Suncheon Garden Expo: The Day It Rained

By comparison to my weekend in Seoul, this one was a pretty inexpensive affair. That said, it can be a tricky thing to keep from spending a lot of money when you're constantly finding things you want to have in order to get settled in the way you like. For me, the things I miss the most about the West are easy access to decent coffee and whisky. Not much luck on the whisky front here as most of it's scotch (no problem there); overpriced, cheap scotch (therein lies the problem). If you want to avoid that by dropping seventy dollars on a bottle of Johnny Walker you can, but I haven't yet found the desire to do so. Zero Canadian rye to be had for any price, unfortunately, so this Christmas please find it in your heart to mail the gift of distilled friendship to a certain someone in a certain Korean country.

Coffee here is, as I've written previously, 90% instant with a mandatory quantity of sugar that, gram for gram, outweighs the coffee powder itself. They love the stuff here though, selling it in boxes of 200 packets (it takes two to make one single regular sized mug of coffee, though), and available in almost every place you go. Aside from the rare coffee house that does it the proper way (yea, I'll say it, the proper way), you have to make it yourself. So going to the store to buy a french press and a bag of actual coffee grounds can be an expensive prospect, but one which I feel is worth it in the long run. It's good for your mental health to have something that reminds you of home, especially one that gives you an artificial boost at the beginning of the day. So I dropped some cash on that and some peanut butter, because in for a penny, in for a pound. 

Anyways, I went to Suncheon for these things, sure, but I stayed for the Suncheon 2013 Garden Expo. It's an exposition of gardens, naturally, that spans a large chunk of the city and would take days to see the entirety of. I wasn't sure what to expect going into it, but it turned out to be much larger in scale and ambition than I'd thought it would be. The landscapes sprawled in unique visual styles with sculpted hills, gardens themed around specific countries, statues made of everything from stone to wicker, and just a generally unique take on outdoor design. It was the kind of place that a photography enthusiast could get lost in for weeks, and I would have had a fair bit of fun with it as well had it not been raining non-stop for the entire day. Koreans are not defeated by rain however, and there were just as many people out while it was pouring as would be on any other day. I managed to get a few pictures, such as they are, but I decided to just take it all in in the moment after a few awkward attempts at getting anything decent. 

It's not a great shot, but you can see how the hills were sculpted into spiraling ramps, some connected over the water by bridges designed to look all twisted up. From time to time I half expected a Teletubby to pop out from a hole in the hills somewhere. 

Chinese garden path, all within a courtyard built in traditional-looking Chinese style

 They went all out on the sculpture component

 There was a really beautiful walkway through the garden, and it passed over this stream at one point. There were a lot of marble pools throughout as well that graduated in height as you went along. All things flow downhill. 

 The Dream Bridge was a long covered bridge that featured these small (3.5 by 3.5 inch) tiles decorated with the artwork of what I assumed to be either the city or province's younger students. There were a hell of a lot of them. It was actually a really cool idea, and I don't doubt that the kids loved the prospect of adding to something that will probably be standing for a long time to come. 

Here's a closer shot

It being a pretty wet day, there's really not a whole lot more that a person can require beyond a dinner of Korean BBQ, so we did that. I was lying though, about the whole not needing much more than that. We needed more, and only the jim jil bang could provide what we needed. Check my previous post to learn more about jim jil bangs. Luckily a couple friends in Suncheon live in an apartment complex that has its own jim jil bang downstairs, and I can't imagine how incredible it would be to go right to sleep after a solid session. I had a train to catch though, so I spent the entire trip fighting tooth and nail to keep from drifting into a zen-like coma and missing my stop. The weather kept doing that thing where it sucks for the whole weekend, so my plans to rent a bike and go up the Gurye county bike trails didn't quite pan out, but next weekend is the Jinju lantern festival, so I really can't complain about not having plenty to do these days. 

Seoul Good, Man..

Heh, look at that, a play on words in the title. Genius.

