Tag Archives: dongdongju

Craving kimchi

Botswana, Daegu, Food, Namibia, Travel, , , , , ,

It’s strange the things you find you miss when you’re not there anymore. I never, in a million years, thought kimchi would be something I missed. And yet, I found myself, last week, really, really wishing for some proper, hot, crunchy kimchi. It wasn’t even a specific nostalgia moment. Some days, for example, I really feel like going down to the hut and ordering kimchi-jeon and dongdongju and sitting there with those friends for hours on end.  The memory is so strong I can almost taste the heat of the kimchi and the icy-cold dongdongju and the touch of the table and and the sounds: the loud foreigners, the background of quieter hangul and, of course, ‘Congratulations’.

This wasn’t that. I just wanted to be able to pop down to the local ‘mart’ and get some kimchi with the rest of my groceries. Apparently there is a Korean mart, of course not in the small town I’m currently in, but as soon as I go to Cape Town again, Korean food it will be. I miss metal chopsticks, too. I guess the places you visit become a part of who you are.

It’s funny the things you miss and remember. I was idly sitting in front of the cooking channel, reading my book, the other day and they were making pancakes. Pancakes, South African-style, so crepes, rather than American pancakes (which we call flapjacks for some reason). Pancakes make the think of Windhoek now. One of the best things about the backpackers where I stayed in Windhoek was the pancakes in the morning. The price of accommodation included 2 cinnamon-sugar pancakes and coffee or tea for breakfast (7am to 10am). It was a gorgeous wake up, in the cool of the bar area, by the pool, early enough that the day wasn’t yet hot, with BBC World News on the TV, to keep track of what was going on in the real world.

That experience, traveling there, has changed my reaction to hot days, too. It’s hot in the Eastern Cape at the moment, hot and humid a lot of days, but it’s not hot like Windhoek. The cool of the morning reminds me of how hot it gets there. The cool morning air feels the same as it did in Windhoek in December.

The heat is like Gaborone. There was a thunderstorm here the other day and I found myself wishing for the downpours of Gaborone, the hard, pouring rain, relief after the glorious, exhausting, almost-overwhelming summer heat. The feeling of ice-cold water after a round in one of the sweltering venues. Sitting that hot, stuffy briefing room. Still hot at three in the morning. All the people. The Irish singing.

Sensory memory is so strong. Some days it makes me glad to be here, remembering. Some days it makes me wish for the things that were normal there – like kimchi and early morning pancakes. Other days it makes me wish to be off, a backpack and a guidebook, traveling again.

Dreams of kimchi-land

Daegu, travelling in Korea, ,

“We live, as we dream – alone…” Joseph Conrad

There is nothing quite like travelling alone to a foreign country to isolate one. This is not to say that I haven’t been loving every moment of seeing friends and family since returning. It’s amazing to see everyone but it also a reminder of how experiences isolate us. As a friend observed the other day, it’s the little things – the food, the household practices, cultural idiosyncrasies of a place far, far removed from anything those around me have ever known. A couple of months returned and I am particularly aware of those little things. I keep thinking of something or noticing things that remind me of Korea. It doesn’t seem rational. I am so very happy to be home and have no desire to go back. I guess when you live in a place for month upon month it gets under your skin and I always miss the places I’ve called home.

Some of the things I miss are obvious. I’m still subscribed to the ROKetship feed so I get each new cartoon and find myself laughing and thinking of the people who share that context. Some mornings I also wake up full of the urge to head to DongDaegu to take a train or a bus to Gyeongju or Busan or Seoul and go exploring. It’s a lot harder without that super-efficient public transport system. It’s also harder without a thousands-of-years-old Silla Capital and museums around every corner. Or an Opera House just across town. I miss living in a country that invests heavily in history, tourism and the arts.

