Chuesok

Sokcho Diary

7.10.06

Chuesok- A noun denoting the biggest Korean holiday of the year. For this holiday, almost every Korean goes to their hometown to do several things: Commonly called Korean Thanksgiving, it is a lunar holiday that shifts year by year with the moon phases.
1. Pay homage at the graves of their ancestors.
2. Eat
3. Eat some more
4. Settle family business


The Craziest Bus Driver I Have Ever Met

For this Chuesok, like the last one I was in Korea for, I was invited to my old bosses family residence in the tiny town of Go-Sak, about five miles outside of the first town I worked in, Heung-hae.

I left Sokcho on the 9:10 bus, right after my last class. I had packed my bag and taken it to school with me, so I was totally prepared. Because of the holiday, when travel of all kinds in Korea is very hard to get on, I had bought my ticket the preceding Saturday. For the low, low price of 32,000 won I was given the privilege of meeting the craziest bus driver I have ever met.

He was a pretty young guy, the driver of the express bus to Pusan and Pohang. Probably he had only been out of the army for a couple of years, and he still showed enthusiasm for the job.

I got on quick and found my seat, about two rows back from the door, thankfully a single, and stowed my bags. Looking around the bus it seemed pretty full but not totally with a mix of both waygooks and Koreans.

We pulled out of the bus station with a lurch and I was thrown into my seat with the sudden sensation of speed as the driver stomped on the gas and shifted from first all the way through to fifth in about three seconds, running the red light at the corner and flying around a curve on the way to pick up the main road out of Sokcho.

We blazed through downtown, past the busy shops and through the waves of neon lights without stopping. Red lights did not mean anything to this guy and we hit Yang-yang, usually a forty-five minute drive in thirty minutes.

The road south from Sokcho starts out as a four-lane expressway all the way to Donghae, about one hundred and fifty kilometers down the coast but that is it. While a new highway is being built to link Pusan with Sokcho by expressway, the road is mostly a twisting and turning run through mountains along the ocean.

Four the four hour run from Donghae to Pohang I alternated watching the squid boats on the ocean and gripping my seat in fear as my driver passed on the yellow line, around curves, going up hill, sounding his horn like the hounds of hell were after him, telling everybody in his way that he was coming through in a ten ton bus and it was up to you to get out of the way in time.

The other sight I had outside of my window was much prettier. The whole way down the coast, and the road hugged it for about eighty percent of the way, you could see the full moon shinning on the water, and far out to sea you could see the lights of the squid boats shinning like little cities in the night.

The boats ran in an almost solid line from Donghae to Pohang. Some were closer in shore than the others but all of them had their bright lights shinning on the water to lure the squid up to the nets.

The boats, even though they could see each other seemed like little planets on the ocean. Small worlds were nothing else mattered, only the men on the boats and their catch. It was like looking at a satellite picture of the world at night but instead of looking down at it you looked across it, like it was three-dimensional.

You could picture the men sweating and working the nets, talking in Korean, listening to their captain shouting directions about where to place their gear, all the time pulling, tugging, the nets into the boat, laden with the catch of the sea.

I finally got to Pohang about one thirty in the morning and walked off the bus into a bus station that I had not seen for almost two years but remembered it like it was yesterday. I walked to the right door and immediately veered right to the taxi line and went to the head of the row. I looked the taxi driver right in the eye and said, “Heung-hae”.



Heung-hae

I always knew that I would come back to the little town that I had called home for a year, my memories of the place where too good to be ignored and forgotten.

I checked into a pretty run of the mill Korean hotel about two in the morning and watched the Twins lose live. I had to get up around ten to meet Greg so I only watched through the fifth inning.

When I got up I headed into the bathroom to wash the travel grime from the night before off of my body but of course, in this very mediocre motel, my opinion of this place was going down by the second, there was no hot water. That kind of sucked because it meant the last real shower that I would take for three days was on Wednesday morning.

After my unfulfilling shower I headed into Heung-hae proper to meet Greg who I had not seen for over a year. Unerringly I found my way through the back alleys and side streets that I had walked and wandered through for a year on foot and on my bike.

I looked in the shop windows where I had gotten my haircut and bought some clothes. I went by the now closed bookstore where I had looked in vain for any sort of English novel.

Lots of businesses that I had gone to had failed or moved but some were still there. The man I had bought my fruit from, religiously every Friday still ran his stall but had obviously prospered as he was not selling out of the back of his blue truck anymore. The old crone that I had bough my eggs from remembered me and gave me a ton of garlic for one thousand won.

My Family Mart, a place that I had bought many bottles of soju and makju from had been replaced by a L.G. Telecom outlet, but the lady who sold me deep-fried chicken balls was still there. Most importantly, to me anyway, Mrs. Park was still running her mudfish soup restaurant deep in the market.

