Monthly Archives: May 2010

Travelling solo

Adventures, bus, Travel, travelling in Korea, , , ,

A lot of the exploring I’ve done in Korea has been on my own. I’m a fairly flexible and accommodating travel-mate, however, so when others have expressed interest in joining me on particular adventures, I’ve generally been more than happy to let them join and, on more than one occasion, to shift the plans to accommodate their tastes and whims. That really doesn’t bother me. These various trips with different people have given me an opportunity to watch how different people travel and I think it’s taught me something about choosing travel companions. Not that I’ve gotten it right yet but I think I have a better idea of the difficulties and risks of choosing people with whom to share adventures. This is not to say that one should refuse the opportunity to travel when it presents itself. If you’re like me, and willing to be flexible and put up with things, you will probably enjoy it anyway, but it’s a really, really good idea to be fairly explicit about expectations. Or at least for someone to be explicit so that there is one solid set of expectations out there. If everyone is constantly tiptoeing around, worrying about inconveniencing the others, it may end up being a fairly miserable trip for all. And sometimes, just occasionally, it is better to travel alone.

It wasn’t until Sunday that there was finally an opportunity to do some Island-hopping. As a result of bus-related delays and a taxi not able to take us to a ferry in Jindo, we had moved on to Wando for the night (Wando is highly recommended, btw). It was a wild, wet, windy night. I love nights like that. I got soaked, but it was beautiful and coastal. It felt like the sea. In the morning, it was still wet, but seemed – to me at least – less bitter. They said at the ferry terminal that there was a slight chance the ferry wouldn’t be able to come back immediately, but there were many ferries running during the day (every hour) to and from this particular island. My travel companion chose not to take the chance. I don’t know that she really enjoyed the weekend. I know I spent more time worrying about how she was enjoying it than I wanted to. Especially because this was always meant to be a solo expedition for me – a chance to travel and be in motion and experience things more roughly and with more difficulties than usual. I think perhaps I should have trusted my instincts on this one and insisted on doing it alone. Either way, by the time I got on the ferry at 8am on Sunday morning, I was on my own.

It felt so free, standing on that ferry. I love boats. There is a mystery and a wonder about sailing across open ocean or, as in this case, between distant islands. It is particularly free and wonder-filled when the clouds are lying low across the see and rain is falling on your face as you stand at the railing and look out at the blue-grey-green water. Perhaps it is my British heritage and in my veins flows the blood of centuries of sea-faring explorers (by which I mean generically as someone with an historical link to the UK – I have no idea, really). I felt the powerful pull of going, of the freedom of the sea. I was the only foreigner on the ferry and I think the Koreans thought I was a little odd, standing there in my jacket, in the wind and flurrying drizzle, looking out as we passed by islands and ships in the distance.

Once on the island, Cheongsando, I stood for a while and watched the tour-buses drive off the ferry. A lot of the people there were obviously on package tours. I drifted past them, walking past rows of cars, along the little harbour looking around at the little town. Not far along the road, I saw a sign for a beach. I didn’t know where it was or how far away it would be but I decided to take the chance. I walked past an old, falling-down house, windows empty, paint peeling, grey in the grey morning. I passed a school, the sandy playground lying muddy and empty on that Sunday. After a while, I left the buildings behind me and was walking between watery, green rice paddies, terraced up the hills. The road rose up towards forested hills. I passed a man and a woman with a little tractor, working their lands. The sound of a tractor engine broke the silence. The sound was familiar in the foreign fields.

Over the hill, the road dropped down again. I turned off towards the little beach. There was an information board saying that this was the most popular beach on the island. I stood and looked out across the curve of the beach to the buildings on the other side of the green-grey water. The small waves broke on the sand. Another foreigner passed by, covered up in a bright orange raincoat. We didn’t interact at all. It seemed inappropriate to make any sort of contact on this deserted beach in the rain. Beyond the surf were rows of what looked like some sort of fish or seafood-farming activities. A man in a little blue Korean truck drove along the pier and clamoured aboard one of the small boats moored there. In the distance, the orange raincoat took a path up a hill into the forests. I headed in the same direction, not following, just coincidentally taking the same route.

