Category Archives: travelling in Korea

A village out of time

Adventures, bus, travelling in Korea, ,

My travel-partner tells me this is a moment she will never forget. ‘She’s right,’ I think. We’re sitting on a bench, under twisted, Korean pine trees, the a sky full of stars, watching the Nakdong river meander past Buyongdae Cliff. The night is perfectly still except for our laughter and the calls of night birds. Very occasionally, a rustle or murmur of household noise drifts across from the village at our backs. It is a perfect evening: relaxed and calm and beautiful and (finally) not cold enough to chase us indoors.

Earlier in the evening, we sat on the floor of restaurant near the village and savoured a glorious dinner of exquisitely-cooked mackerel, yummy haemul pajeon and creamy dongdongju.  There were many restaurants to choose from. This one was buzzing with multi-generational family groups around little tables, all sitting on bright red cushions on the warm, polished-wood floors. Our spot was in the open air, under a little roof, just at the edge of the building. Sitting cross-legged on raised floors to eat is the one disadvantage of wearing hiking boots to travel in this country because each time the boots need to come off and then be replaced at the end, which is rather a mission. For leisurely and delicious dinners like this one, it is worth it.

I arrived at Hahoe Village around mid-afternoon. Anna got their earlier through a series of unfortunate timing moments: she, travelling from Seoul, arrived earlier than expected while my bus from Daegu was delayed due to traffic problems. The bus to the village only leaves from Andong every couple of hours, so it made sense for her to go ahead, to secure us accommodation and spend some extra time exploring. She meets me at the bus stop. I pay the 2000 won entry fee (R14). There is a bus that takes visitors from the entrance gate and ticket office to the village itself, but we decide to walk. It is the kind of place where walking made sense. The path winds up little hills and across bridges under tall trees, between the road and the river. We would walk this path again several times, back and forth, that afternoon sunshine and the dark, quiet evening.

Hahoe Village has been here for some 600 years. A farming village and the rural home of a line of scholars and government officials, it has sat quietly in its loop of river the Nakdong river that surrounds it on three sides, the people, simple farmers and noblemen, working side by side for all those centuries. Its current claim to fame is that it is a ‘traditional village’, a tourist attraction because the houses are still the same houses – both the noble tiled-roof houses of the Joseon dynasty upper classes and the little thatched cottages of ordinary farmers – as those hundreds of years ago. In a country that has developed so quickly that grandparents and grandchildren have grown up in worlds which would, quite literally, be hundreds of years apart in any other country, tradition is a complicated issue. The majority of the tourists who visit the village are Koreans, often Koreans taking their children from their sky-scraper apartment-block homes to see what the country looked like not so long ago. It is marketed as a glimpse of life in the past but t is more than that. The marketing creates the impression of a place artificially stuck in another time. The reality is far more comfortable and more interesting, at least for me. This isn’t a dead relic of a time that is long gone. It isn’t a museum. It is a real village where real people live and work. And these people aren’t stuck in the past. They still live in traditional houses and do traditional things, like make their own kimchi and farm vegetables, but they live in the real world. The traditional houses have cars in the driveways and electricity and sometimes even satellite dishes. That might disappoint some people but it isn’t intrusive. It doesn’t detract from the enchantment of the place, it just makes it more real.

We stayed in house number 42. A gate of sticks opened onto a dusty courtyard, where two elderly ladies were working their outdoor wood-burning oven and a pile of red peppers lay drying in the open air. One side of the courtyard was shielded from the road by a open-air, thatch-roofed storage area. On the other three sides, were traditional thatched buildings. Our room was in one of these. Up four stone steps and across the threshold – through the empty doorway, we stepped into the kitchen and shoe-pit area and took off our shoes before climbing onto the raised, wooden floor. Anna had warned me that our room was tiny. There were two little rooms opening off the small central area of the little house – a ‘room’ that was little more than a raised-floor platform of shining, polished wood resting on the stones that make the foundation of the house. Two sets of paper double-doors led to our room on the left and another on the right; doors too low to walk through upright. Inside our tiny room lay a mattress and bedspread. On the wall was a mirror. There were no other furnishings. The walls were papered white. Opposite the doors was a window of paper over a wooden frame. Beyond the window were some of the traditional rich-brown pots, a little grass and a wall topped with traditional roof tiles, above which we could glimpse other thatched rooves, a tree or two, and the sky. The afternoon sun seemed to rest on the scene of rural ordinariness.

The afternoon is wearing thin as I wander along dusty paths between traditional houses in a world so far from my own. Anna has gone to lie down for a while, so I am exploring alone. The traditional rooves and the fancy houses that typify Korea sit, happily, alongside traditional thatched cottages. I walk past houses where husbands and wives sit on their wooden floors drinking tea and talking. Children play in the tourist-attraction restored buildings. A Korean fir tree sits proudly next to an information board proclaiming that it was planted by Queen Elizabeth II. I wander further, along semi-deserted dusty streets. Swallows flutter back and forth under the eves of a thatched house. I am struck by memories of the swallows back home (in SA). They must have flown from there by now to have arrived here. Not the same swallows, of course, but still a strange sense of sameness in all the difference. Around a corner I come out of the village into farmlands stretching to the river and the hills. A farmer is driving his tractor home at the end of the day. Anna and I talk several times during the weekend about the universal sameness of ordinary rural life.