So, an entry on my Chuseok trip to Seoul is a daunting prospect, what with all I saw, all I did, and most importantly, all I forgot to take pictures of (there was a lot). We managed to fit a lot into a little less than four days, and I left behind a lot of things unseen that I've made a list of, as well as a few belongings as well, because if there's one thing I've learned at this point, it's that I quite simply cannot go anywhere major without forgetting stuff somewhere along the way. It has not yet occurred, so henceforth I will only travel with the shittiest stuff I own, and perhaps several things I wish I didn't have, but can't bring myself to simply throw away. Let fate embrace my shortcomings for the greater good of my suitcases.

Now, as mentioned previously, Chuseok is Korean thanksgiving/Christmas rolled into one five day weekend, and after exchanging gifts with my co-workers I was in the spirit of the goddamn holiday. Wednesday was when my train departed, leaving the station at 10 am to arrive in Seoul at about 2:30 pm. The trains here are slower than buses (perhaps that's how it is back home, I don't know, too damned expensive), so the choice was really only made in favour of the train to simplify the meeting places of all eight members of my group, and I'm a notoriously unrushed person, so a longer trip maximizes my ability to play Angry Birds on my phone, or catch up on a few albums I've been neglecting over the last few months. Korea being what it is though, a place of awe, magic, and bizarre circumstance, I managed to land a seat right beside one of my group members. We booked our tickets days apart, there were hundreds of seats, and yet, there you have it. To make it all a little weirder, I had thought to myself the day previously that it sure would be funny if I ended up right beside this person on the train of hundreds of potential seats. Therefore, the world bends to my will, which is good because I will for both riches and the crushing defeat of my enemies.

Yongsan Train Station, Seoul 

As you can see, the train station is a pretty spiffy place, being spacious and modern simultaneously, yet lacking to a tragic degree in seating options. Much like building a vast and powerful empire, one must acquire one seat, and then bide one's time until the moment is ripe to expand, granting all newly acquired territory to a friend/vassal. Be particularly wary of old ladies, as they play by no rules but their own. 

So we find our hostel without a lot of problems, and got oriented with some of the places we wanted to check out. So we ate and made our way into the heart of Seoul by way of their fantastic subway system. It's both aesthetically pleasing and incredibly efficient. Trains come about every five or so minutes, and the tracks are blocked off with glass panels that slide open when the train doors line up to them. It's a really good idea for preventing murder and suicide, and allows the station to play a lovely song for you as the train arrives without deafening noise washing over it. Anyways, so we come out here: 

Seoul has a deep appreciation for both scale and shininess

The night was really just a toe in the lake, so rather than dwell too much on weaving a tapestry of prose on every moment and feeling, I'll just slap down some pictures and write whatever I feel like writing. 

 A waterway in downtown Seoul, famous for its ultra-modern design, with steps, walkways, and gardens on its edges.

 An old gate dividing the roadway, which I assume once attached to the wall that used to surround much of Seoul and its palaces, since rebuilt in some places.

I'll actually stop for a second to put in a little story that my group and myself found quite unusual. We were near the gate above, maybe across the street, and we saw that two police officers were talking to a man in a car who had pulled onto the median of an intersection. This was a pedestrian crosswalk zone, and he had just pulled right in on a weird angle and sat there, I guess. They were talking to him, got him out of the vehicle, and I'll be damned if that man wasn't wasted to a degree that only an experienced Korean can manage. He was staggering, slurring, pointing here, there, and everywhere, and generally just being drunk as shit. We think he also had an older woman in the passenger seat, but it was dark and he was too distracting. Anyways, I'd love to say the police saw the inevitable danger in allowing this man to drive any further, but they did not, and rather indicated for him to back out of the median and into the busy street behind him, which he did, most inexpertly. The guy pulls out and comes within a few feet of being t-boned by an oncoming car, well within its right to be there but when you're driving drunk under the watch of the police, why the hell would you bother to look behind you? It was too strange for words. Those two cops just laughed it off, having almost been responsible for a drunk driving accident they had basically encouraged. Korea man, Korea. 

 Before we had wine openers with levers, real men used to uncork their goods with nothing but the iron of their behemoth musculature, and the tasteful application of loin clothes.

The picture of the inside of this bar didn't turn out well, but it was really interestingly decorated with chains, bike helmets and metal sculptures. I would have tried for better photos, but we left as soon as we found out that they didn't offer pitchers of beer. We're busy people, and we don't have time to waste on lost causes.

