Conclusion

That brings my blog recap of our trip to Korea to an end. It was an amazing place to visit and it was a wonderful way for me to spend my first time overseas. Its taken me a while to finish writing up our travels and sorting through the 700 odd pictures, so these last half dozen posts were done since I got back to Melbourne.

Some general musings about Korea before I finish up. It is very different from Australia, yet quite similar in a some ways. Both countries share a strong affection for cars and alcohol.

They have both been strongly influenced by a 'mother nation', England to Australia and China to Korea. But where as Korea was seen as a little brother to China, Australia might be considered England's dodgey criminal cousin.

Since then, both have been strongly influenced by the USA. Since the end of WW2 and apparently even more so since they hosted the Football World Cup, Korea has become very western-ised. This is most evident in the younger generation, where as many of the older generations are quite fixed in their traditions. I think it will be fascinating to see how Korea changes as a country in the next decade or two.

Korean Cuisine

Korean food seems to come in a lot of different versions, the staple seems to chili and kimchi. For the uneducated, kimchi is fermented cabbage with chili. In a traditional Korean diet, it is commonly served with every meal. I had intended to write a bunch of posts about each of these types of meals. But lack of time means that I've been forced to distill it down to one big post with lots of pictures and some commentary. Koreans tend to share almost all of the foods that they eat, so many of the pictures you see below were the food was communally eaten. Either directly with chopsticks or taken off the grill and put in a small bowl.

Korean BBQ

All sorts of meats, but most commonly pork and beef. The Koreans generally have much thinner cuts of meat that we normally eat. It comes with a large range of side dishes which can vary widely from restuarant to restuarant. The Beef ribs pictured on the right, we're the tastiest BBQ we had while in Korea.






Some BBQ restaurants have hot coals that sit in a bay embedded in the table. You can see in the picture on the right, them replacing one of the coal trays when it had started to cool down.

Traditional Food

Traditional food can vary widely but some common things are roasted fish, soups with tofu and various veges, dried fish and once again many side dishes. Often they are served with rice and/or noodles. There seem to be a never ending array of different types of kimchi. Rice seems to serve a very important role in Korean society and it is considered quite rude not to finish your bowl of rice. Where as westerners seem to have a large mound of it on their plates when they eat, Koreans tend to have 1 smaller bowl of slightly sticky rice, but it gets totally eaten up.

Shabo Shabo

The Korean version of hot pot, that is popular in many parts of asia. We had this meal with Jiran's parents a couple of times. It was delicious but extremely large meal. Beef, prawns, tofu, a large variety of mushrooms, assorted vegetables are put into a boiling stock and sit there for a couple of minutes to cook before they are taken out and eaten and more ingredients are added to the put.

Due to the hardships that Koreans of Jiran's parents generation went through during and after the Korean war, some of the language seems to have relationship to eating. One saying that has a equivalence to 'How are you?', is translated literally into 'Have you eaten?'. Whilst we were eating Shabo Shabo I was often told to 'Enjoy the meal', which directly translated into 'Eat a lot'. As the stack of ingredients eventually got eaten up and I was feeling rather quite full, I was told that once the last of the ingredients are in the pot, the remaining broth has some noodles added to it. I was almost ready to burst at this stage, but had been told by one of Jiran's friends that the best way to impress Korean parents is to eat everything on your plate.

Seafood

In Busan because it is right on the coast, there is an amazing amount of seafood available to eat. We went out for crab at one lunch. We did order about 5 crabs between the 4 of us, but we also got provided a huge amount of side dishes on the house. Once the entrees were completed, 2 women came in with a tray of crabs and proceeded to break them up for us, so we could easily extract the flesh with these modified stainless chopsticks with spiky parts on each end for prising out the good bits of the crab from the legs and such.

Street food

Almost every corner in a city seems to have street vendors on it selling just about anything you can imagine for jewelery to puppies. There is a very wide range of street food available in Korea. When Koreans go to the movies they often get squid legs fried in butter as a snack to munch on. They come in a small paper bag and are sort of like really chewy popcorn that tastes a bit like squid.

My favourite type of Korean street food was known as Ho-dduk. A shallow fried ball of dough with dark sugar, fruits and veges inside it. The sugar goes all gooey and the whole thing tastes delicious. We were recommended a Hoetduk shop near Insadong in Seoul. When we got these on a fairly busy Sunday afternoon, the line to get a $1 Hoetduk was about 20minutes long and stretched all the way around the vendors tent.

