Exploring Korea: Hwacheon Ice Festival

It's freaking cold and, in Seoul, the only thing to do outside when it's cold is go to an ice skating rink (of which there are many) or complain about how cold it is as you rush from indoor area to indoor area. We, my friends, are forced to look outward. Out of our lovely city cocoon to the great wilderness that is the rest of the country. To those who have only lived in Seoul their entire time in Korea and rarely ventured outside the city limits (that time you went to Gyeonggi-do doesn't count! It's the suburbs!) traveling around this wonderful, wild country can be rather daunting. Their hotel and pension websites don't have an English option! There's little to no English tourist information about less populated areas! 95% of the cars aren't taxis! Not everything has a taxi or bus to take you there and stuff isn't within walking distance! It's enough to make a person panic! To be sure, this is one of the top ten situations where Korean-speaking friends come in the MOST handy. Anyway, I'm getting away from the real topic here... The point is I wanted to get the crap out of Seoul and do something fun, and that led us to...

The Hwacheon Ice Festival

Smells Fishy!

Hwacheon is a district in the county of Gangwon to the northeast of Seoul. It has a lot of very beautiful rivers and gets damn cold in the winter, causing almost all of the rivers to freeze over. 

For reference

Every year they hold an ice festival that has every kind of ice activity you could imagine and some you would have never thought of (seriously... there was one are where people were kneeling on saucer sleds and pulling themselves along using two 7" dowels...). The more notable activities are ice fishing for Sancheonneo (Mountain Trout), barehand fishing, ice soccer, ice sledding, ice skating and many, many, many, more. Pretty much any verb you could imagine doing on ice it was there.

Ice... Ineffective Aerial Attempt? WHY THE HELL NOT?!

Myself, Mr. Y, and 10 of our good friends left Seoul Saturday afternoon for our pension rental. The pension was roughly a 15 minute drive from the Chuncheon ITX Rail Station and was about halfway between Chuncheon and Hwacheon. Our Pension owner was nice enough to pick us up from the station and then drive us to the festival the next morning. In order to get to Hwacheon from Seoul you can either take a direct bus from the NamSeoul Bus Terminal or take the ITX to Chuncheon and then take a 30 minute bus from there to Hwacheon. I recommend the latter because the ITX Chuncheon line is MUCH nicer than a bus. 

Just look at how wholesome and comfortable these handsome people appear!

Incase I haven't made it clear before: staying in Pensions when outside Seoul is the BEST method of accommodation. Even though you have to sleep on floor mats (unless you're the lucky couple who gets the one double-size bed) it's worth it to not have to deal with going in and out of hotel rooms, not having noise restrictions, and having 24hr access to a kitchen you can stock with all the junk food and booze your heart desires.

And you can play beerpong while wearing animal onesies without fear of public humiliation!
At least... until your friend posts a picture of said activity on their very public blog.

The next morning we made our way to the festival. It was mind-blowing just how many people were there and how many activities we could choose from, but it was nearing lunch time so we went right for the ice fishing. I think the best part of this festival was that there was a separate reception and fishing area for foreigners. This way they could keep an eye on you and see if you were completely oblivious as to how to catch, unhook, and kill your fish rather than looking pitiful for an hour or so until a Korean decided to be neighborly and help you figure shit out. Koreans were also allowed into the foreigner area if they were with a foreigner. 

The fishing was... cruel but effective. Rather than using bait thousands of people dangle four-hooked fishing lines into the water and snag the fish as they ignorantly swim by. Fish are stupid. You'd then need to bash it's brains in before it was able to flap its way into one of the other fishing holes. You're only allowed to catch three fish per person and we easily met our quota after about an hour of fishing. 

BEHOLD, THE MIGHTY HUNTER!

There was also a separate area for foreigners to turn in their fish for cooking. You could have them grilled or fried (for fried you were allowed to choose between dokkbokki sauce or soy sauce) and the price was 3,000W per fish (~$3). The fish don't taste really unique, but the 100% fresh quality of the meat was amazing!

Eating fish has never been more rewarding until you've bashed its brains in with a hunk of ice using your own two hands.

After lunch some people were ready to go home and others wanted to try out some of the ice activities. I busted my ass on the ice before going home for Christmas so I was more than a little apprehensive to play on the ice, but was more than willing to be goalie for a game of Ice Soccer (think Air Hockey, but with your feet and a lot more physical sacrifice).

HACK THE BONE! HACK THE BONE!

