One Last Korean Road Trip

As much as I loved living in Hong Kong (and you know I really, really loved living in Hong Kong), it did have it's limitations. Hong Kong's compactness is part of it's charm - it is a ridiculously convenient place to live - but it also means road trips aren't really on the holiday agenda. One of the joys of moving to South Korea was the road trip possibilities it opened up. Looking back I think all of our most fun times, our hilarious-in-hindsight disaster stories, come from the roads of Korea.

(If you're an expat in Seoul and you're maybe a bit nervous about tackling a road trip I say - go for it! The road system in Korea is amazing. Most of it's shiny and new, with tunnels and highways and smooth tarmac, and the scenery is always intriguing and often breathtaking. And yes, sometimes the signage is a little haphazard, but if you've got an atlas and a GPS (or Google Maps on your phone) you'll be fine. Besides, getting lost is part of the fun right?)

Anyway...last week it was the youngest step-son's thirteenth birthday, and he was in Seoul. One of the sad things about living overseas is all the birthdays you miss, so we wanted to make this one a bit special. We went to Everland, and did the special safari thing again (I wrote about the first one we did here) - basically 15 minutes in a heavily grilled 4WD with a guide and a bucket of raw chicken to feed to the animals. There were no giraffes this time, but there were lions and bear cubs - not a bad trade really. And the animal areas seem to have been enlarged and upgraded a little, so you can focus more on how awesome the experience is and fret a little less about animal welfare. 

Driving around feeding man-eaters while the guide reminds you every few minutes not to poke your fingers through the grill is one of those crazy things that perfectly straddles the line between dangerous and okay. You'd never be allowed to do this in Australia. Equally, there's probably a bunch of countries where you wouldn't want to do it even if you were allowed, for fear of actual injury. But in South Korea? No worries! 

After feeding the lions and tigers and bears, we beat a hasty retreat to our own air conditioned vehicle (it is so hot in Seoul right now...) and headed over to Vivaldi Park for a night. Vivaldi Park is a ski resort, but like most ski resorts in Korea it has all kinds of extra things to attract visitors throughout the year. It's set amongst lush green hills and has one of the best water parks in the country.

We happened to be there right at peak summer holiday time, so we headed to the water park early. But apparently not early enough - by 9.30 in the morning there was already a three hour wait for most rides! Yikes. So, no rides for us but we did have a paddle in the crazy wave pool with a few hundred Koreans. Coming from the relatively empty Australia I'm always amazed and fascinated by the sheer mass of humanity we've so often stumbled upon in Asia. It was kind of the perfect final road trip really.

Seoul Walking : Getting Crafty in Dongdaemun

Dongdaemun Fabric Market has been on my list of Seoul 'to dos' since the day we moved here three and a half years ago, but it took a visit from a dear friend at the beginning of the year to actually get me there (isn't it so often the way)? I've been back several times since, and it's one of the places I'm really hoping to make it to one last time before we leave. 

Dongdaemun is a big sprawling market with areas dedicated to the sale of different things - lots of cheap clothing and footwear, and a slightly disturbing section for pets and pet supplies (if you find yourself stuck in Seoul looking for a pet iguana, this is the place to come). Amongst the knock off sneakers, fish tanks and two dollar sweaters is the Fabric Market - if you have the slightest hint of a crafting bone in your body, this is the place to visit. 

Don't be fooled by the name, it's more than fabric you'll find here. Hundreds of tiny stalls are crammed in to two buildings, spread across six floors - it is beyond overwhelming (and often stiflingly warm, even in winter). There's beautiful embroidered silk, fluorescent lace, printed denim, corduroy, cotton and lace; there's spots and stripes and checks. There's beads and buttons, feathers and sequins, and all manner of embellishments and trims. There's embroidery hoops and knitting needles and teeny, tiny little pom poms. Oh, and then there's the ribbon! So much beautiful ribbon! 

The market is largely aimed at wholesalers. Each of the fabric stalls have little samples set out, which you can take for free (provided you treat the system with respect), but they'll also sell it to you by the yard. Most of the ribbon stalls will sell you some 'samples' for about a dollar a yard (which is insanely cheap, especially considering the quality on offer). The top floor is targeted more at your everyday crafter, with things for sale in standard quantities for standard pricing (standard for Asia, that is!). Jade beads and wooden beads and fabric patches and fat quarters and all kinds of rope and bias binding in every shade and hair clips and tiny teddy bears and little bows and pink plastic hedgehogs and oh my! You can pretty much find anything and everything you crafting heart desires! 

Buddha's Birthday : Jogyesa

Jogyesa (조게사) is the largest Buddhist temple in Seoul, so come Buddha's Birthday and the Lotus Lantern Festival it's a hive of colour and activity. I didn't manage to get to the temple at night, to capture all the lanterns lit up, but I did manage to be at the temple just when everyone was prepping for the big lantern parade. (If it sounds like this was planned, it wasn't at all - I just blindly, happily stumbled upon it.) 

So as well as all that gorgeous colour from the lanterns, there was also a wonderful atmosphere of muted excitement and barely organised chaos - a bit like being back stage just before the curtain goes up. 

At the entrance were queues of Korean ladies in beautiful hanboks waiting to be given their lanterns (and then later, wrestling with them as they seemed determined not to stay on their hooks). Then, just next to the temple, people with hangul lanterns in all different colours and a man with a megaphone trying to get them into some kind of order. And further on, under the white lanterns, groups of school kids in traditional dress and a monk or three getting them in a row. And a man on a cherry picker, who slowly moved up and down, placing wishes on the lanterns hanging overhead. And amongst it all people saying their blessings, going about their rituals.

