Kangwha-do, Seokmo-do, Christmas and Awe

I’m dropping two posts rapid-fire again.  Make sure you’ve already checked out the last one here.

Okey dokey.

First off, it goes without saying that I’ve missed everyone from home, especially over the last three weeks.  I think of you all often, and each time you say “nothing’s changed here,” you’re being more boring than necessary.  Things always change, just small things.  Also, I’m not trying to get into a change competition with anyone.  Yes, I’d win, but that’s not the point.  What you call “not very exciting news,” I call “home.”  It’s nice to hear about things that are essentially the same.  Same = home.  Different = not home.

Now for something completely different:

Kangwha-do, Seokmo-do, Christmas and Awe:

“Do” (pronounced ‘doe’) is Korean for “island.”  For Christmas, I went island-hopping.

It all began about a month ago.  Several teachers in Seoul realized that many of us only had a few days between school ending (12/23 or 12/24) and winter session classes beginning (12/28-12/30).  This was our Christmas window.  Simon, my New Zealander buddy, suggested we get out of Seoul for a few days.

After a coffee and a glance through the Lonely Planet: Korea, it was decided.  Destination: Kangwhado.  It’s big.  It’s close.  It’s anti-urban.  Sounds perfect.

We set up to leave on the 23rd, but Simon had school on the 24th sprung on him.  Damn.  Our third amigo bailed because he refused to brave the roads on xmas eve.  A coworker had told him horror stories of 2-hour trips becoming 8-hour trips due to traffic.

The Kiwi and I were not to be deterred!  We filled up on street food beforehand, and I’d packed water and snack foods of all kinds.  Bring on the traffic!  The plan was also to get beer, but we wanted it cold, so we waited to get it at the bus depot.  We had to run to catch the bus, though, so no beer.  Oh well.  We left the Sinchon bus terminal at around 6:30pm on Christmas Eve.

It was slow-going as we neared the outskirts of Seoul, but the bailer had failed to take one thing into account when he wuss’d out: we were heading northwest.  On Christmas Eve (especially when Christmas is backed up by a weekend), Seoul’s highways are packed as people go to visit family across the whole country.  Pretty much all of that “whole country” lies South and East of Seoul.  As you can see on the map, northwest of Seoul lies the Seoul suburbs, the islands we were visiting and North Korea.  Traffic accounted for 30 minutes of our 2-hour trip.  Not too shabby.

I should play with maps more often

We got to Kangwha-eum (eum means “town”) at 8:30pm on Christmas Eve (there are two bridges to the island, so the bus got us all the way there).  We asked a cabbie to take us to a minbak (somewhere that rents out the rooms of a house; usually cheaper than a hotel/motel).  The cabbie said there were no minbaks in the main town.  Did we want to go out of the town?  Hmm…  We paid the $25/each for a motel room (no 2-bed rooms).  On the way out, we bumped into a young couple who I think were renting by the hour (did I mention that most mid-20′s Koreans live with their parents?).

It was well below freezing.  Simon and I shivered our way down to the town’s main street, where we found a couple bars, had a couple beers, met some ajoshis (middle-aged men), and hung out with some kids in their mid-20′s.  While English-speaking ability is notably worse outside of Seoul, the locals were very outgoing and generally very friendly.  We also got to practice our Korean a bit.  The ajoshis spent minutes phrasing the standard questions in English (where you from?  What’s your job?  Where are you living now?).  Simon and I are used to these, so as soon as they got the questions across, we shot the answers right back in Korean.  They laughed as they realized that their English wasn’t all that necessary, and were somewhat impressed.

We saw a candle-lit procession of church-goers roaming around before going to their midnight services.  Also, I was wearing a Santa hat the whole time, which was generally a hit.

On Christmas day, we slept in a little.  We’d had some soju with the younguns, so we took the morning slowly.  We checked out and then set out in search of food.   All the restaurants were closed.  After checking down all the main streets in our chunk of town, the only one we’d found was cheap and unappetizing.  We ranged further, but soon gave up and headed back to the cheapo restaurant.  On the way, Simon spotted some people sitting above a butcher’s shop.  Sure enough, there was an adjoining restaurant up there.  For Christmas brunch, we had by far the best sam gyeop sal I have ever tasted.  Being situated above a rural butcher shop, it was almost certainly the freshest I’d ever had, and it was also the cheapest.  Christmas ’09: so far, so good!

