Tag Archives: trains

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. .

Return to Seoul: traditional village

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

After an evening in Itaewon, we woke up slowly on Sunday morning; slow but insensibly cheered by the appearance of the sun. I used to find it strange that people from places like the UK talked so very much about the weather. These days I do it myself. I still think it I a bit odd, but the weather, and particularly the lack of sun, is such a big part of life here in Korea (especially in Daegu). It also mean that a little sunshine is enough to make any day better, even if it’s still fairly chilly.

We set off to do some more exploring. We caught the bus to the city centre area, getting off at the Sejeong Performing Arts Centre. This central area of Seoul is more open than most of the built-up areas because there are open, ‘square’-style areas. There are also magnificent (and sometimes bizarre) statues to the leading figures of the country, alongside luxury hotels and financial centre buildings. It really does feel like a modern city centre capable of competing with any other city centre in the world. From here, we caught a cab to Namsangol Traditional Korean Village.

The concept of a traditional or folk village bothers some people because they feel like it’s all fake and just created to get money out of tourists. Apart from the fact that most of the folk villages in Korea are free and set up to educate Koreans as well as foreigners, I quite like the attempt to represent the everyday lives of people who lived in a very different time. I suppose the attempt to represent social history accurately appeals to me. It’s probably also particularly important in a country that has modernised so quickly it would be very easy for the old ways to be lost forever within a generation or two.

Namsangol Traditional Village is not in fact a recreation of a village that existed or a ‘typical’, hypothetical village that could have existed. Instead, five residences (including houses and outhouses and sometimes servants quarters) were all relocated and restored here so that different social strata are represented and also that the homes represented are those of real historical figures. It is a different approach. I haven’t seen enough of the other approach to be able to compare. For now, it was just great to be able to get a closer look at life during the Joseon period through the lens of these five households.

The first house was that of Sunjeong Hyo Empress Yun’s parents. This is the home where the future Empress lived until she was 13, when she was designated the wife of the crown prince. It’s always a jolt to be reminded of how young marriages happened in the past, and even in the not so distant past : this was in 1906. The house was beautiful. Each room was set up with beautiful old furniture, brightly coloured bedding and polished metal. I particularly loved the wood – the doors, the cupboards, the tables. I’ve always loved old wood but wood is particularly important in Korean homes because it is reasonably plentiful on the peninsula.

The second house was a residence built for the 27th king of Joseon by his father in law so that he could use it when he came to pay respects to his ancestors (as is part of the Korean tradition). The father in law built it when his daughter was designated a second wife of this king. Around the back of the house, as well as what looked like an outdoor oven, what looked like a Teepee made of straw. When we looked closer, there were three of the traditional brown, shiny storage pots (what I tend to refer to as kimchi pots) buried up to their necks inside the hut. Of course, there were no information boards to explain why. We’ll have to keep wondering.

The other three houses were those of the husband of a princess, a military commander and a regents chief carpenter. In each, we saw bedrooms with beautiful wooden dressers with bedrolls stacked on top of them, clothing hanging on bars from the walls and stunning old lamps. The floors of Korean houses are raised so that there is space for the heating fires under the floors. These kitchens, however were deeper, to provide access to the fires of what looked a lot like aga-style stoves (except less fancy). Large black pots and kettles in unfamiliar shapes sat on stove plates. Garlic and dried plants hung on the walls. Piles of wood waited to add to the heat. Unexpectedly (at least for me), what looked like half-calabashes hung on the walls. In a bedroom, we saw rolled up straw mats next to a high table with ‘ancestor chair’ and the small tables used by those sitting on the floor on cushions all hung on the wall for storage. Definitely an original way to store tables you don’t know what to do with.

In several of the houses, there was a real person dressed in traditional clothing working on some aspect of traditional art and willing, for a small fee, to show everyone else their traditional writing, traditional music and traditional clothing. We didn’t stop to try any of these out but we did enjoy the addition of live models to the quiet old houses. In the central area, we walked past families playing traditional games, several of which I’d seen at the Daegu museum and several of which also reminded me forcibly of some of the traditional games back home. There was even a game where children run along with a bent piece of wire (which is a specially made tool) and a metal ring, trying to keep the ring going. Watching them, I couldn’t help but picture African children in tatty clothes with a stick and an old tyre running along dusty roads. I suppose some things really are universal.