Two old men, clearly residents of the village, chat on a pathway, one in a full suit, complete with hat, the kind of suit my own grandfathers used to wear. A middle-aged man passed me on a bicycle. A woman in a little cottage is sells curios. There are so many twists and turns and paths and alleyways and pretty buildings. 180 families make their home in this village. I find a house, no longer used, set in a square walled-in garden, complete with spring-green fruit trees. The house is empty and the windows are bare. Next to it is a two-story pavilion. The information board says that it was been built 1576 to take advantage of the views of the river and the cliff. The pavilion was named for the medicinal herb ‘Wonji’ because “the place itself is as effective for improving mood as the herb”, the info board tells me. The sun is sinking, so I find a quite spot by the river and watch it slowly drift towards the horizon, reflected in the quiet river below. The many tourists who cluttered the place during the day have, for the most part, left and the ordinary peace of rural life is beginning to descend on the village.

Later in the evening, as we turn away from the river to return to our lodgings for the night, an almost full moon is rising. We follow its rise, between buildings and across beautiful, traditional rooves and rustic thatch, as we walk through the sleeping village. There are enough electric lights but we don’t really need them tonight. The streets, between the walls topped with roof tiles, are quiet; empty of people, and magical in the silvery, moon-lit night. Our hostess looks across the courtyard and waved us goodnight as we quietly walk to our room. The heated floor takes the slight chill off the night air and we climb into our warm floor-bed and fall asleep in the stillness of a traditional village.

In the morning we wake to birdsong. ‘There are no cars,’ Anna says. It is early; way before the alarm we so diligently set. The people staying in the other little room are starting to move around. We follow suit and head out to walk the village before the tourists arrived. Strange, as tourists ourselves, that the best part of visiting this village should be the evening after the masses have left and the early morning before they arrive. We take a slow stroll around the village in the crisp morning light. The houses are still beautiful. People are starting to go about their chores. Farmers walk their fields. A church spire rises silently alongside the town.  It is difficult to describe the quiet joy.

We stop at a little curio shop just opening for the day and contemplate ice-creams but decide, when they don’t have chocolate, to go back to our lodgings and think about breakfast instead. Our hostess is sweeping the courtyard when we get back. With absolutely no common language, she asks if we’d like something to eat. Although still a little resistant to the idea of kimchi and rice for breakfast, we agree, partly to please her. We pack up our few belongings and sit on the polished wood floor to wait, enjoying the light and the breeze and the views. Before long, our landlady arrives at the open doorway with a small round table laden with dishes, and places it in the middle of the floor for us to sit around. On the table are bubbling tofu soup, a whole mackerel, two silver bowls of rice and 7 different side-dishes. Some of them are unexpectedly delicious: the greens (of an indeterminate variety) with sesame oil and sesame seeds, the small, fresh succulents with delicious red sauce, the pickled garlic. Even the kimchi has an unusual flavour. And the fish is delicious, too. I never imagined that I would find myself enjoying fish, rice and kimchi for breakfast. Then again, I never imagined I would one day eat breakfast sitting on the polished-wood, raised floor of a traditional Korean farmer’s house that may well be hundreds of years old. Just as we finish eating, our ajumma arrives with perfectly sweetened, milky coffee.

A ferry crosses the river to a traditional house and Confucian school and the cliff on the other side. We gleefully perch on the wooden benches in the mid-morning sunshine as the ferryman poles the boat across the gently flowing water. We wander around, taking many, many pictures and climb the cliff (up the path at the back, not the cliff-face, obviously) to look down on ‘our’ village. There it lies, nestled in the curve of the river, looking just as peaceful and enchanting as our experience of it has been. A friendly Korean man obligingly takes some pictures of us with the village in its valley and the mountains beyond as a strikingly beautiful background. Touristy pictures just to prove that we really were there.

We both want to stay but we know we can’t. Buses are infrequent and the work week is calling. We walk the path for the last time to catch the bus back to Andong for a delicious galbi lunch and then  onward bus-trips to our respective Korean cities. It is a place, a moment we will never forget. A visit that will stay with us. It doesn’t seem like it rushed past or was too short. That sense of time passing quickly can’t capture the peace and the relaxation. There are many things to see in Andong, the majority of which we didn’t see because we chose instead to spend our time soaking up the atmosphere of Hahoe Village. I am glad, I realise, on the comfortable bus back to Daegu. Those other sites may be amazing but sinking into the calm of a place still living and working and laughing in the same kind of houses they have used for hundreds of years (plus the river and cliff), is probably one of the most precious experiences I have had in Korea.

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Some practicalities for those who might wish to plan their own Hahoe Village experience. Anna and I were travelling from Seoul and Daegu respectively. We both found that the most convenient way to travel to Andong was by bus (3 hrs from Seoul, 1hr 30 min from Daegu). This in spite of the chaotic nature of Daegu’s bus set-up which is destined to become a blog entry all of its own. Bus tickets were 7300 won from Daegu and around 16000 won from Seoul.