The paved path rose up between the trees. On my right, I could see the sea, stretching out to islands and horizons, through the tree-trunks. It was peaceful. I could hear birds singing.

At the top of the hill I rounded a bend and looked down on a little pebble-beach. Brush and trees stretched down the hill towards it. Around a corner, the forests opened out into ploughed fields. The pebble beach bay was still below me. A brown cow stood under a tree, tethered to a post. It’s huge brown eyes watched me as I followed the path towards it, past it, onwards, always onwards. Around another corner, I came to a freshly ploughed field on my right, all sandy except for the two grassy mounds in the middle of it. Grassy mounds, in this country, are graves. They sat in the middle of a field where the farmer had lovingly ploughed, ever so carefully, around the final resting place of his ancestors. Two black goats chomped on grass in the fenced-off field beyond. I stopped to look down again at the pebble beach. The water was dark blue and crystal clear. A tiny islet rose just beyond the little bay, between the big island I was on and another just a little way across the sea, creating a silhouette line of rocks-in-water.

The path wound back down between the rice paddies. The farmer I had seen earlier was struggling with his little tractor in the mud. Another farmer stopped to help him, leaving his own tractor standing on the path, idling. I edged past and suddenly caught the familiar scent of diesel engine. Strange that island hopping would have lead me to, for the first and only time, a place where I could catch a glimpse of rural Korea; just a glimpse, a last goodbye from Korea.

Back in the little town, I walked past a fish restaurant than smelt fantastic. I thought about stopping for some food but there was no-one around. The door stood open, but no-one was there. I moved on. I passed a modern and very clearly ‘designed’ coast-guard building. Just beyond it, a metre from the edge of the land, was a basketball hoop standing forlornly in the rain. I could picture the island boys playing here, experts at shooting without falling backwards into the sea.

I stopped for coffee at a little shop – that said ‘coffee’. There were people here. A family. They looked bemused when I came in but showed me to a seat, clearly wondering how we would communicate. I asked for coffee. They relaxed a little until they realised they’d have to ask if I wanted cream (milk). They looked relieved when I said no. The coffee was gloriously warm and sweet. I stared through the doorway at the falling rain and surreptitiously watched the family. A mother sat with her baby and chatted to a friend. A little girl walked around with her toddler brother, making sure he didn’t wander out into the rain. The father sat with a friend in front of the TV, clearly engaged in serious conversations (possibly about the Korean game show on the television). I finished my coffee and paid, grateful that I know enough Korean to recognise money numbers. As I left, the little boy, the toddler, came to the door and insisted on showing me, before I could go, a dog’s footprints in the cement outside the door. With no words, he earnestly shared his secret, his serious little eyes demanding that I pay attention.

I thought I should wander back to the ferry dock and find out what time the next ferry left. I had 50 minutes left, so I bought a ticket and took another walk, past houses and rice-paddies next to the water in another direction. I walked along a road between two hills. Next to the road were two more grassy mounds. Next to one was a bunch of flowers.

Below some rocky cliffs, was a manufacturing area of some sort. A boatyard? I stopped and looked for a while but my ferry had arrived and I knew it was time to head back, so I walked back around the little bay. At the ferry, I handed my ticket to an island police-man and then ducked between cars and buses boarding the ferry, and up the stairs. As we left the island, I stood on the top deck of the ferry, looking out at the island and the sea.

There were more people on the ferry this time, so the upper deck was a little crowded. After a while, I went back down to the area below and found a familiar spot along the railing. Fragments of songs drifted through my mind. The smell of the sea mingled with the Korean-food smells from the little restaurant/food (ramen) shop behind me. I was alone with my thoughts and the sea.

Coming back into Wando, we had perfect views of the huge, forested rock in the harbour and the bridge connecting this island to the next one. Bridges and rivers and mountains and sea. My Korea.

