had just turned in our ticket when the Education Director ran up and said something to the cashier. She nodded, typed on her keyboard for a rather long period of time... and printed us boarding passes. Apparently the flight had been delayed for 15 minutes, therefore, for a reason I don't believe I'll ever understand, that magically freed up at least another eleven seats. Grabbing our passes, we sprinted for the gate. We had made it- We were going to Daegu.
A Wretched Hive of Scum and Villainy
After an hour-long flight, we arrived in the city. It was only then that we realized we had no idea where we were going. Calling our friends from Jeju, who were only just then leaving the island, we were told to take a taxi to Camp Walker, a US Army base in Daegu, being told we would find a cheap hotel near the entrance. after a 20 minute cab ride, we were dropped off near the guarded gate, in what was by far the seediest area I've been to in Korea. No sooner were we dropped off on the side of the street than a carfull of GIs cursed at us for standing in the road. In the dimly lit street we could see shady-looking Koreans stalking the shadows and groups of prostitutes escorting wayward servicemen off the streets into dark houses. We later learned from a local EPIK teacher (who had finally called us back) that we had come to the back gate of the base, a markedly different kind of area from the front entrance, but by then, we were already back in downtown waiting to meet up with the other Jeju teachers.
While waiting, we saw a rather interesting idea to get around paying high downtown rent: a big pink bus was parked along the main shopping district, which had been converted into a clothing store. It seems to park on the main roads after dark on weekend nights, selling various Korean-couture items, departing late that night (it was gone the next day). Alicia (finally) finished shopping, and we set out, cell phones edging tenuously on the brink of death, to find our Jeju friends, who had just arrived. After numerous instance of 'just missing each other', we were finally able to set off in search of a hotel, at 10pm.
The Love Motel
We wandered into a bustling and crowded network of streets, similar only in the most basic layout to the City Hall district of Jeju Si, full of restaurants, shops, and bars, labelled with the requisite copyright-infringing names found all over Korea: the Sex and the City boutique, The Beatles bar, the Sleepless in Seattle coffee shop (I think that last one's actually pretty clever). Lost if left to our own devices, we asked the first foreigners we saw (one of many on the street, actually) if the could help us. They agreed, leading us through street after street of the large downtown district until we came to a small sign pointing to a hotel called Mellow Yellow. Walking down the small back street, we saw the there were actually two hotels, the Yellow and the Mellow. Joking that the Yellow must be for locals and the Mellow for foreigners, we checked to see if the had space, but there was nothing in either. We were told to walk around the corner to another hotel, and soon we found the signs for ZOO004 (I guess it's zoo-thousand-and-four, approximating the word 2004, but that doesn't really work in Korean, when it's something like zoo gong gong sa...). Rooms were available, with names like the Diamond Room, Ruby Room, and ours, the Sapphire Room. We grabbed the key, eager to unload our baggage, and entering the room learned something interesting about ZOO004, which I suppose should have been obvious from the downstairs movie rental shelves- it was a Love Motel.
Now, even if the love motel isn't a uniquely Korean invention, they have certainly done much to proliferate the concept. Rented out for two different periods, the day block and the night block, or both, love motels serve as the equivalent of the pay-by-the-hour motels back home, but are far less seedy. Honestly, it was a fairly nice hotel room, complete with an internet-equipped PC, two TVs, and in the case of the nicer rooms, everything from Japanese wood Hanoki tubs, to saunas, to projection screen TV's and LED constellations on the ceiling above the bed. Our room was unique in having a loft bed (called a 'second story for the business man' in the room descriptions)... complete with mirrors on the ceiling. The TVs had basic cable, but when they were turned on were tuned to the more 'adult' choices the hotel provided... weird, Asian 'adult' choices. Now, as far as I've heard, this was a relatively tame version of the love motel, with others having many more unusual adult conveniences, ranging from unusual adult vending machines to massage services. Quite regardless of its purpose, the hotel was a bargain for 45,000 Won a night, and honestly had the softest bed I've slept on in Korea so far. Here's hoping it was a clean, soft bed.
Mellow Yellow
The mirrored ceiling
The Love Motel Room
ZOO004!
Having settled in, we made our way out to the bar scene. Both of the bars we stopped at were choked with foreigners, and even had a few tending bar. Having been in Korea for a long while now, I suppose, I think we all experienced a bit of culture shock coming back into such an environment. It was like being dropped back home, and I don't think I liked it.
This was merely the first night in our adventures, the next day being far more exciting, with ancient Korean medicines and one weird Halloween night. To be continued...
That is, until Thursday, the day before we would have to leave, when we once again decided against all advise to go to the airport and try to get a standby seat. Hastily packing our bags, and, at least in my case, half-expecting to be coming home the next night, we agreed to leave work early and arrive at the airport at 3:30pm, an hour and a half early.
Alicia met me at my school at 3, just as the kids were getting out of school. Chaos ensued. While she was waiting on me outside, a girl asked her if she knew me. She said, "yes, I'm his girlfriend", and soon had a group of sixth grade girls swarming around her. By the time I arrived, a throng of students were shouting Girlfriend! Girlfriend! Pretty! Pretty! and mobbing us as we walked down the street. A little girl gave Alicia a stuffed animal as a gift. It was very cute pandemonium.
