The Great Wall of Suwon

This is what it's come down to: a desk piled high with roach killer. For the last few weeks, our apartment hasn't felt much like a home, thanks to an infestation of giant cockroaches. They've been dropping from the ceiling, crawling on our cups and just generally making themselves at home. It's hard to sleep at night when we can hear them scurrying around our apartment, and when we do sleep we often have cockroach-related nightmares (or worse- I dreamt that we had a scorpion infestation last week!) Anyway- on top of this, the new semester of school has left us both feeling drained and wanting to get away for the weekend, so on Friday night we went to Suwon, our home away from home.

Though we usually stay at the Lucy, we decided to try another hotel on our favorite Love Motel strip- the Pink Panda. We were given the Pink Panda: Black Edition room, though it was curiously decorated with pictures of the Pink Panther and was more pink than black.

Even though we've stayed in dozens of love motels, I'd never noticed that the cars in the parking lot all have their license plate numbers hidden. This helps to keep what happens in the love motel on the down low. I guess most people that go to these places aren't in it for the whirlpool and big screen viewing of Oprah like we are.

We decided to spend the day hiking around Hwaseong Fortress. The Fortress is essentially a wall that surrounds what was once central Suwon. It was built over 200 years ago by King Jeongjo, who had planned to move the capital of Korea to Suwon. That didn't quite work out, but the scenic fortress walls are well worth a day trip to Suwon. We'd hiked there before, but that was almost 5 years ago, so we'd been looking forward to getting a weekend with nice enough weather to do it again.

Just as we were about to start our hike, I was approached as I left the washrooms by a young guy wearing a Samsung t-shirt.

Guy: Hi, how are you? Do you know Samsung company?

Me: Yeah, sure.

Guy: Do you want to do commercial about Samsung electronics? You can dancing with us.

Me: (Nearby, I can see one of his co-horts already getting dressed up in some ridiculous blue costume because he's sure I'll say yes) No, thank you.

Guy: Come on, it is simple dancing. We will teach you salsa (guy starts to salsa dance).

Me: No no no no no no no... have a nice dayyyyy (running away)

I don't like to dance. A lot. Anyway, we started our hike at the Paldalmun gate (there are 4 gates along the wall) which means we started out by hiking straight up 1000 stairs.

Once that part is over, the rest of the wall is an easy hike. There's lots of little towers, platforms and structures along the way to look at (like the one above).

Some more pictures from our hike:

A nice view of Suwon from the top of the fortress.

Lots of flags along the way.

Stopping for a sammich.

Lovely Suwoncheon Stream.

There's an absolutely humongous cathedral nearby. It's black, very gothic and looks like the spookiest church ever.

There are a few random activities to enjoy along the way: there's a trolley ride, museum, dog soup restaurant, Korean archery and even adjoshis playing croquet.

The humorously named Bongdon: five chimneys that puffed out warning signals to locals just in case someone was coming to plunder all of Suwon's famous yumyum galbi.

After about an hour and a half, the trail ends at a traditional food market. There were a lot of butchers set up there, as well at many fruit and vegetable vendors, and the ubiquitous groups of ajummas selling dried things from seeds to peppers to stingrays (as seen above). From the vendors to the little makeshift restaurants with tarps for walls and menus printed in marker on old cardboard, it feels like this area hasn't changed much in the last 50 years.

Yep, you could buy just about anything there, even... pig heads? For a minute it was like being back in Taiwan again, as I don't think pig heads are a very popular food item in Korea.

It was time for us to head back to Seoul and our cockroach nest of an apartment. If it weren't the last weekend before pay day we probably would have splurged on a second night at the Lucy or Pink Panda, but what can you do? I wonder if leaving a pig's head at the front door would scare all the bugs away? It might at least get the landlord's attention for long enough that he might spring for a little fumigation...

How To Make Your Own Ddong Pen

We were shopping at a stationary store in Suwon on the weekend when Mel spotted a line of DIY pen kits. Who hasn't dreamed of making their own pen? There were a few styles to choose from: a bunny pen, a heart pen, a cloud pen, or a Ddong pen. For those of you who aren't aware of this friendly character, Ddong is a smiling pile of POOP. We bought four pen sets and got right to work that night.

We sat down to create our pens together. The first thing we did was read these incredibly useful directions.

We used the provided ddong stencils to cut out the shape of our pen topper from some brown felt. There was extra felt so we decided to make special sheaths for the inky ends of our pens as well.

Using double sided tape, we unevenly wound yellow ribbon around our pens.

We sewed faces on our felt, glued on some googly eyes and stuffed our friend with cotton. This part took close to an hour to complete!

We attached the ddong to our pen, glued on a bow tie and *ta-da* our poo pens were finished! I wrote my name in Korean on the pen sheath that I made, so no one tries to swipe my amazing pen.

