Spiders, Cows, and Anapji Pond: Gyeongju by Bike

Yep–one more post on Gyeongju.  It’s not every day I get to ride around on a fall afternoon in the Korean countryside…so I took a lot of pics.

Enjoy, and thanks for reading, everyone!

Hanging to dry

Amanda in the flower field

Joe and the rice farmer

The boys spotted something...

What could it be?

Well, hello there!

Looking at me, looking at them

A gate along the way

Hard at work

Trying to find the least-warped angle...

And ending up with a squished head

Last stop: Anapji Pond...

Reconstructed on former palace grounds of the Silla Dynasty, circa 674 AD

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All-day nature, a bike ride with my peeps, and a little Korean history?

Thank you, Gyeongju.  And Joe, Kent, and Amanda.  I needed that!

xo

Rice Paddy Chilli Peppers

Half the fun of renting bikes in Gyeongju…

 Is getting lost in the rice paddy fields, crouching low to the peppers drying on the road, their red skins shining.

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Gyeongju Tree Heaven

Back in the 7th, 8th, and 9th centuries, Korea was ruled by a kingdom called Silla.  Its capital was Gyeongju–a city northeast of Busan and an hour and a half by train. It’s loaded with history: hilly tombs called Tumuli, a royal pond called Anapji, and a temple called Bulguksa are just a few of the sites that draw crowds in the thousands to explore.

So a couple weeks back, Joe and I and our friends Kent and Amanda hopped a Sunday-morning train to the Silla Kingdom capital, looking forward to kicking back with some snacks and taking in the coastal scenery along the way.  This would be Kent and Amanda’s first train trip in Korea, and Joe and I had talked up the views, mentioning its route along the sea. Unfortunately, when we arrived at the station, all the seats were sold out, with only standing-room tickets available. We hoped we’d be able to snag a sit-down for at least part of the ride, but as soon as we settled into a cozy grouping of four, a Korean family appeared in the aisle beside us pointing to, well, their seats.

But who needs chairs when you can crouch on the floor of the train’s hallway beside the bathrooms? And who needs big windows when you can wedge your body into the narrow space between cars and jam your nose up against the glass for a glimpse of track and sky?  And who needs anything else when Amanda’s homemade chocolate chip cookies are along for the ride?

It was good times.

Self-timer success! We rested the camera on the sink counter...

Our plan was to spend the day cruising around the city on bikes.  Kent and Amanda brought theirs along, and Joe and I rented a couple from a shop just outside the station in Gyeongju.  First stop: a forest that belongs in some sort of fairy tale. Seriously, these trees were mystical-gorgeous.

Branches above the roof of some sort of ancient mini-temple...

Fall, I love you.

I could have walked among these beauties all day. But the bikes were calling...

More Gyeongju highlights to come!

xo

Wine Party (In the Park)

There’s a park in Victoria, my Canada home, called Beacon Hill.  It’s huge and beautiful. Weeping willows and cherry blossoms and peacocks and families of fat ducks floating on ponds.  Baby goats in a petting zoo.  Stone bridges crossing water.  Miles of grass. My mom took my brother and I there to feed the ducks when we were kids, breaking off crumbs from old loaves of bread she saved for the outings in our freezer. I know, you’re not supposed to feed animals in parks, but it was common then (I think?), and my mom loved to toss the crumbs on the ground and let the ducks swarm the feast at our feet, listening to their quacks and the west-coast wind that gusted off the Pacific at the edge of the park.  Those days were shortly after we moved to Victoria from Saskatoon, to be closer to the ocean, my mom said, and the artists there.

But I digress.  The park is huge and beautiful, and I’ve been spoilt to envision its vast, inviting floor of grass when I hear the word “park.”  I never thought about Beacon Hill as often as I have living in Korea, where an area on a map labelled “park” often turns out to be a concrete pad and an outdoor exercise gym enclosed by trees.  Sometimes the parks here are big, and feature pathways to tread and various flora to admire, but there’s a consistent sparcity of grass–rarely will you find a wide-open space or something resembling a field. So it is.

But catch the subway line 2 to Centum, take exit 12, walk straight past Shinsegae, and you’ll come to Apec Naru Park.  It borders the Suyeong River, and is filled with sculptures.  It has more grass that you’d expect and a wide path along the water that you can cycle or walk along, taking in the view of the city buildings on the other side.  The trees are tall and at night their silhouettes stretch up against a sky coloured dark pink from the street lights.

