Bongwhasan - A weekend in the Country

The noise and traffic are too much in Seoul. Last weekend we decided to escape them for a while. Heidi leafed through our neglected copy of the lonely planet and plumped for Chunchon. Chunchon, it said, was the hub of the Korean Lake District; it sounded ideal. Saturday morning we caught a couple of tubes to Cheonymangi train station, hurriedly bought the train tickets, and we were off.

The word 'ipssok' on our ticket, underneath the word for seating meant standing room only. We found ourselves crouching near the exit between two cars, as the train was full to bursting. The main problem with this position was the hole in the door. Had I lost my footing at any point, (especially over a precipitous bridge) I would have been killed. I was acutely aware of this for the whole 2-hour journey. We had brought the lonely planet with us so did some precarious research balanced over the hole. The town of Gangchon a stop or two before our final destination seemed to offer everything we were looking for so we got off there.

It was around 4pm when we arrived. 2000 students Heidi and myself alighted onto the graffiti strewn platform. We trudged out of the station carried along by the crowd. The town was already a disaster. Every 10 metres there were stalls renting out bikes, tandems and quads to students. Cars and motorbikes kept blocking our path (there were no pavements of course). On top of this we kept hearing hysterical female shrieks coming from the far end of town. Yes, a huge grotesque fairground just to remove any final hope we’d had of a peaceful weekend. Not being one to grumble I suggested we made the most of things and find somewhere to stay.

We checked into a ‘minbak’. I don’t know if this has any meaning other than hostel but even English speaking people seem insistent on calling it this. The receptionists were a group of middle-aged men and women. They were sprawled out on the floor watching a soap opera. We gestured ‘room’, ‘2 people’ and ‘thanks’, then handed over $30. The woman snorted, gave us the key and crawled back to the group. Simple.
The Koreans have a strange double standard, the hypocrisy of which is quite staggering to me. They are appalled if they see a westerner blowing their nose into a tissue. This taken alone seems fairly reasonable you may think; I don’t relish the sound myself. But Koreans are at liberty to spit, no hack, any substance that enters their mouth wherever they happen to be standing. I’ve seen people do it in the - otherwise pristine - subway in Seoul; they do it in the street, in the bathroom, on my foot, wherever they like. I heard an old women do it the other day, she rattled and hacked for a good ten seconds before releasing a volley of gelatinous unguents onto the pavement before me. Forgive me if I sound a little snobbish here but that is wrong.

I bring this topic up with a slight sense of shame as whilst we were looking for a snack in Gangchon, I coughed unexpectedly, and my mouth filled with the exact same substance. We had just been asking for prices at what we had assumed was a restaurant, and were now walking away, as we hadn’t understood a word the proprietress had said to us. Under normal circumstances there would have been no issue, I would have swallowed and been done with it. I realized that with a little hack I could free a lot more up and be cleansed of the stuff for good. After a split second of culturally relativist rationalization I hacked then spat the lot onto the pavement right in front of the proprietress and her startled 5-year-old daughter. Heidi was aghast, the Koreans were horrified, and after about a nanosecond of re–rationalization I was deeply ashamed. I became petrified by the embarrassment barely able to tear myself from the spot. I maneuvered one foot slowly around the other, did a 90-degree turn, regained composure and quickly headed in a different direction, Heidi shouting abuse after me.

Of course I was quickly forgiven and we started thinking about our stomachs again. We settled on ramen (or pot noodles as I used to call them). There is a plentiful selection of instant noodles at most convenience stores here. The store we ended up at had a supply of boiling water and picnic tables for the customers use. We bought two spicy pot noodles, some water and a box of ‘fancy cakes’. We poured the boiling water onto them and sat down. The lady that ran the stall offered to put our soups in the microwave, presumably to help soften the noodles a little faster. We thanked her, and she promptly turned them into molten lava.

We have become pretty adept with chopsticks since arriving here, especially with the wooden ones, so as the noodles started to cool off a little we confidently started scooping and slurping away. I have no idea exactly how it happened but at some point my slurps turned into snorts and some of the contents of my chopsticks went straight up my nose. I then had the privilege of experiencing a completely new kind of pain; whatever had gone up my nose burned my sinuses with agonizing intensity. Heidi thought it was hilarious. Served me right for my earlier stunt I suppose. The pain ebbed slowly away but stayed with me throughout the meal, both my eyes were watering and I was having difficulty seeing clearly. At the end of the meal we got out the fancy cakes.