Each ddong had two sides, so we were able to make two different faces for each pen. This one of Mel's is my favorite. He looks like he just poo-ed out his last brain cell.

Can you believe that they sell DIY bunny or cloud pen kits? Who would want to make something like that?

Cat Poop Coffee>Lamb Cafe

A cafe with a LIVE LAMB living in it? We had to go. It took a bit of walking around, but Saturday afternoon we found our way to Hongdae's Famous Lamb Cafe.

Inside, we noticed a large number of people but very few lambs. Confused, we asked our server where the lamb was. We'd checked this place out before we came and pictures of the cafe definitely showed a precious, constantly-pooping little lamb trotting about. From what I understood of our server's explanation, it was the lamb's day off. I guess he had other plans. It also seemed to be decent coffee's day off too, because we were served a weak-ass cup of joe.

The interior featured artwork of a big-boobed goat driving a car.

It was time to move on so I consulted my ipod for a suitable plan B.

This is a cat's butt. If you're like me, and you've always been interested in drinking something that was pinched out of it's bumhole, then maybe our next stop will interest you.

Retro Mama Burger House!

I really liked how they'd decorated the interior, especially the creepy dolls in the front window.

We started off with very normal and yummy burgers and fries that were in no way derived from cat asshole (that I know of).

For dessert we ordered the Kopi Luwak. The coffee beans used to make Kopi Luwak are collected from the excrement of a South Asian cat-type animal called a Civet. They eat the coffee beans and, after they poo them out a day or two later, the beans are collected and roasted. Don't worry, they're washed off first.

How does it taste? Definitely different. Kind of woody. Better than the stuff that sham Lamb Cafe was brewing up... not that I'd recommend brewing your litter box's contents anytime soon.

Landfill Park (A Trip to the World Cup Park)

On Saturday afternoon an air quality warning was issued due to the first Yellow Dust storm of the season. We thought this would make for a good opportunity to hike outside for several hours.

We took a pretty scenic red bus ride along the Han River from Yangjae to the World Cup Stadium park. The park is pretty infamous in Korea because of where it was built. No, it wasn't built on an old Indian burial ground or anything like that- it was built on a landfill!

According to thestar.com:

"...from 1978 to 1991, this expanse of land had been the Nanjido landfill, dubbed the ‘land of death’ where municipal, construction and industrial waste created two hills over 90m high which polluted the environment with leachate and hazardous gases."

It took six years to change an unsightly landfill into a nature park, and the city has even gone so far as to make it a green park: that structure in the above photo is a series of solar panels.

Every fifth stair on the trail up the hill is numbered, so you can count down your progress as you ascend the old pile of trash. I think there were 260 steps in total, which doesn't sound like much but we were down to our t-shirts by stair 220. At the top is a flat display of space (space is a good thing in a densely populated city), dead grass, and sculptures. It would be nice to come back here in a month or two, when the grass and flowers start growing again.

We were so thirsty but the place was all sculptures and no fountains.

The view from the top... as you can see there was almost no view, thanks to the dusty weather. After exploring around for a little while, we hiked back down to World Cup Stadium Mall for a little lunch and ice cream. I have to say, it was the nicest landfill I've ever had the pleasure of hiking in.

'Partment Problems

When your apartment is only slightly larger than a shoebox there are a limited number of things that can go wrong with the fixtures within. Recently though, it seems like there's a new problem every week.

Take our upstairs neighbors, for example. Never heard a peep out of them up until a few months ago. Now, every night (and only on work nights, for some reason) they are driving us up the wall. They don't usually get home until a little after midnight and then it begins- the drunken girly laughing and giggling. This usually escalates into drunken thumping, falling down and (for some reason) late-night vacuuming. Usually around 2am they've started the drunken screaming (it sounds like the killer from the Scream movies has just snuck into their room). We pound on the ceiling, to no avail (English knocking is not understood). Then they fall asleep with their phones on the floor which vibrate on our ceiling over and over through the night. We wake up in the morning and there's puke and cigarettes in the stairwell. I hate them.

Two weeks ago, Mel texted me at school to let me know that it smelled like gas in the apartment. I got my school to send the gas guy over to our apartment to check it out, but he said there was no problem. We were relieved! But then, last Saturday night, our gas powered Boiler exploded. Ash lined the wall and ceiling. Water leaked from the bottom of it all weekend and we had no hot water for two days before my school sent another guy to fix it. It's fine now.

But then came the most disturbing change of all- we have cockroaches!!! This apartment has never really been insect free- in the summer we had wasps letting themselves in to hang out, and in the fall we had a rotten stint of mosquitoes, but cockroaches is a new low.

After our weekend away in Andong we walked in to our place to find a roach crawling around in the sink. After killing it, I opened up the cupboard to get a cup and there was another one crawling on our cups!! Ahhhhh!!!! During the debate about who was going to kill this massively disgusting creature, it disappeared somewhere and now it's living free among us... walking on our faces as we sleep, I suspect.