When we came back later to get another one the line had become even longer. It was worth it.

Dukboki

Another dish that is very commonly sold as street food. It is generally composed of rice cake, fish cake and quite hot, fairly think, chili sauce. We went to Dukboki town to eat the real thing once, I was amazed at how tasty this dish was. It was soo much better than the street food verison, it was one of my favourite meals in the whole time we were in Korea. The restaurant we went to, the owner had been making Dukboki there for over 50 years. What ever magical ingredient she puts into the chili sauce was amazingly good.

We walked into the restaurant, sat down, ordered (they only sell Dukboki at this restaurant) and our dish came out to us within about 2 minutes. It was placed on the burner between us at the

table and proceeded to bubble away. The extra ingredients that were in the good version were, thin noodles, dumplings, boiled eggs and spring onion.



Pizza

Korean pizza is quite different to the pizza we commonly get in Australia. It has a lot of very strong flavours, where as western pizza tends to be a bit more minimalist.

The pizza we got with when we out with some of Jiran's friends had a topping of sweet potato, bacon, sweet corn, cheese, some sort of mayonnaise sauce. Very little tomato pizza sauce was evident.

It makes for quite a mouthful, but is very tasty. There are salad and fresh fruit bars available. The people that seem to go out for pizza seem to be almost always couples or groups of girls. You almost never see a group of guys eating dinner together in Korea. Jiran told me that they tend to go straight to the bar.

Drinking snacks

The reason that men tend to go straight to the bar instead of out for dinner is the amazing range of drinking snacks that are provided in just about every bar in Korea. We went out for a beer with one of Jiran's friends. We ordered our drinks and a small plate of snacks. What arrived was our plate of assorted snacks and about 5 other platters of free snacks, ranging from pork cutlets, fruit salad, dried squid, nuts.

Another time we were out drinking we had a fried fish, that had quite a few bones. But some dexterous surgery by Jiran and her friends the tasty fish was a truly excellent complement to the Soju we were drinking.

When we were having a drink of the Ginseng liquor that I posted about earlier, we had sea slug and seaweed as the drinking snacks. Both of these are considered health food/drink and often consumed in combination with the other.

Koreans like to drink, but will almost never drink without eating something at the same time. After all these descriptions of immense meals you might be wondering why the populace of Korea isn't vastly overweight. Almost all traditional Korean food is almost entirely without carbohydrates and sugar. In my almost 3 weeks traveling around Korea I would be able to count the number of Koreans that I saw who were obese on one hand.

Advertising

Koreans have really taken embraced capitalism. Neon signs and billboards adorn just about every business and advertising is just about every where in Korea, places that you dont really expect in western countries.

Some quick trends in Korean advertising :

Ubiquitous - They have advertising for mobile phones on escalator hand rails.

Cute - Cartoon characters advertise everything from soju to the airforce. Below right is a picture of superman hocking some soju.








Attention grabbing - A department store got these groups of kids to do choreographed dances on a stage outside the store to entertain the crowds.



A bank that was opening a new store had about 100 new employees out the front chanting and singing to attract customers.



When we went to see a movie one day, there was only 1 preview and no ads. Jiran told me that not all cinemas are like that in Korea, but I was astonished at this advertising opportunity which gets so blatantly exploited in Australia, going partially unused in Korea.

Vending Machines

There are so many weird and wonderful vending machines in Korea, most often found in train stations. Here are a few of the
interesting ones that I found :

Toiletries vending machine - Had tooth paste, mouth wash and chewing gum.










Poorly secured vending machine - This one was outside a shop, selling drinks and the like. But it was propped up on some cinder blocks and weighed down with some loose stuff at the top.









Popcorn vending machine - As you'd expect, this one sells popcorn. In a train station.









Book vending machine - Had a quite bizarre range of Korean language books.












The Lotte vending machine - Lotte is a Japanese company that sells just about everything. This Lotte brand vending machine had fairly normal stuff along with some cracker biscuits and was quite huge.

Not quite a vending machine, but a gas mask cupboard in a train station.

Koreans and their cars : Part 2

This post is a bit of an addendum to all the stuff that happened after my first cars post, various things I forgot and random bits of information that I didn't know where to put elsewhere.

First off, before I left, Jow asked me to photograph any drift cars I saw in Korea. I mentioned previously that foreign cars, let alone Japanese cars where quite few and far between in Korea. As such I only saw 1 Japanese car the entire time I was there and probably less than 10 makes of foreign cars total.

