After the trip to GyeongJu, we spent the night at my uncle’s home in Gumi.

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It’s a small and modest house in what most of us would consider a very rural area. this is where my dad’s family’s land is. most of it belongs to this particular uncle, since he was the only son to stay in korea, while the other two sons went off to the states. he built this home from “scratch”. he and his wife saved their entire lives in preparation for retirement.

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americans typically think of retirement as moving to florida, hanging out with other old people and going to denny’s for the senior grand slam special. koreans have a different view. my uncle and aunt spend their time farming the family land. the grow their own soybeans, and other vegetables. they do everything organically so everything is cooked simply and the flavor is amazing! they make their own soy sauce, tofu, soybean paste (dwenjang), red pepper paste (ggotchujang), and a number of other things.

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On basically what was our last full day in korea, my uncle gave us a tour of his home. extremely proud of what he’s been able to provide for his family, and also to show us that he’s taken care of our family land. he pointed to some of the dried greens that were hanging from the garage and said that it was my dad’s favorite vegetable. so he dries plenty of it each year hoping my dad comes for a visit. he showed us the mill he uses to grind the beans.

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before getting ready to take us to kimcheon, he wanted to show us one more thing. my dad’s best friend’s burial/memorial site and the buddhist temple the man had built and worshipped at. though my dad’s family is catholic, they were good friends with this man and also proud of his acheivements.

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i don’t know his name, but my dad showed me pictures. he was the provincial wrestling champion. but also a devout buddhist. he would go to a local cave and meditate for days without food or water. later he became a famous buddhist monk and raised money to build this temple. along with the temple he had a deep desire to serve the disabled and mentally handicapped. there is an adjacent home to the temple. we didn’t get to visit the facility so no pictures. unfortunately, my dad’s friend was murdered by one of the mentally ill. he was buried next to the temple.

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we then decided to take a quick trip to kimcheon. there’s a park there that features different types of art. including some very interesting statues like these:

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the first is joseph pretending to play a children’s game where you attempt to hop on someone’s back and play a game of rock, paper, scissors. next joseph was told to rub the buddha’s belly so we would have good luck in trying to have a baby. i proceeded to touch the belly button instead. the last two were all in good fun of course

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there should be no vacation/travel posts without the gluttonous amount food consumed! we went to a pork bbq place. instead of the usual vents that are fixed on the ceiling, you could pull these vents down towards the table and then push them back up and out of the way to eat. this basically concluded our trip to the kumi area. before we left my uncle proceeded to say “i’m sorry if they did anything wrong”. after this lengthy post of the hospitality and the family love they showed, suffice to say there was NOTHING wrong that they did. in fact, joseph and i probably should’ve said what they had said instead. we intruded on their quiet lives and they welcomed us with open arms.

my aunt and uncle put us on a high speed train back to seoul. this by itself is a treat. it’s like taking the acela instead of the regional train. time difference between the two is a few hours because there are also far fewer stops in between.

it actually dropped us off not too far from namdaemoon. so guess were we went next?

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this outdoor street market is HUGE. it’s a maze. i tried to be as diligent as possible to make sure we either knew where we were going, or at least know how to get back to where we came from. it’s a sea of wholesalers of all different types of stuff, of everything from clothes, socks, bras, pots, knives, computers….you name it, they probably have it. apparently there are alot of tourist from china and japan looking for korean ginseng. all the sales people kept yelling at me and joseph in cantonese, mandarin, taiwanese, japanese and korean – unsure whether we were one or another.

lastly, the last nite of being in korea meant that we finally got to spend some time with my cousin. usually he’s the one i spend most of my time with when i’m in korea. but this trip was obviously different. he’s also far busier now, running the furniture company that my uncle built. it used to be living room, bedroom and dining room furniture company. my cousin decided to change the direction of the company based on his research and noticing the fair share of furniture companies in asia. it was a smart investment and business strategy for him. the new direction was to build wardrobes for apartments. much like in the US, the real estate market BOOMED all over asia, with new buildings and renovations happening all over. guess who was building new wardrobes through many of korea’s new/remodeled homes?

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we ended up starting at a chicken place. like i said before, joseph was so smitten with kyochon, we looked for every opportunity to eat more of that kind of chicken. my cousin ended up taking us to this place where one of the owners looked like my aunt #6. we had some beer and chicken and caught up. instead of staying after we finished eating though, we headed off to a second place. some japanese place to eat more food and drink some more. by this time we get to this second place, i’m already a little tipsy, on the verge of drunk. i don’t think joseph was, though he did get quiet and looked very happy with a huge grin on his face. this is probably why there aren’t many pictures of our time spent with my cousin. man koreans can drink.