It's a small apartment, but the location is amazing, it's free and it's functional. Actually, it's more than free- we get paid to live here thanks to Mel's housing subsidy. Mel hates it, but I've stuck up for it in the past. However, these recent developments are wearing me down. It's hard to deny that living in a cockroach nest isn't a hit to your quality of life. I can't help but think that our first 1-bedroom apartment in Canada is going to feel like a palace in comparison.

Now if you'll excuse me, I have a ceiling to bang on and a cockroach to hunt down.

UPDATE: We had 2 more roaches visit our laundry room on Sunday night and on Monday morning there were three in our bathroom! Mel bought some Raid for us on her way home from work and I bought some bleach to pour down the drains. It's war, roaches!!!

UPDATE 2: We have now been roach-free for a full 24 hours! In addition to being extremely effective, the Raid has also had another pleasant side effect: spraying a whole can of it in the air yesterday has left our place smelling of the sweet floral scent of poison. Life is finally getting back on track.

배우고있어요

Two weeks ago we graduated into the Korean 2A class at the Global Village Center. We're basically in the "no child gets left behind" program- if you keep attending class regularly, you can move through the levels without taking a level test. As a result, a bunch of new people who are actually good at Korean tested into the 2A class with us and we felt SO DUMB in our first class! One new classmate actually rolled her eyes when she was paired up with us during a role play. So embarrassing...

We realized that if we're going to stick with it, then we need to be more prepared for our classes so we've started pre-studying the lessons in our textbooks before going to class. It helps a lot! Anyway, today was a nice spring day so we were able to study at Hangang Park.

You don't really need to know Korean to get by in Korea, but it makes things more interesting. It's been helpful with the new batch of 3-4 year-olds that have come to the my school this semester, and it's always useful when we take trips or go out to eat. On the weekend I was able to ask a bakery employee which macaroon she recommended. It wasn't very good, but I appreciated the practice.

Eating Kitty

Today, in my manliest move yet, I bought this Hello Kitty donut from Krispy Kreme in Myeongdong. She was surprisingly full of chalky strawberries but I still enjoyed eating her very much.

Andong Soju Museum and Hahoe Folk Village

In 1999, when Queen Elizabeth visited South Korea she asked to be taken to the "most Korean place in Korea", and off she was whisked to Andong. On Friday night, Mel and I decided to take the 3 hour bus ride to see the most Korean place in Korea (which sounded like quite a feat since Korea is pretty damn Korean!)

Although we'd heard that there had been an earthquake in Japan before we left, we didn't realize the severity of what happened until we got on our bus. The TV, which is usually quite reliably tuned in to gag concerts or historical dramas, was airing non-stop footage of the disaster. We tried our best to read the headlines and translate what we didn't understand with our cellphone dictionaries. The saddest bit was translating the word "dead" and seeing the number next to that newly-learned word rise higher and higher as our drive down south continued.

Very Korean thing #1- as you leave the highway to turn off into Andong there's a huge billboard advertising Andong kimchi. I love the ajumma on the billboard. "Please.. a..try my kimchi."

Strange Andong thing #1- After we drove through the Andong toll gate, we passed by a robot dressed in a yellow raincoat that was waving a flag warning us to slow down. The bus was then thoroughly sprayed down with water by some other automated machine installed on the road, and we carried on to the bus terminal. Don't even try to bring your dirty-ass vehicle into Andong! This is the Queen's hood!!

If you ever take the bus to Andong you should know this important slice of information: the bus terminal has moved. It's shiny, new and on the other side of town from where it's shown on the guide map you brought with you. There is nothing at all around the terminal now. Don't even bother walking anywhere, it's just surrounded by farmland and apartment buildings for farther than you would ever want to walk. Not realizing this, we followed the map that we brought for about 10 minutes before realizing that something was up, so we hailed a taxi and got the driver to take us to a motel. Any motel that he likes, we said. He dropped us off god knows where, but it was a hotbed of love motels- there must have been over a dozen of them, so we found a nice place (PC, tub and big screen TV- but no whirlpool, sadly) and read about the earthquake online before watching Idol and going to sleep.

You know you're in a fine quality motel when your door looks like this :)

In the morning we tried to get our bearings. We didn't really have any clue where we were. I'd read that Andong was pretty small and since we seemed to be in such a flashy, motel-filled area last night, I assumed we were in the vicinity of the main market. Nope! The area where we stayed looked much quieter in the morning without all the love motel lights flashing... we were clearly not in any type of city center. Regardless, we decided to get some lunch at a Kimbap Nara before heading to the soju museum. My donkatsu was pretty good, but what's with the ketchup and mayonaise salad dressing on my veg? Do people like this?

