GANGHWA!!! And some other stuff.

I've been intent on writing for a while now, but haven't quite gotten round to it, with school being busy, weekends being booked and general life getting in the way. Anyway, tonight the air is finally cooler than normal, owing to an immense thunderstorm this morning (I love thunderstorms more than anything in the world, they make me feel so alive and appeal to the gothic lover inside me - where's my Poe novel, godamnit?!), I don't have too much to do and I'm skint, so what better time to dedicate an hour to catching up with a life that's flying by?



The week that followed Deokjeokdo meant the departure of the lovely Sharon teacher from school. I was truly sad about this, as Sharon is a lovely girl and really helped a sista out when she first arrived in Korea. Still, all things must come to an end, and Sharon will be returning soon, after a lovely break back home in Canada and a chance to see her neice and nephew. With the departure of Sharon came Adam, who has been here for about a month now, and is a really cool guy. Annie teacher was a bit worried about how having a male in a female run school would affect our dynamic, but I think that his arrival may have improved our banter somewhat, as you know what happens when there's too much oestrogen in the room. Still, poor guy, he does get it in the neck somewhat! That weekend Faye, Anda, Amy and I headed to the north of Seoul, for a brilliant shamanistic walk, made comical by my repeated falls, including the one where I bent my toes backwards and didn't realise, Anda's inability to get down another mountain and subsequent escorting by an old, old man, our hulahoop tries - can I just point out here that I am ACE at hulahoop, something that amazed me as much as the rest of the girls and our long and 'interesting' chat about conkers. Amy, bless her, was very confused about conkers but very bored by the end of a 20 min lecture on 'the best way to soak your conkers so you can win battles' and 'where the conker actually comes from'. Americans, they just don't get it, hey? We spent Sat night in Pyongnae, as there was a house party to celebrate Frank's birthday and all ended up drinking too much and overdosing on the bondeggi that I kindly bought the Fman as a present. I'm that kind. Still, awesome time had by all.
The week after this is a blur, though I vaguely remember girly night in Suwon and DVD banging whilst watching girly films - excellent way to spend a Wed. Come Friday, we had our exploring hats on once more, this time the planned location being Gangwha-do. A moment to give you the blurb about Ganghwa. Although not a pretty as Deokjeokdo, Ganghwa-do is a nice little island, in the estuary of the Han river, connected to Incheon by a bridge. It's the northern-most island controlled by South Korea, and from the northern part of the island you can take a sneaky peak into North Korea. The area of the island is about 302km and it is quite mountainous, which isn't really a surprise, as it's in Korea, the third most mountainous country in the world, size accounting. At the top of the main mountain, Mani-san, the God-king Dangun was rumoured to have made sacrifices to the Gods (I presume at the time, this didn't include him), making the island quite a pulling place for tourists, that, and the world's biggest Dolmen, a UNESCO world heritage site. Poor old Ganghwa has also been invaded many a time, which adds to the lure of the place for many historians.

Butchie and I jumped on to a subway straight after work to catch a bus to said island. Which we missed. Though I maintain it was not our fault. Poor Mike had been waiting for us at Gangbyeon station for about 2 hours, so when we finally met up he didn't have the biggest smile on his face. Whoops - sorry, Mike! Even later than us though was new recruit to the team (who we met the Friday before at a party in Yongtong full moon park), Birthday girl, Christina, who got herself completely lost on the subway and spent about 3 hours underground. Bless! Not too much fun after catching a flight from Jeju straight after work. Poor love. Anyway, we headed to Hongdae (where Christina finally joined us) for a night of relaxing, with the aim of relaxing in a jimjilbang before catching the first bus to Gangwha, which was due to leave about half 5 in the morning. By this time it was already 11, so after spending some time in a really cool jazz bar, brought to our attention by Panda, we headed for chicken, (where we saw a brilliant fight between a Korean man and woman, ex-couple from what I could glean) and then to a hooka (the pipe, people, the pipe) bar, which was possibly one of the coolest bars I've visited here (thanks, Mike). Once you walk into the bar, the walls which until that point are just your bogstandard, you know, plaster, paont thing, become rocks and lights blaze at you from randomly chosen spots. The music, instead of normal relaxed hooka joints, was techno/trance and the flavours of tabacco on offer, amazing. We spent a good couple of hours there soaking up the crazy ambiance and then decided to get our heads down for an hour or so. Which we did. In the bar. The barman was rather surprised, when he'd closed the doors at the end of the night, to see 5 sheepish heads pop up from behind a wall (our chosen sleeping spot was deviously picked due to the privacy of walls and the fact it was on a higher level than the rest of the place) and make their way into the early morning light. Bet he checks the place thoroughly every night now. Sucker.