I did happen to see 1 rice car, which is displayed above. It seems to be a Hyundai Excel that someone has kitted up. New rear lights, skirting, spoiler, exhaust. Given that this was the most ostentatious car that I saw in my almost 3 weeks in Korea, I think its safe to say that the Koreans tend towards the simpler side of car aesthetics. Or maybe because I saw almost every sort of Mercedes styling 'borrowed' in the styling of Kia and Hyundai car makes, they just really like the look of the Merc.

Some other amusing experiences I had in Korean taxis were, the driver smoking a ciggie and talking on his phone while he drove.

In this picture here, you can sort of make out a taxi dashboard. The screens sitting in the center, the big one is the sat nav. The smaller one is the driver's mobile phone, upon which he was watching a Korean soap opera, whilst driving. He didn't crash so he must have watching TV and driving down to a fine art.

One thing I really liked about Korean roads were the fact that other than the major roads, every road in Korea was roughly like Bourke st mall in Melbourne. People walking here there and everywhere. You get the occasional car, but generally they are driving pretty slowly trying to avoid the pedestrians that are walking wherever they damn well please. This system seems to work pretty well and I never felt that I was in danger from being run down by a car. However, motorbikes don't seem to follow the car method and like pedestrians, go wherever they want, no matter how smaller the opening or how many people are walking in a street. I'm guessing there are a large number of minor accidents from motorbikes mowing down pedestrians in Korea because these guys, mostly delivery drivers, really seem to be focused on delivering their package in record time. I got almost run over a couple of times and tooted multiple times by motorbike riders.

I guess this is the downside of being able to get almost anything delivered to a residence in Korea at almost any time, night or day.

One more car thing, when we were staying in Seoul, the guesthouse we were staying at had a free dropoff service.  We took advantage of this to go to the museum.  On the way there, the car got pulled over by the cops with a number of other cars.  The driver spoke to a policeman for a fair while, handed over his license, more talking and eventually we drove off.  I asked Jiran what had happened and she said they were checking for seatbelts, which our driver hadn't been wearing at the time.  He was supposed to get a 30000 won (~$40) fine for not wearing the seatbelt, but had managed to talk himself down a 20000 won (~$30) fine for chaning lanes illegally.  I thought this was amusing that you could barter for the fine you were to recieve.

Learning Korean

Before we came to Korea, I got some beginners Korean language tapes and read a number of blogs by foreigners living in Korea to get a feel for the language and culture. It provided me with a decent base of knowledge upon which to build.

After making my way through the tapes, I had told myself that I should learn how to read the alphabet. The Korean alphabet, known as Hangul, is widely regarded as one of the most intelligent linguistic inventions in history. It was created by the King Sejong in 1446 as a means of improving literacy in his country. It is a phonetic language, meaning that every character is directly associated to a sound. It must have worked because literacy in Korea these days is roughly 99%.

Learning the characters is apparently quite easy to get to the point where you can sound out individual words. Unfortunately, due to a lack of time, I didn't have a chance to learn it before we left. So I was constantly trying to find time to sit down and learn it. This proved difficult as I had an interpreter on hand and more interesting things to fill in my time. Despite this set back, In the time we were there, I was able to develop a moderate collection of functional language, which helped out with things like meal times, greetings, basic requests.

Koreans as a people are generally very polite and this is reflected strongly in their language. Even something as simple as pouring alcohol has its own hierarchical influence. During a meal, the junior must be alert to the state of their elders glass and be ready to refill it should it near emptiness. When pouring or getting your glass filled by an elder, you must grasp the bottle or glass with two hands. Having your hands in your pockets when bowing or saying thank you is seen as a big no-no. One I was guilty of a couple of times.

When speaking to people older than you, it is essential to use a more polite tone than if you were speaking to your peers or those younger than you. This is more than just adding the equivalent of please and thank you to your speech. Formal language is often entirely different to its more casual equivalents. It is seen as quite rude to use informal language to your elders, and elders would get quite irate at you for doing so.

Before we left, Jiran had predicted that if she were to tell her parents that she was teaching me Korean, they would blame her for every mistake I made. So she decided to stress to them that I had been learning the language by myself and she wasn't to blame for my lack of knowledge. Hence they were quite forgiving whenever I made a mistake or couldn't remember something. However, this didn't extend to Korean customs and somewhat amusingly (to me) Jiran's dad blamed her for not teaching me the customs better.