I was sad to leave the island and the ferry but the time had come to start the journey home. There were no cabs outside the ferry terminal, so I started walking in the direction of the bus station. The rain was getting heavier. I was very thankful for the built-in-rain-cover on my backpack. After a few long blocks, a taxi picked me up and dropped me off at the bus terminal. I picked up a ticket to Suncheon and grabbed some kimbap for lunch while I waited. Kimbap is rice (bap) rolled around egg, ham, kimchi, radish and whatever else you have lying around, with a layer of seaweed (kim) around the outside. This cylindrical roll is then drizzled with sesame oil and sliced up and eaten with chopsticks. It’s not particularly tasty, but it is conveniently quick, cheap and ubiquitous. I ate it on the bus, watching the world pass by. We drove through rice paddies, barley fields and forested hills. I let my mind wander and watched the scenery, the words of Simon and Garfunkel’s America singing softly in my mind.

It took several hours to reach Suncheon, where I would change buses. The afternoon stayed mostly grey but occasionally we would pass through an area where the clouds were thinner or there were holes in the overcast sky and sunshine drenched small towns and forested hills in summer light. It was beautiful.

Suncheon was small and damp but seemed pleasant enough. A multi-story motel proudly sported the name ‘BMW motel‘, complete with BMW emblem. I wondered what international copyright laws would have to say about that. It doesn’t seem to matter here, as long as the brand is not Korean. I had a few hours to wait before the express bus. I could have taken a slower bus but it would have arrived at a terminal I don’t know, so I opted to wait. In the meantime, I explored the area around the bus terminal. A lot of people feel that a city is just a city. I disagree. I think each place has a sense of place, an identity that is unique. I relish the chance, even for a few hours, to wander around and guess at what that might be. I stopped into Lee’s Sandwich and Coffee for a cappuccino before returning to the bus station and finding a quiet corner to settle down with Douglas Adams.

And then I was back on the bus, travelling through the rapidly descending evening to reach Daegu at around 10pm. As I sat in the cab on the way home, I still felt the lingering sense of freedom and movement. I hadn’t originally intended this trip to be my last real adventure in Korea, but it has turned out that way. In just a few days, I will board a plane and travel home. I’m glad I had the chance, the moment of solitary freedom to glimpse a different side of Korea – a rural, island world, small cities and towns, buses full of people, rivers and bridges and mountains and sea and movement. This is the Korea I carry with me as I prepare to depart for good.

Travelling solo

A lot of the exploring I’ve done in Korea has been on my own. I’m a fairly flexible and accommodating travel-mate, however, so when others have expressed interest in joining me on particular adventures, I’ve generally been more than happy to let them join and, on more than one occasion, to shift the plans to accommodate their tastes and whims. That really doesn’t bother me. These various trips with different people have given me an opportunity to watch how different people travel and I think it’s taught me something about choosing travel companions. Not that I’ve gotten it right yet but I think I have a better idea of the difficulties and risks of choosing people with whom to share adventures. This is not to say that one should refuse the opportunity to travel when it presents itself. If you’re like me, and willing to be flexible and put up with things, you will probably enjoy it anyway, but it’s a really, really good idea to be fairly explicit about expectations. Or at least for someone to be explicit so that there is one solid set of expectations out there. If everyone is constantly tiptoeing around, worrying about inconveniencing the others, it may end up being a fairly miserable trip for all. And sometimes, just occasionally, it is better to travel alone.

It wasn’t until Sunday that there was finally an opportunity to do some Island-hopping. As a result of bus-related delays and a taxi not able to take us to a ferry in Jindo, we had moved on to Wando for the night. It was a wild, wet, windy night. I love nights like that. I got soaked, but it was beautiful and coastal. It felt like the sea. In the morning, it was still wet, but seemed – to me at least – less bitter. They said at the ferry terminal that there was a slight chance the ferry wouldn’t be able to come back immediately, but there were many ferries running during the day (every hour) to and from this particular island. My travel companion chose not to take the chance. I don’t know that she really enjoyed the weekend. I know I spent more time worrying about how she was enjoying it than I wanted to. Especially because this was always meant to be a solo expedition for me – a chance to travel and be in motion and experience things more roughly and with more difficulties than usual. I think perhaps I should have trusted my instincts on this one and insisted on doing it alone. Either way, by the time I got on the ferry at 8am on Sunday morning, I was on my own.