Luckily, we got to Gangbyeon on time and, after purchasing some snacks, sat down for the long ride to Ganghwa, which, owing to it being half 5 in the am, wasn't very long, in all honesty. We got to the station about 7 and, as we were so tired, decided to get a taxi to take us to one of the beachy stretches of the island, Dongmak. During the taxi ride we were all pretty tired, pretty hungry and pretty stinky and there was a lot of miscommunication and jokes that sunk heavily to the floor of the car. In fact, I'm pretty sure that when we disembarked at our destination, the taxi was still weighed down and drove off, tail hitting the road. At first, we were worried that the place was a complete shithole and that we'd been dumped in the middle of nowhere with little way of getting back to the station, as the taxi driver informed us that taxis were infrequent heading through the town. Crap. We decided to take a seat on the beach for a while though, even though the weather wasn't looking too hot, and decide what to do. Luckily for us. Later on in the day, with the benefit of hindsight, we decided we'd been a bit rash in looking at a place, at 7.15am, and deciding it was crap. Isn't everywhere at 7am?! Stupid us. By 9, we'd chilled out and realised that the place was in fact pretty nice and that the sea, although having a massive receding tide pattern, was lovely, although swimming wasn't an option due to the mud flats. We found our nearest minbak and a quick shower later jumped on a bus to the nearest temple.

After a dinner of kimchi jigae, which we were all gagging for, we headed up towards a lovely temple, Jeondungsa, in the middle of the island. Jeondungsa used to house the Buddhist scriptures the Tripitaka Koreana, before they were moved to a different location. Although the temple no longer boast these scriptures, the place is still rather beautiful and we spent a nice hour there before heading to the docks to meet Tambo, Frank and Jon, (who were joining us late, as they were lame and got too drunk the night before to head out any earlier than late morning), and for a quick ferry ride to Seokmodo. Once on Seokmodo, Frank (the man, the legend), suggested we all hire bikes for a ride around, a suggestion that was received with joy by the whole team, especially Mike, our resident semi-pro bmx-er. The ride was brilliant and the views amazing, though the uphill journey found most of us stopping and walking up the road and at one point Frank breaking his bike, meaning he had to free-wheel back to the other side of the island to claim a fully functional ride. Whoops! We also spent a lot of time freewheeling, which was bloody exhilarating, especially when faced with beautiful views and a bit of opera, courtesy of a random house we went past. About half way round Seokmodo is Bomunsa, which is another excellent temple, with a Buddha rock carving at the top of a rather steep hill (a joy to climb) and 491 steps, where Korean women go to pray for sons. Again, we got to take in some amazing views and it was with a sad faces that we descended again. However, there was still half an island to cycle round and more amazing views to see and rice paddies to meander through. As per, I injured myself on the ride home and, although almost a month later, I still have the most beautiful scar to remind me that I should be careful when cycling on a crappy bike....




We finally returned the our charges, though over an hour late, and hopped back on the ferry, for some more seagull attacking (the gulls tend to hang around the back of the boat, waiting for food from tourists and generally looking pretty, but striking poo fear into the hearts of all) and then a quick taxi ride to Dongmak. Well, I say quick, it was pretty long and the taxi guy tried to charge us 20,000 for the ride, whilst trying to find out where he was going on his mobile and muttering that we were 'ke sakes' under his breath (ke sake translated loosely into 'dog baby'. Nice). Anyway, somehow the girls made it back before the boys, which means that we locked them out of our minbak (8 people sharing at tiny room? Made for nice smells in the morning) for a little while whilst we made ourselves purdy.