We wandered the park area for a while and also saw the Seoul time capsule. The time capsule, containing 600 items representing current life in Seoul, was buried in 1994 to mark the 600th anniversary of Seoul as the capital of Korea. It is rather ambitiously designed to be opened in 400 years time on the 1000th anniversary of the same. Unfortunately, it’s not particularly impressive to look at and the idea that Seoul will still be Seoul and still be capital in another 400 years seems a little optimistic to me, but perhaps that has to do with my South African view of how long things last. The rest of the part was prettier and we particularly enjoyed the combination of pine trees and water features. We also found a little gazebo-type place made of wood that reminded me so, so strongly of church pews in far-flung farm churches in the Eastern Cape in South Africa. I stopped to take some pictures and run my fingers along the smooth wood surface. Strange associations from two Eastern Cape girls 10 000 miles from home.

By this stage, we were a little cold and definitely hunger so we found a Chinese restaurant – my friend  has a very useful knack for finding Chinese restaurants. After a late lunch of shrimp-fried rice, fried meat dumplings and the most delicious pork and vegetable spring rolls, my second trip to Seoul was almost over and after we chatted for a bit more before I headed off to the station.

The final little bit of my trip took an unexpected turn. The economy tickets for the next KTX to Daegu were sold out. I debated waiting for a later train but I was fairly tired and not in the mood for sitting around so I took a chance and checked the price of a first class ticket. It was definitely more expensive but not completely unreasonable and I figured I could chalk it up to experiencing something new, so I bought one. The KTX train is a fairly luxurious train experience. It feels a lot – from the design of the stations to the seats – like a modern plane, except with more leg-room. There are even ‘cabin attendants’ who could very easily work on planes. Given this, I should probably not have been surprised that the first class is very much like a the first class on a plane. The seats are huge, with ridiculous amounts of space to stretch out and relax. There are only three seats in each row – one on the left and two on the right. Next to me was a huge window with blinds and curtains to block out whatever I didn’t wish to see. Of course, it was evening so there wasn’t much to see anyway, especially with the lights within the train reflecting on the windows. The amount of space was excessive and I wouldn’t have paid the extra if it hadn’t been for getting home earlier, but it was nice to enjoy a little luxury for a bit.

Return to Gyeongju: museum without walls (part 1)

Adventures, travelling in Korea, ,

A few months ago, I spent a delightful day in Gyeongju with some friends. Most of the time was spent riding bikes (with accompanying reversion to happy, childhood days) and it was most fun. Towards the end of the day, we shivered our way around a few of the historical sites for which the town is famous before rushing home in an attempt to get warm. After my (mostly) failed trip to the Daegu museum last weekend, what better way to satisfy my still lingering craving for museum time than to go back to Gyeongju and spend a day in a place which markets itself as a ‘museum without walls?

Gyeongju was the capital of the Silla Kingdom for almost a thousand years. This included the ‘three kingdoms period’ and the early part of the era of a unified Korea, the Unified Silla period. After political control passed to the Goryeo dynasty, the capital was moved elsewhere and this area fell out of favour with kings and rulers for many centuries. It was largely restored in the 1970s and 1980s and also protected from the rapid development which was overtaking the rest of the country at the time. As a result, it remains a smaller city but one which more truly resembles and celebrates a Korea of earlier times, rather than just any other rapidly developed Asian city.

Last time we went to Gyeongju, we didn’t leave Daegu until after 11am, which meant that the day was quite short before the sun set and the freezing began. This time I was doubly pressured because I had a function in the evening, so I decided to take the early train (9:43am). The downside of this is that it required me to get up early. Because I only start work late and don’t finish until late in the evening, my days generally do not start before 10am, so getting up at 7am (to have time to get ready and get all the way to the train station in time to buy a ticket, etc.) was a struggle. I almost gave up and went back to sleep. Luckily, ‘museum-fascination’ proved too strong and I dragged myself out of bed and I got to the station in time. In fact, I got there with 25 minutes to spare, so I wandered around and bought a hot dog for breakfast. Several people are probably judging me right now for choosing a Western food over a Korean one for breakfast. Sorry, but, while I may be able to handle kimchi and rice at most times, they’re too much for me first thing in the morning.