I miss the little things too. Not even miss – I’m just aware of the difference and less comfortable in my own culture than I used to be. I feel just a little bit uneasy every time I suddenly register that I’m wearing shoes in the house. Anyone’s house. I miss having a ‘mart’ on every corner selling the basic essentials – like garlic and instant rice and plastic cheese slices and Spam. The shops are lovely and western and modern here – not to mention clean and pleasant – but they are so far away and wandering down aisle after aisle makes everywhere feel like Costco or HomePlus (which isn’t as good a thing as it seems like it should be). I find myself reverting to Korean – strangely most often when I’m trying to use a language other than English. Saying ‘Kam-sa-ham-nida’ to an Afrikaans-speaking bag-packer at the local PnP gets odd looks.

Other things are less expected. I miss eating with chopsticks. It’s not intellectual, either. I miss the feel of metal chopsticks in my hands. I feel the need to eat (ramen) noodles with chopsticks just to be eating with chopsticks. But really what I want is pajeon or galbi. Korean food. Proper Korean food, with all the side dishes – even the ones I don’t like. And, of course, kimchi. I miss kimchi. It is strange and odd and a little embarrassing, but I really do. I keep thinking about that Galbi place next to Festival downtown. Or the Hut. I miss the Hut. I miss the people and the place and the music and ‘Congratulations’. And dongdongju. Bizarrely, I miss Korean beer, but I think more for the sake of Somaek. Some days I want nothing more than to be able to head to the Hut after work at 9pm.

I miss that part of my life – far enough away now to be something that happened, another chapter. Missing places and people, like regret, is probably futile, except that it strengthens memories, histories. Things experienced alone only really exist in the mind of the experiencer. In remembering, we travel back to those places and those times and revisit, reinforce, sometimes recreate, what exists nowhere else. At least, that’s how I think of it – with a secret, private smile – when I suddenly feel that crazy urge to go to the hut or drink dongdongju or eat kimchi with metal chopsticks.

Silkworms in a can

Adventures, Daegu, Food, , ,

Koreans eat some pretty strange things. Dog-meat, probably the best-known, can still be obtained although it is restricted to special restaurants, is rather expensive and is consequently unlikely to show up randomly in your bulgogi. Some of the snack foods seem to freak the foreigners out even more.

Koreans tend to order and offer lots of side-foods (anju) to nibble on when people are drinking. One of the most popular with my friends is the salty-fried-eggs served at the Hut – our usual Friday-night dongdongju spot. A few weeks back when we were there one of the Koreans in the group ordered chicken’s feet. Having grown up in SA, I am familiar with ‘walkie-talkies‘ and various other unusual (from a Western perspective) animal bits. I’ve even (willingly!) eaten tripe. So I was less thrown than the others and, to be honest, quite enjoyed giggling quietly in the corner as I watched their reactions. I certainly wasn’t jumping to sample it, though.

I was more adventurous last week, when the anju (I think ordered by one of our group) included bugs. When I think of edible bugs, my mind immediately meanders calmly over to mopane worms and all the things you can do with them. I once saw a menu (in Obs – go figure) advertising a starter of feta-stuffed mopani worms.

In Korea they eat silkworms. Or more accurately silkworm pupae. The silkworm pupae are steamed or boiled and then served on a plate. I tried one. It actually wasn’t too bad. It’s difficult to separate taste from texture. I’d describe them as crunchy and salty and juicy. The only problem with them (assuming you can get your head around eating bugs) is that they have a sort of gritty, cement-dust-like aftertaste which isn’t all that pleasant. Also, they’re a mission to pick up if you’re as inept with chopsticks as I still am.

But I tasted them and they weren’t too bad and I didn’t think anything more of it. Until last night. I had just been thinking about Beondegi wondering if they’d make an appearance this Friday night – not that I’m desperate for them; I was just wondering – and I was in the mart (mini-supermarket), when there, between the tinned sweetcorn and the ubiquitous Spam, were tins of silkworms. I couldn’t believe my eyes. One thing to serve bugs with dongdongju and soju in a Korean restaurant/bar, but another thing entirely to sell them, tinned,  in the supermarket. At which point I got the giggles – can’t you just picture it, ‘Honey, I’m just popping down to the mart for a can of silkworms’?

Some days I feel like Korea is a little colony of the USA and then along come the canned silkworms and I feel like I’m on a different planet.