It felt so free, standing on that ferry. I love boats. There is a mystery and a wonder about sailing across open ocean or, as in this case, between distant islands. It is particularly free and wonder-filled when the clouds are lying low across the see and rain is falling on your face as you stand at the railing and look out at the blue-grey-green water. Perhaps it is my British heritage and in my veins flows the blood of centuries of sea-faring explorers (by which I mean generically as someone with an historical link to the UK – I have no idea, really). I felt the powerful pull of going, of the freedom of the sea. I was the only foreigner on the ferry and I think the Koreans thought I was a little odd, standing there in my jacket, in the wind and flurrying drizzle, looking out as we passed by islands and ships in the distance.

Once on the island, Cheongsando, I stood for a while and watched the tour-buses drive off the ferry. A lot of the people there were obviously on package tours. I drifted past them, walking past rows of cars, along the little harbour looking around at the little town. Not far along the road, I saw a sign for a beach. I didn’t know where it was or how far away it would be but I decided to take the chance. I walked past an old, falling-down house, windows empty, paint peeling, grey in the grey morning. I passed a school, the sandy playground lying muddy and empty on that Sunday. After a while, I left the buildings behind me and was walking between watery, green rice paddies, terraced up the hills. The road rose up towards forested hills. I passed a man and a woman with a little tractor, working their lands. The sound of a tractor engine broke the silence. The sound was familiar in the foreign fields.

Over the hill, the road dropped down again. I turned off towards the little beach. There was an information board saying that this was the most popular beach on the island. I stood and looked out across the curve of the beach to the buildings on the other side of the green-grey water. The small waves broke on the sand. Another foreigner passed by, covered up in a bright orange raincoat. We didn’t interact at all. It seemed inappropriate to make any sort of contact on this deserted beach in the rain. Beyond the surf were rows of what looked like some sort of fish or seafood-farming activities. A man in a little blue Korean truck drove along the pier and clamoured aboard one of the small boats moored there. In the distance, the orange raincoat took a path up a hill into the forests. I headed in the same direction, not following, just coincidentally taking the same route.

The paved path rose up between the trees. On my right, I could see the sea, stretching out to islands and horizons, through the tree-trunks. It was peaceful. I could hear birds singing.

At the top of the hill I rounded a bend and looked down on a little pebble-beach. Brush and trees stretched down the hill towards it. Around a corner, the forests opened out into ploughed fields. The pebble beach bay was still below me. A brown cow stood under a tree, tethered to a post. It’s huge brown eyes watched me as I followed the path towards it, past it, onwards, always onwards. Around another corner, I came to a freshly ploughed field on my right, all sandy except for the two grassy mounds in the middle of it. Grassy mounds, in this country, are graves. They sat in the middle of a field where the farmer had lovingly ploughed, ever so carefully, around the final resting place of his ancestors. Two black goats chomped on grass in the fenced-off field beyond. I stopped to look down again at the pebble beach. The water was dark blue and crystal clear. A tiny islet rose just beyond the little bay, between the big island I was on and another just a little way across the sea, creating a silhouette line of rocks-in-water.

The path wound back down between the rice paddies. The farmer I had seen earlier was struggling with his little tractor in the mud. Another farmer stopped to help him, leaving his own tractor standing on the path, idling. I edged past and suddenly caught the familiar scent of diesel engine. Strange that island hopping would have lead me to, for the first and only time, a place where I could catch a glimpse of rural Korea; just a glimpse, a last goodbye from Korea.