But the Korean language while not being tonal like Chinese, is still a very difficult language to learn. The necessary politeness expands the required vocabulary considerably but because of the structure of the language there are many words that sound very similar to one another, where only one syllable varies but would have an entirely different meaning. That combined with an entirely foreign grammar structure makes learning Korean quite a difficult task. I bought myself a Korean language book while I was over there, so hopefully I will have the alphabet down soon so I can carry on with my study.

Korean Bathhouse

Before we left, Jiran said that her dad would want to take me to a Korean bath house.  She told me that it is a naked bath house.  As I had wanted to experience an authentic Korean lifestyle, I thought why not.  She had told me that her brother, who speaks English, would be there to help me through it.

We arrived in Busan on a Friday afternoon and was told that night, that Jiran's dad wanted to go to the bathhouse the following day. Jiran's brother was stuck at work  and would be unable to make it. Jiran's dad was quite insistent that body language would be sufficient to guide me through.  So it was the following day that off Jiran's dad and I went to the Korean bath house.

Walk upto the counter, Jiran's dad pays some money (about AU$5 each) and then turns and gives me a plastic band with a key attached, which he gestures for me to slip over my wrist.

We take off our shoes and put them into a tiny locker, opening it with the wrist key.

Into the elevator, upto level 5. We hop off the elevator and turn the corner and I see a changing room with Korean men in various stages of undress. He helps me locate my clothes locker and then begins to strip. I open up the locker with my wrist key and then follow along. I notice another foreigner, an old guy, who is in the process of getting dressed. This helps sooth my nerves somewhat.

Off with the underwear and we head into the room with the baths and showers. We head in and there are naked Korean guys of all ages inside. Ranging from young kids, maybe 5 years old to old men. He hands me a disposable toothbrush and wash cloth and then gestures me towards a shower. He puts a healthy dollop of toothpaste on the toothbrush for me and then heads towards his shower. I'm basically following everything he does at this stage. Brush your teeth very thoroughly, wash yourself off with soap also very thoroughly.

As I wash myself, I'm looking around and while I'm the only foreigner in the baths at the moment, none of them seem bothered by my presence or are even particularly starting at me. Some of the little kids seem intrigued by my presence, I smile and say Hello in Korean to one of them and he become shy. His elder brother then came up and i think told him not to stare.

Eventually we head towards the baths. We hop into a fairly hot one to begin with. There is two levels to the bath, we initially sit on the step and then he slides into the deepers water, making a contented 'Errrrrrr' sound. I sit down on the lower level, it is deep enough that only my head is above the water. Not understanding much Korean, I'm not really listening to the conversations around me. There are some kids playing around behind me in one of the other baths. I lean back keeping just my face above the water and close my eyes, its really quite peaceful.

After about 15 minutes or so we get out of the hot bath and then get into a really hot one. I'm not sure whether it was for my benefit but Jiran's dad turns the cold tap on and pushes the water around abit bringing the water temperature back to just very hot. We lie in this one for about another 15 minutes.

We then hop out of the bath and head back towards these seated showers where, we scrub ourselves thoroughly with the washcloth and Jiran's dad shaves for the day. After being in the hot bath, the coarse wash cloth starts to exfoliate the skin.

Once this is over we head to the far end of the baths where the cold bath is. Its bigger than the rest of the baths and the water temperature is similar to what you would expect in an outdoor swimming pool, fairly cold. We swim around in this one for about 10minutes. Another one of the little kids takes some interest in me, but wont say Hello back to me.

We get out of the cold bath and then get in a fairly hot one. Jiran's dad does some stretching and we sit here 10minutes, then we leave the baths room and head back into changing room. As we head out and begin to towel ourselves down, I notice the skin on my shoulders peeling away easily. In front of the mirror, Jiran's dad applies a couple of different lotions to his whole body and I follow along. He does his hair and then we head back to the lockers and get dressed.

On the whole, it was a really cool experience. I thought it displayed some interesting aspects about how the Korean traditions are still a vibrant part of life in Korea. For a society that is obcessed with phsyical beauty and plastic surgery, to see people naked in all shapes and sizes was very reassuring.

Given that Korea is also one of the most digitally connected countries in the world, that they would give up their mobile phones to necessitate this tradition is also reassuring. I havn't seen any other place in Korea yet where phones were needed to be switched off or taking photos wasn't allowed. The bath house was one of the traditional social gathering places and still continues in this function.

While we were there and old and quite frail Korean man was assisted into the baths by what I can only guess was his teenage grandson. Helping him move gradually on his walking frame and then easing him into the bath, it showed the togetherness of family in Korea.