Korean packaging designers have a lot to answer for. There is a battle every time you wish to eat something here. Cakes and Biscuits are individually wrapped in an impenetrable cocoon of foil or plastic. Often, you have to sacrifice the very thing you are trying to get at in order to get at it. There is a brand of biscuits filled with strawberry gloop to which I’m particularly partial. In order to get one of these out of its shell you literally have to tear it in half. If you’re lucky you’ll get the 2 halves, if not you have to scoop the remains from surrounding surfaces and friends and clumsily funnel them into your mouth. The fancy cake package was no exception and we had to go through the usual ritual before getting at the treats. This package had an extra surprise in store for us though. When we’d finished I aimed the box in the general direction of Heidi’s purse to store the remaining cakes. The cakes tumbled into her purse, and onto her lap, shortly followed by a battalion of dead insects. As you can imagine I laughed like crazy.

Remember I mentioned the tandems a little earlier? Well we had seen a lot of students cycling past whilst we had been eating and I fancied a go. The woman that sold us the pot noodles also rented out bikes. I couldn’t help noticing though, that her tandems were pretty shoddy. There was a stall next door that had a selection of tandems that appeared much newer, so, after eating, I tried to edge us in that direction as subtly as possible. Like a hawk she saw what I was doing and ran over; ‘you need bike?’ I immediately resigned myself to our fate. As she’d been so kind as to make our soups lethal I felt duty bound to accept a potentially lethal tandem off her too. My estimation of this kindly woman was plummeting.

We gave her $4 and hit the road. We wheeled the tandem to the bike track and got on. Heidi first refused to be the passenger then after a quick rethink refused to be the driver. I positioned myself on the front seat, my lower back wedged against Heidi’s handlebars. I started to peddle; my knees smacked straight into the front handlebars and my feet were knocked off the pedals. As I tried to regain control we veered dangerously close to a bunch of rollerbladers. I managed to pull us away from them but kept swerving from left to right. The tires were almost flat and I couldn’t steer the thing. After 30 seconds of this I stopped abruptly in a ditch, cursing the bitch that rented it to us.

It was Heidi’s view that our erratic trajectory had been my fault; as evidence she pointed out the other people who were having no problems. I offered her the driver’s seat for a second time. She refused it again. I wasn’t going to have another go so our only option was to take it back. I’d imagined throwing it through the window on our return but rather predictably we just said thanks and left it there for the next poor sucker.

I was in a pretty bad mood by this point, my nose was still hurting from the noodle incident and the students were driving me crazy. I suggested we try to escape the noise by going for a walk. We headed toward the river. Our walk was far from idyllic; we found ourselves on the quad course and kept being forced into ditches by passing riders. There were no provisions for pedestrians in the town; you could drive, cycle or quad but you couldn’t walk anywhere - marvelous. I started to sneeze. Three or four sneezes later a little ring of chili shot out of my nose and landed in my hand. Jesus what a relief! I was so pleased I showed the contents of my hand to Heidi; she screamed, made some retching sounds then started swearing at me.

We walked back from the quad track across the town and up a hill that lay between two shabby residences. We thought it inconceivable that the students would go up there, and, thankfully, we were right. We walked up for 10 minutes and found a Buddhist temple nestling on the hillside as peaceful as could be. Well, we could still hear the distant rumble of cars and quads and the muted shrieking of pleasure seekers but it was a vast improvement. We felt happy at last and spent an hour sat in the temple’s garden unwinding.

Later we returned to the scene of my earlier crime, the restaurant I’d christened with snot. I had a little look for it as we walked up the path but couldn’t see it anywhere. Luckily, the woman from before was nowhere to be seen. The place was warm, rustic and empty. There was one other couple and no students so we nodded to the man in charge and were shown up a very narrow staircase to a seating area close to the roof. We took off our shoes, crouched towards a table and sat on the floor. He gave us menus and left us. I wasn’t bothered what we were given as long as it wasn’t more noodles or octopus. Woody Allen expressed my view on the issue of eating octopus when he stated ‘I don’t eat monsters’. I asked Heidi to spy what the couple at the next table were eating as it smelled really good. She had a better vantage point from where she was sitting so took a quick glance at their table. She said it looked good so when the waiter returned we asked (well pointed) for the same.

