Blog /Rtw Day 58: Yeosu, Korea

November 07, 2007 08:14 +0000  |  Korea 'Round-the-World Travel 0

To the rest of the world, Yeosu (if anyone has heard of it) is in South Korea, but the locals don't see it that way. They are a single country divided and so when they refer to their home, the people here ask: "So how do you like Korea?"

The Trip

The Dolsan Bridge

Getting here was a lot scarier than I thought it would be, as Jeong-Yeon was unable to meet me at the airport. Instead, I had a scrap of paper with some instructions on how to traverse the country after 19hours of travelling. Here's what my first day out of Europe entailed:

  • Leave hotel at 8:00am
  • Take train to Fuimancino
  • Check in for flight
  • Fly to Singapore
  • Lay over in Singapore
  • Fly to Incheon (Seoul International)
  • Get bags etc. and based on English instructions from Shawna find out how to get a bus to Gimpo Airport (Seoul Domestic)
  • Get correct ticket and bus (I hope) and ride along foreign roads hoping the squiggles on the signs mean I'm going where I'm supposed to be.
  • Arrive at Gimpo. Book last flight to Yeosu (6:30pm) and begin trying to figure out how to call Shawna.
  • Find friendly information person who explains that pay phones are dumb and that I can just use the info booth's phone. Apparently all calls within Korea are local calls.
  • Talk to Shawna, advise regarding arrival time, walk around airport for an hour.
  • Fly to Yeosu where I'm met with flowers (yay!) and a hug from Shawna. Shawna's friend drives us to her place and I crash.
  • Total travel time: roughly 26hours

Recovering from the jet lag has been harder here than it was in Frankfurt, but thankfully Shawna and her friends have been tolerant of my grogginess. I'm more or less over it now though.

Culture

Kina

Yeosu is beautiful, and I'm not just talking about the scenery. The people here are just plain awesome. I'm repeatedly impressed by the culture of sharing here that just doesn't exist back home. One of the few foreigners I've met here explained it best: if you're playing basketball with a couple guys and one of you goes off to the machine for some Gatorade, he'll return with one bottle for everyone. There's no money to hands, no agreements to buy the giver lunch later, it's just how it is, and similar behaviour is expected from all those involved for the future.

Like other Asian countries, a reverence and respect for elders is ingrained in the culture so deep that it directly affects the language. When speaking to someone older than you, you must use the polite form of the language (an-yang-ha-say-oh vs. just anyang), and elders are entitled to ask you anything they like, while you may only speak when spoken to or ask limited (non-probing) questions. It really is a pleasure to spend time with these people.

The culture has its downsides though. For starters, one of Shawna's teachers who seemed quite excited to talk to me when I first arrived, shut down when I explained to him that I never graduated university and quit my job to travel the world. While I'm rather proud of both of these facets of my life, it appears to be enough to have him lose interest. The focus on university (and school in general) is just insane here. Kids start school at 9am and often run all day, often 'till midnight... and they haven't even tackled homework at that point. It's no wonder that sleeping in class is so common. It's also acceptable (though many teachers don't do it) to engage in corporal punishment (hitting the kids) and hitting in general seems common practise among the children for fun.

Sleeping

Shawna

Ah Korea. Where moving from the couch to the floor is a "step up" in terms of sleeping arrangements. Koreans by-and-large sleep on the floor here. It's comes with the bonus of extra space in your apartment when you're not sleeping, and since many homes use heated floors to keep warm, it makes for a cozy sleep... if you can only get past the fact that it's the frickin' floor. Also, unmarried male/female pairs can't sleep in the same house -- regardless of what's actually happening there. Of course there's no law, but for the sake of not making any waves, Shawna had male a friend of hers afford me a spot on his floor a few nights this past week to avoid situations where significant people in the community might notice where I was sleeping. Personally, I think it's silly and don't give two shits what the locals think when I know I'm being a gentleman, but this is Shawna's life and I'm not going to make it tough for her here. Yeosu is still rather old-world in this regard.

Lifestyles

Koreans are way better environmentally on some things and horrible with others. Hot water, for example, is handled with a little button panel on the wall. Push a button and hot water is available (almost instantaneous), push it again, and the hot water goes away. Compared to Canada, where we waste megawatts of power just keeping 50L of water warm 24hrs a day this only makes sense. They also make heavy use of those instant-on lights I liked so much in Germany, but their doors and windows aren't as well designed.

Soomi

They seem a little too crazy about sterility here though. Water from the tap is boiled before consumption (why it can't be cleaned before reaching the tap is beyond me) and a number of food products you buy are wrapped in plastic, then individually wrapped again. Also, walking around with a face mask on is common. Sometimes it's for keeping your skin UV-free (it's a fashion thing) and other times it's to prevent communicable diseases. Kinda crazy when you realise that everyone eats from the same bowl in a restaurant. They don't even use individual plates.

The Food

And now the part so many of you are waiting for: the food. I'll make this easy for you: I still hate it. Not only that, I still hate it and I haven't even eaten that much of it. Shawna's been kind enough to take me to the few western restaurants around town while I've been here and even those still taste way too Asian for me to be comfortable. I'm going to eat kimchi though, don't worry. Just not yet.

Sightseeing

The green tea fields

In terms of sights, Shawna & friends have been really accommodating. I've seen pretty much everything there is to see in and around Yeosu. If the city wins it's Expo bid for 2012, there will be lots for the tourists to see... they'll just have to work on the transit infrastructure 'cause frankly, it sucks.

Since Shawna has to work during the day, her friend was kind enough to give me a tour around town. Soomi, one of Shawna's closest friends is really cool and her English is excellent. She took me to Yongmunsa Temple (very pretty, very old), Jinnamgwan (the old Naval headquarters during the Japanese invasions) and around town to go shopping (sadly, everything seems just as pricey here as online in Canadian dollars). In the evenings I've had the chance to meet a number of her friends over drinks and BBQ, or go to a classical music performance by some of the teachers in her school (Tchaikovsky, Dvorak), and just yesterday I met a girl I'd run into in Firenze (my first time) who was also teaching here, and she took me on a tour with her class to see the city.

Pretty trees over a path near Dodongo

The biggest outing though was probably this weekend's trip to the Boesung green tea fields and the Suncheon Folk Village of Nakaneupseong for which I have many pictures. Some of the shots are here, but the majority will make their way into my imager soon.

What's next

Alright, I'm burnt. I've been blogging for about 2hours now, so I'm going to take a break and do some dishes. I'm heading up to Seoul on Friday where I'll spend the remainder of my time with Emily-Jane (yay!) I'll close by saying that it's wonderful to be able to see Shawna and the life she's built for herself here. For the first time, I see her in the kind of life she wants, rather than the one she just happens to be in... and it looks good.

Comments

Post a Comment of Your Own

Markdown will work here, if you're into that sort of thing.