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Post tags: acheivements, Add new tag, baby, beer, buddha, buddhist temple, building, business, chicken, china, cooking, cousin, dad, denny, dries, drinks, family, food, games, good friends, goodness, greens, gumi, gyeongju, japan, japanese, joseph, korea, korean, koreans, locals, memories, money, moving to florida, pepper paste, post, red pepper, rural area, s, scissors, scratch, seoul, soy sauce, soybean paste, soybeans, tofu, tourists, vegetables, water, worshipped

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during the reprimand from the other day (re: day4 post) my cousin mentioned a tour bus that runs through seoul called “seoul city tour” they’ve got 4 different tours. palace, downtown, night and convention tours. we opted for the downtown tour since we thought that would be most interesting for us. the great part about this bus is that if you get a day pass, you can get on and off as you please at any of the stops your ticket is good for.

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a completely no frills tour in a very simple bus. each seat is provided with headphones and a gadget that plays an audio tour of the various stops in various languages.  since joseph has never been to most of the spots, we went on the bus for the entire 2 hour roundtrip so he could hear more about each of the stops and then decide which one(s) we wanted to check out. he said he enjoyed it. i dunno. I didn’t get a headphone for myself, i somehow sat myself down at the only seat on the bus that didn’t have a headset. it was fine, for me it was more orienting myself of various places i used to hang out at and trying to remember what used to be where and when.

after the 2 hour roundtrip, we needed lunch. we’ve been trying to stick to korean food being that korean food in nyc is just so-so and in nyc every other cultural “food” can be found that’s almost if not just as good as the home country. joseph also wanted to check out one fast food chain for a quality check. KFC

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but why KFC of all places? kfc was our non-chinese food choice in china. the chicken was great. joseph thinks it’s because the people who worked at the kfc took pride in what they do and chose select chicken to sell. this maybe true, but for me KFC in china was a nice (God-send) break from the chinese food (i’ve known since the china that i can’t handle eating chinese food for every meal for more than a few days without feeling sick and greasy). i know, i know. kfc is greasy too, but it’s a different kind of greasy. kfc korea wasn’t as good according to joseph. i couldn’t really tell. i’ve rarely eaten fast food in the last 4 or 5 years, especially after reading the book “fast food nation” so my fast food taste buds are happily long gone (in-n-out doesn’t count). but he’s probably right. you’ll know why in a later post.

at lunch we decided that we should go to the national museum. it was a great choice. the museum was cheap (~$3 for the both of us) and HUGE. it took us 2 hours to get through half of the first floor, and the museum has multiple floors. we didn’t get through the first floor after having been there for over 2 hours, it was time to go to meet up with family for dinner. (more on that later.) but the 2+ hours we were there was great. for another $3 you can rent these pda devices which will give you commentary on about 70% of the artifacts/museum peices. the stupid thing drove me nuts for the first 30 minutes because i’m not very patient. you have to walk up to a peice and then let the pda find the commentary in order for the it to play the specific commentary. i didn’t want to wait. i looked at everything but didn’t wait to listen, unless it picked it up almost immediately. (yes. sunggyuk ii geuphae)

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we left the museum without seeing the whole thing. but for $3 who cares, 2-3 hours was more than our monies worth. plus family is more important, especially if you’re getting to meet some family members for the first time!

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meet #1 (yoohyun/cris) and #2 (yoosun/kate) of korean triplet fame. famous in korea since triplets are rare and also because they were featured on tv shows that were played throughout the country. maybe i should’ve asked for their signatures =P jongwook, their dad, is my quiet gadget-loving cousin (blame him for my need of personal technology devices). the kids however, are definitely not quiet which we found out shortly after meeting them. at first they didn’t want to talk to us, scared to say hi since we weren’t so jovial when we first saw them and also scared since we were “foreign”. secondary to the meeting, was dinner of course. we had some amazingly good pork ribs – korean style, what else?

