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.