Back in the little town, I walked past a fish restaurant than smelt fantastic. I thought about stopping for some food but there was no-one around. The door stood open, but no-one was there. I moved on. I passed a modern and very clearly ‘designed’ coast-guard building. Just beyond it, a metre from the edge of the land, was a basketball hoop standing forlornly in the rain. I could picture the island boys playing here, experts at shooting without falling backwards into the sea.

I stopped for coffee at a little shop – that said ‘coffee’. There were people here. A family. They looked bemused when I came in but showed me to a seat, clearly wondering how we would communicate. I asked for coffee. They relaxed a little until they realised they’d have to ask if I wanted cream (milk). They looked relieved when I said no. The coffee was gloriously warm and sweet. I stared through the doorway at the falling rain and surreptitiously watched the family. A mother sat with her baby and chatted to a friend. A little girl walked around with her toddler brother, making sure he didn’t wander out into the rain. The father sat with a friend in front of the TV, clearly engaged in serious conversations (possibly about the Korean game show on the television). I finished my coffee and paid, grateful that I know enough Korean to recognise money numbers. As I left, the little boy, the toddler, came to the door and insisted on showing me, before I could go, a dog’s footprints in the cement outside the door. With no words, he earnestly shared his secret, his serious little eyes demanding that I pay attention.

I thought I should wander back to the ferry dock and find out what time the next ferry left. I had 50 minutes left, so I bought a ticket and took another walk, past houses and rice-paddies next to the water in another direction. I walked along a road between two hills. Next to the road were two more grassy mounds. Next to one was a bunch of flowers.

Below some rocky cliffs, was a manufacturing area of some sort. A boatyard? I stopped and looked for a while but my ferry had arrived and I knew it was time to head back, so I walked back around the little bay. At the ferry, I handed my ticket to an island police-man and then ducked between cars and buses boarding the ferry, and up the stairs. As we left the island, I stood on the top deck of the ferry, looking out at the island and the sea.

There were more people on the ferry this time, so the upper deck was a little crowded. After a while, I went back down to the area below and found a familiar spot along the railing. Fragments of songs drifted through my mind. The smell of the sea mingled with the Korean-food smells from the little restaurant/food (ramen) shop behind me. I was alone with my thoughts and the sea.

Coming back into Wando, we had perfect views of the huge, forested rock in the harbour and the bridge connecting this island to the next one. Bridges and rivers and mountains and sea. My Korea.

I was sad to leave the island and the ferry but the time had come to start the journey home. There were no cabs outside the ferry terminal, so I started walking in the direction of the bus station. The rain was getting heavier. I was very thankful for the built-in-rain-cover on my backpack. After a few long blocks, a taxi picked me up and dropped me off at the bus terminal. I picked up a ticket to Suncheon and grabbed some kimbap for lunch while I waited. Kimbap is rice (bap) rolled around egg, ham, kimchi, radish and whatever else you have lying around, with a layer of seaweed (kim) around the outside. This cylindrical roll is then drizzled with sesame oil and sliced up and eaten with chopsticks. It’s not particularly tasty, but it is conveniently quick, cheap and ubiquitous. I ate it on the bus, watching the world pass by. We drove through rice paddies, barley fields and forested hills. I let my mind wander and watched the scenery, the words of Simon and Garfunkel’s America singing softly in my mind.

It took several hours to reach Suncheon, where I would change buses. The afternoon stayed mostly grey but occasionally we would pass through an area where the clouds were thinner or there were holes in the overcast sky and sunshine drenched small towns and forested hills in summer light. It was beautiful.

Suncheon was small and damp but seemed pleasant enough. A multi-story motel proudly sported the name ‘BMW motel’, complete with BMW emblem. I wondered what international copyright laws would have to say about that. It doesn’t seem to matter here, as long as the brand is not Korean. I had a few hours to wait before the express bus. I could have taken a slower bus but it would have arrived at a terminal I don’t know, so I opted to wait. In the meantime, I explored the area around the bus terminal. A lot of people feel that a city is just a city. I disagree. I think each place has a sense of place, an identity that is unique. I relish the chance, even for a few hours, to wander around and guess at what that might be. I stopped into Lee’s Sandwich and Coffee for a cappuccino before returning to the bus station and finding a quiet corner to settle down with Douglas Adams.