A couple weeks ago, my friends and co-teachers Kent and Amanda organized a gathering here.  It began at 6 and ended sometime after 1 am.  The theme was wine. We sampled from France, Chile, Australia, California, and a few other regions I don’t recall.  We drank white and red and then a little lot more red.  Our crew hailed from from Wisconsin, California, Chicago, Colarado, Maine, Busan, and Vancouver Island. (Yep, that last one is me.)  Not all are featured here, as my photographic inspiration kicked in a little late in the wine game, but the night and the promise of bottled goodness brought out a solid crew of 13.  The park had a grass-and-stone circle to set up in, and a built-in glass-topped table for all our snacks and fruity/dry/smooth/spicy/long-finish offerings. The pics are a little blurry and pretty grainy, which is exactly how life looks after eight hours in a park with your friends and a grape buffet.

I recommend.

Thank you, Apec Naru.  You just might pop up in the mind memory the next time I think “park.”

Beacon Hill–I will return.

~xo

Dadaepo Birthday Sky

When I was a kid my birthday always fell somewhere around the first day of school.  No big deal, though I do remember a few tears in grade one: everybody more stoked about their fancy new pencil cases than the fact I was turning six.

Now I love September.  Before moving to Korea I spent a year in Edmonton, Alberta, and in the fall there I began to run through the river valley in the evenings, when there was still enough light to see the leaves scattered across the path in loose piles, red and yellow and the last bit of summer green hanging on.  Despite the trees shedding their colour, fall feels new.  And hopeful.

This year, I celebrated the birthday on a Busan beach called Dadaepo…

with great friends.

and a crazy sky.

Well hello, 33…

I’m ready for you.

xo

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In Busan? Want to know where you can camp with a fire?

Dadaepo Beach is on the west side of the city, and it’s beautiful.  You can find firewood in a treed area beside the beach.

Get there:

From Busan Stn: Bus # 2 or 98 for Dadaepo at the stop in front of the station.

From Nampodong Stn: Take Exit 3, Bus #11. The ride is about an hour and 20 mins from here.

Subway most of the way: Get off at Sinpyeong Stn or Geojeong Stn (Line 1) and transfer onto a bus to Dadaepo, # 2,11, 96, or 98.

Enjoy!

Deokjeokdo Bliss: 41 Hours, 39 Pics

Any of you who have been following Coco Busan over the last year and a half (thanks, everyone!) have likely noticed my fondness for Korean islands.  I’ve visited six of them now, escaping the homogeny of the city buildings and immersing myself, temporarily, into the more traditional lifestyle and architecture that lingers on these slow-paced refuges. Bright rooftops and forests of fat green trees frame the small villages that make up this part of Korea’s culture.  Fishing boats glow in the night waters; narrow roads wind up toward silouhetted hills; the sound of families cooking dinner drifts into my minbak windows, unobstructed by cars.  Yep, I like these places. When I leave, six months from now, the islands will stay with me.

So of course I had to show one to my sister.

After three days trekking through Seoul, a journey that included hours poking around the vintage Hongdae boutiques, a sweaty jaunt to see the wooden houses of Bukcheon Village, an afternoon strolling through the art shops of Insadong, an hour at the 14th- century Gyeongbok Palace, which Abby thought would be “an awesome place for a music festival”, a cable-car trip up Namsan mountain to the bottom of Seoul Tower, and a rainy Han River Cruise–we took off for Deokjeokdo.  It’s an island an hour three hours from Incheon if you somehow miss the express boat and have to take the slow one, like we did.  Ah, well. What’s an extra couple hours on a boat with your sister in the Yellow Sea?

We arrived in the late, late afternoon on a Thursday. Our return boat was scheduled for Saturday morning. With only two evenings and one full day to enjoy a little beach time, we had one hopeful wish: sun.

The evening sky looked promising…

and after a couple hours sipping Cass while the tide rolled in…

we headed back to our luxury digs.

There are quite a few minbaks on the island, but in peak season, they were pricier than we’d hoped, so we settled on a minimalist barren room that fit our budget.

The real luxury was waking the next morning to clear sky, bright sun, and a stroll through the village…

past the ajummas and their carts…

and little houses tucked between trees…

to the beach.

Upon glimpsing the sand and the shore in its late morning-Deokjeokdo-sunny-August glory, Abby’s pace sped up.  Seriously, I think this was the fastest I saw her walk in Korea. Forget ancient palaces, traditional wooden houses, vintage boutiques, river cruises, and Namsan Mountain views…

My sister is a beach girl.