It was a chilly and partly cloudy day in Gyeongju when I arrived, an hour or so later. Cloudy not in a solidly overcast way. Instead, there were streaky, high clouds bringing with them the icy winds. There were a collection of overly-friendly taxi drivers at the station exit but, armed with my map, guide-book and a determination that this time I would not get lost, I set off on foot. As I walked along, I was struck again by what an incredible difference it makes not to have sky-scrapers everywhere. Part of the effort to restore and preserve this city in the 70s and 80s involved height restrictions on buildings near historically important places (i.e. most of Gyeongju), so most buildings are one or at most two storeys high. They also almost all have traditional Korean roofs, which are attractive, although the roofs on bus stops and electricity boxes are a little quirky.

I walked all the way past Anapji pond to get to the museum, having decided to start the day’s exploring at a distance from the station and then work my way back. It took me about 10 to 15 minutes of gentle walking to reach my first destination: Gyeongju National Museum.

The museum is one of the main attractions in Gyeongju as is apparently one of the best in Korea. And museums make me happy. The collection of this museum spans almost two millennia but is richest with regard to the Silla period due to two great sources of artefacts: the tombs of royals and noblemen which dot the whole of the area, the most prominent of which are gathered in the Tumili park and Anapji pond. This pond, or man-made lake, was completed in the year 674 and is valuable not only because it is pretty and is an important palace site but, and perhaps more importantly from a knowledge perspective, because when the lake was dredged in the 1970s, thousands of artefacts, ranging from metalwork and statues to a whole boat, were discovered.

Entrance to the museum is free. Having now seen the size and scope of their collection and having some sense of the work that must go into researching and preserving it, I am very impressed that they can manage to run as a free facility. Wherever they get their funding from, it must be somewhere or someone significantly large and significantly committed to history.

The first thing I stopped to look at after picking up my free ticket and heading inside the grounds  was the Divine Bell of King Seongdeok, part of the outdoor exhibition. This 18ton bronze bell was cast in 771AD, stands 3.75m high and is the largest Korean bell ever to be preserved. It was made in honour or memory of King Seongdeok (702 – 737AD). It also carries a stranger tale. It is said that when the bell was first cast, it would not ring. This huge bell, cast in honour of a great king, would not make a sound no matter what anyone tried. Eventually the bell had to be melted down again and  recast. But this time, so the legend says, a young child was sacrificed to give a sound to the bell and the bell rang out for the first time. It is said that the echo of her cries can still be hear when the bell is rung. Because of this it is also known as the ‘Emile’ bell, ’em-ee-leh’ resembling the traditional word for mother. When I heard it rung later in the day, it did have an eerie echo, which, for the more factually minded, may have something to do with the sound-tube at the top of the bell – apparently a unique feature of Korean bells. Pure historians who object to the mingling of myth and fact may want to stop reading now, as this is a crucial part of a social history approach and one of my slight dissatisfactions with this museum in general, but more on that later.

After wandering around the outdoor exhibition a little more, I headed inside. Before entering, however, I stopped to look at a replica wall of rock art outside the main hall of the museum. While my own country does not have as many castles and ancient tombs as some others, rock art is something with which I am fairly familiar. I was fascinated by this particular piece however. I have never before seen whales in rock art. It was bizarre. Most of the figures were fairly standard but there were distinct drawings of actual whales. A reminder, I suppose, of just how dependent the people of this area have been on the sea ever since they settled here.

As I walked inside, still chuckling at the unexpectedness of the whale rock art, one of the most annoying things possible happened: I was approached by a nice-enough-seeming Korean man who spoke English and eagerly offered to help me. When I politely refused his help, he admitted that he was a Jehovah’s Witness and tried to hand me a ‘watchtower’ pamphlet. I very firmly, and somewhat less politely, handed back his pamphlet and walked off. People are welcome to believe whatever they want but I object to being accosted by JWs in a museum of all places.