I'd recommend possibly getting to the festival in the morning, right after breakfast at a "we're not 20-somethings with little responsibility" time (aka before 10am). By the time we had fished, eaten, and played one game of Ice Soccer, the Winter Sun was beginning to set. Don't forget to take advantage of the 5,000W-off coupons you get when buying your tickets. You can use more than one at a time and buy items like makgeolli, honey, snacks, and various other Korean traditional products.

If you're looking for an awesome time outside of Seoul that's not terribly expensive (pension, transportation, food, and festival total was probably close to 150,000W, and that's a bit of an overestimation) I thoroughly recommend you check this festival out!

Exploring Korea: Boryeong and the Boryeong Mud Festival

I had heard-tell of a festival... a festival in Korea full of dirt and fun-times... a festival considered part of a right-of-passage for any self-respecting 외국인... it was approaching... I felt it in the wind...

My primal nature... it calls to me.

I am speaking of the Boryeong Mud Festival. I am sure that when the seaside town of Boryeong decided to have a mud festival to celebrate the rainy season creating an excess of supposedly beneficial mud in their region they didn't account for how much foreigners love to party in creative ways. They set up inflatable slides, a mud pool, and various other attractions that are made instantly cooler by the addition of being dirty and slippery, and the throngs of 20-something non-Koreans came a-runnin'!

Seriously, I haven't seen this many waygookin in one place since orientation. Everyone was super happy and covered from head to toe in mud.

I want to make one thing clear for people who might be getting the wrong idea about this concept: Mud Fest is NOT just a giant mud pit, there was actually a surprisingly small amount of mud around, unless you wanted to pay for it. To get into the area with the mud slides, mud obstacle courses, and mud wrestling ring (what I heard was the only really cool thing to do) you had to fork over some Sejongs (King Sejong is printed on the 10,000 won notes). Our group split between those wanting to pay for the stuff inside and those fine with just doing the free things (mud painting tables, body paint, dance party, and ocean).

On the outside, looking in

I stuck with the people who were doing the free stuff (I had put my wallet in the locker already, there were plenty of pay lockers as well as a small number of pay showers and a decent number of bathrooms). It was about 3pm when we got there and the mud painting tables were VERY short on mud, but you could get enough to coat yourself pretty thoroughly.

See? Thorough!

The lines for the body painting were WAY too long, so we skipped that. We wound up coating ourselves, walking around, and then going into the ocean to clean off.

Some people thought the water was cold, those people have never swam in the northern Atlantic

We wound up having to go back into the ocean a few times, because every foreigner we knew was there, and they all wanted hugs.

They actually just all saw someone they know who is not currently covered in mud, and are rushing to rectify the situation

The festival slowly devolved more and more into insanity. Some of my friends I ran into informed me that they had been drinking since the previous night at 8pm, and I had no problem believing them. People were super drunk, but in high spirits. There was, at one point, a flashmob of people dancing to the Wonder Girls song "Like This," which was entertaining, and then the mob turned into a massive, filthy dance party on the beach. I had no issues mumbling to my more literature-minded friends about how much my fellow waygookin reminded me of the Yahoos from Gulliver's Travels.

Though I'm not 100% sure why...

As for the city of Boryeong, we had a pretty fun time! We stayed in the KU-run motel on the first night (I am thoroughly convinced they have one of these in every medium to large sized town throughout the country) and in a pension the second night (a pension is like renting a condo with very little furniture in it). To get to 보령 my good buddy Bacon rented a car, which was a pretty awesome way of getting there.

Our chariot!

I would be happy to visit 보령 again, but hopefully when it's sunny. It was the rainy season that weekend, so it was severely foggy and overcast whenever it WASN'T raining. There were a lot of seafood restaurants and the area (west coast Korea) is famous for bbq oysters, called 조개구이 or Jokaekooie, which are pretty damn tasty. You can take buses or the train from Seoul to get there, but renting a car was a pretty fun experience. The beach was pretty nice and would probably be SUPER nice if it was sunny out. However, I recommend staying at a pension over a hotel. The KU hotel was ok, but I heard from most of my friends that the other hotels close to the beach are kinda seedy and in desperate need of renovation. Pensions are also more private, so you can party in peace!

Just LOOK at that peaceful partying!

Exploring Korea: Wando-gun and the Yeosu Expo

Last weekend was a wonderful three-day weekend for both Seung Hyun and myself due to Buddha's Birthday on Monday being a national holiday. Seung Hyun decided he wanted us to go on a trip, just the two of us. I had no idea where we were going for a while and he refused to tell me. I have to say, he did an amazing job choosing where we should go.