I decided that I was going to take a little walk for a while after my shower. The weekend of Ganghwa was a pretty strange one for me, as it was the 10th anniversary of mum's death. I was feeling pretty strange about the whole thing, as it's a heartbreaking time for anyone, I'd expect, and I was feeling rather sad, as you would. I chatted to Dad earlier on in the day, and had a bit of a cry, but I thought that it was time to spend a bit of time talking to her (or the memory of) by myself. Luckily, there couldn't have been a better place to have done it than where I was right then. Those of you who knew mum, would know that she was an avid traveller and always had hopes that I would follow in her shoes, and a massive reason for me getting off my bum and moving halfway across the world at this particular point in life was the 10 year mark. I'd always intended on travelling, but it felt like I kept putting it off, and this massive milestone and a chance meeting with a stranger really put me into motion. I think that, for all my faults and the rest of it, she would be truly proud that I'm here and doing what I'm doing, and may not have been too ashamed to call me her daughter afterall. Anyway, there was a massive heart to, whatever it is, while I watched the sunset over the ocean, and I came away feeling a lot better. I would also like to take this chance to thank all of my lovely friends for all that they did that weekend, you all made it truly special and picked me right up - I know that mother would have loved every last one of you, as much as I do. It really meant a lot, more than you could know. Yep, sometimes I'm gushy. It happens.


On return, we all headed off for samgyeopsal, which is like galbi, but with pork strips a bit like thick bacon. The meal was excellent, and much laughter was had and beer was consumed. After, we headed to the beach, (minus Christina, who was poorly), which is always a fun option whilst away for the weekend. Luckily the ajeemas (see, correct spelling...) were out in force and selling cheap fireworks once more, though we did have to travel across the road to purchase them. Lame. Many pile ons, firework fights (Ben's face and actions are still freaking me out...) and beers later, we'd had one of the best nights possible, in fact, still, a month later, one of the best nights I've had here, regardless of the anniversary.
The next morning, we attempted to climb Mani-san, the mountain mentioned earlier, however, after an hour of riding a bus and realising we'd missed the mountain by about 50 minutes, we sacked the idea off and decided to head to the Dolmen instead. Which were, by all accounts, a massive bloody letdown. The construction of Dolmen is pretty darn cool, seeing as they were being made thousands of years ago and the Dolmen that we visited had a stone weighing 50 tonnes perched on top of it. Constructed as tombs to dead greats, the vertical pillars of the Dolmen are covered to with earth and the huge top stone hauled up to rest on top of the vertical ones. The earth is then dug out and you are left with a massive monument, that looks like it would be impossible to build without the aid of a crane. Smart thinking, old dudes. These monuments did impress me, it's true, but the rest of the site was ridiculous - attempting to show Korean's what Stonehenge or the Easter Island statues looked like and failing epically. In fact, at one point, Mike noticed that the 'stone' used for the other constructions was in fact plastic and after that, all respect for the place was thrown out of the window and the boys crawled all over all the monuments checking to see if they were real or not and generally acting fools. Damn funny though. Frank even checked one of the Dolmen, which, happily, turned out to be real stone.

Considering we'd planned for Mani-san, we ended up with a couple of hours to kill, which meant, joyfully, that I could suggest a trip to spy on North Korea. Luckily Jon and Ben were as excited about this as me, with the others not really minding, so we jumped into a cab from the Dolmen site and got our camoflauge on! Ok, so there was no camoflauge, but we did have to go through a checkpoint and pass soldiers with guns, who looked pretty scary, 'til they smiled and waved. The area that we went to housed the Peace Observatory, which in turn housed telescopes, that we used to look across the mile of separation between North and South and peek into the lives of others, controlled by a regime that we could not imagine being under. It was strange and amazing and I was truly interested to see these people carrying out their daily tasks. No doubt that this 'village' was strictly montiored by the Northern leaders and did not show a true representation of what we would encounter if we were to step across to the other side, but it was very absorbing, so much so that I could have spent all day there. However, we couldn't so, after checking out the rest of the observatory, which would have been more informative had it had English information (I know, I'm the stupid Westerner that came here without being able to understand the language...I should do better) and playing in tanks, we headed back to the mainland for a curry and chat about another amazing adventure! Shame the curry was pretty shit. . .