Two weekends ago my friend Lara and I decided we wanted to go hiking before it gets too cold so Lara looked through her 'Frommer's South Korea' travel guide and found a national park close by Daegu. The park is called 가야산 (ka-ya-san) national park and is located about an hour by bus from Daegu. After waking up a little late on Saturday afternoon we hopped a bus headed for the mountian. Here there is a really famous Buddhist temple (해인사) that we were also planning on visiting. When we arrived we headed towards the temple. The temple looks pretty similar to all the other Buddhist temples i've seen so far in Korea. They are very beautiful but it seems that once you've seen one, you've seen most. This temple though has one characteristics that differs it from all the others: It holds the world's biggest collection of Buddhist scriptures. These scriptures are carved into squares of wood and functioned as a printing press to be able to easily copy the scriptures for dispersion. These 81,340 squares of scripture are kept in locked rooms and protected from people, weather, animals or anything that could possibly hurt them.
From this view each one of the squares looks like a book binding but when you remove it it looks like this:
After we left the temple it was getting dark and was too late to go on a hike. We decided we should look for a hotel and go hiking the next day. Then we went to look for dinner and ended up in a little Korean restaurant we thought would be good judging by the amount of people already there. The second we walk in a man sitting at a table in the back says hi to us and motions for us to come sit down. We really don't know what to think but, like I said in a previous post, I was told never to turn down an offer by a Korean! This has probably been one of the best pieces of advice that I've been given since I've been here since it's lead to some fun/hilarious experiences. This one was no exception. We go over and sit down at the man's table where he is sitting with another man and a woman. The man begins to talk to us and he speaks almost perfect English. He tells us that he lived in New York for 11 years where he worked in some job relating to computers. He looks around 60 years old and is very open and sweet. We look at the menu and tell him that we want beef and he orders something for us and tells us that we will like it. We are goin' with the flow so we decide to go for it. The man tells us his name is 'Wechool' and that all three of them live in Busan but went to high school in Kayasan and are back in town for a high school reunion. Apparently the other man that was there is a famous Korean poet that specializes in writing Haikus. The woman is a politician running for some position in Busan with the opposition party. These two Koreans don't speak much English but Wechool does a good job translating. It also helped that they wouldn't stop feeding us beer and a purple drink that they said was a home-made cranberry liquor. The famous poet knew the owners of the restaurant and so we definitely got the special treatment. This cranberry moonshine apparently wasn't on the menu and they were only sharing it with us because of this friendship. Wechool keeps looking at Lara's beer and then at mine and pretty much tells me that I need to step up my game. Apparently Lara was being a better cultural ambassador than I and downing her beer at a quicker pace. So what did I have to do? Step it up. It is Korean tradition that when someone wants to drink they pour you more alcohol so that you pour some for them afterwards. It is rude to pour your own drink and rude to not pour someone's drink when they are running low. Well, these men wanted to drink so they kept pouring us drinks so we would return the favor. I think you probably can guess what happened from here. The food came! It turned out to be one of the most amazingly tasty dishes that I've ever eaten. It was a spicy soup dish loaded with beef, mushrooms, 잡채(japchae) and other sweet goodness. Like most Korean restaurants you are overloaded with yummy side dishes too. We continue eating, drinking, talking, drinking and drinking for a few hours. Then Wechool answers a phone call and tells us that a man he knows is going to come meet us. The man is apparently one of the most famous Korean-Chinese calligraphers. When the dude comes into the restaurant he looks pretty wasted. He is an old man, probably around 80 years old, and he doesn't say anything to Lara and I or even make eye-contact with us. The first thing he says when he sits down at the table in a low voice is 'where's my drink' with a serious look on his face (Wechool translated). He seems like a very traditional guy to say the least. Anyways, we continue drinking and after a few hours Wechool gets a call and has to leave but tells us to stay as long as we want and that he would pick up the bill. It's traditional the older person to pay for the younger people in Korea. The bill wasn't cheap so we were very thankful.
Ok, here is the good part. Brace yourself, father. Because the communication between the two parties has significantly dropped with the departure of Wechool Lara and I begin to try and plan our withdrawal. Before we know it the poet comes over and sits down beside me. Lara is across the table. The second I say hi the poet puts his arm around my shoulder. His next words are unforgettable. "You sing song," he says. My heart starts to race as I remember that section in my Korean culture book about being asked to sing solos on the spot in front of guests at a dinner party. I start to freak out because I was caught so off guard I can't think of any song that I know all the lyrics to. My mind has gone blank and I don't know what to do. I know that it would be rude to not sing so I look at Lara desperately for help. She can't think of anything either. Finally, after about a minute or so of negotiating songs in my head, the poet belts out, "Edelweiss, Edelweiss..." and I instinctively catch on, "every morning you greet me..." All I can say is thank God i've watched the Sound of Music at least 20 times and I know every damn song from it. As I loudly and drunkenly kill the song I look at the poet and notice that he doesn't know the words but he sings how he thinks it sounds. He's pretty close on most words! At the end of the epic duet we receive an applause from the people at our table, the restaurant owners and two other people eating across the restaurant. I think the greatest moment of it all is when I look across the table to Lara and tears are streaming down her face. I'm sure the cause of the emotion was the mixture of pure hilarity, a touching, beautiful performance by yours truly and too much booze. I would say that i definitly bonded with this man on the fact that we both love to sing and we both know the 'words' to Edelweiss. After the song finishes and we make fun of Lara the poet says, "you go home now," and walks us to our hotel.
Pic of the singing coming soon...
The next day we get up 'early' and find the trail for our hike. The hike 8k hike was actually pretty awesome. Unlike the hike up Seoraksan, there were far fewer people. There were some pretty rocky/steep inclines but we made it to the top and the view was definitely worth it. Koreans hike in large groups and don't hike without packing what seems like a full meal and lots of soju, beer and makgeolli. We converse about the fact that in the states it would be totally taboo to be downing liquor while hiking on a Sunday in a national park but we think its pretty awesome. As we are hiking down we start saying "anyeonghaseo" to everyone we see. Our hike down, which should have taken about an hour and a half, ends up taking about 2.5 hours because we get invited to so many people's gatherings on the side of the trail. During these gatherings we are force-fed raw beef, songpyeon (rice cake), and shots of liquor and given a whole bag of home-made songpyeon for the journey home. If I had to describe Koreans in one word based on this adventure it would be 'generous.'
If you can believe it this is far fewer people than at Seoraksan
Lara almost threw up eating the raw beef
The main lesson that I took out of all of these shenanigans was that I should definitely start traveling with only one or two other people instead of large groups. None of this would have happened if we would have been in a bigger group. We got to experience real Korean culture and meet and hang out with Koreans because it was just Lara and I. It's definitely fun to travel with lots of friends but it needs to be balanced with traveling with fewer. Meeting the awesome Koreans, eating and drinking and being in the mountains definitely made this one of the best weekends so far in Korea.
Oh, by the way, can you tell that I've learned to read and write the Korean alphabet, 한글 (Hangul)? It's definitely a really awesome thing to know. I usually don't know what the words say but sometimes they are English words written in the Korean alphabet. It's really fun when you are reading a sign and sounding out the letters and then you find out that it is actually an English word. Koreans and foreigners here call this 'Konglish'. It's a pretty great phenomenon.
