Category Archives: Adventures

A quiet visit to Grahamstown

Adventures, South Africa, ,

It is a dusty, warm winter afternoon as we wandered between the tombstones. I find cemeteries interesting. It’s not a fascination with death; it’s the history. This cemetery was used by the settlers in Grahamstown – those families who climbed off the boats in the 1820s and began a new life in what was to become a thriving educational, judicial and religious centre in the expanded Cape Colony and the young Union of South Africa. There are many important people, like the man who brought the first printing press to Grahamstown. To be honest, though, it is the ordinary people that fascinate me: the parents of Mr so-and-so who came over and lived their last 20 years here, the woman born in Dublin who married a Grahamstown farmer, the family that lost four children before any reached the age of 5. I was struck by just how many young children, infants rest here. There has been lots of talk about infant mortality rates in Africa just lately. We forget just how recently South Africa had the same, terrible problem.

Later, two of us went driving. Grahamstown is a university town and in all the very happy years I spent there, I didn’t explore very much outside of town thanks to lack of car. This time we could. We drove up past the monastery. The monastery wasn’t there when I was at varsity. Or, at least, I didn’t begin hearing about it until much later. It’s a landmark now. The road wound past and kept going, past crystal-blue dams and tall trees, through dips and up hills and over railway tracks, until we reached a point so high we could see for miles and miles. The road was beginning to get worse, so we stopped and got out. Not even the breeze was disturbing the incredible, breath-taking quiet. One of the things I missed so much, longed for so often in Korea was a quiet, empty landscape stretching to the horizon. This landscape stretched forever and forever – rolling hills right to the sea, a glimpse of which was visible in the distance. We could see a house far away to one side and the aloes and dry winter grass and thorn-trees of home. It was a perfect moment. The afternoon was warm and sunny. The sky was so huge and so blue above us. The view stretched all the way to the sea.

On the way back, we chatted – that gentle, rolling conversation of old friends. We went looking for coffee and found everything shut (except Wimpy) on a Sunday afternoon. Grahamstown was so quiet. It felt so familiar and so gentle. Grahamstown always does that to me. The beautiful old buildings – Commem, the Grocotts Building, the Cathedral – as you’re walking up from the bus stop. The University rising at the end of High Street, so reassuringly solid and the same. Getting the bus at Kimberley Hall, where I spent so many, many hours. Some part of me wishes I could live in Grahamstown but opportunities are scarce and chances are slim. That doesn’t mean I won’t visit again and again, particularly for as long as one of my favourite travel-mates is there to share those little moments of gentle exploring.

Photographs and memories

Adventures, Ideas, Mozambique, Seoul, ,

There is something about photographs. Since I returned, I have thought very little about the experiences in Korea. As in any journey from one culture to another, there has been a sweet honeymoon period and I have given myself over to that heightened appreciation for the beauty and amazingness of the Eastern Cape. Today I plugged in my camera for the first time and discovered I hadn’t even downloaded my pictures from Hongdae and the DMZ.

I duly downloaded them. Looking through the pictures was the strangest (strongest?) experience. I had downloaded a picture in the wrong place. I’d put it in the Hongdae folder but it wasn’t – it was a picture taken in Itaewon. I took it from the window of the restaurant where I had lunch after I went to the DMZ. The window was open and the flags strung across the street were flapping in the breeze. It was a quiet afternoon. It was a Tuesday and not many people were wandering around this tourist/shopping/restaurant area. I suppose it would still be busy by many people’s standards, but it was quiet for Seoul. I find myself, in my mind, pronouncing Seoul in the Korean manner. The photo takes me back. I can taste the Korean beer – not very good, especially after the North Korean beer we’d tried earlier in the day. I had fish and chips. It was the first Western-style fish-and-chips meal I’d had in Korea. The restaurant was called Little Guinness, I remember now. I can feel the breeze through the window and hear the sounds. I sat on the side with the hatch from the kitchen. In the background, beneath the music, I can hear people speaking Korean as they prepare the food. It took a while to arrive – I was hungry – but the day was beautifully hot and clear and it was peaceful there.

