Week 3: Research, Korean Food, Beach Trip: 6/10-6/16
I've never had authentic Korean cuisine until I came to Seoul. A typical out to eat dinner in America consists of everyone sitting at a fairly large diner and each person ordering individual platters, right? Well not here. I've only had a handful of meals so far that I ordered and ate entirely myself. The meals are shared by everyone you don't really order individually. After ordering a main dish for everyone to share, you get served many small "appetizer" dishes. With their chopsticks, everyone grabs what they want from any of these dishes. Once the main course arrives, typically in a large pot or pan, you chopstick whatever you can grab. As an American it seemed odd at first and took some getting use to but now I'm one of the first people getting my chopsticks dirty. Oh, they also LOVE their food spicy; luckily I do too.
Unique flavors and a variety of unfamiliar types of foods have made each meal one new experience after another. In the last week alone I've had a variety of different types of seafood I've never tasted before including octopus, which I found floating around my bowl of seafood noodles, ha. I'm noticing that if it is edible in Korea, there is a decent chance you can get it at a restaurant. I've also noticed that many dishes stare back at you. A small difference, literally, that I noticed was the amount of water you get during dinner. I'm use to a large glass of cold water - what you get is a tiny baby cup. It's about 3 small sips and you're bone dry. My only complaint!
Unique flavors and a variety of unfamiliar types of foods have made each meal one new experience after another. In the last week alone I've had a variety of different types of seafood I've never tasted before including octopus, which I found floating around my bowl of seafood noodles, ha. I'm noticing that if it is edible in Korea, there is a decent chance you can get it at a restaurant. I've also noticed that many dishes stare back at you. A small difference, literally, that I noticed was the amount of water you get during dinner. I'm use to a large glass of cold water - what you get is a tiny baby cup. It's about 3 small sips and you're bone dry. My only complaint!
A handful of diners in Paju have a setup that looks as though the family both lives as well as operates a business out of it. One restaurant, we ate dinner at a table that literally felt like we were in their living room/kitchen. The family was watching some world cup soccer on the tube while we ate. It was strange but cool at the same time. The family was impressed with our chopstick skills. Even though Korea still retains its traditional types of food and has MANY family owned restaurants like these, American & other foreign style restaurants can be found scattered about. For instance we've had Taco Bell and Popeye's here - surprisingly to me, haha - both delicious like at home. If you need to get away from the foreign food for awhile you can always stop into one of these places for a pick-me-up. Food is generally cheap and grocery store shopping is amusing. Most items are written in Korean and I just grab things that look interesting ha. Sometimes our Korean friends help out with this, too. Fruit is crazy expensive. People yell at you in the grocery store too, still no idea what they're saying. Free samples around every corner! It's fantastic.
|
Our place in Paju is considerably modern and definitely better than I was expecting, reminds me a lot of my first college house my sophomore year - except this place is about 1/3 the size. One appliance that I've come to love here are these water filters. I see them everywhere and I think I'm going to buy one when I get home! I'll throw up a few pictures of the place below. Our place is also located surprisingly close to the DMZ, we're only a short bus ride away. For those of you unaware of what the DMZ (demilitarized zone) is, it's basically a highly fortified boundary that stretches across the country separating North and South Korea. I'm going to go check it out one of these days, stay tuned.
This weekend we were originally suppose to do 48-hours of non-stop field work tracking frogs but our researchers decided to call it off. In lieu of our research being canceled us guys decided to take a trip to the East Coast Sea. Typically you plan something like this in advance and also book a hostel to stay in but obviously planning isn't in our strategy on this trip. We decided we'd simply sleep on the beach, free of charge! Great plan I know. To get across the country you can take a non-stop bus for a flat rate of around $15. To get there sometime before the sun goes down we had to leave our place in Paju at around 5:00AM, catch a bus, catch the subway, and make it to the long distance bus terminal for our 8:15 bus to Gangneung, which is just off the coast. The best part about buying a ticket for this bus ride was the fact that there are about 5 other cities with almost identical names, so if you don't know EXACTLY what the destination is called you're kind of guessing. I'm not kidding there were places called Ganeung, Gangnung, Gangnang, etc. Tricky but we managed to figure it out, it's just interesting that you get one letter wrong and you're going to a completely different place on the other side of the country!