Wando-gun (완도군)

Wando-gun (Wando County) is a group of islands off the southern coast of Korea. In order to get there we had to take a bus from Seoul to Gwangju and then from Gwangju to Wando. Seung Hyun had made arrangements for us to stay in the pension-style housing owned by Korea University (his current employer and my future employer). On the main island and the secondary island (where we were staying) there was a good number of places to stay, many of them pension-style (hotel rooms ranging from mini-apartment size to being like renting a house or condo). The island was not very crowded, it's still early in the travel season, but I could tell right away that the 외극인 (foreigner) community has not yet discovered this place; I got the "Korean Stare" more times than I have in a long time and many shop owners were not shy about asking Seung Hyun how he wound up dating a white chick.

Xenophobia aside, this county is GORGEOUS. Wando and Shinsido islands were both extremely picturesque. However, nothing could have prepared me for how beautiful Cheongsando Island was going to be. Easily reached by ferry from Wando's central ferry terminal this island is an internationally recognized "slow city," which means it has a population of under 50,000, uses a minimum amount of machinery for agricultural and artisan products, and has a well preserve cultural heritage. The farmers on Cheongsando still plant rice the old-fashioned way: one sprout at a time. The walking trails around the island are extensive, well-marked, and lead you to some beautiful and secluded areas. However, the walking trails have very little tree-cover, so I highly recommend wearing sunblock and bringing a fan (learn from my mistake). There are no taxis on this island, so either try to catch one of the buses (which run infrequently) or just do what we did and walk the entire way, you wont be sorry you did.

Wando Harbor

Cheongsando

Cheongsando

Yeosu Expo

The World Expo for 2012 is in the small city of Yeosu on Korea's southern coast. Every year they choose one city for the world expo (think of it like the World's Fair). The expo has one theme and the theme for the Yeosu Expo is environmentalism and conservation. The Expo had a few large buildings dedicated to this theme as well as buildings sponsored by the major Korean businesses (Hyundai, Samsung, LG, etc.) and two massive buildings containing individual pavilions representing countries.

We went to the Yeosu Expo on the busiest day it has had since opening a month ago (the expo runs all summer, until August 12th). There were 100,000 people in attendance on the day we went, so that made things slightly more complicated. I had heard that we needed to reserve space for the main theme pavilions, one of which is an aquarium, but the expo website was a huge pain in the ass to navigate. If you are thinking about going I would suggest picking up your tickets at the expo one day before you go. You can easily reserve space in the theme pavilions via a smart phone app, "Yeosu Expo Reservations," and the QR code on your tickets. You could possibly also call the customer service line, I'm sure they have plenty of assistance in English. All in all the expo did a pretty good job with crowd control. The city of Yeosu, however, pretty much broke down after the expo closed for the night. There were not enough buses, not enough taxis, and about 6x as many people as the city was prepared to deal with. Learn from out mistake: make your hotel reservations WAY in advance and try to stay within walking-distance of the expo grounds.

On the expo itself I have to say I was very impressed. The grounds are kept to a Japanese-level of cleanliness (Japanese-level being the ability to, without a second though, eat off the sidewalk). The overall design concept is decently executed (the only real eye-sore was the Expo Tower). There were an acceptable amount of bathrooms, vending machines, and food stalls. The highlight of the expo, for me, were the individual country pavilions. We only had time to go to a handful (the lines were long, though acceptably fast, and each pavilion had a good deal of things to see), but we were impressed by what we saw. We went to the Russia, Denmark, Pacific Islands, Australia, USA, and Singapore pavilions. I can say, without a doubt, that you can skip Australia unless you are dying for certain Australian food treats (the store focused on these items). Seung Hyun's favorites were Russia and the USA. My favorites were Denmark and Singapore. 

My biggest tip for the expo is to get there as soon as it opens just so you'll have time to do as much as you would like to. There are a LOT of country pavilions and some of the ones we missed looked super cool. Special thanks go out to Alexander Kim, a friend of ours from Seoul who is currently working at the Russia pavilion. He gave us some very good advice and saved our lives by keeping our luggage in his office (there are NO storage lockers at the expo, YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED).

The massive monitor ceiling between the two international pavilions was a definite highlight

Another highlight was the monitor room in the Russia pavilion

The expo was built in a harbor, I think this helped a good deal towards making the entire event feel less crowded.