Ten minutes later he returned with octopus stew and noodles. I’m not making this up. I could have killed Heidi. I tried to calm myself a little and asked her what exactly she had seen when she looked at the other couple’s plate. She sensed something accusatory in the tone of my voice and protested that it was dark and she hadn’t wanted to appear rude. She hadn’t even looked in other words. I was deeply disappointed, so, being a man, I bitched and moaned until she felt awful. Feeling her remorse enabled me to grow up a little and do something constructive. I decided to go and ask for some rice. The monster stew had cost a princely $20, and I was determined to get some nourishment from it. I spent a good five minutes constructing a pile of suckers and tendrils on Heidi’s side of the plate; then set to work on the vegetables and sauce. They were delicious and I was soon smiling again. Heidi worked her way through the octopus’ dismembered legs, some of which had suckers the size of pennies on them. It never ceases to freak me out watching that.

A couple of weeks ago we were in the student canteen at work. I’d woken up in a very sensitive mood that morning; I was feeling a little homesick. Sometimes being the only white guy around can make you feel a little conspicuous, that was one of those times. I felt so far removed from everything I’d ever known that tears could’ve started welling. I looked up at Heidi for a little solace; she had two fat octopus legs sticking out of her mouth. I went dizzy. I felt like a child again, surrounded by things I had no conception of; I wanted my mum to come and rescue me from it all. I swallowed hard and stared at my plate…. I got over it.

After we had licked the plate clean in the restaurant we decided to go for a drink. We were after somewhere quiet and rustic again. We walked from one end of the town to the other without success. I decided to see if a side street would offer anything better. Unfortunately there was a gaggle of hags congregated around the entrance of the street. They were selling food and drinks from makeshift stalls to the students. Spotting us, they saw dollar signs and started gesturing for us to come over. I ran up the street to escape them. Knowing the street I’d chosen was a dead end they formed a line at the bottom and awaited my return. When I came back down again one of them asked what I wanted; I said Soju (a Korean alcoholic drink) not expecting her to have it. Of course she had it and gestured towards her stall. I wasn’t going to be hoodwinked again so I pushed past her and walked away as fast as fast as I could, Heidi dragging behind.

We finally found a place and looked at the menu. We had both heard of Soju but hadn’t tried it yet. Heidi doesn’t like beer much so we ordered 2 Sojus, I ordered a beer too as that was what I had originally wanted. The woman taking the order looked concerned, she asked us a question. Not understanding a word she said we repeated our order. She asked us something again, we gave our order again and so on for a little while. We then assumed she must have been trying to sell us food, so we rubbed our bellies indicating that we were full. She still wasn’t entirely happy but went to get our order all the same.

Wearing a look of concern, a male waiter came over and asked us if we wanted sausages. Everywhere we go we are offered these horrible artificial sausages; the Koreans seem convinced that this is what westerners eat. We were starting to get a little exasperated and indicated as clearly as we could that we were full and didn’t want any of his nasty little snausages (as Heidi calls them). When our drinks finally came we understood what all the fuss had been about. We had ordered a bottle of Soju each; like going to a bar and ordering two bottles of whiskey (you don’t see many young couples doing that). There efforts to get us to eat had been out of concern for our health; not concern for their pockets as we’d suspected. We both felt very guilty.

I drank the beer then started on the Soju. It soon became apparent that this was an insidious sort of drink. After two small shot sized glasses Heidi’s face morphed a little; her personality and physical appearance were becoming disparate. I quickly put the glass down and didn’t touch another drop. Heidi wouldn’t stop drinking. She downed her fourth glass with a demonic glint in her eye and wasn’t for stopping there. She started eyeing my untouched third glass with evil intent. I suggested to her it was time to go and went to pay. I told her not to touch any more whilst I was gone. She came and met me at the door with a guilty grin on her face. She had downed the remaining glass and was arseholed. I then had to use all my cunning to coax her back to the minbak and get her safely into bed. ‘Oscar and Lucinda’ was on the TV so I watched that whilst Heidi wriggled to and fro chattering to herself deliriously in bed. It was a pretty good movie.

