Chungcheongnam-do Cultural 'Expedition'

Now you may be wondering why I refer to this as an expedition. It suggests to me the first time, a type of trail blazing. Webster's Dictionary defines an expedition as: a journey or excursion undertaken for a specific purpose. Well somewhere along the line the specific purpose of seeing the culture of Chungcheongnam-do province was lost. The irony: The trip was selected and run by the Ministry of Tourism for the Republic of Korea.

Folk Village Totems

Now they provided an excellent bus, provided water and even a guide but the entire thing was lost in the relentless, cattledrive-esque manner in which we were shown Chungnam province. It allowed for no wandering on an extremely tight time schedule, for which there were ministry Gestapo to corral us if we wandered or lagged. To be honest with I think this one Korean had it out for me; if I was not at the forefront of the group he would literally track me down and grab me by the arm, leading me forth. I felt like Moses leading the Hebrews and ol' Pharoh was up my ass, and me with no Red Sea in sight. At the Ginseng festival he somehow tracked me through a crowd (maybe its the height and red hair that gave me away) of several thousand people, to take me to some remote display of 1001 ginseng products - I did learn though, that there are many, many kinds of ginseng and ways of processing them: wine, cake, gellies, drinks, underwear, you name it. It was like one of those movies where the actor looks everywhere and sees dead people. I see Ginseng! And for the amount of Ginseng in the country it is outrageously priced. I did momentarily shake my stalker and managed to see a traditional Korean dance/music - that was cool, espicailly the fact the local orphans were the ones playing the music! I also managed to snap a shot with some Ginseng mascots, before I was located an promptly return to a Ginseng based lunch. Now Ginseng is okay in small quantities, but an entire lunch and I actually felt high - not to mention that I smelt like soil after rain when I sweat! Ginseng has a very earthy flavour. Folowing lunch we were allowed some measure of freedom, bu I felt I was being watched the whole time. Then we ponied up on the Bus and head to a monestary (Temple) in the South on the Geum-kang river. The boat took us to a place where '3000' women had dove into the river to avoid being the slaves of an approaching army.

Ginseng and Cute Kid

We climbed a hill partially and got yelled at because we didn't have enough time. Then we drank water from a natural spring and we were supposed to become 3 years younger, apparently only mentally judging from the wrinkles I still have. I also got some marvelous shots of this Monk who was playing his flute in front of the temple; he even had me try playing his flute - which I failed miserably at unfortunately. Partly because the Gestapo were swarming and suggesting that I was going to miss the boat (I waited 10 minutes in the boat). Just before we left the Monk stood on this precipice and played an errie song over the Guem-kang river to bid us farwell, which I might say was really very cool.

Man-Made Lake

Then we found our hotel, which was very nice and western style. Then we proceeded to get loaded (again) at the hotel and found our way to a nuri-pang in town for a night of singing. We had the whole place to ourselves, and the staff joined in singing at the end of the night shortly before kicking us out (again). We then found some restuarant, had some food and stumbled home.

In the morning I discovered I had left my camera at the resturant. Which was very kindly returned before the bus left town. These Koreans are great!

We visited a museum which contained the National Treasures from a Korean King of 500AD from the Kingdom of Bakjea. The highlight of the last day was the Korean folk village outside Asan, it was great focusing on the 1900's Korea and the way of life before the modern age. We even got to pound rice cake the old way, with giant mallets! It was cute the Koreans loved the big Westerners going at the rice full-tilt.

Monk With Flute

Then, unfortunately, our group had to part ways to their seperate areas in the province. Some were very close to one another (even in the same buildings), others (like me) fairly isolated. It was tough to leave that comfort zone - the one drawback of the week was that re establishment of home, of English at a natural level. However adjusting back has been relatively easy and we stay in contact to try to assist one another.

So that was my week of advenure...

Temple and Pagoda of Bakjae