On arrival in Andong, the tourist info office outside the train station should be a first stop. They are super-helpful and have maps of the area, as well as bus times, prices and info on where to get a bus to each tourist spot. They also speak English, which is a great help to those (like us) who are linguistically-challenged when it comes to speaking Korean. There are also plenty of restaurants in town and I would highly recommend the steak galbi, even if it is a bit pricey – it thoroughly satisfied two South Africans who are used to good meat as the norm.

The bus to Hahoe Village leaves Andong only 8 times a day so make sure you get there in time or you will wait for up to 2 and a half hours. Once at the village, you will need to pay the 2000 won entry fee. This is nothing to pay given what you will be seeing. You can take a shuttle-bus to the village itself but, provided you’re not carrying too much baggage, the walk is far prettier.

We attempted to book accommodation in advance and were frustratingly unsuccessful. Once there, however, it wasn’t all that complicated. We stayed in one of the rustic, thatched houses and were extremely happy. It is probably important to note that this is not luxury accommodation. If you like 4-star hotels, you should go elsewhere. We were in a tiny room with only bedding and a mirror for furniture and the toilet and shower were across the courtyard in outhouse-type constructions. That said, we found it clean and comfortable and the calm and sheer peacefulness was glorious. There is underfloor heating in case of cold (Room price: 30 000 won). Also the breakfast was amazing (7000 won per person). Oh, and not being able to communicate at all with the ajumma running the house didn’t pose a problem either. The four French tourists who were staying in the other room seemed equally happy. Staying overnight is a good idea because it will give you a chance to see the village without the masses of tourists who descend on it during the day.

For those wishing to eat out at Hahoe, there are plenty of restaurants near the bus stop/fee-paying spot and we were very happy with the food – the mackerel is highly recommended. The famous Andong Soju (which is purer and has a higher alcohol content than other soju) is available in the village. If you’re looking for night-life, you will be disappointed – this is a tiny, rural community that lives a farming lifestyle and, as a result, tends to go sleep relatively early. If you’re still awake after dinner, try walking by the river. It is beautiful. And take the ferry across the river (during the day, 2000 won per person) and walk/hike up the cliff to get a stunning view of the whole area. For sheer quirkiness, be sure to check out the Korean fir tree planted by Queen Elizabeth II. There is also an “exhibition hall of Queen Elizabeth II” (because the world is sometimes a strangely tiny place).

Every place in Korea has its own charm. I don’t care how touristy and clichéd a traditional village may sound, a visit to Hahoe Village is a delightful, relaxing, charming experience that any visitor to this country would be making a mistake to miss out on.

Cherry blossom fail, Lake Hotel for the win

Adventures, travelling in Korea, , , , ,

Some experiences are more difficult to explain/describe than others. This seems especially true the further away (in time and space) I get from home and thus common ground with those for whom I am writing. This was one of those experiences. But perhaps those reading will understand more than I realise. Here is the story of Cheongpung.

Jecheon is a town in the middle of nowhere. My guidebook doesn’t even mention it, although it appears on the map so that you can see that it’s in the far right corner of Chungcheongbuk-do (ChungCheong province, north), which puts it somewhere near the middle of the country. It’s so far off the beaten track that only the very slow ‘commuter’ (Mughangwa) train goes there. The train does actually stop there, which is an improvement on some of the smaller farming settlements nearby.

Cheongpung is 30 minutes outside Jecheon. To get there, you take the Saemaul or KTX train to Daejeon (1-2 hours) and then change to the slow train to Jecheon. A couple of hours later, you walk out of the station onto a dusty street-side area, complete with deserted roads and faded buildings. It is technically a city (140 000 people), but in Korean terms – where people cluster in huge numbers (like termites) – it’s virtually a small town. There are no signs in English and no flashy new information offices. You know you’ve left the beaten track. To get to Cheongpung, you take a bus or a taxi. The buses are cheaper but there is absolutely no English so you may end up rather a long way in the wrong direction.

Of course, the taxi drivers don’t speak much English, either, so you’re likely to find yourself sitting in the taxi with a nagging premonition of being lost, anyway. If you’ve gone to Jecheon/Cheongpung for the spring flowers, you’ll also be watching in anticipation, hoping all the time that they’ll appear soon. If you’d followed the information on various usually reliable internet resources this year, and gone last weekend, as we did, you’d be disappointed.

There were no cherry blossoms. As our taxi drove on and on, we watched, in dismay, the bare branches of the hillside trees. All that travelling, all that waiting, to see flowers that weren’t there. And it didn’t even begin there. My morning had started with sneezing, my cold feeling nastier than ever, rushing to the station and discovering that all the tickets for the next three trains were sold out, leaving me twiddling my thumbs at Dongdaegu station while my travel companion cooled her heels in Daejeon. There are only four trains from Daejeon to Jecheon each day. The train I finally found  to Daejeon (buying first class because it was the only option) was due to arrive 15 minutes before the train to Jecheon left. Cutting it fine but the only option. The train was 5 minutes late. Luckily my travel companion had bought tickets. I ran from one platform (up one set of stairs and down another) to the other and only just made it. And then the uninspiring Jecheon station. And then the taxi driver and the fear of being lost. And then no cherry blossoms.