 The next place met our expectations with towers of beer with dry ice in a tube in the centre. Looks like a science experiment gone awesome, and while we do have those in Canada (maybe not the dry ice part), it's always a good time when your beverage stands over your head.

Harrison approves

On to day two. Here we managed to get in more culture than we had our first night in Seoul, so that was pretty nice. As before, pictures with explanations. 

 Statue of King Sejong, who implemented the Hangeul writing system, bringing literacy to the masses

 The palace we visited, with its enormous court yards. In a small country, the truest sign of wealth is the ability to fill lots of space with nothing but flat dirt.Maybe if you were lucky, you could spend some time standing in that space. 

 I love the roof tiles in this country

 Waterway running down the centre of one of the courtyards

 This empty space is filled with flat stone rather than flat dirt, because this is a palace and they can cover the floor of their empty space howsoever they wish

 The interior of a scribary room

 This girl was too cute to not get a picture of, seen here in a traditional Chuseok dress. There were several little girls running around in variations of these dresses. They were pretty adorable, but none of them would fit into my backpack so I had to leave them all there. 

Korea's version of gargoyles  

 Oh hey Gordon

Traditional grave markers 

One of the best museums I've ever been to, and it was completely free. We showed up and there was a big performance going on of traditional Korean-style drumming blended with hip-hop and break dancing. It's just one example of how Korean culture places a lot of value on keeping tradition relevant to modern life. The museum itself was immense and beautifully designed, with everything from prehistory to mid-twentieth century. 

So that was the second day. We finished it by lounging about in a gazebo beside a pond under a harvest moon before heading over to one of the university districts. We found a hookah bar and hung out there for a bit before deciding to call it an early night to get ready for the next day. I used to feel bad about heading to bed early, but we packed so much into every day that I never felt like we were cutting it unnecessarily short. Besides, we didn't go right to bed anyway, because five of us went to a Jim Jil Bong near our hostel at around midnight to freshen up before bed. A Jim Jil Bong is a Korean bathhouse, basically, where you go to hang out in the nude with all ages of your respective gender. The main room is in the basement, where you go for showers, water-pressurized massages, saunas of various types (steam, dry heat, salt rub), several temperatures of bathing pools ranging from cold to 43 degrees Celsius, pools of water filled with pebbles to massage your feet, and pool chairs you can just lay and nap in. It sounds strange, and perhaps it was a little bit, but if you're comfortable with nudity and various degrees of homoerotic bathing styles (like scrubbing your friend's back whilst your dangly bits rest close to their face) then the Jim Jil Bong is one of the most satisfying experiences you can have. We stayed for about an hour, switching through all the options around us, just getting insanely unwound and perhaps outrageously clean. The place also gives you a set of clothes to wear around the rest of the facility if you choose to purchase the extra services of "fomentation". It's like wearing your eternal salvation in clothe form. We finished in the spa area and just decided to look around at what else there was, going from floor to floor, becoming more and more enamoured with everything we saw; Full gyms, ping ping rooms, computer rooms, snack bars, full cafeterias with alcohol, sleeping quarters, and about six different types of rooms for sleeping or hanging out in that ranged from cold rooms to one that was 63 degrees and filled with jade stones you would lay and sweat in. Every room was calm, serene, filled with people sleeping, relaxing, socializing quietly, or doing whatever in complete and utter comfort. You pay about $13 dollars to stay for the whole night, including the spa and every service available, with floors to sleep on with thin, but somehow amazingly comfortable, mats complete with pillows. I can't put the true feelings we felt in those moments into words, because it was much like being inducted into a cult. We felt incredible, and the whole place was a series of discoveries that made it all better and better with every room we walked into. No more hotels, and no more hostels. Only the Jim Jil Bong remains to me now. Only the Jim Jil Bong truly has my heart. Needless to say we went back the next day for another round, because once you feel that good, you can't stay away. 

So the next day our group took a split. Myself and a couple of the guys went looking for a hike along the city's battlement walls (or what's left of them), and the rest went shopping. I wish I'd done more shopping in Seoul, but battlements are like a second word for 'fun', so I knew what I was doing. Turns out the hike wasn't that great, with the walls not being what I had hoped, and the city coming into play far too often for my liking since there's not a lot of places for the walls to go without being overrun by houses, streets, and people. Here are some photos. 

