Suwon Fortress and AK Plaza

October 23, 2010

Today Sacha, Sean and I headed out to Suwon fortress, which is in the town of Suwon. Suwon is about halfway between Pyeongtaek and Seoul, so it took about 30 minutes on the subway to get there. I have learned that I will be using only one subway line, really, the one that goes toward Seoul, because that is where all the exciting things happen.

Once we got to Suwon – interesting sidenote, the train station there is also in an AK Plaza – we took a cab over to the main gate. Turns out Suwon fortress is huge – about a fourth of the town is inside the walls, which kind of reminded me of the Great Wall of China, except a lot smaller! There was some pretty heavy traffic, it being 4:30, so we sat in the cab for a good 20 minutes. The final toll was something like W10,000 – about $10 – but we got there safe and sound, so it was all good!

We ended up at the visitor’s centre, which is where the Eastern Gate was – which looked more like a temple than a gate, due to the temple-like structure that was covered with beautiful green and red paintings. At the visitor’s centre they had an archery range set up, and we watched for a few minutes as a line of old men took turns shooting targets that had to be at least 50 yards away. Or farther? Far enough that I couldn’t see where the arrow landed, I could only hear the thunk if it hit the target. I think the men were part of an archery club of some sort, because they had different coloured scarves hanging out of their pants pockets.

After attempting to sneak into the fort without tickets – which is to say, we didn’t know we needed tickets, and a lady in a hanbok yelled at us – we got very confused in the ticket line and eventually got tickets for both the fort and the train ride. The train was a cute little trolley, with the lead car designed like a dragon’s head. To quote the back of the ticket, “Hwaesong Trolley consists of the power train and the three tourists’ trains. The front represents King Jeongjo in the form of a dragon head to symbolize powerful driving force, while the tourists’ trains represent king’s chair both to symbolize the king’s authority and facilitate viewing”.

We’re pretty sure that King Jeongjo built the fort, hence the large statue we found of him on our trolley ride. Before that, though, we checked out the Eastern Gatehouse, which was, as I’ve already said, gorgeous. The wall and various accoutrements – guard stations, crossbow towers, etc. – were astonishingly well preserved, which leads me to think that the government may have been pulling a Sir Arthur Evans, doing extensive “maintenance” so that everything looks like it did originally. Not that there’s anything wrong with that, but I’m pretty sure the vivid greens and reds of the gatehouse wouldn’t have survived that well after a few centuries.

The trolley ride was pretty neat. We picked the back seat, so we could have an uninterrupted view of the fort, but that failed when a tour guide jumped up right in front of us and hung on the whole way. Ah well. I still got lots of great footage for my “Trolley Montage”. When the trolley ride ended, though, we were stuck in the middle of nowhere. You see, the ticket we bought was one-way, but the implication was that you could get a ticket to go back when you reached the other end of the route. Not so. In fact, we caught the last train, so we were stranded.

We trekked down the hill, which had a lovely bicycle path, and caught a cab to Jang an Moon, which is a bus stop (or possibly an area of Suwon) where we met up with Zebekiah (Zeb), who is a friend of Sacha and Sean. He’s a pretty awesome guy – shaved head, bushy beard, California drawl. He took us to a Korean BBQ place that was delicious, and we had a few rounds of soju, which are guaranteed to take revenge on me tomorrow. I also partook of some Korean beer.

About five minutes after leaving the restaurant I got the hiccups. By the time we’d finished sipping beer outside a convenience store and proceeded to meet up with Corrine, who is Zeb’s girlfriend. She lives right next to the Suwon AK Plaza, which is insanely convenient. Then we proceeded to the Noraybang – no idea how to spell that – which is the Korean version of Karaoke. It was very loud, but there were awesome laser lights, and a fairly large English song selection. I think my favourite moment was when Zeb and Sean rocked out to Britney Spears’ “Hit Me Baby One More Time”. They turned it from bubble-gum pop to bordering-on-death-metal. The line of Sean’s that I managed to capture on my flip was “My loneliness is killing YOUUUUU!” Cue deep, unnecessarily menacing laughter. Very fun, and definitely something I’d love to do again.