The weekend could have been a total disappointment. It almost should have been a total disappointment. Instead, it turned out to be a lovely couple of days in a place I would quite happily have stayed.

The taxi trip took about 30 minutes, giving us ample time to enjoy the spectacular views of the lake from the winding roads (in between worrying about being lost). We were headed for Cheongpung Resort, the only hotel we’d been able to find on-line that was definitely in this area – as opposed to being in Jecheon itself. It was more expensive than most accommodation but we wanted to be sure we’d see the cherry blossoms. This turned out not to be an issue, of course, but the choice was a good one nonetheless. It turned out the driver knew exactly where we were going. As we got near to the hotel, he asked if we were booked at the ‘hills’ or the ‘lake’ hotel. We said ‘lake’, figuring we could go to the other one if we needed to. He drove up to a huge hotel overlooking the blue-green water and dropped us off. In the 9 months I’ve been in Korea, I’ve seen plenty of love-motels, a few backpackers, a ‘youth hostel’ on a ski resort and some ‘tourist hotels’ (which tend to be expensive and particularly ugly). I haven’t seen a ‘normal’-looking hotel for a while. We walked in through the main door and went to a professional-looking reception desk. They confirmed our reservation, polite and friendly (if not all that fluent in English) and handed us our key to our room on the 8th floor.

Every room in the hotel faces the lake. From our 8th floor balcony, we looked out across the beautiful expanse of water towards perfect mountain peaks. All around, the lake stretched away to mountains in the distance, finger-spreading into valleys. To the left, on the same side of the lake as us, we could see a huge crane-like structure which turned out to be a bungee platform. To the right, small jetties stretched into the water. On that afternoon, mist and low cloud rested on the mountains, giving the whole place a mysterious, storybook quality. A fountain came to life spraying high into the air. It is one of the highest fountains in the Asia, reaching 162m.

Our room was great. A real, proper hotel room. With a bath. I don’t think people who have never lived in Korea (and possibly other Eastern countries) truly understand how glorious baths are. On Sunday morning I had a bath which was, absolutely seriously, the first bath I’ve taken since I arrived in Korea. It was wonderfully luxurious. So, so good.

For now, though, we went down to the hotel restaurant. In the midst of late trains and worrying about getting to the hotel, we hadn’t had lunch yet. We sat at a table against the huge windows looking out at the lake, and drank beer and ate steak and duck and revelled in the view and felt like real grown-ups.

After lunch we went walking. We spent the rest of the afternoon and early evening wandering along the roads and paths around our hotel area, taking in everything, returning each time we turned a corner, to the stunning views of the lake. We saw so many things. At one point we tried to stop at a wonderfully quirky and cute wooden restaurant/bar but they didn’t want to serve us outside, so we moved on. We stopped on a gravel road looking across a dusty field in winter colours and with rusting soccer posts towards our hotel. The other hotel (‘hills’ not ‘lake’) stood white against dark, craggy mountains soaring towards the sky. We walked along a wooden board-walk down and up the side of a mountain, climbing steps and strolling along wooden walks, all the time watching the different-coloured lights on either side of the path. We stopped to look a huge climbing wall and the night-time lit up, multi-coloured bungee platform. We watched colour-changing lights reflecting off pine trees. Back at our hotel, we watched the evening go by with a cold beer and good conversation. From what looked like a tiny performance stage near the bottom of the bungee platform, out a little into the lake, drifted Korean music throughout the evening, music that was aptly dubbed by my travel-mate, Anna, the Korean Neil Diamond. It wasn’t unpleasant and it added a uniquely Korean feel to the evening. Anna thought the place looked a little like Guilin (in China) “but the Korean Neil Diamond version”.

By the time we decided we were hungry (after our late lunch), the restaurants had closed, so we got a take-away pizza from the bar and ate it upstairs, more than happy to combine reasonably good pizza with an awesome night view. The pizza was ‘combination pizza’, which, it turned out, meant whatever was left over, ranging from ham and plenty of cheese to shrimps that kept surprising us. By midnight we were crawling into hotel beds complete with crisp, white sheets and down duvets.

Sunday morning breakfast was a hotel breakfast buffet. Between 2003 and 2008, I spent an awful lot of time in hotels. The hotel buffet breakfast is something that is familiar and a little bit comforting (as odd as that may seem). This buffet didn’t disappoint. It had all the usual standard options: cereal and milk, muffins, croissants, pastries (all of which were miniature), watermelon and fruit salad and hot breakfast. Of course there were differences. Most breakfast buffets I’ve experienced don’t include rice, kimchi, bulgogi, seaweed and rice porridge. Anna decided to try them out. I stuck with the traditional. I even had bacon, sausage and chips. All finished off with coffee and tea. It wasn’t a cheap breakfast but it was so good that it was worth it. In fact, that was pretty much true of the whole weekend.