After fortifying ourselves with a few bowls of the excellent soup flavored with leeks, garlic, hot peppers, and who knows what else we each drank a big bowl of makgoli and headed into Pohang to hit the market and buy some supplies.

We took good old bus 107 into town, from the same bus stop that I always went to and drove to Pohang. On the way I was able to point things out to Greg that I remembered seeing on my many treks through the neighborhood. The leper town was still there, we could just barely see the ruined church, and so was the apple grove and the driving range that I always wanted to go to but had never been to, if that makes sense.

Downtown Pohang had not changed much, the main market not at all. There were still crowds of people jammed into a very small area, each one hustling and bustling to gather supplies for Chuesok. The fish market was the same, the floor still covered with slimy water and floating guts and heads, the whale vendor was still on their corner with lumps of baleen and meat for same at ten thousand won for a few small slivers. Even the smell of the fish was the same, and why wouldn’t it be? Rot, decay, death, salt, all mixed together to from a potent scent that permeated the air.

After wandering around for a while, we headed to E-Mart. It was our job on Friday evening to cook up a big pot of pasta at the pension that Mrs. Kim had rented in a little fishing village.

After gathering our ingredients we headed back to Heung-hae and had some of the worst sundubu that I have every tasted and proceeded to drink ourselves silly until the wee hours of the morning.

After stumbling home around one I had to get up early to fetch Greg and head out to the village of Gok-san where Mrs. Park would be cooking the very traditional feast.

We hopped in a cab about ten to eleven and headed out into the country. Again I was able to see places and things were I had spent a lot of time. The rice was golden and about ready to be cut, just like I remembered, and look, there is the first mountain I climbed in Korea with the thousand year old grave stones out in front of it

We went through the small village that I had hiked through on my first quest to see the blue green waters of the Pacific and under the irrigation system that I climbed to get to the top of a mountain. Past fields, ponds, and little streams that I knew intimately from bike rides and walks taken, well it seemed like yesterday.

When we arrived at Mrs. Parks the food was all laid out for us to eat. We had fish, both cooked and dried, squid, octopus, sweet potato, kimchi, two kinds of soup, bean sprouts, fruit, a real spread. Everything was fresh cooked by Mrs. Park using nothing but a rice cooker and a two-burner gas stove.

We left after just an hour, the family had business to take care of and I think Mrs. Kim felt we were intruding a little bit, and we were, but it was a nice gesture to invite us to such a pleasant and traditional holiday.

Mrs. Kim had a really nice surprise for us after we ate. She had rented a large room in a really small little seaside town for us all to spend the night in. It was so incredibly pretty and relaxing to smell the salt air and feel the power of the ocean so close to us. We alternated between playing spades with the girls, talking, walking on the little beach and just staring from the balcony as the huge swells that rolled in, ten footers at least that came crashing over the breakwater with a roar like a train, the foam sliding off into the inner harbour.

The night was so pretty that after watching the moon rise and eating the pasta that the girls had helped to make that I took my blankets and thin foam pad out to the balcony about one in the morning and made a nest to sleep in where I could hear and feel the waves while the smell of the salt tickled my nose.

When I got up on Saturday morning I went for a walk. It was early, around seven, and the sea was still breaking hard against the breakwater. I sat for a long time on a hard cement post facing the ocean watching the waves roll in, one after another. They kept crashing against a group of rocks that jutted out from the shore and the water from the curl at the tops of the waves ran over them and down their backs with a sound just like a running tap in the bathroom.

The Stupidest Bus Driver that I have Ever Met

Saturday afternoon, I met probably the worst bus driver that I have ever seen.

I got on the bus in Pohang around two fifteen to head back to Sokcho and I new immediately that this would be the worst bus driver that I had ever had.

The first giveaway was he let some guy come on board to try and sell cheap watches to the customers, not a good start.

The torture continued as we had to stop every hour, on the hour for the guy to have a smoke, and it wasn’t like we stopped at places where the rest of the passengers could get off and do something, no we stopped at random bus stops, wide spots in the road, you name it we stopped at it.

Constantly riding the clutch and the brake we gradually weaved our way up to Sokcho. With the horrible driving skills of the old man at the wheel it turned a five-hour ride into an eight and a half hour torture. The less said about it the better.

Pictures

1. A traditional Chuseok meal laid out on the table

2. Waves crashing over the breakwater

3. Red peppers drying in a wooden boat that has not been used in years

4. The full moon rising over the harbour Chuseok night

5. The girls wearing Hanbook, traditional Korean clothing made from hemp, back left Sandy, back right Laura, center, a cousin