By that point I was hicupping up a storm – I may have to lay off carbonated beverages like beer – so we said goodnight and headed back to Pyeongtaek. Unfortunately we missed the last subway train by about 7 minutes, so we had to take a W50,000 cab ride. Yes, that is expensive. But there’s no other way to get to Pyeongtaek, so we didn’t have much of a choice. It was kind of neat, because the cab driver was technically off-duty, so, because we offered a flat rate, he drove as fast as humanly possible, which involved a lot of running red lights and veering around parked cars. All in all, a wonderful day!

October 24^th, 2010

Woke up with a splitting headache, likely due to my copious consumption of alcohol the night previously. I think I’ll be laying off the beer for a while, because it’s doing my digestive system no favors. Or it might have been the Soju? I’m sure I’ll figure it out soon enough, lol.

After recovering for a few hours, I did some laundry, cleaned up the kitchen, and swept the floor. That doesn’t sound like a lot, but for me, it’s a big deal. I also had ambitious plans to clean the bathroom, but it turned out that I needed gloves for the chemicals I planned on using, so that plan was shot to heck. I settled for grabbing my video camera and heading for AK Plaza.

AK Plaza was fairly easy to locate – just go left out the apartment for a few blocks, then follow the main road straight until you hit AK. It’s literally right in front, so it’s impossible to miss. AK was... not what I was expecting. I’d been inside before, of course – that’s also where the train station is – but I hadn’t gone into the mall proper. Turns out that the mall is actually 8 stories, and about half of each story is occupied by this massive department store. I have no idea what it’s called, or how you actually buy stuff there – I didn’t see any cashiers. Another mystery to solve!

The theatre is at the top, although again, no idea how to actually buy tickets or get in. I got a nice green tea ice cream scoop from Baskin Robbins, which actually wasn’t as good as I thought it would be. It seems blasphemous to say that Canadian green tea ice cream – or, at least the stuff they serve in sushi restaurants – is better than the Korean version, but so far that seems to be the case. I also hit up the book store on the 6^th floor, which had about four shelves of English books. I picked up Catch 22, which was W20,000 – not bad. I was hoping to find some more fantasy books, and they did have Harry Potter, but no Sword of Truth or Xanth, unfortunately.

I also grabbed a soap dish and alarm clock from the massive dollar store at AK. Then I walked home, hitting up the Lotte Super on the way back to grab some rubber gloves and a little kids’ book on learning how to write in Korean. I promptly composed a song about the first dozen or so words I learned, which I shall now share with you. The song is to the tune of Queen’s Crazy Little Thing Called Love, and I have entitled it “Crazy Little Thing Called Frog”:

This thing called kawi, my scissors can’t handle it.

This thing, koyangi, I must pet that fluffy cat.

Kaekuri! Crazy little thing called frog.

This thing called napi, it flies with buttered wings,

It swings, it jives, bubbles up like a naempi pot.

Kaekuri! Crazy little thing called frog.

There goes nokuri. That racoon likes to rock and roll.

It drives me crazy. Then the talp’aengi snails through,

And leaves me with its swirly shell.

I’ve gotta be cool, relax, find a toma table and sit right back.

Maybe chill with some twaeji.

Those crazy pigs know how to set you free!

Kaekuri! Crazy little thing called frog.

The concept here is of course that after the Korean word is introduced, the next word/line tells you what the word means. So kawi is scissors, talp’aengi is snail, toma is table, etc. I think it’s pretty brilliant, myself, although time will tell if it actually helps me remember the words.

After that, discovered that while I can’t stream videos with my illegally purloined internet, I can access fanfiction, which is a slippery slope. Fanfiction once ruled my life, many years past, so I’ll have to make sure I resist its complusion. I have faith in myself! Rahhhh!