After breakfast we went to the reception desk and asked when the ferry rides started and where we should go. Here we ran into a problem (exacerbated by the lack of a common language between the desk staff and ourselves). It turned out the ferry departure point as not within walking distance. “Well, can we call a taxi?” we asked. Apparently not. Since we’d arrived, the idea of a ferry on the lake had wormed its way into our plans. I had my heart completely set on it. But what could we do. Just as we were deciding whether we should set off walking anyway, even if it took us hours and hours, the hotel staff graciously offered to drive us there. Thrilled, we threw our stuff into bags, checked out, and rushed out to the hotel mini-bus.

We were early for the next ferry departure. We bought our tickets and wandered around looking at the curios until the overwhelming smell of bondeagi drove us outside to enjoy the water and the view of the bridge. The weather was overcast but the clouds were high and there was plenty of light.

The ferry arrived and everyone rushed inside to get a seat. We were very happy (if bemused) to let them rush indoors and found ourselves a spot near the back from where we could watch the stunning scenery with the wind in our faces and the splash of the water below us. Boats are another wonderful way to see the world. The scenery we passed was stunning. Above the water-line, all around the lake, there are layers of exposed rock in various colours, starkly clear and exposed between the start of the trees and the water. In some places, similar rock was visible in huge, strange formations higher up the hills. Sometimes the rocky cliffs reach the water. The waves from our boat splashed against the rock.

We travelled between high mountains and hills and passed small villages and roads twisting along hillsides. We passed under bridges and commented on traditional buildings. At the end of the ferry trip, we walked up to the top of the hill and looked out across the blue-green lake at the hillsides and mountains. We were at the start of some of the trails in Woraksan National Park but there was no time for hiking. Before we knew it, it was time to get back to the ferry and return to our starting point. The ride back was even prettier than the trip there because the sun came out and sparkled on the water. We stood at the back of the boat, enjoying the water and sunshine. It seemed an appropriate moment to open a beer. An older man sidled up to us and offered us some rather disgusting chips. We accepted them. In Korea the act of ‘offering’ can sometimes be rather forceful. Just then, after looking around to make sure no-one else was watching, he surreptitiously opened his coat to show us a bottle of soju tucked in his pocket. We declined as politely as we could in our limited Korean. In a last ditch attempt to persuade us, he whipped out a cucumber and offered it to us triumphantly. He eventually found someone else to share his drink and they sat tossing back soju shots from paper cups as the boat sped on.

The hotel staff really went above and beyond for us and when they dropped us off had given us a number to call so that they could fetch us. They even refused payment and then organised for us to go back to town with the hotel’s shuttle bus. Our experience of the hotel was definitely one of the most positive I’ve had at any place in Korea and I’d recommend Cheongpung Resort (Lake Hotel) to anyone. Plus the setting is just exquisite: blue water, sweeping hills, pretty fountains and the ferry. The kind of place you may only see once but you know that looking back you’ll always – even just a little – wish you could return.

Some experiences are more difficult to explain/describe than others. This seems especially true the further away (in time and space) I get from home and thus common ground with those for whom I am writing. This was one of those experiences. But perhaps those reading will understand more than I realise. Here is the story of Cheongpung.

Jecheon is a town in the middle of nowhere. My guidebook doesn’t even mention it, although it appears on the map so that you can see that it’s in the far right corner of Chungcheongbuk-do (ChungCheong province, north), which puts it somewhere near the middle of the country. It’s so far off the beaten track that only the very slow ‘commuter’ (Mughangwa) train goes there. The train does actually stop there, which is an improvement on some of the smaller farming settlements nearby.

Cheongpung is 30 minutes outside Jecheon. To get there, you take the Saemaul or KTX train to Daejeon (1-2 hours) and then change to the slow train to Jecheon. A couple of hours later, you walk out of the station onto a dusty street-side area, complete with deserted roads and faded buildings. It is technically a city (140 000 people), but in Korean terms – where people cluster in huge numbers (like termites) – it’s virtually a small town. There are no signs in English and no flashy new information offices. You know you’ve left the beaten track. To get to Cheongpung, you take a bus or a taxi. The buses are cheaper but there is absolutely no English so you may end up rather a long way in the wrong direction.

Of course, the taxi drivers don’t speak much English, either, so you’re likely to find yourself sitting in the taxi with a nagging premonition of being lost, anyway. If you’ve gone to Jecheon/Cheongpung for the spring flowers, you’ll also be watching in anticipation, hoping all the time that they’ll appear soon. If you’d followed the information on various usually reliable internet resources this year, and gone last weekend, as we did, you’d be disappointed.

There were no cherry blossoms. As our taxi drove on and on, we watched, in dismay, the bare branches of the hillside trees. All that travelling, all that waiting, to see flowers that weren’t there. And it didn’t even begin there. My morning had started with sneezing, my cold feeling nastier than ever, rushing to the station and discovering that all the tickets for the next three trains were sold out, leaving me twiddling my thumbs at Dongdaegu station while my travel companion cooled her heels in Daejeon. There are only four trains from Daejeon to Jecheon each day. The train I finally found to Daejeon (buying first class because it was the only option) was due to arrive 15 minutes before the train to Jecheon left. Cutting it fine but the only option. The train was 5 minutes late. Luckily my travel companion had bought tickets. I ran from one platform (up one set of stairs and down another) to the other and only just made it. And then the uninspiring Jecheon station. And then the taxi driver and the fear of being lost. And then no cherry blossoms.