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we ate till we were crazy full, and then tried to “trick” the girls into liking us by bribing them with some ice cream. it worked for about 2 minutes, and then they retreated to their parents and grandparents shortly after gobbling up the ice cream.

hmm..you might be asking, if they’re triplets, what happened to #3? yoomin/kelly spent the day with her other grandparents to help give her parents a break from the craziness of 3 kids at once. for those of you with kids, you know how difficult it is to have just 1 child, imagine having 3 all at the same time, all the same age, and demanding to be treated equally!

no pictures, but #1, #2 and their parents spent the nite at my aunts that nite, and my cousin and i had a few beers together while watching tv. at 7 yrs old, #1 loves beer too. she’s definitely family.

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Post tags: cousin, family, food, headphones, joseph, kfc, korean food, museum, ns, s, seoul, seoul city, tour bus

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every morning, we’re required to eat breakfast as a family. something that joseph and i normally don’t do everyday is eat breakfast, and if we do, it’s rarely together. this is something i hope we’ll do in the future together, but not likely to happen everyday. and honestly, probably not going to happen once a week either.

after breakfast my aunt decided we’re going to changdeokgung, so off we went on a bus that was less than $2 per person for a 40min ride into the city. darn cheap if you ask me! joseph’s first real taste of seoul and one of the first things he sees is burger king’s bulgogi burger. *sigh* we’ve yet to see the kimchi pizza i used to adore, but there’s still a few days left on the trip.

not sure if everyone knows, but there’s rhyme and reason to my fighting for the check. korean culture dictates that in various situations an older “sibling” or married person pick up the tab. there’s other incidents where you are supposed to at least ATTEMPT to pay. one example of this is if you’re out of town, and being a “burden” to a friend or family or if you have guests in town and want to treat them. here my aunt and i are fighting for who pays to get into the palace (this concept is often lost on most westerners, and it’s hard to fully explain all the intricacies so i’ll bypass the remaining details):

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the palace requires that you go on a tour through the palace and “secret garden” based on a schedule. if you want to take the english tour you MUST go during a specific time. same with korean, japanese, or chinese. (people wonder where i get my analness from. here’s your answer):

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after we left the palace grounds, we ran into street vendor cart that sells gookhwabbang (traditional cake with red bean). some other tourists were curious as to what we were eating, and so my aunt nonchalantly passes one of the tastey treats to a tall white lady and says “TRY!”

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she then quickly went and bought her own bag to share with her friends, and offered my aunt one as a replacement for the one offered to her. my aunt laughed and brushed her off.

next was lunch. and when i say lunch, i mean a very traditional korean meal! we had samgaetang (chicken soup). but this is not a chicken soup like the kinda stuff that campbell’s makes in a can, it’s the kind that feels homemade, in the deep farm lands of korea, with the healthy stuff that kids absolutely hate, like ginseng, chestnuts, jujube, and gingko nuts.

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i guess i’m now old, since i love the samgaetang. both joseph and i pretty much ate each of our entire chickens that were stuffed with rice and all the healthy “junk”. after finishing this meal i think i wanted to take a nap, but my aunt is a vary active woman and demanded we go to the next place.

namsan tower – now known as N Seoul tower. Not really sure why they changed the name, but whatever. it’s still the same cheese that you get at empire state, or top of the rock in nyc. view is great since you can see most of seoul, but on a super clear day you can see pretty far, as far as incheon which is about an hour drive away from seoul. unfortunately, our day was not as clear, but we still got to see pretty far.

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afterwards we went to namdaemoon shijang (north gate market). this market is at the foot of what was one of korea’s OLDEST and most beloved landmarks. the gate had survived many wars, japanese invasion, and the modernization/bastardization of korea’s epicenter. recently a crazy old man, decided to light the gate up in flames, destroying a piece of history and national treasure that sat amidst throngs of cars, and flashing lights as a reminder to all koreans of “where we came from”. korea quickly put together the funds to rebuild the gate and what you see today is a large wall that encircles the entire area. when i saw this from the bus, i felt a tug in my heart that was deep. i guess it would be like the statue of liberty being taken down by a mad man. you’d feel pain but it’d be rather surprising to know how much you were unknowingly attached to it.

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we didn’t take any pictures of the market, but it’s definitely a site to see. apparently it’s best to go at nite when all the business owners are buying stuff to sell at their stores, but i hate the shopping and haggling, so why bother? but we did see this box on our way out:

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i didn’t realize an operating system was synonymous to “home ceramic irons”.

© hehmin for agapeshack, 2008. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: bulgogi burger, burger king, business, cousin, family, joseph, kimchi, korean culture, koreans, secret garden, seoul

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