The whole time we were there I dont think anyone asked him who the tall foreigner accompanying him was, I've gotten better at recognising 'foreigner' when people question my presence. Once I was over my inital nervousness, I found it to not be self concious at all and was quite comfortable strolling about in my birthday suit.  

We ended up going again a couple of weeks later, that time taking in the sauna aswell as the baths.  It was similar to a western sauna, but seemingly hotter than I remember a western one being.  It has a tiled floor which becomes insanely hot and you lie down on a towel on the floor.  After what lieing on the floor for what seemed for a long while, Jiran's dad motioned for us to go.  I'm not sure whether it was my useless memory or the fact that my brain was addled by some serious heat, but as we were leaving he said something to me that I wanted to respond to, I tried to say 'Very hot' but accidentally said 'Very cold'.  I realised about half an hour later and then told Jiran, who thought I was quite funny.

Korean Alcohol : Soju

The quintessential Korean alcoholic beverage, is served chilled in shot glasses. Traditionally made from rice, it is it commonly made from a range of starches including potato, wheat, barley or sweet potato. Weighing in at about 20% alcohol per volume, it is quite similar in taste to Vodka, but with only the half the alcoholic content much easier to drink.

The downside of this easy drinking nature is that it gives a fairly horrific hangover to the person who imbibes too much, as I can now attest to. Such is my journalistic integrity, that I'm bringing you this post as the side effects of a few too many Soju shots wears off.

I've heard second hand reports that a large Soju binge can produce quite bizarre thoughts in the drinker, but I'm yet to reach that stage as yet. Given how sore my head is after about half a dozen of these, I'm not sure I really want to find out.

As we caught one of the late trains back to our guest house last night, we saw a fairly common sight in Korea. Drunken Ajussi's (Korean elder male) stumbling their way home after a night out on the Soju. Drinking with co-workers and the boss taking their employees out for a meal and drinks seems to happen quite often in Korea. I'm told as often as 4 times a week in some offices. I'm not sure my liver could handle such a beating.

Trip to Gyeongju : Part 2

The first stop on the bus tour was the Bulguksa temple. It was still snowing lightly as the bus pulled up into the parking lot. Through the large front gate, over a bridge over looking a chilly looking lake and up a winding path we were presented with an astonishingly beautiful sight.

It was the first snow of the year at Gyeongju and it had turned this large series of temples and pagodas nestled amongst the trees into something you'd normally expect to see in a postcard. We were the first of the tour groups to arrive that morning, so it was still relatively quiet as we walked up to the main building.

None of the monks seem particularly impressed at the horde of tourists that turned up each morning to distrurb thier zen. There were many smaller buildings further up the back of the Bulguska grounds, so we avoided the crowds and went for somewhere a bit more peaceful.

The temple and surrounding trees into an astonishingly beautiful sight to behold. We timed things pretty well to turn up on this special day. Accordingly we took many photos, there are more up on my flickr account that what i've added to this post, check them out here.

Next stop was the Silla art and science museum. It was alright, a couple of bus loads of school kids turned up at the same time so this spot was pretty full. We took a wander around the surrounding artisan village but most of it seemed to be closed.

Onto General Yusin Kim's grave. the silla dynasty took to creating these gigantic mounds as tombs for their fallen royals and heros. this guy joined the military at age 15 and went on to be one the nations finest military strategists and martial artists. helped to unite 3 countries. this earned him a big mound in the hills upon his departure from this world. The weather had finally started to warm up (to maybe a couple of degrees above zero), as the blue skies emerged for the first time.

Buhnwangsa temple was the next stop on the tour. There was only one large building, surrounded by some menacing looking lion statues outside and a smaller room containing this sleeping looking buddha.

Cheonmachong was the next on the tour, a whole series of tombs. I think there were 21 of these very large mounds in all and the large surrounds were dotted with groups of trees. As we left we posed for some photos with the statues that welcomed visitors inside the gates.

Anapji is an artificial lake that was created during the Silla dynasty. These picturesque surroundings are commonly used as a venue for young Korean guys to to take their girls to express their love as they walk around the lake. The way the views reflected up off the lake made for some stunning views.

The last stop on the tour was Cheomseongdae, an ancient astronomy tower. By this stage we were both pretty exhausted, having gotten up quite early.It was a pretty long day, about 8 hours of on and off the bus, walking here and there and many photos. Bulguksa and Anapji were both amazing sites to behold, I hope that our photography has displayed some of it.