 A local park near one of the segments of the wall. Koreans do public spaces really well. 

Locks of Love, each placed to represent the relationship of a couple who put their own lock there. They add up quickly, I suppose. 

We actually ditched our original hike in favour of climbing the main mountain in Seoul. This is from the rest stop at the summit overlooking the city. It was pretty crowded, but we bought some beers for the walk back down the mountain, so that was pretty nice. 

Our final night in Seoul has no photographic evidence on my part, sadly because my phone died and I was using that as my camera for the weekend. Heading over to Itaewon (the foreigner district) we hit a few bars, had dinner together (expensively), found a foreigner club, and then ended the night at a bar dedicated to playing vinyl records. The wall behind the bar was all shelving full of these records, and you could request songs pretty easily. We had a few of ours played, which was pretty cool because usually requesting songs in a bar is a lost cause. I managed to get a Bad Brains song off of their iconic first record, so I was about as happy as I could be. 

There's a lot more to my first Seoul trip than I've been able to cover even in a post as long as this, but there's no point going into every detail. We made the most of every day we were there, and overall the trip was a huge success. I learned that the Korean lifestyle can be hectic, but that they really have the art of relaxation down pat. They know where and how to find their moments of calm, however brief they probably are, whether it's a garden tucked away in the centre of a busy city, or a room full of older Korean men staring at your North American penis like it's not at all weird to do so. There's a subtle beauty in that, and you just can't find an equivalent to it back home. Canada is too full of perverts to be able to have bathhouses. 

In Order To Stoke The Flames Of Your Jealousy..

I tried to go to the gym, but it was closed on a Sunday, so instead I changed the plan and wandered around to see a bit more of the biking trails around Gurye. My phone actually takes decent pictures, so several turned out pretty well, I think. With yesterday having been as stormy and rainy as it was, I definitely wasn't expecting today to be as nice as it was.

 Sure you could build just another wooden bridge, but Gurye builds Lion Bridges

View from the Lion Bridge 

The second view from the Lion Bridge, because Lion Bridges can have as many views as they please 

This is an exceptionally beautiful location for a traditional style Korean home, called a Hanok  

Every bridge I've seen in Korea so far has an accompanying path of stepping rocks from one end of the river to another. Some days the water is too high to use them, but if you want to cross the river in style, and perhaps stop to sit and dip your feet in the water, then you'll have every opportunity to do so.  

 The paths here have two sections; one for bikes, and one for people walking. I don't know if they're actually used like that, since lanes don't seem to be a thing that Koreans regard too highly. 

 Another stone bridge, complete with islet and a few herons in there too, I think. 

I saw a snake, a frog, and a few grasshoppers along the way, so not a whole lot of wildlife aside from the herons in the river, but mantises are a lot more common here than back home, so they're still interesting to look at.   

Gurye From A Mountaintop Temple

Where there's a mountain, there's probably a temple, as a general rule of thumb, and some have some pretty excellent views looking over the town or countryside. I had planned to take Saturday to hike up to one of the larger temples in the area, up the mountain in the national park, but due to a pretty insane storm that the day started out with, that was postponed. Instead I took a short hike up to one of the lookouts in our small town of Gurye with a couple of the other foreigners, since it's a lot more easily accessible and therefore not a big deal if we got caught in another storm. Gurye looks a lot bigger than it often feels, so for me at least, it was interesting to get a different perspective on it.

The temples here are all intricately painted

Once you get to the top of the mountain, and even in certain places along the way, there's a variety of exercise machines that are open to the public to use. They're pretty much all unique to Korea from what I've seen, and exactly what it is you're supposed to do with them is dubious. I should have taken pictures, but I've gotten used to seeing them (they're scattered throughout every town and city, here and there) so I didn't think to. One only seems to turn you upside down for some reason, to no real effect other than throwing off your sense of equilibrium. Another you just lay back over a curved metal surface and sort of, I don't know, lay there a bit, maybe look at the clouds for a while and dream of the six pack abs that it definitely won't help you attain.