The main building or ‘archaeology hall’ of the museum is divided into four rooms. The first room contains artefacts dating from prehistoric to proto-three-kingdom times. These include pottery and weapons and basic implements for living. It’s not a vast collection but there are some interesting pieces. Given Korea’s recent (last few centuries) reputation as a ‘hermit kingdom’, for example, it was fascinating to see and read about the extensive interaction they had with neighbouring countries and kingdoms in their early history. Grey earthenware pottery, for instance, was first introduced very early on from China.

The second annoyance of the day began at this point. By some unpleasant twist of fate, I had apparently picked a day to visit the museum that coincided with the visits of at least one – but what felt like many – school trips. By school trips here I am not referring to groups of quiet, studious high-school learners. My meandering around the museum was accompanied by lines of small, loud, uninterested children, accompanied by a few adults who themselves seemed remarkably disinterested in what they were seeing. One of the reasons I love museums is that they tend to be quiet, peaceful places where one can think and contemplate and relax. This one was not. Instead, these lines of kids were rushed past each display case, moving too fast for any of them to really understand what they were seeing, while simultaneously forming an impenetrable wall which made it impossible for anyone else to see the displays at all. Added to this noise and chaos were several other Korean family groups who had also brought their small children to see the museum. I do not understand why people feel the need to drag small children around the main exhibits of a museum. This one, like many museums these days, has a whole children’s area full of interactive displays and high-tech learning opportunities. There is no reason for them to be dragged around the static displays they will not understand for at least another 10 years and which serve only to bore them to the point where they start running around and almost knocking over the glass cases of 1000 year old treasures.

Luckily, I am a determined museum-er, so apart from the slight, throbbing headache – the result of loud children and echo-ey rooms on top of limited sleep – I was able to patiently ignore them and, with some pushing and refusing to be moved by the seemingly inexorably lines of kids, see everything I wanted to see.

Two of the museums main rooms are dedicated to the Silla period and contain a range of artefacts mostly discovered in the excavation of various of the tombs in the area. These include jewellery, pottery, gold and silver and bronze cutlery and crockery and ornaments and particularly fascinating bits and pieces of glass and metal-work. Gold crowns, belts, crown ornaments and ‘chestlaces’ (which is apparently a word now) were clearly the fashion at the time, too. According to wikipedia (yes, I know, not the most reliable source in the world) there are only 10 fully gold crowns in the world, 8 of them from Korea and six from the Silla Kingdom. The most spectacular of these is a large crown and belt of gold with decoration of blue glass beads and comma-shaped jades (another definite favourite of the times – they were everywhere). This crown is large and spectacular and is given a whole alcove with special stand, background and lighting to show it off perfectly. It is of course also one of Korea’s National Treasures, although I still haven’t managed to figure out if it’s 191 or 188. It also appears to be fairly similar to/the same as the crown used in a hugely popular 2009 Korean TV series about the Silla Queen Seon-deok, making the crown itself and this museum more generally even more of a tourist hot-spot.

The crowns and crown ornaments (and gold caps and silver caps and gold chestlaces) were  fascinating but I was also interested in some of the other artefacts. One display included about 20 gold rings from the 5th or 6th century – mostly fairly plain rings that have survived beautifully and could so easily be wedding rings today. I loved the bronze three-legged pot which just made me want to imagine a group of Silla people making a potjie and watching rugby on a Saturday afternoon. Some of the pottery was also fascinating. One long-necked pot with little figures of snakes and frogs and people and animals (National Treasure 195, stoneware) from the 5th or 6th century, was particularly impressive. I was also intrigued to discover that the Silla rulers imported Roman glass.

A second room of Silla relics covers the later Silla period. The pottery and burial items begin to be more sophisticated here. There is also a wide array of slightly more complex weaponry and armour and horses seem to become particularly important. The armour even included armour for horses. This is also the period when burials became more sophisticated. Jar tombs were on display here – large clay jars for children’s or bone-burials – along with small funeral items and, a little heartbreakingly, what must have been children’s toys. I finally got to see some bronze and iron mirrors – I’ve always wondered about them – although I still don’t see how they worked as mirrors. There were also several figurines, including one of a man (civil-figure, male was all the explanation given) that looked exactly like a tiny gnome. There were of course also exquisitely made figures of the Chinese zodiac and a wealth of other bits and pieces.