There are other pictures, later. I went to a park by a river. By THE river, the Han River (Hangang). There was a man by a tree, in a field of flowers, practicing the saxophone. I’d forgotten about it. I watched him for a while. It was so unusual.

And the craziness of cosmopolitan Hongdae. The Self-Esteem boutique. SPAM restaurant. B-hind coffee shop. The crisp taste of the white wine at the bar where I sat on that last night. A beautiful Italian place. There were dogs in the courtyard outside the window next to my table. Children came and talked to them and fed them. Groups settled down to eat pizza and drink wine. Families sat on the balcony across the courtyard (all the same restaurant) and ate fancy dinners. I can taste the wine as the last sunlight fades and the night settles softly on the city.

I am struck by the tangible sensations evoked by the photographs – the smells, the tastes, the feeling of the wind. I go further back, to the pictures from the Mozambique trip, a good year and a half ago now. They’re just as vivid. The rain on the first morning in Maputo and later, when we stopped and ordered Sangria, and in the wild gardens. How soaked we were when we finally got back and my hat that would never be the same. And Rich and Jonathan going off to find prawns for dinner. Breakfast at that surf-themed place with the bookshop in Tofo after waking up because it was no longer possible to sleep in the heat of the yellow tent. Looking the pictures, I feel the heat, even on this cold winter morning. I had fish and chips in Tofo. The others had gone off exploring but I stayed behind. It was the best fish and chips I’ve ever eaten. I don’t have a picture of that. I wonder why.

There is a picture of Inhambane that New Years Day. The sun is just going down and people are starting to gather on the wall by the water, across the road from where we were staying. My picture is blurred and not very good but still I can hear the music starting and taste the cold Mozambiquan beer as we sat down to watch the people and soak up the atmosphere. It was such a perfect evening.

Days later, in the lush green of Vilankulos, the squid pasta evening. We drank Savannahs there. I’d forgotten that. And that amazing sunset. And the dog. And the rolls. Suddenly I remember those tiny, sweet rolls we bought that morning in Inhambane and ate with those Senor something-or-other chips. That was the day we took the ferry and found that bakery/ice-cream shop. The memories tumble over each other like a dam bursting. The tastes and sounds, the heat and the rain. Being soaking wet on the ferry. Everything comes back in a rush. I feel the need to go even further back, to a long-ago cruise in the Caribbean. The pictures are almost like travelling – they allow you to go back, in your mind, to revisit and experience again. I am primed for travel.

Next to my computer sits a bus ticket. It’s not a long trip, just an overnighter, in fact, but it a little taste, a little glimpse of travel. A little picture, even. I pack my camera back in its little bag, check that I have extra batteries and put it in my daypack. I have a longer journey planned for next week, to one of my favourite cities in the world, but for now this will do nicely – a little journey to a little place that more than any other makes me feel home.

DMZ

Adventures, Seoul, travelling in Korea,

On Tuesday, I was up and ready to leave by 8am. Outrageous, I realise, especially for a non-working day, but worth it for what was to come. I was going on a tour to the DMZ. There are two kinds of DMZ tours. The longer, more expensive option takes you right up to the Joint Security Area, where you can actually enter the room where talks are held, through the middle of which runs the border between North and South Korea. The border never used to be enforced in this UN-controlled area until the axe murder incident between some US soldiers and the North Korean army, after which it was enthusiastically insisted upon (mostly by the North, if reports are to be believed).

I opted for the shorter tour, which takes you to the edge of the DMZ. I was picked up at the backpackers at around 8:15am, just as I took the first sip of a destined-to-be-abandoned cup of coffee. I joined the rest of the group in the small bus and we headed off. There were 6 of us on the tour that day, two New Zealanders, an entertaining American (as opposed to the annoying type) and two possibly-Canadians who didn’t say all that much. I was the only woman, apart from the tour-guide, which bothered me not at all, although the guide seemed a little concerned about it.

Our first stop was Imjingak. This is the site of the second-last station on the North-South line and the closest any civilian can get to the North without being part of a specially arranged, guided tour, complete with military checkpoints and permissions. All the way to Imjin, the road followed the line of the Han River (or Hangang – for some reason generally translated as Hangang River). For most of the way, the pretty area of forest beside the road was separated from the river by a line of barbed wire fencing, dotted with guard posts with  armed guards. This line, the guide explained, is the civilian control line. The demilitarized zone stretched for roughly 2km in either direction north and south. On the Southern side of this (and presumably mirrored on the North) is an extremely heavily militarized zone stretching between 5km and 20km (depending on where you are in the country) to the civilian control line in the South.