Our next stop was just up the street: a restored palace from the Goryeo era.  Here are a few pictures:

Oops!  That’s not a Goryeo-era palace!  What is it, you ask?  Check out the roof in the fourth picture again.  Look closely.

I’m not kidding, go look at that fourth picture again.

No way…

You gotta be kidding me...

I thought it was a safe bet that I would never confuse a restored Korean palace with an Anglican church.  I guess I was wrong on that one.  Well, high-five and happy-birthday, Jesus!  On to the palace!

We asked a local if he knew where the palace was.  Turns out he wasn’t a local, but he called information for us and then pointed us toward the real palace.  We learned that the French had briefly invaded the island and stolen a bunch of documents and artifacts (which they still have… punks).  The re-built palace was a little run-down–probably lacking funding, but somebody got creative with the landscaping.

The guy at the info booth gave us a tourist map that covered Kangwhado and the smaller islands to the West.  We asked him about minbaks and he circled all the villages that would have some.  We grabbed a cab across the island to a fishing village called Eopori (sound-wise, eo=’aw,’ o=’oh’ and i=’ee’).  We were eager to drop off our bags somewhere.  We asked the cabbie to take us to a minbak.  He dropped us off at something that looked like a hotel.  We asked a local shopkeeper.  She directed us to a “Pension,” which was basically quadraplex’d beach-houses.  Hmm.  The owner cut us a ‘special deal:’ $65 for a single room with sleeping mats and no bed.  Hmmm.  At this point, it seemed like minbaks were an extinct species of tourist housing, and we were running out of Christmas Daylight.  Screw it.  We’ll take the room.

Unburdened, we decided to check out one site before dark.  There were several buddhist temples built up in the hills.  Sounds like a winner.  Simon wanted to hop the ferry to Seokmodo (smaller island) and check out the temple there.  I was a little skeptical, but willing.  I’ve developed the habit of letting Simon decide where/what to do, as he spent six months of his life backpacking through India and Southeast Asia; the man’s got traveler instincts.

The guy at the ferry ticket office made sure we understood: the last ferry back left dock at 7:30pm.  It was about 4:30 then.  No problem.

The seagulls have discovered that ferrygoers will throw food to them.  The rear deck of the ferry had an almost constant wind blowing, allowing the gulls to hover stationary just off the railing.  I actually snapped some video of a seagull gliding in seeming-slow-mo to grab a Koreacheeto out of a man’s hand.  Way fun.

The background is Seokmo-do. The picture is taken from Kangwha-do. They're very close.

The ferry ride was only 15 minutes.  Kangwhado and Seokmodo are very, very close to each other.

Kangwhado had one decent-ish sized town and several small villages.  The capitol of Seokmodo is a cluster of 20 buildings.  Awesome.  Take us to your temple!

Hmm…  Transportation might be a problem.  No cabs waiting dockside, so we started walking.  That was a dumb idea.  We got a couple hundred yards into rice-paddy territory when we decided to turn back; anything with wheels and a friendly disposition would be located near the ferry dock.

We found the bus stop.  A bus leaves to do a circuit of the island’s one road every hour.  While waiting for the bus, we threw words of Korean back and forth and tried to make sense of all the signs we saw.  One of them jumped out rather obviously: “Minbak-$17 (yes, I’m converting everything into $ for you).”  Damnit.  Now that the Pension ajoshis had our $65 in-hand, we find our minbak!  We boarded the bus and waited for it to depart.  As it pulled out, we saw a sign on another building: “minbak!”  Two buildings later: “minbak!”  As we left town, the lighted signs faded away, and were replaced by pieces of plywood on which were painted: “minbak!”

Minbak after minbak after minbak on top of minbak!  Dubai got lots of press for their World Map, but I think the Koreans deserve a nod; they have an island which is constructed entirely of minbaks!

We went about 60% of the way around the island in 30 minutes, passing a great many minbaks and never going more than 35 mph.  The bus dropped us off at another collection of 20 buildings, which the Lonely Planet said was the base of the temple hill.  In a victory over the Korean Language, we asked the bus driver when the next bus would come through, all without using a single hand-gesture! (onjay bossuh dashee awdsay-yo?).  He said 6:00.  It was 5:30.  Not much time.  It was snowing.  Also very cold.  Okay, we’d just run up and take a glance at the place.  We bought some fried food from a street vendor. She also gave us cups of hot broth and a warm holiday smile. She liked my santa hat.