As I was leaving this room, I passed through a small temporary display to celebrated the year of the Tiger. Lunar new year is in about two weeks and the new lunar year will be, according to the Korean calendar, the apparently auspicious ‘Year of the Tiger’. This was a very small display but included a few masks and a sculptures, as well as a beautiful blue and white porcelain jar from the Joseon period (18th century) with tiger and magpie images. There was also another rock art replica, this time including tigers as well as whales.

The final room of the main hall is dedicated to a collector who built up and later donated to the museum a collection of over 600 artefacts from this region. Some of them were stunning, some a bit random and some funny. There were daggers and hilts from long, long ago – in stone and later metal. Full sets of metal cutlery – chopsticks plus spoon. A very obviously duck-shaped pot/jar in grey earthenware from the proto-three kingdoms period. A particularly well-preserved and unique national treasure: a horse-back-riding-warrior-shaped double-cup. Horses were a prominent theme. There were many bits of horse-riding gear, horse-shaped buttons, a wide variety of horse-bells and even some ‘Lacquered stirrups’ – also a treasure (one level below national treasure). There was also a ‘pillow’. Made of steatite and from the Unified Silla period, this block of stone, with some faint carvings and perfectly straight edges had me giggling as I pictured what a good night’s sleep it must have given the people who owned it. There was also a lovely display of jewellery, that would have looked equally appropriate in any modern jewellery store window, and a display and explanation of roof tiles – I think I finally understand how Korean roofs are put together now.

Many of these artefacts  fall within the periods of the other rooms, but are kept separate because they belong to this specific collection and I imagine also because many of them are not accurately dated and do not have exact information about where they were found. Which brings me to my minor issue with the curators of this museum. I recognise completely the value of archaeology and the scientific assessment of artefacts. I feel, however, that sometimes the focus on science in the study of the past can go too far. I loved the collection at this museum. They have a huge number of really stunning pieces, all of which are well-maintained and documented. What was completely lacking for me, was any attempt to present the historical and particularly the social context of these pieces. With a fairly active imagination and a basic knowledge of the past, I was able to reconstruct some of how things might have happened, but without a more detailed understanding of the social structures and the manner of interaction between people and peoples at the time, it’s really hard for a visitor to turn these individual pieces into anything more than ‘some pretty art that’s kind of old and a few bits of bent armour’. This makes me sad. I think history is fascinating and I fully believe that a large part of the reason so few people are interested in it is that it is often presented badly. The display cases at the Gyeongju museum are all beautifully constructed and everything is elegantly-lit and appropriately labelled but it could just as easily be an art gallery as a museum.

I had the same problem with the Anapji hall, where I went next, although there was at least some effort here to visually show where the artefacts were found. The difference between the main building of the museum and the Anapji hall is that the majority of the artefacts in the former were excavated from burial sites, and so are probably things associated with the afterlife or treasures of royalty and noblemen, while the Anapji finds were gathered from the bottom of a lake, and so are more likely to be everyday items from the period. The lake or pond was part of a pleasure garden attached to the palace of the crown prince, where foreign dignitaries and important people were entertained, so it’s the everyday life of royalty, but it still represents something closer to the ordinary lives of people (and thus social history) than the burial finds. The period also spans several hundred years as the pond was created around 700AD and used until the mid-to late 900s. The artefacts range from toys and horse-wear to small statues and roof tiles and even some iron scissors which are thought to have been used in some superstitious ritual, although – frustratingly – no further information is given about this. I had a lovely time wandering around and imagining in a hall slightly less full of children than the previous one had been. It also made my later visit to Anapji pond all the richer.

After this, via a short walk around some impressive stone water-troughs and well-stones outside, I walked through the Art Hall. I know very little about Buddhism but was still able to appreciate the detail and effort that went into making some of these exquisitely crafted pieces. The displays were also great and a little more appropriate to the art than they had been to the artefacts in the previous two halls.

The guidebooks and the Korean tourism website suggest that you should allow at least an hour to see the museum. I spent just over two hours there and would probably have stayed longer, had it not been for the children. The collection is definitely worth visiting and, in spite of my issues with manner in which things are presented, it made me very happy to be wandering through history again.