Lunar New Year Part II

After the high-jinks of snowboarding finished, Sarah and I decided to leave the others and do some more exploration of Gangwondo. Originally, the others were going to join us for a nearby ice festival. Ice festivals in Korea are composed mainly of ice fishing with other ice-related games, such as, ice football and snow bumper cars (!), as well as the usual sledging and so on. However, due to a recent British-style outbreak of foot and mouth disease amongst the animal folk of the country, many of these festivals had been postponed or cancelled. Boo. However, we heard one was going on in Taebeak, about an hour away. Sarah and I decided to check it out on
the second leg of our trip.

The main area we wanted to explore, however, was Samcheok, a town near the East coast of Korea. There are two main reasons people go to Samcheok, one is the impressive caves nearby. The other is Haeshindang Park, or Penis Park as it's affectinately known. Koreans can sometimes seem quite repressed when it comes to all things procreational (or maybe thats just in comparison to us loose Westerners), so it seemed slightly odd to us that there is an entire park which pays homage to the human phallus. This we had to see. So after inadvertently nearly checking ourselves into a love motel (pre-marital sex is not tolerated by many Korean families so young adults have to hide in one of these) we managed to find a fairly decent motel and head off in search of the penis park. As you can expect, the park was very penisy indeed. There were phalus' (not quite sure the correct way to pluralise this) of all sizes and descriptions. There were benches shaped like penises, a giantic penis and even a penis cannon (please add your joke about what it fires). Our personal favourite, however, had to be a pregnant woman penis with her unborn baby inside. If this wasn't bizarre enough, the baby also had an erect member, just so he wouldn't feel left out. As well as other young adults visiting the park, there were many families there too. It was bizaare to see parents lining up their children to be photographed with giant phalic statues. Hmm, that's one for the family photo album! In retrospect, maybe I'm the prude, but seeing children hugging 20ft penises just didn't sit too well with me.

As well as its obvious charms, the penis park has another draw; it's beautiful coastal location. After we had had our fill of penis, we walked down to the beach. The water was so clear and a beautiful shade of blue. Definitely a place that would come into its own in the summertime. Whilst we strolled along the beach, we noticed off in the distance a penis-shaped lighthouse! Brilliant, is there nothing these cock-obsessives hadn't thought of? Of course, there is a reason that there are numerous wooden penises in a park. So the legend goes. . . . "Once upon a time, in a coastal village there lived a beautiful girl who used to gather seaweed. In the distance there was a rock called Aebawi where plenty of seaweed grew. One day, this young girl was taken out to the rock by a man in a boat. The man, who had a pact to marry her, promised to return to the rock to pick her up after she had collected seaweed there and he went back to the village. At dusk, she waited for the man to come and take her home, but he was unable to come and fetch her due to wild waves. That very night a terrible storm arose and a large wave struck the rock, drowning the ill-fated girl. From the time of her death, the fishing catches turned bad for the village and so a rumor started circulating among the villagers that it was due to the dead girls bitter soul. Finally, the people of the village decided to offer carved wooden phallics as a sacrifice inside Haesindang to console the bitter soul of the unmarried girl. Mysteriously, after that, the village again enjoyed a good catch." Just sounds like an excuse for Koreans to vent some repressed sexuality if you ask me.

After the park, we headed back to our base in Samcheok. We decided to have a wander around the town in the evening before dinner time. We came across a cave exhibition centre, built to promote and educate people on the nearby caves which Samcheok is famous for. The exterior of the buiding resembles a giant wedding cake and is somewhat of an avant-garde design for Korea. I'm pretty sure it's supposed to look more sophisticated then an behemoth bloumange but that's the effect they created. After paying our entrance fee, we immediately realised it wasn't even worth the 6,000 KRW (about 3 quid). Although not expecting a sensory overload, most of the exhibitions were not working and some displays and features were missing. The main area though was a huge, cavernous representation of the nearby Hwanseongul caves and was pretty impressive, although clearly not very weel thought-out. When the exhibition centre was built, the optimistic designers and investors thought this project would draw large crowds. Sadly, this did not materialise and most of the exhibitions have since become delapidated. After a less-than-fulfliling 10 minutes inside the exhibition, we sneaked back out of the building, avoiding the girl on reception, thus saving our joint embarrassment. It was somewhat fortuituous that the exhibition centre was so lame, as we emerged at the optimum time of sunset and Sarah took this lovely picture. We then headed to a shikdang (cheap Korean Restaurant) and had some pretty good jae yuk bok keum (spicy pork) and soybean jiggae (Korean soup), my favourite jiggae of them all. Replete, we headed to bed, ready to tackle the caves nice and early.

The air became noticeably chillier upon arrival at the Hwanseongul cave the next day. We had a short walk to the bottom of the steep slope which had to be negotiated before entrance to the cave. Fortunately (for our legs were still weary after snowboarding) there is a monorail which takes you there! Ah, to be lazy. The cave itself is pretty impressive. My experience of caves is limited but this one seemed fairly large, the guided walkway is just over a mile long. All the usual stalagmites and stalactites are there to be seen, all wonderfully lit up, creating dramatic shadows. This is where this cave really excelled in comparison to the other cave I have visited in Korea, Manjanggul, on Jeju island. Although Manjanggul is the world's longest lava tube, I thought the lighting inside the cave was poor. What's the point of going to the world's longest lava tube if you cant see it?! Hwanseongul had much more thought put into it in that respect. The cave even featured various bridges, each with their own deliciously macabre name, such as, the "Bridge of Hell", and the "Bridge of Confessions." The cave also has a famous heart-shape eroded into the wall. Wondeful.

After the caves we headed to Taebaek to try and find the elusive ice festival. This was the last festival which hadn't been confirmed to us as either cancelled or postponed. However, it didn't look good upon arrival. There were no obvious signs of a festival, no posters or banners to tell us about the merriment which was sure to be had. Our fears were confirmed when Sarah spotted a heap of festival posters rolled-up in the back of a work van, either yet to be put up or (more likely) taken down due to the plague of foot and mouth. Nay mind, the festival would have been a nice bonus to round off an excellent holiday, but we had been snowboarding and explored some more of Korea, so we weren't too disappointed. We decided to head back to Seoul, a day earlier than originally intended, but this way we would have more time to relax before going back to work. We decided to go to a coffee shop near the bus depot to play some cards and chill before the long bus journey home. We entered the coffee shop and had the warmest welcome we've had so far in Korea. The exuberant owner obviously doesn't have too many foreign visitors and she was seemed rather happy we had selected her establishment. She proceeded to make us feel welcome and sat down with us, attempting to engage us in conversation. Initially, we didn't have a clue what she was talking about and after apologising, explained that we dont speak Korean. However, the enthusiastic shop-keeper was not to be put off and continued to quiz us. To my shame, even after living in Korea for 9 months, I could not decipher what turned out to be fairly basic questions. However, much to Sarah's surprise, she managed to answer most of the woman's question's both through her own kowledge and some educated guess work. The woman was delighted by this and sat with us, asking the odd question, but just being generally interested in us and our ensuing card game. Sarah did a great job and as we stood up to leave our new friend jokingly said to her co-worker"I thought she couldn't speak Korean!" After thanking her for her kindness, we then trudged back to the bus stop and high-tailed it back to Seoul.