The bus ride was around 3 hours long and the landscape views were phenomenal. Korea's terrain is extremely mountainous, our trip took us through a tangled network of long distance roads through valleys and mountains. Tunnels that had to be a mile long took us what felt like directly through the mountains. It's as if when constructing the roads they realized there was no path around the mountain so instead they went right through it! I was surprised to see how natural the landscape still is considering the cities are a sprawl of endless buildings/streets and very little wilderness remains.
|
When we arrived it was about 11:30AM and we began walking towards the coast, East. Some of the Korean people here are selfless and kindly help tourists like it's their job. She informed us that taking a taxi would be the best idea, and proceeded to flag one down, speak to him in Korean for us. She was a sweetheart and asked us if we wanted a big ocean or small ocean (she meant beach instead of ocean). These random acts of kindness from complete strangers is uplifting. The beach, wow the beach! It's always a great feeling seeing the ocean and just like my first time seeing it I was like a little kid ready to dive in. A few new experiences here though ha. For one, the toilets - not all the toilets are, well, toilets. The majority of the "toilet bowls" were actually just porcelain rectangles in the ground...AKA aptly named "squatters" for the obvious reason. Interesting, very interesting. Korean beaches differ in another big way, almost nobody wears what we refer to as swimsuits - at least at this beach. Nobody had their shirts off. Barely anyone went farther than ankle deep into the water. It was bizarre haha. Of course we wanted no part in that and stripped down to our suits and dived in. The Pacific ocean was chilly at first but quickly became refreshing on a hot day. At this point I've gotten use to being stared at by almost everyone and this was no exception, in fact we were an attraction as the only white dudes, only shirtless, only swimming people at this beach.
We did some exploring along the beach and found some interesting sites. I was fascinated by these irregularly shaped concrete pylons placed along the coast as wave barriers. There were hundreds of them. A walk-bridge that lit up at night also drew attention, illuminating the itself and the water with a bright colorful display. The diners along the coast were a new site as well, each one had live fish tanks at the entrance to attract you. There were all sorts of critters in these tanks; fish, squid, octopus, sea cucumbers, HUGE crabs, etc. You could stop in and literally have as fresh of a seafood meal as you can get. I settled for food on a stick from some local sweet older women selling on the beach, it was delicious. We also met up with the other two girls who also were there staying at a hostel, ate these delicious ice cream cones, and just relaxed.
|
After shooting the breeze with the girls, we let them go to their hostel and we went on finding a place to sleep for the night. Haha, hilarious. The beach real estate suitable for sleeping was few and far between! People, ESPECIALLY couples, were everywhere at all hours of the night. We managed to find a nice dark-er space (the beach was lit by light posts) and setup shop there. Even though it was chilly, it was relaxing to fall asleep to the sounds of the ocean with a constant breeze. What a night! These beach dwellers don't ever leave like we hoped. Fireworks, yes FIREWORKS are going off all night. You can buy them at vendors all over the beach and they just shoot them off casually haha. The sleeping part really didn't happen, maybe an hour or two ha which was to be expected...but I also expected the beach goers to leave at some point, but they didn't. Like I said couples, they're everywhere. It's clingy central. The best part though was watching the sunrise burst out from the horizon, totally worth the ridiculous night!
One of my other favorite parts was the taxi ride back to the bus terminal. Our taxi driver didn't speak a lick of English BUT he had this phone application where both him and I could speak in our own language into the phone and it would translate it for the other person. Incredible the power of technology these days. I've also really come to enjoy the ease of getting around in this place (when you know which ways/where you're going..haha). The network of transportation lines is like a spiderweb that spreads from the central location of Seoul to almost anywhere in the country. It's cheap, reliable, timely, and well-managed. If you miss a bus or subway don't sweat it, another one will be there shortly. It also decreases the environmental impact of each person owning an automobile. It's a great system. Our ride home from Gangneung to Paju was used for mostly sleep, in total about 5 hours to get back to our place using buses and subways. What an experience.
|
While doing research near our home in Paju, we have been finding remnants of what looks like military trenches and bunkers from the previous war with North Korea. We decided to investigate into the forest to see if we could find some more, and we did. Right in our own backyard there are barbed wire covered bunkers made of concrete and fortified with sandbags! They are covered with camouflaged material and many are still in great condition. Over the years, natural plant overgrowth has begun burying them like lost ruins, which make them almost completely hidden depending on where you're looking from. The place we found had seemingly endless trails of dug-out trenches that led to bunker after bunker, strategically staggered on a forested hill that climbed ever higher. The hill overlooks a river probably attempted to be crossed by North Koreans and this hill was most likely used as a vantage point against the enemy. It's surreal to be using the same trails and standing in the same bunkers as Korean soldiers, and also thinking at some point back in the day they were here battling for their freedom, their lives right here. Heavy duty barbed wire still surrounds some trenches/bunkers and most are still fairly untarnished after years of enduring the elements - impressive to say the least.