The weekend could have been a total disappointment. It almost should have been a total disappointment. Instead, it turned out to be a lovely couple of days in a place I would quite happily have stayed.

The taxi trip took about 30 minutes, giving us ample time to enjoy the spectacular views of the lake from the winding roads (in between worrying about being lost). We were headed for Cheongpung Resort, the only hotel we’d been able to find on-line that was definitely in this area – as opposed to being in Jecheon itself. It was more expensive than most accommodation but we wanted to be sure we’d see the cherry blossoms. This turned out not to be an issue, of course, but the choice was a good one nonetheless. It turned out the driver knew exactly where we were going. As we got near to the hotel, he asked if we were booked at the ‘hills’ or the ‘lake’ hotel. We said ‘lake’, figuring we could go to the other one if we needed to. He drove up to a huge hotel overlooking the blue-green water and dropped us off. In the 9 months I’ve been in Korea, I’ve seen plenty of love-motels, a few backpackers, a ‘youth hostel’ on a ski resort and some ‘tourist hotels’ (which tend to be expensive and particularly ugly). I haven’t seen a ‘normal’-looking hotel for a while. We walked in through the main door and went to a professional-looking reception desk. They confirmed our reservation, polite and friendly (if not all that fluent in English) and handed us our key to our room on the 8th floor.

Every room in the hotel faces the lake. From our 8th floor balcony, we looked out across the beautiful expanse of water towards perfect mountain peaks. All around, the lake stretched away to mountains in the distance, finger-spreading into valleys. To the left, on the same side of the lake as us, we could see a huge crane-like structure which turned out to be a bungee platform. To the right, small jetties stretched into the water. On that afternoon, mist and low cloud rested on the mountains, giving the whole place a mysterious, storybook quality. A fountain came to life spraying high into the air. It is one of the highest fountains in the Asia, reaching 162m.

Our room was great. A real, proper hotel room. With a bath. I don’t think people who have never lived in Korea (and possibly other Eastern countries) truly understand how glorious baths are. On Sunday morning I had a bath which was, absolutely seriously, the first bath I’ve taken since I arrived in Korea. It was wonderfully luxurious. So, so good.

For now, though, we went down to the hotel restaurant. In the midst of late trains and worrying about getting to the hotel, we hadn’t had lunch yet. We sat at a table against the huge windows looking out at the lake, and drank beer and ate steak and duck and revelled in the view and the sense of being real grown-ups.

After lunch we went walking. We spent the rest of the afternoon and early evening wandering along the roads and paths around our hotel area, taking in everything, returning each time we turned a corner, to the stunning views of the lake. We saw so many things. At one point we tried to stop at a wonderfully quirky and cute wooden restaurant/bar but they didn’t want to serve us outside, so we moved on. We stopped on a gravel road looking across a dusty field in winter colours and with rusting soccer posts towards our hotel. The other hotel (‘hills’ not ‘lake’) stood white against dark, craggy mountains soaring towards the sky. We walked along a wooden board-walk down and up the side of a mountain, climbing steps and strolling along wooden walks, all the time watching the different-coloured lights on either side of the path. We stopped to look a huge climbing wall and the night-time lit up, multi-coloured bungee platform. We watched colour-changing lights reflecting off pine trees. Back at our hotel, we watched the evening go by with a cold beer and good conversation. From what looked like a tiny performance stage near the bottom of the bungee platform, out a little into the lake, drifted Korean music throughout the evening, music that was aptly dubbed by my travel-mate, Anna, the Korean Neil Diamond. It wasn’t unpleasant and it added a uniquely Korean feel to the evening. Anna thought the place looked a little like Guilin (in China) “but the Korean Neil Diamond version”.

By the time we decided we were hungry, the restaurants had closed, so we got a take-away pizza from the bar and ate it upstairs, more than happy to combine reasonably good pizza with an awesome night view. The pizza was ‘combination pizza’, which, it turned out, meant whatever was left over, ranging from ham and plenty of cheese to shrimps that kept surprising us. By midnight we were crawling into hotel beds complete with crisp, white sheets and down duvets.

Sunday morning breakfast was a hotel breakfast buffet. Between 2003 and 2008, I spent an awful lot of time in hotels. The hotel buffet breakfast is something that is familiar and a little bit comforting (as odd as that may seem). This buffet didn’t disappoint. It had all the usual standard options: cereal and milk, muffins, croissants, pastries (all of which were miniature), watermelon and fruit salad and hot breakfast. Of course there were differences. Most breakfast buffets I’ve experienced don’t include rice, kimchi, bulgogi, seaweed and rice porridge. Anna decided to try them out. I stuck with the traditional. I even had bacon, sausage and chips. All finished off with coffee and tea. It wasn’t a cheap breakfast but it was so good that it was worth it. In fact, that was pretty much true of the whole weekend.

After breakfast we went to the reception desk and asked when the ferry rides started and where we should go. Here we ran into a problem (exacerbated by the lack of a common language between the desk staff and ourselves). It turned out the ferry departure point as not within walking distance. “Well, can we call a taxi?” we asked. Apparently not. Since we’d arrived, the idea of a ferry on the lake had wormed its way into our plans. I had my heart completely set on it. But what could we do. Just as we were deciding whether we should set off walking anyway, even if it took us hours and hours, the hotel staff graciously offered to drive us there. Thrilled, we threw our stuff into bags, checked out, and rushed out to the hotel mini-bus.