Simon and I had commented several times throughout the day that it really didn’t seem like Christmas.  To be sure, we were having a great time.  But it wasn’t very Christmas-ish. Not until we started climbing that hill. It was dark now.  Our fingers started to numb through our gloves.  We ate more hot food as we walked. The road wound uphill through a thin and ghostly forest. The snow picked up as we climbed. Gorgeous winter is gorgeous winter no matter where in the world you are, and to us, gorgeous winter meant Christmas.

Then we saw the first building of the temple compound above us.  “Jesus Christ,” I said.  Simon responded with: “We can miss the bus.”

I've artificially brightened this a little bit, but it gives an idea of the majesty, the bare trees, the stone and the ambient light.

Bear in mind, this temple is in the middle of the middle of nowhere.  I was expecting wood-beam architecture on dirt and a small shrine.  I was wrong.

The buddhist compound was on a leveled platform.  There were five or six buildings, all ornate and gorgeous with sprawling stone foundations spaced around a broad paved plaza.  First we ducked off to the side to see a huge amphitheater full of statues of disciples, where we snapped off these:

Horrible picture, awesome statues.

Rows and rows and rows and rows and rows and rows.

I took off my Santa hat and we entered the plaza.  It was dark and snowing, but light from within the buildings diffused across the whole compound, making an artificial and stilling twilight.  It was incredible.  As I said, stilling. I’ve only felt so emotionally still in a couple other places: the first time I entered a cathedral and the first time I stood in the crematorium of a concentration camp.  Both of those experiences were assaulting in their own way. This one was quieter, calming, but just as still.

We haven’t gotten to “Awe” yet.

This next part will be difficult.  The day after all of this, I asked Simon: “how am I supposed to communicate last night in a blog?”

He shrugged and said: “You can’t.”

Well, I’m a poet.  I don’t like hearing about what can’t be done with words.

At the back of the plaza is a stairway leading up into night. It’s white stone with blocky posts and lanterns at the landings.  It’s all chiseled angles, purposeful: it goes somewhere.

As far as can be seen from the bottom, the stairway heads straight up the mountain.  Eighty steps up, it hits a landing and turns.  From there it winds gently up the steep mountainside, sometimes turning every twenty feet, sometimes running as a sloped path for hundreds.  Snow drifts gently down.  At once you are walking through a dark and grasping forest, climbing a bright path and looking out from the side of a mountain.

cut stone blocks, fingered branches, rolling treetops, silhouettes of a shoreline miles away, snowflakes kissing all of it.  And it’s all still.  The only thing moving is you.

You are alone. Your nose and fingertips are numb.  Breezes sting your face, but you don’t care.  Your eyes can’t stop moving as you climb.  You can never see far ahead, but behind is all laid out, stretching to the sea.

You hear chanting from far away.

It grows louder.

The trees give way.  The stairs continue, then bend back.  There’s a stone platform that hugs the cliff face directly above you.  All you can see is a short wall and stone railing.  Light showers out from atop the platform. The chanting rolls down to you. As you climb again, drums sound, great and hollow and reaching up to you from the temple plaza hundreds of feet below.

You step quietly. You are an intruder on something holy. Something holy in a place of magic, a place that even in silence could still your thoughts and lull your dreams to a contented sleep.

There are candles. A shrine. Carving in the cliff-face. Buddha. Thirty feet tall.

A ledge between you and the platform. You edge onto it. Halfway. Three-quarters. This is all. No further. The chanting stops.  You back away, but a man smiles and motions you forward.  You gain the platform, slipping to the side as the three pass.

You are alone. Only you and stone and candles and Buddha and ghosting trees and the cliff-face edge of everything, where all things standing jut into emptiness and cast lost shadows, drunk by the sea and the clouds and the shoreline so far away.

Large things wash over you, through you, and slowly flow out, down the hillside.

“I think you can take a picture,” your companion says absently; neither of you dedicate much thought to speaking. “They won’t mind.”

“No,” you say, surrounded and drinking it in, all angles,

all bright points and dim distances.

“I don’t want one.”

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