And then I was back on the bus, travelling through the rapidly descending evening to reach Daegu at around 10pm. As I sat in the cab on the way home, I still felt the lingering sense of freedom and movement. I hadn’t originally intended this trip to be my last real adventure in Korea, but it has turned out that way. In just a few days, I will board a plane and travel home. I’m glad I had the chance, the moment of solitary freedom to glimpse a different side of Korea – a rural, island world, small cities and towns, buses full of people, rivers and bridges and mountains and sea and movement. This is the Korea I carry with me as I prepare to depart for good.

K-pop for democracy

Adventures, Ideas, travelling in Korea, ,

After a hair-raising culinary adventure in Mokpo, we high-tailed it onto a bus (sadly there was no ferry) and spent Friday night in Jindo. And on Jindo. Jindo-eup (town) is the main town on Korea’s third largest Island (also Jindo) and the largest city in Jindo-gun (county). It gets confusing.

Friday night, after a safely reassuring dinner of galbi, we found a lovely little jazz bar, complete with appropriate décor, jazz music and good cocktails. In Jindo. Jindo is tiny. Ok, it has a few apartment blocks and a large school or two but by Korean standards it’s a small town. Sometimes it’s amazing the hidden gems you find tucked away in the most unexpected places. Finds like these make me feel sorry for travellers who won’t ever venture off the beaten track, beyond their 5-star resorts and guided tours, for fear that they might be bored/in danger/unable to find somewhere appropriately trendy where they can ‘be seen’. If you ever make it to Jindo, try and find All That Jazz. The proprietor, who is friendly and professional, spend some time in Paris and has put together a delightful little spot to stop for a cocktail or two in a sophisticated yet comfortable bar.

The following morning, I was up early and off to explore, leaving my travel-mate to sleep in. Our plan was to move on fairly soon, so I wanted to get a look at the town before we left. I headed vaguely in the direction of the PB to get something for breakfast, but soon got distracted. By politics. A quick point here: I like politics. I find it fascinating and scintillating and other words a large portion of the population would never in a million years apply to the democratic process (or, most of them, be able to spell). I am most interested in South African politics, but also follow elections and other major political events in other countries, too. This is the first time I’ve been exposed to politics in Korea. It seems there is an election – local government, I think – coming up. Jindo was a great opportunity to watch, as a completely disconnected foreigner, democracy happen.

We had seen the previous day a few vehicles driving around playing bad K-pop-style music at high volume. It took some time and rather a lot of figuring out to realise these were part of the politics. Towards the evening, one of these covered trucks drove past with a man plonked on a stool on the back wearing a smart shirt with a yellow sash. The man waved enthusiastically as the noise assaulted our senses. The truck was yellow with some hangeul writing and a large number. It appears each candidate gets a number, I assume to make the process easier. Each also seems to pick a colour. In Jindo, the highest number I saw was 12. 12 candidates. That’s a lot in what is really a small place. I love that. I love that there are 12 candidates standing in a local election in a small place. And I love how enthusiastically they campaigned.

My travel companion coined the apt term: cute politics. Korea has cute politics. Everything seems to happen on a diminutive scale. Back home, political rallies involve the candidate standing on a big-rig talking and singing and dancing with a crowd of thousands. In Jindo, I found myself at what seemed to be the main intersection of the town’s two major roads (which wasn’t very big at all). Four corners to a busy intersection. On each corner stood one of the noisy little campaign trucks, each barring it’s own pop-ey exhortations for a particular candidate. In front of each truck was a row of women (ranging in age from early 20s to middle-aged), all in the identical, colour-appropriate outfits (with sashes), dancing to the music. When I say dancing here, you should be picturing a row of small Asian women all doing coordinated, very simple, pop-dancing moves. In fact, the dancing consisted mostly of coordinated hand-gestures. But they were determinedly enthusiastic about it and they were all in time. Duelling political campaigns, except that there were four of them. All out in full force, not only at that section but all along the main street where a Saturday-morning street market was taking place, in between the foot-traffic and car-traffic and the political vans and the dancing women. And all of this in the pouring rain.