And the beach is where we stayed.  All day.

Well, we may have rented a couple inflatable yellow tubes for 5,000 won a piece from a nearby beachshop ajumma and floated on them in the Yellow Sea under the hot sun for an hour, discussing the particulars of Abby’s social scene as she stands on the precipice of Grade 12 (girlfriends, boys, basketball) while a swarm of fully-clothed Korean dudes splashed each other in the water nearby…

but other than that blissful sojourn, it was us, a striped blanket we borrowed from our minbak, the sand, which was a bright gold shade, a couple paper cups of sliced watermelon, and a copy of The New Yorker I’d tucked into my bag back in Busan. (Joe got me a surprise subscription a few months back–best gift ever.)

A beach, my sister, and The New Yorker?

This might be my new happy place. Definitely in the top ten…

Did I mention trees are one of my favourite things in nature?  Check out that green.  The whole island. That green.

I’d been eyeing up a long breakwater to our right since the evening before, so as the day dissolved into late afternoon, I dusted the sand from my bronzing reddening skin and went for a walk. Abby stayed, sprawled out and snoozing with her shades on.

A stream flowed out near the edge, the sand framing it windblown into long thin ridges that form what’s probably a sort of steep staircase to the local ants and sand flies…

And to the left of a few old Korean fishing boats perched on the wet shore.

Nets and ropes were piled along the edge of the break…

and graffitied bins…

and unidentified piles of stuff wrapped in blankets.

Close to the breakwater’s end, this little secluded spot appeared… 

And I thought, now that would be a sweet place to spend an afternoon!  If only we had another day…

Abby says I’m wistful.  Actually, I think I said it first, lamenting our limited time on Deokjeokdo the first night, when I saw how beautful it was.  ”We have all day tomorrow,” she’d said.

“I know,” I said. “I just get wistful.”

“Ha! And where do you think you get that from?”

Silence.

“Dad!” she said.

My dad finds new spots when they go on trips,  a quaint little neigbourhood in Southern California or a beach town on Vancouver Island, and starts to daydream.  ”We could get a little place,” he says, “spend the summers, maybe come out for a few months in the winter.”  Traveling does that to you, to us. You think about staying for more than a day or two. You’re not ready to leave. You want this part, the discovering part, to last.  But my dad wants to see more, too, to get back in the car and keep driving. There’s only so much time, and more places along the way.  So that my sister and my stepmom have to convince him to park the car and just enjoy where he is.  I think he wants both–to stay and to go.  The idea of returning, perhaps, provides some kind of reconciliation between the dwindling time and the desire to find out what’s further up along the road.  Last May he went to Turkey with my brother.  Colleen, he wrote in an email to my stepmom, you wıll enjoy Anytalya when we come here.  The old cıty ıs very ınterestıng and wıth the cafes and promenades ıt has a European feel to ıt.

I ask my sister, “Do you think they’ll go?”

“Oh who knows,” she says. “Every time we go somewhere Dad says he wants to go back.  And then we go somewhere else.”

Back at the beach…

Abby was roasting herself.

A little dehydrated, we packed up and found a shaded patio…

with pajeon!

and this little visitor.

Late-day light on the stroll back…

turned to dusk.

The next day, we would return to Seoul, then ride the slow train back to Busan.

Eighteen months into my time in Korea, I’m homesick.  I miss Canada.  I miss my family and all the friends there who have also become my family.  When I hugged my sister goodbye at the Gimhae airport three days later, I thought, there goes my family–separated again, for what will be almost another year.

But, like the islands, she stays with me.

(Thanks Abby. xo)

Green Water White Sand Bijindo Teaser

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As usual, I should be asleep right now, and will be paying for this late-night post in the morning when my kindies are running circles around me because the coffee I’ve downed while applying mascara in the hopes it makes me eyes appear open isn’t boosting me anywhere close to their energy level, but I’ve been grading about 900 essays all night, well actually there’s only 28 students in the uni class I teach on Wednesday nights, but by the time you get to number 19 or so it might as well be 900, a stack that just seems to grow the more you grade it, and I miss my blog kind of terribly, and in just a few more weeks my evenings and weekends will be free again to write, and take photos, and edit photos, and write, and explore the city and the country, and did I mention writing?  And all the other things I love to do when I’m not juggling two jobs.  But for tonight, another glimpse of Bijindo, and the dock that greeted us on the camping trip that somehow already feels like a long time ago. More, more, of everything to come–thanks for reading, everybody!

~Coco xo

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