Imjingak is along the civilian control line. It also has huge symbolic and historical importance. It is here, for example, that ‘freedom bridge‘ stood (stands?). During the Korean War, the bridges that had existed over this river at what, several times, was the front, were destroyed. Once the truce had been signed, the ‘Bridge of Freedom’ was built, theoretically to connect the two Koreas but really for the express purpose of facilitating the exchange of POWs. On that bridge, thousands of Koreans were asked to choose, very finally – they would never get the chance again, whether they wanted to belong to the North or South.

Also at Imjingak are various artefacts from the war, including a locomotive that was shot to pieces as it tried to deliver supplies, as well as a bell dedicated to unification (Peace Bell), a wall dedicated to unification and various other testaments to (some of) the South Korean people’s hope for the reunification of the peninsula. The most poignant, at least for me, was the shrine. The idea and role of ancestors in Korea differs from that in South Africa and is intrinsically tied up with place. So, each Cheosak and New Year, families travel to their ancestral homes to perform the rites that show their respect for or veneration of those who have gone before them. During the Korean war, the front-line between the armies moved back and forth several times and civilian populations scattered before it, trying to avoid the fighting. At the end of the active war, therefore, many were far from their homes. Prior to this conflict, Koreans could move across the peninsula but once the truce was signed, the 38th parallel became a fixed barrier and many Koreans found themselves cut off from their homes and ancestors. This point at Imjingak is the closest they can get and over the years many families began coming here to bow towards their homes and make their sacrifices here. Eventually, the South Korean government built them a shrine – a tiny gesture that is really all the still-technically-at-war nation can do to ease their loss. Just near the shrine is a monument recognising all those nations who fought as part of the UN force on the Southern side. I had a moment of ambivalence about my own country’s involvement.

After half an hour or so, we were all hustled into a larger tour-bus. Because the rest of the places we’d see on the tour are in an area under heavy military control, all small tours are bundled together (with their tour-guides) onto larger buses driven by specially accredited drivers. We were on our way to see the 3rd Infiltration tunnel, also known, according to Wikipedia, as the Third Tunnel of Aggression. Once there, we watched a video that was surprisingly un-anti-DPRK but concertedly, explicitly and emphatically pro-unification. This was followed by a walk through the exhibition hall with our guide – a great chance to ask questions and get a clearer sense of the history.

And then the tunnel. This is one of the bits of the tour I was looking forward to most, perhaps because the infiltration tunnels are less well-known and so less propagandised, perhaps because there is something so classic-war-novel about tunnels underground. Perhaps because allowing people to visit these tunnels is a recognition that hostilities still exist, something that doesn’t seem to happen often in the RoK, particularly in the expat community, where most people dismiss the North as a joke. This tunnel, and the others like it, are clear evidence that the DPRK didn’t just lie down and give up in 1953. It appears that the North Koreans decided in the 1970s that the best way to get around the DMZ was to tunnel under it, all the way to Seoul, so that ground troops could move through the tunnels to back up an air assault (it is assumed). The first tunnel was found in 1974 and the most recent (4th) in 1990. There are probably at least 3 to 5 tunnels as yet undiscovered.

This third tunnel was found in 1978 after a tip-off from a defector. It is estimated that it took roughly 6 years to construct, using dynamite and then (probably) human labour to clear away the rock. It is just over 1600m long, 400m of which are on the South Korean side. In order to get to the tunnel, tourists must don hard-hats and walk down the steep access shaft. The North Koreans are apparently pretty good at tunnels – our guide informed us that they have a subway system up to 100m deep. They must have perfected their skills here – it was a long way down.