We were early for the next ferry departure. We bought our tickets and wandered around looking at the curios until the overwhelming smell of bondeagi drove us outside to enjoy the water and the view of the bridge. The weather was overcast but the clouds were high and there was plenty of light. The ferry arrived and everyone rushed inside to get a seat. We were very happy (if bemused) to let them rush indoors and found ourselves a spot near the back from where we could watch the stunning scenery with the wind in our faces and the splash of the water below us. Boats are a wonderful way to see the world. The scenery we passed was stunning. Above the water-line, all around the lake, there are layers of exposed rock in various colours, starkly clear and exposed between the start of the trees and the water. In some places, similar rock was visible in huge, strange formations higher up the hills. Sometimes the rocky cliffs reach the water. The waves from our boat splashed against the rock.

We travelled between high mountains and hills and passed small villages and roads twisting along hillsides. We passed under bridges and commented on traditional buildings. At the end of the ferry trip, we walked up to the top of the hill and looked out across the blue-green lake at the hillsides and mountains. We were at the start of some of the trails in the Woraksan National Park but there was no time for hiking. Before we knew it, it was time to get back to the ferry and return to our starting point. The ride back was even prettier than the trip there because the sun came out and sparkled on the water. We stood at the back of the boat, enjoying the water and sunshine. It seemed an appropriate moment to open a beer. An older man sidled up to us and offered us some rather disgusting chips and then surreptitiously opened his coat to show us a bottle of soju tucked in his pocket. We declined as politely as we could with limited Korean. In a last ditch attempt to persuade us, he whipped out a cucumber and offered it to us triumphantly. We declined again and tried not to burst out laughing at the sheer oddness of the situation. He eventually found someone else to share his drink and they sat tossing back soju shots from paper cups as the boat sped on.

The hotel staff really went above and beyond for us and when they dropped us off had given us a number to call so that they could fetch us. They even refused payment and then organised for us to go back to town with the hotel’s shuttle bus. Our experience of the hotel was definitely one of the most positive I’ve had at any place in Korea and I’d recommend Cheongpung Resort (Lake Hotel) to anyone. Plus the setting is just exquisite: blue water, sweeping hills, pretty fountains and the ferry. The kind of place you may only see once but you know that looking back you’ll always – even just a little – wish you could return. .

40th Busan International Kite Festival

Adventures, trains and train stations, travelling in Korea, ,

I have a soft spot for kites. In fact, it’s somewhat of a family thing. They’re pretty and fun and watching them is a great way to while away an hour or two. So, I was pleased to discover there would be a kite festival happening in Busan this month. I was even more pleased when I discovered that they’d moved the dates so that it no longer clashed with my trip to Seoul.

I got moving a little later than expected but decided to go anyway, figuring that getting out of town and seeing a new part of Busan would be fun either way. The KTX from Daegu to Busan takes just over an hour and winds through beautiful rivers, hills and farmlands. A cursory search of the internet had suggested that there were two ways to get to Dadaepo Beach for the festival – bus or subway and bus. I chose the latter because I was a little worried about time. I was struck again by the contrast between the Daegu subway, new and shiny and modern, and Busan’s more down-to-earth, slightly run-down version. I bought a day-pass (3500 won) and went down the stairs to the dimly lit and 70s-looking platform. The station was the last on the line (Sinpyeong). The carriage slowly emptied stop by stop until it was just me and a mother and son. I felt the familiar tingle of nervousness at being in a completely unfamiliar place as the train emerged from the subway and we disembarked.

I was still not at my destination but 20 minutes on bus number 2 got me to the Dadaepo Beach stop. I stood on the pavement at an unfamiliar bus stop in an unfamiliar city with no beach and no kites in sight. Nine months in a foreign country is a great way to learn not to panic. The trick, I have discovered, is to pick a direction and start walking. Along the road and around the corner, I spotted a brightly coloured kite fluttering in the distance. I crossed a road and found a policeman directing people and traffic, which seemed a lot of security for a kite festival but what do I know? It made more sense when I noticed a temporary stage set up on a paved square with a sound-check going on. Beyond that, down a hill and along a slightly muddy road, I found the beach.

The number of kites flying above the beach wasn’t huge. This may have been because I arrived rather late – there wasn’t all that much activity around the tents on the beach, either. There were some huge octopus-like kites soaring in the breeze, however. They were beautiful. Blue and pink and multi-coloured giants fluttering above us. In between, smaller kites bobbed in the breeze. Some were birds, some just shapes. My favourite was a full, rigged, pirate-type ship. Some were anchored in the sand, like the big kites. Others were flown by adults or children. I loved looked at them and seeing all the colours and shapes. As I was walking along the beach, looked at them all, someone started flying a 2-stringed, 3-story triangle-shaped kite with two long, long tails. I couldn’t see who was flying it through the scattered people but he or she was good at it. The kite twisted and circled and danced in the sky.

