This picture unfortunatly shows the beggining of Kristi's unfortunate run in with food during our excusion. Nothing was bad per se, but in terms of variety and familiarity, Kristi got an unfortunate sampling of Korean cuisine this weekend. Upon arriving in Chuncheon Kristi saw a nice old woman cooking corn on the cob on the sidewalk and decided to buy some. Turns out it had been cooked for an uncountable amount of hours and it was lukewarm and hard like old jube jubes. For lunch I wanted to get Dakgalbi (you'll know what that is soon) so we went looking for a place to eat. Upon finding one, Kristi did the usual routine of making sure they had something meatless to eat. Unfortunatly, the hostesses readiness to please us combined with my timidness at making requests (I really suck at telling people what I want when I don't know how to communicate) ended up getting us both the vegetarian dish, which unfortunatly I cannot name right now. Honestly, the dish is actually kinda cool, but when you are'nt expecting it and are'nt ready for it, its just not as welcome as it should be. The dish consits of buckwheat noodles topped with red pepper paste, dried seaweed, chopped cucumber, half a hard boiled agg (sometimes), and what seemed to be slices of mild radishes. All of this is served cold and with the bowl a 5th full of water. You still it all together so that the pepper paste fills the water and makes it all spicy. We ate it and enjoyed it a fair bit. I'll get back to the rest of the culinary outings soon, but now onto the shopping.
We get to a tourist information center and after some talking we decide to stay at the 'grand motel' in the downtown area. The perk about this establishment is that the proprietor personally picks you up to take you to the motel. The place is run by a very cute little old man who speaks a fair amount of English. On our way to his place he mentions that all the large stairways we see on the side of the road lead to a large underground shopping complex that is underneath a large amount of the downtown core. After we check in and see our nice little room, we decide to check it out. The place is much more rugged than Coex mall (one of Asia's largest underground malls located in Samseong. I'll talk about that place in another post) but has some pretty remarkable shops.
The above three articles of clothing is a mere sample of some of the sweet threads available in this mall (my apologies if the last image is sideways, you will have to save it and flip it yourself). I was really sad to find that the 'coffee and cinderella' shirt was only in women's sizes. That shirt is a hilarious misprint of the Jim Jarmusch film 'Coffee and Cigarettes', which I am a big fan of. The mall also has delicious gelatto, quite a few nice places to eat, and it made a great shelter from the drizzle outside.
After wandering around the various other shops above ground we eventually made are way to Dakgalbi street. Chuncheon is the birthplace of Dakgalbi, a culinary dish where you are giving raw chicken, covered in spicy pepper sauce, atop a large pile of cabbage that you cook on a cast iron pan at your table. You are given lettuce leaves, raw garlic, raw onions, and more pepper paste to make little wraps which you eat with your hands. Part way throught he meal a server will come by with rice and mix it all in with the chicken so that it absorbs all the sauce and so there is more to eat.
Unfortunatly for Kristi, the only thing vegetarian they seem to serve with this is, you guessed it, not-so-bad-but-really-not-that-good cold buckwheat noodle fun! While I got to stir up a storm of chicken in the birthplace of this wonderful dish, Kristi got to rediscover the wonders of cold noodles mixed with cold water, and apparently the second time was'nt even prepared as well as the first. I will have to take her to some really nice Buddist restaurants to make up for it. Dakgalbi is fantastic. I did'nt eat it fast enough and some of it burned, which made the cabbage carmilize a bit to much for my liking, but apart from that I would totally recommend it. Also, there is an entire alley dedicated soley to Dakgalbi! Totally awesome.
After dinner we continued wondering, but were so tired from travelling and such that we turned in the the night. The next morning we got up early, eventually found breakfast in the form of a bakery chain called Paris Bagette, and after a ton of fumbling eventually made it to the jade mine. The entire time I was at the mine I really felt like a huge outsider. The mine itself is used by the local population as a health spa, as jade is apparently theraputic. As soon as you get past the first room there is a medium size room with a jade floor upon which many Korean women were resting and napping. They were all quite wet from a nearby sauna room. I did'nt take pictures merely because I could'nt do so without feeling like I was exploiting their beliefs somehow for entertainment. The Mineshaft leading to the rest of the grounds though was pretty cool:
the floor is wet and the walls are full of broken jade. The very humid air must be permeated with all the jade and presumably adds to the theraputic process. Our trip was cut kind of short when we reached the end of the corridor. to our left was a completely dark area that we felt we werent ment to enter, and to the right was an area that contained sleeping pods:
These pods contained people at the time, and it seemed like they paid a fair amount of money to be in them. We did'nt want to disturb them, and had no idea where to go, so we simply turned around. Kristi wanted to try out the spa facilities but I totally pussed out. I simply am not at that level of comfort yet where I can just hang out naked in a spa with Korean men, so I told Kristi the I would'nt enjoy the expierience at all. She reluctantly accepted my plea and we checked out the shop. I should have asked if I could take pictures but I did'nt. The jadework is quite gorgeous, and everything was quite expensive. Kristi got a jade-infused plastic Buddist prayer bead braclet (I think they just at jade dust to the melted plastic in processing) for W10000, but jewelry ranged from 40,000 for rings to 3,000,000 for elaborate necklaces and such. The best part is that, for just 400,000 won, you can get ENTIRE MATRESSES OF PURE JADE. If it were'nt so cumbersome there may be a good chance I would be sleeping on jade for the rest of my stay here in Korea.
After the jade mine we took a bus back to East Seoul. The bus station happens to be at the subway stop where Technomart is (a 9 floor electronics super mall) so I stopped in and managed to get a used monitor for cheap. Upon leaving I needed to try some street food I saw some people gathered around, and I was lucky I did. All it was was tiny pieces of chicken on a stick that was barbequed and then doused in a sauce of your choice. Of all the places this shack had the biggest lineup, so I decided to give it a go:
This stuff was nothing less than brilliant. It was dripping with sauce and everyone who bought some merely stood there and ate it. When you got too far down the stick, you simply pick up the purning sheers and cut your stick down to size. You choose from spicy BBQ (my choice), mustard, teriyaki, and some other sauce. You get a footlong stick for W1500, which is quite the steal. After that, we came home. We are going to a Hyundai Unicorns baseball game tommorrow, so expect to hear about that near the end of the week. Thats all for now.
Justin
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