Next morning, bright and early, I felt fantastic; Heidi felt terrible. I should probably point out that this is the only time ever that I have been the sensible one. It was time to hike, and her self-inflicted agony wasn’t going to stop me. I told her she’d be fine after a little breakfast so we headed out. I was imagining toast and jam, Heidi was thinking more along the lines of bagels, reality was howling the words fish head soup at us. We resigned ourselves to fate once more and picked the cleanest looking eatery we could see.

We noticed that they had bread in the fridge, so, optimistically, asked if we could have toast (yes, we can say that in Korean!). The man looked confused and told us they had no toast. We then decided to order the soup the people at the next table were eating. The man informed us, by waving his hand in front of his mouth, that it was very spicy. This obviously wasn’t a problem to us as we are both used to spicy food so gestured that we wanted it anyway. This happens everywhere you go in Korea and it really irritates me. It wouldn’t be so bad if the food was really spicy. I’d love to take a bunch of Koreans out for a curry in Manchester and watch as their faces turned purple. I’d also love to know who gave the Koreans the idea that westerners don’t eat spicy food. Most foreign visitors here are American and I’ve always been under the impression that Americans love spicy food.

The man ignored what we had said and brought a different meal entirely. He had prepared a horrible snausage and dishwater soup, lacking any spice or flavor. He also brought a black fried egg with a blob of ketchup it’s equal in size, and a pile of raw cabbage with mayonnaise and ketchup squirted on top. We gestured frantically to what the others were eating, looking in horror at the concoction he had created for us. But what could we do? He had clearly gone to a lot of effort for us and now we were furious. He was confused and hurt by our reaction and we were starting to feel guilty again.

When we had pointed to the other table he had thought we wanted some of their Korean side dishes so brought them over to us. We greedily ate these few morsels, pushing the ‘western food’ aside. We decided to order coffee as it would go with some chocolate we had in a bag. We called over a different guy and asked for coffee. The Korean for which is pretty simple – ‘kopee’. Of course, it wasn’t going to be as easy as that. We said ‘kopee’ and held up two fingers to indicate that we wanted two. The guy said something that sounded like ‘chigum’. We repeated the order. He repeated his word ‘chigum’ again and so on for a couple more minutes. The last time he said ‘chigum’ we shook our heads and shrugged our shoulders to indicate we hadn’t a clue what he was saying. He walked off and never returned.

Heidi went outside to a vending machine, bought a couple of kopees and brought them back inside. We figured out later that ‘chigum’ means ‘now’. The guy wanted to know if we wanted our coffee now; when we shook our heads at the end he must have thought we wanted them later. I think he thought we were still planning on eating all the food his mate had made us. I really wish people would just do what we ask without constantly assuming things on our behalf. I think the secret is to appear confident from the outset, to avoid future breakfast disasters we definitely won’t ask for toast first.

The next hour was a blur as we dodged cars, quads, bikes and tandems in an effort to reach the entrance to the national park and Bongwhasan, the mountain we were to climb. Apart from having sore feet, a recurring problem with Heidi, she was fully recovered and raring to go. Speaking of Heidi, I just asked her to read what I’ve written, and she complained that I have represented her in a rather poor light. She wants it made clear that she was an active agent in all the decision processes and actions that took place over the weekend and that she doesn’t shout at me as often as I make out. She is also a little put out about the octopus thing, oh, and the bit when she was really drunk. So -for the record- Heidi is more than just a passive, comedy-straight-nag device, and she is not giving me the silent treatment for depicting her as such.

Bongwhasan was great. We discovered that the Korean students and day-trippers were all taking an entrance to the right of the national park; there was a big queue just to get in. We opted for the one on the left; there was no one there. The guy pointed us back to the other entrance, but, undeterred, we said ‘Bongwhasan’ and made mountain shapes with our arms. He nodded and let us through; the other tourists were just picnicking in the valley, whilst we wanted the path for real hikers. The relief we both felt from finally escaping was palpable. The path we took was beautiful; it gently wound it’s way up and up, further and further away from the madness. The leaves had started to change colour, and the air was sweet and fresh. It took us less than an hour to reach the peak, the final 15 minutes were exhausting but exhilarating. We collapsed on the peak, steam rising from our bodies. We felt rejuvenated and happy to be alive. Had it been worth all we had been through? We thought so.