It is early January here in southern Korea and I am staring
out the window at the rain that is falling (yes, I said rain). I can’t help but grin as I recall the many
Facebook statuses I’ve recently read from friends and family back in America
complaining about all of the snow and freezing temperatures. To be fair, we do get some cold temperatures
in Changwon, but we have yet to experience them. However, if you live in Changwon and want to
see snow, you have to go find it.
This was the goal as Johann and I set out for Gangwon
province during our short vacation. We
wanted to do some scenic photography, preferably snow-covered, and Gangwon
province, a mountainous, rural region up in the northern part of Korea seemed
like the perfect place to go. An in
interesting side note, Pyeongchang, in Gangwon province, will be the host of
the 2018 Winter Olympics.
We departed Monday afternoon with nothing planned except for
our first stop, Chuncheon. Chuncheon is
the capital, and largest city, in Gangwon province, but that’s not saying
much. After six hours of travel, we walked
around looking for an acceptable motel. The
rest of the night was spent relaxing and planning for the next day.
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| Motel Room |
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| My First Bidet!!! (It wasn't as great as I've heard people say it is.) |
We made the decision to spend the next day in and around
Chuncheon. We find a park with dozens of
sculptures on display. Many of the
sculptures consisted of nude women and children in various poses. It’s still shocking that Korean culture is
considered to be conservative considering such displays are not uncommon in
Korea. In addition to these “liberal”
sculptures, there is a park devoted to toilets in Suwon, and another park
devoted to erotic sculptures on Jeju Island.
I have yet to see either, but both are on my to-do list.
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| Weirdest children's game I've ever seen! |
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| I wonder what artist thought, "I'm going to make a sculpture of a little naked girl catching a giant fish." |
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| She might not be nude, but when approached from a certain angle, it still looks wrong! |
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| Um.......no comment! |
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| Baseball....Pencil Sharpeners.....Roseanne..............Ok, now I'm good! |
After the park, we took the train out to Gugok
Waterfall. To get there, we had to hike
up a snow-covered path through the valley.
At the end, after climbing the stairs, we were able to gaze upon the
frozen falls, hanging lifelessly over the edge of the cliff. The highlight of the waterfall trip, however,
had to be the young girl who yelled down the stairs to her mother that she
needed to hurry up because she is the slowest…in perfect English!!! Our jaws dropped hearing her accent-less
speech!
No trip to Chuncheon would be complete without trying 닭갈비 (dakgalbi), the dish that
put Chuncheon on the map. There are
literally streets devoted to this dish. It
is a spicy chicken stir-fry often grilled right at the table in front of
you. The dish is so popular with tourists
that, when Johann and I entered the restaurant for dinner, the ajumma didn’t
even take our order. She just greeted us
and asked, “닭갈비?”
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| 닭갈비 |
The next morning, we left Chuncheon for nearby Yanggu, a
very small town near the border with North Korea. We chose Yanggu because of the lakes that are
nestled in the mountains nearby. In the
brochure for Yanggu, fishing is advertised as a year-round activity, so we were
looking forward to a relaxing afternoon fishing and drinking whiskey. We show the brochure to a taxi driver who
nods and drives us 15km into the mountains.
He drops us off at the fishing park next to the lake and takes off. There’s nobody in sight! We go to the nearby pension where we are told
that there is no fishing until spring.
Dejected, we walk around the lake for a little while before calling a
taxi to come take up back into town.
We would have loved to go back to the lake at night to see
the stars, but did not feel it was worth 35,000 won round-trip for the taxi, nor
the hassle of trying to call somebody to come get us out in the mountains at
that time of night. The lesson we
learned is if we are going to travel in remote places, it’s better to have your
own car. This is why both Johann and I
will be obtaining Korean driver’s licenses in the near future.
Anyway, we had previously noticed a walking path along the
river near our hotel. We figured this to
be a possible location to try our luck at stargazing. Long after sunset, we headed out to the
path. While we were able to see the
stars, it was nowhere near the brightness or clarity we were hoping for. It is amazing how even a small town such as
Yanggu can create enough light pollution to diminish the view of the nighttime
sky!
Despite a few disappointments along the way, we were
satisfied as we headed back to Changwon the next day. It was a much-needed change of scenery from
the urban life that I have been accustomed to the past couple years. Also, and I don’t quite know why this is, but
it was also nice to not see many foreigners during our travels. It’s not that I think foreigners in Korea are
annoying or insufferable but for some reason, I was happy not to see any for a
couple days.
Gangwon Province provides a perfect getaway for someone in
Korea looking to get out of the city and into the scenic countryside for a
short while. I wouldn’t want to live
there as a foreigner, but I do hope to return, with a car, in the near future.