Most of the people on the tour were Koreans, mainly families with young children. There were also 4 Japanese people, an American and his Korean partner, Jiran and I. The tour guide spoke some minimal English and Japanese and while the on bus videos were available in English and Chinese they didn't provide a great deal of information. So as the tour guide spoke at length at each of the stops, I wasn't able to absorb much at all. So Jiran and I wandered about each of the sites and she translated some interesting bits when she was feeling so inclined.

Korean Alcohol : Rice Wine

We tried this at a traditional Korean restaurant while we were in in Gyeongju. It came in a big tea pot, and was poured into these metal bowls.

It was a whitish colour, it was served fairly cold from the tea pot and the taste was quite bitter. My guess at the alcoholic content would be about 10%. But the fact that it came in the rather large tea pot, you could certainly put enough of it away should you be so inclined. It was very cold that night in Gyeongju, so a few bowls of this certainly helped to warm us up a bit.

Trip to Gyeongju : Part 1

Jiran and I took a trip up to Gyeongju, which is a historical city to the north of Busan. The bus trip took about 1 hour, through fairly mountainous Korean terrain. As our bus pulled into the depot, we could see that it was lightly snowing.

After a quick coffee break, we caught a taxi to the Gyeongju museum, as it wasn't going to be open on the following day, when our bus tour was scheduled. It was about now that I started to wish I had put on my thermals earlier.

There was lots of interesting stuff at the museum, about the Silla kingdom. The Silla, reigned in Korea for roughly 1000 years until 953AD. Gyeongju was the capital city of the Silla kingdom and seemingly a mountain of artifacts have been excavated from the many sites around Gyeongju. I wont write too much about the museum, as this is already becoming quite a large post. I will post a couple of pictures about the cool Silla drinking game they played with this oddly shaped dice.













We spent a few hours at the museum, the snow steadily getting heavier. When we left, as we waited for a taxi out the front it seemed to take forever. I cursed my lack of foresight regarding the thermals. Finally, a taxi showed up and we headed to our accomodation, a traditional Korean guesthouse.




As we headed in the main gate, the Sarang Chae guesthouse looked most picturesque. It had been snowing for a few hours now and it was just starting to build up on the roof tops and furniture in the courtyard. We met the propreiter and dropped off our bags.





I then learnt the hard way that traditional Korean houses weren't built for people of my stature. After taking my shoes off as is Korean custom, I turned to head in the door way and headbutted the large post running along the top of the door frame. Thankfully it connected straight on with my forehead and left nothing more than a small red mark. It could have been much worse if it had been on an edge of the wood. The picture on the left show the door to the bathroom in our room. The front door was about the same size.


We went off to get some dinner and then gave Jiran's parents a call to tell them that we had arrived safely. Then we turned in for the night. I was thinking that should it continue to snow through the night, it would make for quite a scene the following day on our tour.

The traditional Korean bed, isn't actually a bed at all but you sleep on the heated floor on top of a couple of fairly thick blankets. This took some getting used to. I found it quite difficult to sleep on my side, which I am used to, as my hips where hard up against the floor. Sleeping on your back is the proper technique, but i couldn't really get the hang of it, so i got a few hours sleeping on my side.

When we woke up the following morning this is the sight we were greeted with.

Korean Alcohol : Ginseng Liquor

The first part in a 3 part series about the various forms of alcohol that the Korean's enjoy. I'll try to upload one of these each day until we return, internet access permitting. I thought I'd start with something completely different, Ginseng Liquour.

Often home made, as pictured on the right, it is also commonly served with a specialty Korean chicken soup dish. It is often consumed as a health drink.


This particular batch, was brewed up by Jiran's mum. As far as I know it contains about a dozen Ginseng plants, a hefty amount of Soju and some water. It was left to ferment for about 6 months.


My best description of the taste would be a vodka and red bull, if you could take all the sugar out of the red bull, if you can imagine that. It has a very unique taste and gives quite a kick, its estimated alcoholic content being about ~30%.

Koreans and their cars

First some ground rules for Korean car travel, which is somewhat different to what I was used to in Australia. Wearing a seat belt is optional for passengers, and seemingly sparing enforced for drivers with very few taxi drivers opting to belt up. After being programmed to put on a seatbelt by the laws in Australia, this has taken some getting used to. I still automatically reach for the belt, every time I get in a car.