Buddha's Birthday : Cheonggye Stream

Yesterday was the Buddha's Birthday holiday in Seoul, which means a three day weekend and hours of traffic for anyone crazy enough to try and leave the city. It also means that for the past few weeks parts of Seoul have been festooned with lanterns. 

The lanterns are quite simple really, nothing fancy, but en masse and in such gorgeously bright colours they have quite a magical effect. It helps that - whilst the date varies year to year - the Buddha's Birthday generally coincides with the mass of fresh green growth and colourful blooms that mark Spring in Seoul. 

Cheonggye Stream looks especially wonderful at this time of year. The stream is such a vibrant public space in all seasons, but now that the weather is warming up it's even more so. Crowds of people stroll along in the sunshine, jostling for prime photography positions (it was getting pretty dangerous on the stepping stones at one point!); office workers take a coffee break in the shade of the many bridges; kids throw off their shoes and dip their feet in the cool water as little silvery fish swim by. All in the heart of the city! File this under 'things I will miss about Korea'.

New listings + Discount (yay!) + North Korea (boo!)

I've finally found some time to list a few new goodies in the Jorpins Handmade shop - pom pom gift tags (these are so happy and bright) and the lovely sakura mini cards (featuring Japanese fabric sakura against a textured paper background). 

And in celebration of the new additions (and in a nod to current world events) I'm offering a 15% discount on the entire shop - just use the code  SEAOFFIRE at checkout. If shipping is disrupted by resumption of the Korean War I'll let you know. 

But seriously...I am a bit over all the hyped-up reporting on Korea right now. Everyday I see headlines shouting about Korea being on the 'brink of nuclear war', when often the article that follows is actually quite a measured, balanced assessment. It's unsettling for me, and it's especially unsettling for my family back in Australia. 

Seoul is very calm right now (apparently so is Pyongyang). But yes, people are concerned. They may have been through this all before but this time there's a few differences which are a little unnerving. But - people are going about their daily lives, and the vast majority of South Koreans don't believe a war is likely. 

I think Andrei Lankov nailed it in this op-ed when he says 'the farther one is from the Korean Peninsula, the more one will find people worried about the recent developments here'. That's not to say there isn't a risk that it's all going to go pear shaped, and that I'm perfectly relaxed about the whole thing. I'm not, but I still believe that an attack by North Korea is incredibly unlikely (all of their war rhetoric thus far is prefaced by 'if you attack us...then we will turn Seoul into a sea of fire etc'). And  anyway, this article reassuringly suggests that if they do attack statistically there'll only be about 200 non-Chinese foreigner casualties. (No mention of dachshund casualties though.) 

I could go on and on - I've been reading a LOT of news and opinion lately - but I won't bore you anymore than I already have. Right now we're all waiting for North Korea's 'imminent' missile test. I'm not sure what that's going to bring, but for now things are good. Well, aside from the Spring sleet/snow, that totally sucks!

So...back to the Etsy pretties!

Seoraksan : From Winter to Spring in Three Days

A few weeks ago a rather dear friend came to visit. This is a friend I've known for 30 odd years; we grew up in the same street and went to the same schools. The kind of friend who happily reminds you of the time you showed off your lyric-remembering-skills by reciting that bit from Madonna's Vogue. The kind of friend where you find yourself frequently saying 'oh gawd, do you remember when we were 12 years old and had matching 'Smoking NO WAY' t-shirts?'. The kind of friend that you know you'll know until you are both very, very old. It was pretty great having her in town. 

As part of her visit we went to my favourite-place-in-Korea-to-take-people-to (aka Seoraksan National Park) and it was as breathtakingly beautiful as ever (and now even has a rather hip coffee shop, with actual good coffee! It's housed in a newly built hanok and seems to be run by the local monks. Pretty great.). 

We stayed at the Seoraksan Tourist Hotel which is right inside the national park. Great for natural beauty, not so great for eating options, but I'd definitely recommend it for a night or two. It meant we could stroll through the park in the dark of night. Which was actually rather spooky, especially after I came face-to-face with (okay, several many metres away from) some kind of giant wart hog creature. 

We stayed for two nights and we did three walks - the easy stroll at the top of the gondola, a moderate stroll to the Yukdam and Biryeong waterfalls, and the rather more strenuous hike to Ulsanbawi, a 833 metre high granite crag. The Ulsanbawi walk starts of as a rocky tree lined path, weaving along streams and temples, and ends as a succession of crazy steep metal stair cases bolted to the side of the rock. Quite the work out, but worth it for the amazing, truly vertigo inducing views (you can see all the way to Sokcho on the eastern coast). Because it was mid-week the only other hikers where the fully kitted out Korean retirees - so friendly! And so fit; there's nothing quite like being over taken by a grey haired 60 year old to give you the motivation to get up that last set of stairs...

The day before we arrived there'd been a snow storm, so the ground was thick with (rapidly melting) white stuff. By the last day there was a warm spring breeze blowing, hardly any snow on the ground and green buds all around us. From Winter to Spring in three days!

Death by...Doxie?

Okay, so this is clearly not a dachshund. But it is a ridiculously cute Korean chipmunk. Seriously - look at how ridiculously cute he is! And in honour of his cuteness he is getting his own death by doxie chipmunk post, okay? 

My friend and I spent three days in Seoraksan last week and we spied loads of these adorable stripey little guys. Most of them were moving too fast to be captured on camera, but on our last day and the end of our last walk we met this cutie. Depending on how legal/lethal it is to feed wildlife in a national park, we may (or may not) have lured him closer with a nut. I know, I know, hanging head in shame... 

ps. If you are desperate for a dose of doxie click on over here. You will find a capybara looking after a whole litter of dachshund pups. Which is possibly the greatest thing ever. (With many thanks to Ngaire for alerting me to this piece of awesome.)