Quick montage of funny signs on the street we woke up on in Andong:

Lotteria: A Delicious Burger (looking fun)

A cafe called "Gag Story". Sounds like they brew a nice coffee!

After lunch, we took a quick taxi ride to the Soju Museum. On the ride we passed through the city center and finally got a feel for where we were. As we approached the empty-looking building we suddenly got a very Museum of Drinking Water-feel about the place.

When we walked in the front door a young girl was standing there as if she'd been waiting for us all day. Speechless, she ushered us to a nearby room and turned on a well-worn VHS tape about soju production. Still speechless, she pointed at the TV and disappeared, as the video began. We never saw her again. There were no seats or anything, so we just kind of stood there in this empty room watching as videotaped ajummas fermented grain cakes to make soju. It sounded like a lot of work for such an unappealing drink.

A model of the fermentation process.

We weren't allowed to take pictures in the museum- who knows why, it's so small and they could use the promotion- and after the soju video finished we were shadowed by an adjosshi who made sure that we didn't photograph anything as we looked around. He stuck so close, but didn't say anything to us at all, which made it very awkward see the exhibits. As we left, we asked him to phone a taxi for us, and while we waited for it he offered to let us try a shot of his soju. It was A LITTLE EARLY for soju, but I tried it, to be polite. Andong soju is 45% alcohol- double the alcohol content of normal soju- so it was pretty damn strong, though I have to say it had a more agreeable taste than regular soju.

We had our taxi drive us to Andong Station, where we knew we could catch a bus to the Hahoe Folk Village. The bus ride took about 50 minutes and drove through some very rural areas. We were in the type of place where your bus has to slow down because there's a farm tractor on the road, and trust me- you don't see that very often in Korea! It reminded me of my Grampy and I was momentarily homesick.

After buying admission tickets to the folk village (less than $2/CAN) there's a 1Km hike to the actual village. The hike is actually really scenic and passes by a pretty river, with lots of hills in the distance. At 15 degrees, it was the prefect day to be sightseeing outdoors.

Before entering the folk village, there was a small exhibit about Queen Elizabeth's visit in 1999. This was a pretty remote-feeling place, and certainly would have been far more so a decade ago, so it must have been huge when she came into town.

The feast that was laid out for the Queen. I can just imagine her seeing all this ddoek and kimchi and politely saying, "Oh no thanks, pet, I'll just have a cup of tea".

"As I visit the Pongjong temple in the peaceful mountains, I feel the beauty of a Korean spring day." -Liz

The cool thing about the Hahoe Folk Village is that it's real. People actually live here (229 people and 121 housesholds). It hasn't been rebuilt or recreated- it's really over 600 years old. It was a charming place to wander on a lazy Saturday afternoon. Here's some pictures from our walk:




Just because the homes themselves are 600 years old doesn't mean that the residents are left wanting for modern conveniences. Everyone had electricity and one adjoshi even proudly showed off his modern toilet. Hey, it's nicer than my officetel bathroom!

This family, and many others, even had HD satellites installed on the side of their straw-covered homes.

On the edge of the community is a handsome little pine forest, with park benches and a nice view of the river and a layered rock-faced mountain.

The edge of the pine forest.

As we walked back to our bus we were alarmed by the huge amount of smoke billowing from the nearby hills. A large group had formed to watch the fire. It appeared to be out of control, but no one seemed to be making any attempt to put out the fire. It didn't look like a good day to be hanging out in a town full of houses made of straw.

It was time to say goodbye!

We took the bus back to Andong Station where earlier in the day we'd seen a food street that looked promising for supper. The street name on the gate literally translates to, "Food's Street."

We decided to try Andong's most famous dish, Andong jjimdalk chicken. There are quite a few places to get this dish in Seoul, but we'd only tried it once or twice and found it a little too spicy. We were seated in a small room that looked and felt like someone's living room. We were the only ones there, so we were handed some pillows, the TV remote and some free (service-uh) Coke to drink while we waited for our food. Shockingly, the woman working at the restaurant asked us how spicy we'd like our jjimdalk (this choice is rarely offered in Korea, where more spice=more deliciousness). We asked for NO spice, because even though we like a little spice we knew they'd try to sneak a little in there anyway.

Here it is, a huge dish of bone-in chicken, potatoes, glass noodles and carrots in a sweet-soy sauce. Not a lick of spice at all! It was the best jjimdalk I've ever had, though if someone can show me an easy way to eat bony, saucy chicken, I'm eager to learn.

With that, we took a quick taxi back to the bus terminal and got on a bus back to Seoul. It was a quick trip back and we still got in early enough to relax a bit before bed and since it was Saturday night, we still had all of Sunday off to chill, too!

Andong was a pretty fun trip, and I would recommend a day there whether you're a queen or just a couple of Canadian bums looking for something to do.