Once in the tunnel itself, I found myself wishing – for the first time ever – that I was average Korean height. Scores of Koreans wandered effortlessly past as the Westerners bent and ducked to avoid knocking ourselves out on the solid rock above us. The rock dripped and glistened as we walked. Dynamite holes were ringed in white paint to mark them. On the walls and the roof, if you touch them accidentally, is the black ‘coal’ they were dusted with by the retreating North Korean soldiers, the basis of the North’s later claims that the tunnels were in fact part of a coal-mining operation.

The end of the third tunnel is blocked by three solid concrete walls. Tourists are able to go as far as the Southern side of the first. The space between the first and the second is monitored by CCTV and beyond that second barrier, land-mines protect from any invading force that might successfully overcome the final wall. The area around the first wall is now also monitored by CCTV, too, replacing in the early 2000s, the previous human-plus-dog-plus-canary early warning system.

The tunnel is fascinating, particularly to someone with an interest in history, if only to get a real idea of just how determined the North Koreans were (and possibly still are). It should, however, come with a warning – coming back up to the surface required a hike of nearly half a km up an 11 degree incline.

Our next stop was Dora Observatory – an opportunity to look across the DMZ into North Korean territory, or at least at the Kaesong Industrial complex and the DMZ ‘peace’ villages. You are not allowed to take pictures beyond the ‘photo line’ at the observatory, apparently because they’re scared you will capture on camera images of a South Korean military base in the DMZ, but that makes no sense to perhaps there is another reason. This means that it is impossible (at least without a fairly substantial zoom lens) to capture images of the villages and the border.

The view is awesome, though. We were lucky to be there on a perfectly clear day and so were able to see far across the DMZ, even without the binoculars (500 won per view). The DMZ is, these days, a precious nature preserve in a peninsula where not all that many creatures survive. This provides an even more stark contrast that would exist anyway with the massively deforested hills of the North’s side. On the Southern side, forests blanket the hills with lush green (happily concealing their carpet of deadly landmines). To the North, the hills are bare and huge patches of erosion glaringly scar the landscape. Of course, this area is near the border and it is possible that some of the clearing has been intentional, but there is an awful lot of ground cleared, suggesting that the North’s insatiable and unfulfilled need for energy is a more likely explanation. What little is known of the North suggests that they are anything but a thriving country, struggling to produce sufficient food, power and other goods. A far cry from the North Korea that existed not so long ago, when the North’s standard of living in fact remained higher than that of the South right up until the 1970s and the South’s economic miracle.

From this look-out point, we could also see the two flags, the North’s bigger after they finally won (at least for the moment) the bizarre my-flagpole-is-bigger-than-yours stand-off, building one of the world’s highest. Also visible was the North’s ‘model’ village, often referred to as a ‘fake village’. I was a little sceptical of the story that the North maintains this village that no-one lives in, but looking closely through the binoculars, it does appear that the windows are empty and the buildings are just shells. The South’s own ‘peace village’ has a population of 500, with a maximum of 200 allowed to live in Kaesong-dong, from what I could gather.

The observatory was good but soon it was time to move on to Dorasan station, the last station on the Southern side – or fist station to the North as the information boards and pro-unification propaganda proclaim. This sparkling, modern station complex, complete with customs, cargo storage area and ticket office, has never been used and stands as a symbol of Kim Dae Jung, President’s Sunshine Policy towards North Korea. The train to the North (to Kaesong, not any further) apparently runs past here but this station, situated as it is within the civilian control area, is not uses. At the deserted counter, tourists pick up info pamphlets and use the commemorative stamp to prove they were here or shop at the tiny café. Nothing else happens here and guards walk back and forth, dealing more with tourists than anyone else.

The final stop on the tour was unification village, where we visited a ‘market’ (read: souvenir store) selling products made in the DMZ and North Korea. They sell a variety of goods, from T-shirts and key-rings to roots and herbs grown in the DMZ. They also sell North Korean beer. Once the guide mentioned this, several of the group jumped at the chance to try it. It was very good, actually – rich and refreshing and beating hands-down the South Korea offerings.

And then it was time to return to Seoul. As we drove back, we chatted with the guide about the situation and the history, learning more about the two Koreas. Back in the city, we were dropped in Itaewon and went our separate ways. I had a last lunch in Korea’s foreigner-central and let myself process and think about all that I had seen and learnt in my 4 hour tour to the DMZ.