Arriving at the airport, we learned that we had dramaticaly overestimated our chances of getting on the 5:05 to Daegu. Korean Air was so overbooked that even standby was closed. The thought occurred that we hadn't tried Asiana Airlines, so with little hope in our hearts we approached the counter, and succeeded in securing a set of standby tickets. We were numbers 12 and 13, and were informed that there would probably be 5 people let on, though we could wait if we wanted. Wanting to say that we had at least tried our best to take this trip, we waited the hour and a half until we were to return to the counter.
When we came back up, a small crowd had formed, and a man was reading information off a sheet, in Korean of course. Just as we were panicking, we saw that the Jeju Education Director (our bosses' boss' boss) was standing in front of us, a man who could speak English much more successfully than we could speak Korean. We tapped him on the shoulder, and he, though taken off guard, agreed to act as an interpreter for us. Soon thereafter, we were told that they would begin announcing standyby ticket numbers for the Daegu flight.
Two people were allowed to board. Only two. Dejected, we walked over to the counter to get a refund for our unfulfilled dream. We had just turned in our ticket when the Education Director ran up and said something to the cashier. She nodded, typed on her keyboard for a rather long period of time... and printed us boarding passes. Apparently the flight had been delayed for 15 minutes, therefore, for a reason I don't believe I'll ever understand, that magically freed up at least another eleven seats. Grabbing our passes, we sprinted for the gate. We had made it- We were going to Daegu.
A Wretched Hive of Scum and Villainy
After an hour-long flight, we arrived in the city. It was only then that we realized we had no idea where we were going. Calling our friends from Jeju, who were only just then leaving the island, we were told to take a taxi to Camp Walker, a US Army base in Daegu, being told we would find a cheap hotel near the entrance. after a 20 minute cab ride, we were dropped off near the guarded gate, in what was by far the seediest area I've been to in Korea. No sooner were we dropped off on the side of the street than a carfull of GIs cursed at us for standing in the road. In the dimly lit street we could see shady-looking Koreans stalking the shadows and groups of prostitutes escorting wayward servicemen off the streets into dark houses. We later learned from a local EPIK teacher (who had finally called us back) that we had come to the back gate of the base, a markedly different kind of area from the front entrance, but by then, we were already back in downtown waiting to meet up with the other Jeju teachers.
While waiting, we saw a rather interesting idea to get around paying high downtown rent: a big pink bus was parked along the main shopping district, which had been converted into a clothing store. It seems to park on the main roads after dark on weekend nights, selling various Korean-couture items, departing late that night (it was gone the next day). Alicia (finally) finished shopping, and we set out, cell phones edging tenuously on the brink of death, to find our Jeju friends, who had just arrived. After numerous instance of 'just missing each other', we were finally able to set off in search of a hotel, at 10pm.
The Love Motel
We wandered into a bustling and crowded network of streets, similar only in the most basic layout to the City Hall district of Jeju Si, full of restaurants, shops, and bars, labelled with the requisite copyright-infringing names found all over Korea: the Sex and the City boutique, The Beatles bar, the Sleepless in Seattle coffee shop (I think that last one's actually pretty clever). Lost if left to our own devices, we asked the first foreigners we saw (one of many on the street, actually) if the could help us. They agreed, leading us through street after street of the large downtown district until we came to a small sign pointing to a hotel called Mellow Yellow. Walking down the small back street, we saw the there were actually two hotels, the Yellow and the Mellow. Joking that the Yellow must be for locals and the Mellow for foreigners, we checked to see if the had space, but there was nothing in either. We were told to walk around the corner to another hotel, and soon we found the signs for ZOO004 (I guess it's zoo-thousand-and-four, approximating the word 2004, but that doesn't really work in Korean, when it's something like zoo gong gong sa...). Rooms were available, with names like the Diamond Room, Ruby Room, and ours, the Sapphire Room. We grabbed the key, eager to unload our baggage, and entering the room learned something interesting about ZOO004, which I suppose should have been obvious from the downstairs movie rental shelves- it was a Love Motel.
Now, even if the love motel isn't a uniquely Korean invention, they have certainly done much to proliferate the concept. Rented out for two different periods, the day block and the night block, or both, love motels serve as the equivalent of the pay-by-the-hour motels back home, but are far less seedy. Honestly, it was a fairly nice hotel room, complete with an internet-equipped PC, two TVs, and in the case of the nicer rooms, everything from Japanese wood Hanoki tubs, to saunas, to projection screen TV's and LED constellations on the ceiling above the bed. Our room was unique in having a loft bed (called a 'second story for the business man' in the room descriptions)... complete with mirrors on the ceiling. The TVs had basic cable, but when they were turned on were tuned to the more 'adult' choices the hotel provided... weird, Asian 'adult' choices. Now, as far as I've heard, this was a relatively tame version of the love motel, with others having many more unusual adult conveniences, ranging from unusual adult vending machines to massage services. Quite regardless of its purpose, the hotel was a bargain for 45,000 Won a night, and honestly had the softest bed I've slept on in Korea so far. Here's hoping it was a clean, soft bed.
Mellow Yellow
The mirrored ceiling
The Love Motel Room
ZOO004!
Having settled in, we made our way out to the bar scene. Both of the bars we stopped at were choked with foreigners, and even had a few tending bar. Having been in Korea for a long while now, I suppose, I think we all experienced a bit of culture shock coming back into such an environment. It was like being dropped back home, and I don't think I liked it.
This was merely the first night in our adventures, the next day being far more exciting, with ancient Korean medicines and one weird Halloween night. To be continued...
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