Red lights and indicating to change lanes, both seem to be regarded as optional. Lanes in general, seem to be more of an guide than an actual rule. Speed limits seem to be enforced fairly selectively.

Pedestrians give way to cars, rather than the other way around. At a cross walk without traffic lights, you can usually expect a car to stop for you, but I'm havn't been taking this one for granted. Korea has the highest number of road fatalities and injuries of any OECD nation. Most car travel in around the city in Korea seems to be of the low speed variety, because most streets are barely wide enough for 1 - 2 cars. In these circumstances, the optional seat belt rule seems to make a bit of sense.

But on the open road some Koreans really plant the right foot. We hopped into a cab the other night, within moments we were onto the freeway and hurtling at 140kph as we weaved around the traffic. It was a bit like waking up and finding yourself on a rollercoaster. I think next time I know we'll be travelling on the freeway I'm going to belt up anyways.

Taxi travel costs about half as much or less than in australia, so its a relatively cost effective way to get to ariound. There is a pretty effective bus and subway train network around Busan, but this country really seems to love their cars. Atleast 90% of the cars on the roads are of Korean make, Hyundai or Kia. Given the extreme population density, such a devotion to cars and all the space they take up, is astonishing. The area of the car park is greater than the building it supports in some cases. Petrol costs about ~AU$2 a litre, I think.

There is a pretty steep import tax on foreign cars, so i've barely seen any sports cars at all. Mercedes seems the be the biggest foreign car brand, but the Korean brand have borrowed the front styling of some of the more recent Mercs so its tough to estimate how many of them were the real thing. Other than Mercs my total count of foreign cars has been a few BMWs, Lexus' and Audis, a Corvette, a Mitsibushi Lancer Evo. So about 10 all up. (Sorry didn't get a chance to photo the Evo for you Jow)

Love Motels

In Korea, most young people tend to live at home with their parents until they get married. Due to the fact that almost all Korean families live in small apartments, finding some privacy for a young couple can be difficult.

This is where the Love Motel comes in. They are really just a hotel with a parking lot, but the English words Love Motel, have worked their way into the Korean language, in much the same way that English draws influences from Latin, French and many other languages.

Anyways, there are many Love Motels in Korea. They offer the services you would expect from somewhere providing accommodation, a bedroom, bathroom and possibly TV, computer, room service, etc. But its about here where the similiarities stop in what you would expect in a Western hotel. Vending machines for condoms and sex toys, mood lighting ranging from a dimmer switch to coloured ceiling lights, free porn on the cable TV, hookers calling cards often get left near the enterance in an attempt to drum up business in much the same way as you would expect local businesses to try and advertise.

They seem to be the cheapest reasonable form of accommodation available in Korea. So they get patronised by young couples obviously, gentlemen accompanied by a lady of the night, people carrying out their sordid extra-marital affairs away from prying eyes, foreigners and generally anyone in need of a cheap place to sleep for the night.

I guess its here that I should tell you that Jiran's parents own and operate one of these establishments. Due to the Korean tradition that stipulates that a young couple would never sleep in the same bed, she is staying upstairs in her mother's room and her parents have provided me with a room in the Love Motel.

Meeting the Parents

Jiran's mom turned up not long later. We sat down and had some fruit. Due to the high cost of fruit in Korea, it is seen as more of a treat than we would normally consider in Australia. Jiran's uncle on the island of ? had sent a plate of mandarins and kiwi fruit down to Busan for her family.


Communication with her parents has been interesting to say the least. Given my minimal Korean language skills, Jiran has been forced to translate all but the simplest of things, such as hello, goodbye, sleep well, see you soon, this looks delicious, this tastes delicious, etc. While listening to an abundance of Korean hasn't really helped my being able to speak it significantly, I do seem to have understand the flow of the language a bit better.


We sat down on the floor around the table, which is similar to what a coffee table would be in Australia and ate the fruit and had some onion drink, which is apparantly a health drink in Korea. In Korea, most buildings have heated flooring as the main heating for the residence. Jiran showed me up to my room and we deposited our bags.


Then Jiran, her dad and I went out to dinner. Her mom stayed behind, because Jiran's parents run a Love Motel, one of them is at the front desk at all hours of the day apart from the wee hours of the morning.


We went to a traditional Korean restaurant not too far from her parents place. We had a private room with a heated floor. We were seated around the low table on the floor, a waitress came in not long after and started depositing plates and stone bowls on the table.