I was fascinated, I just kept walking along the road and finding more and more of them. It was amazing. I was simultaneously amused (okay, very amused) and elated. There is a moment in the West Wing when CJ says that the small town that votes before everyone else is important because it teaches us about democracy. I felt a little like that, that Saturday morning in Jindo. Here we were, in the rain, in a small town, on an island, in the forgotten south-western corner of Korea but these people believed; they believed so strongly that there are 12 different candidates standing and each and every one has a little van of pop-music-noise and at least one row of well-rehearsed dancing followers. These people believed in democracy. And they were celebrating that belief. They were celebrating their right to vote and to dance for their candidates and to choose their leadership.

The south west (Jeollanam-do) was the birthplace of Korean democracy and the area that bore the brunt of the painful transition from dictatorial rule. Just days before, the country had commemorated the hundreds who fell during the Gwangju massacre on May 18th, 1980. And here, in this small town, were people standing up and honouring them in the truest way possible: by engaging fully in the democratic process. It was a little awe-inspiring, in a K-pop-ey, dancing-women kind of way.

(PS Can’t add photos to this post but this is hands down my favourite pic of the day)

Extreme eating

Adventures, trains and train stations, travelling in Korea

A long weekend is a rare blessing in Korea, particularly as a Hagwon employee. This long weekend – courtesy of Buddha’s birthday on Friday – was a chance to take a trip to the less touristed, less famous South West of the country. Except that there are no trains that run across the country (east to west). In order to go from Daegu to Mokpo, it is necessary to travel half way to Seoul (heading North), change stations and catch another train back towards the south. Frustratingly complicated, especially because the whole country was on the move. Having bought my tickets 2 weeks in advance, it took me leaving Daegu at 7:40 in the morning (having worked until 10:20 the night before) to reach Mokpo at 12:20.

I arrived in Mokpo, hopped on the city bus (thankfully described in the guidebook because there is NO English) and promptly found myself going in the wrong direction. One more try and I made it to the Mokpo Ferry terminal. The terminal isn’t particularly well sign-posted until you’re right on top of it. At least, it isn’t in English. It may be perfectly signposted in Korean.

I took a wander along the road, loving the hot sun (I even put on sunscreen) while I waited for my partner-in-travel to arrive. Her bus was slightly delayed by the traffic jam of people leaving Seoul for the weekend, but eventually she arrived in Mokpo and proceeded to follow in my footsteps and get on a bus going in the wrong direction. While I waited for her to change buses and find her way to the coast, I sat on the steps outside the Ferry terminal and watched the world of Mokpo pass slowly by.

Mokpo is a relatively small and underdeveloped city. The whole province of Jeollanam, in fact, is underdeveloped, in terms of infrastructure for tourist but also economically. This is, according to guidebooks and the other usual information sources, apparently partly because the opposition was, for a long time, based here. This was also the hot-bed of revolutionary resistance to dictatorial rule during the early 1980s, resulting, among other things, in various security-force crackdowns, sieges, massacres and other strategies of oppression generally employed by authoritarian regimes clinging to power in the face of change. Unsurprisingly, this adds to the appeal for me. As a result of being the trouble-makers, this region was, apparently, systematically underfunded and has only in the last few years begun to be given the kind of investment it needs. This is one of the reasons the transport systems are nowhere near as prolific and efficient as in, for example, the South-East (where I live) which has produced a large number of recent leadership figures.

After her bus adventure, Anna arrived. We were, by this stage, both a little hungry, hot and tired, so lunch first. There are seafood places all along the street across from the ferry and marina. You know they are seafood places because they have pictures of seafood creatures on their signs. There is also the dead give-away of the tanks of sea creatures outside. When I first saw shops with tank upon tank of octopus, squid, crabs, fish of all makes and sizes, not to mention eels and weird mollusc-ey things, I thought they were pet shops. How wrong I was.