There didn’t seem to be a lot of this type of competitive stunt-flying going on, but there were groups of men standing around who I gathered from the whistles and the tension were involved in competition. It took me ages to figure out what they were doing. The kites they were flying were fairly ordinary looking pale squares, each no bigger than about 50cm square and with a round hole in the centre. It wasn’t until I saw one of these kites flutter down without its string that I realised they were kite-fighting. Anyone who has read The Kite Runner will have some idea of what I’m talking about. The two kite-flyers battle it out as each tries to cut the other person’s string with his line, without getting trapped and his own string cut. It was fascinating (for a while at least) to watch the desperate silent battle high in the air.

On the other side of me, a far younger and more modern crowd were harnessing the wind in a very different way. In the shallow sea-water where the river meets the sea were the kite-surfers. I haven’t seen anyone kite-surfing in ages. There is something about the power of the wind and someone flying across the water under that power that is particularly beautiful. Behind a dark grey layer of cloud the sun was tilting towards the horizon and the light shining on the water silhouetted the surfers and their kites against a silver sea.

I walked along the beach towards the rocky hill at the other end, enjoying the light and the water and the ordinary, precious moments: the man standing on the sea-shore with his little daughter, a Saturday afternoon beach-soccer game, a couple walking along the sand. Against the rocky hill at the end of the beach there is a wooden boardwalk. I climbed the stairs and walked along the boardwalk, enjoying the views. The beach is in a little bay, so there are no real expanses of the open water, but the views are still beautiful.

As 5pm approached, people were starting to pack up and leave, although the kite-fighting matches were still going on. As I walked back towards the road, there was increased activity in the direction of the stage. In the open area down the hill from the stage, I noticed that the single police bus that I’d seen on my way down had been joined by three others. Food stalls had been set up and a crowd was starting to gather. In the open square area, where the stage and chairs were set up, I sat down to change my camera batteries. Once I was sitting down, I saw that there were many more people in the square. To the side, I saw an ambulance parked. People were milling around in front of the stage and being moved back by volunteers in orange vests. I saw men in suits and women in high heels and people wearing blue sashes over their shoulders. There was something about the energy that was so familiar – I could almost feel the adrenaline of eventing coming back to me.

And then I saw a photographer. In Korea, people wandering around with large, expensive-looking cameras are a dime a dozen. Everywhere I go, there seem to be people taking pictures of each other, sometimes in groups and sometimes in amateur photo shoots. This wasn’t one of those. Over one shoulder, he carried a fancy tripod, over the other a particularly large and impressive looking camera. Instead of taking pictures of pretty Korean girls or family snaps of the groups of people, he was walking the area, trying to see the stage from different angles. He obviously knew what he was doing. After looking at every possible angle, he wandered off to the side and had a cigarette. Thinking about it now, I do hope he didn’t notice me watching him but his presence and the way he was acting were a clear sign to me that something important was going on. I decided to stick around and see what happened.

I didn’t try and get a chair, most of which were already full of Korean families, with children running around and mothers pushing prams and grandparents getting settled. I sat off to the side and just watched. A group of people in sleeping bags arrived and walked the open area in front of the stage. Ok, not actual sleeping bags but the kind of puffy long winter coats that make the person look like he or she is wearing a sleeping bag.

Before long, the sound of drums and gongs started in the distance. A group – I assume the same people who had been wearing the sleeping bags – were marching onto the square in a procession, all in traditional outfits. The front person carried a flag and all the others had drums or gongs or cymbals. They wore white with black waistcoats and yellow and blue and red sashes and the strangest white hats that looked as if they were wearing bundles of candy floss on their heads. They processed past the chairs and into the open area in front of the stage and dancing and playing their instruments. In all my time in Korea, one of the things I haven’t managed to see is traditional music and dancing. It was great to find it by accident today. The music was so different. It is strange to think that traditional music using the same instrument (drums) that I’ve known for so long, can be so different to what I’ve known. The dancing was different, too. I’m so glad I saw it.

After the dancing, a swing band played lovely music. Just as they started, the sound system distorted badly and two people, obviously the ones running the show, tore across the square to fix it. I had a moment of nostalgia for my days of running events. I listened to the band for a while but the evening was getting colder and I had a long trip home and increasing activity of the police and volunteers and people in suits suggested that the evening may shift quite rapidly to speeches and other things in Korean, so I headed back to the bus stop. The bus took ages to get back to the station, but I had a lovely time looked at all the things in the city. I may not have been paying that much attention because I definitely thought I saw a chicken shop called ‘Syndrome’, a bakery named ‘Alientots’ and a bus stop for the ‘Korea Cast-Iron Pig Refinery’. Also a sign for one of the suburbs (Gu) of Busan which has taken the tradition of each place acquiring a trite and often inappropriate adjective (‘Dynamic Busan’, ‘Colourful Daegu’) to another level, calling itself ‘Nice Jung-gu’.

A trip back on a particularly smart-looking KTX and I reached Daegu feeling tired and hungry after the sea air but still managed to stop and pick up a lemon meringue cupcake before taking the bus home. Kites, beach, silver-sea and traditional dancers – a good afternoon. Oh, and the cupcake was delicious.