Jiran's father had lots of questions about me and Australia in general. Jiran was busy translating amongst putting more food in my bowl. Jiran's father was most impressed at how adept I was at using chopsticks. I guess I got all of the family chopstick skill genes, as my brother, who was recently gifted some training chopsticks whilst he was in China as a joke by one of the restaurants. Chopsticks in Korea are slightly different from the standard variety, being a bit thinner in one dimension and made from stainless steel. This makes them good for sticking into foods like Kimchi and tearing it apart. It took me a while to get the hang of this skill but Jiran's dad patiently showed me the ropes.


I'll talk more about the Korean cuisine soon, but suffice to say that 'baebuleoyo' or 'I'm full' quickly became part of my Korean vocabulary

Train to Busan

As we leave the Love Motel the following morning, I have wisely adorned my borrowed thermals (thanks Geoff!) and I am feeling much more comfortable. After grabbing some breakfast, we head to the train station. Jiran's friends have told her that the standard seats on the KTX train aren't really designed to accommodate foreigners of my height. We opt to buy the more expensive seats and find our way down to the platform. After poking my head in the window of one of the standard carriages, I am forced to agree, it seems unlikely my knees or shoulders would have fit in the dimensions of the small seats.

Our carriage on the other hand is rather spacious, so I stretch out and we are soon hurtling across the Korean country-side. The KTX train is similar to the Japanese bullet train, reaching speeds of 300kph, it travels almost the entire length and bredth of the country in roughly 3 hours. I took some pictures out the train window but everything flew by so fast and the window was a bit reflective, so it was a quite tricky to capture the desired effect. But early impressions of the Korean country is that it is highly mountainous, there hardly seems to be any flat land at all. We sped past, lakes, snow capped mountains, cities and small villages on our journey.

We arrived in Busan and caught a taxi to Jiran's parents place. Her parents dont speak any English, so it was going to be the first time that my minimal Korean was going to be seriously tested. The taxi driver thought it was quite amusing as I practiced saying something to the effect of, "Hello, my name is Mark. Its a pleasure to meet you". He thought it was a bit strange that I was meeting her parents as only her boyfriend. Apparantly, in Korea it is common for a boyfriend/girlfriend to not spend any significant time with their partner's parents until after the wedding. But Jiran had been instructed by her father that when she came home, she should bring her degree and her boyfriend. Feeling pretty nervous as we stepped out of the taxi and into the parking lot. Jiran's father came out to greet us and there was the embrace and crying as Jiran hadn't seen her parents in over 18months. Then he turned and shook my hand and I stumbled out the words I had been practicing on the trip.

Into Seoul

We take a bus from Incheon airport into Seoul. It begins with a largely uninteresting freeway. I had been battling an upset stomach from playing too much Nintendo DS on the flight, it had eased off while we were in the airport, but was now back with a vengence.

The bus was a comfortable temperature, except for every 15 minutes or so when a blast of hot air filled the bus, making it quite unconfortable and providing no assistance to my upset stomach. The girls chattered away amongst themselves for a while before tiredness and motion sickness got the best of Jiran and I and the next 30minutes on the freeway seemed to draw on forever.

Suddenly we a re thrust into the midst of Seoul, bright neon lights adorning tall buildings everywhere. I'm looking around wide eyed, helping to make my car sickness a bit worse. Jiran notices that I'm turning a whiter shade of pale and opens the window just a touch. The chilly night air helps to ease my stomach somewhat.

Seoul it turns out is a really big place. Duh, one of the worlds mega-cities, with a population of > 10mil people. It takes about another 25 minutes to get to our stop. I'm estimating that I can stop myself being sick for about another 5 minutes when we finally arrive at our stop. We pile off quickly, retrieve our bags from the undercarriage and suddenly the bright lights and bustling action of Seoul is all around me.



We check into a 'Love Motel' (more on these later) and then head back out into the city to get dinner. One of the many nearby BBQ restuarants serves us for the evening. Having been to a decent selection of Korean BBQ places in Melbourne, I knew the basic type of cuisine, but the authenticity and range of side dishes (also more on the cuisine at a later date) was superior to anything I had previously sampled. It is finally starting to sink into my head that I am actually sitting in a restaurant in Seoul eating Korean BBQ, it all seems a bit surreal.


After the meal, we wish Eun-mi a good night and head off to catch the one of the final days of the light shows that adorn the large creek that runs through the downtown of Seoul. We have walked about halfway down the display when they start turning the lights off for the evening. I start to realise that it is really cold and my bottom is freezing. We make a hasty retreat back to the warmth of our accomodation.