We picked a restaurant at random, wandered in and gratefully settled onto our floor-cushions and ordered beer. The women working there wanted to know (all in Korean of course) if we’d be eating too or just drinking. Anna went off to point at something in the tank (no menu, let alone in English). She pointed, the women looked concerned. She pointed again. They told us the price. We were a little shocked by the prices but really didn’t feel like going elsewhere so we decided to pay anyway and pointed meaningfully at the tank of baby octopus. The price really did seem rather high for Korea, or for that matter anywhere. In retrospect, that should have been a warning.

Korean food sometimes arrives too quickly. I like being able to relax and chat for a while until the food is ready. Here they tend to bring it quickly and relax after. Even for Korea, this food arrived remarkably rapidly. They brought us a couple of sides first, one of which was baby potatoes – making me particularly happy – and then the main dish was brought out.

What was placed in front of us was a dinner-plate sized platter of cut up baby octopus. Under normal circumstances, this would not really have bothered me. I quite like octopus. I’m a big fan of calamari. But calamari, at least in my previous experience, does not usually move. I know, it’s probably my own fault – I should have learned a little more of the language before venturing into the less touristed places and we should have asked more questions before ordered. We certainly didn’t intend to order a plate of raw, grey, slimy, squirming octopus tentacles. They were moving and wriggling like a mass of worms. One, I am not kidding you, almost managed to escape off the plate. They twisted themselves around the chopsticks. They stuck, with their little suckers holding on for dear life, to the plate. We waited a while for them to die – after all, the tentacles had been severed from the bodies, waited for them to stop moving, but the minute you touched one with your chopsticks, they all wriggled madly. The woman who worked there showed us the red sauce to dip the tentacles in. Dipping them in the sauce had no effect other than to turn the grey wriggling tentacles into red-brown, dripping-with-sauce, wriggling tentacles.

Had I not heard of this ‘delicacy‘ before, I think I would honestly have assumed they were trying to play some horrific joke on the foreigners. But I had heard of it. In fact, I have friends who tried it and were warned that you have to be very careful to chew each tentacle thoroughly (and hard) to make sure that they’re dead, otherwise they can sucker onto your throat, killing more people each year than blowfish. It had never even vaguely occurred to me that anyone would assume that’s what two accidental walk-in tourists, who obviously had no idea what they were doing, wanted to order for lunch. We were horrified. Anna at least is a fairly experimental eater. I’m not. And I’m certainly not going to happily chow down on a bowl of wriggling tentacles which arrive with no warning or time to psych myself up.

Which is not to say we didn’t try it. We each tried at least two tentacles. Picked up with chopsticks (around which they instantly, squirmily wrapped themselves), dipped in the appropriate sauces and (deep breathe and eyes half-closed) stuffed into the mouth chewed as fast as possible to stop them wriggling about. We sat for a while looking at the plate, hoping all the time they’d stop moving so that we could eat the rest. They never did. We couldn’t do it. It seemed a terrible waste to leave all that expensive food but there was no way. I am very solidly a carnivore but even I cannot quite bring myself to eat something that is still fighting back after it is sliced up and sitting on the plate.

We paid our bill and left as politely as we could given that all we wanted to do was run out of there before anyone suggested any more extreme eating experiences. I have it on video (a video of lunch!) and watching it again, I can’t believe that a) I actually ate some and b) people think this is a good thing to eat. It certainly wasn’t delicious enough to make it worth the trauma, to risk death by wriggling things. That said, it didn’t taste bad, actually. Not amazing enough to make it worth it but it wouldn’t have been too offensive if only it hadn’t moved. No-one died, so I suppose we escaped relatively unscathed but we got out of Mokpo post-haste and couldn’t quite bring ourselves to eat at a seafood restaurant for the rest of the weekend.