Chuseok

I've gone through my third of these thanksgiving ceremonies, and so far the tally of gifts received reads as follows:

2007 - Set of SPAM

2008 - Set of SPAM

2009 - Set of rice cakes

For those of you unfamiliar with SPAM, it is the canned, chopped and reconstituted 'ham' that formed a staple of many an army meal, and which, after the Korean war, became a hugely popular delicacy. It is fatty and salty and absolutely disgusting if you are, like me, a true meat eater.

So, you can imagine that I welcomed the set of rice cakes with considerably more enthusiasm! The two photos shown above show the opened box, with each of the little boxes holding a different color and shape of rice cake, and the lid - very opulent with its gold and royal blue finish.

As for taste - well, let's just say it's basically like mixing Rice Krispies with sugar and water and letting it dry - hard, crunchy, but no basic taste to it beyond sugar!

Purple

It is said that purple foods are good for you, if so, this must be excellent! It is a purple sweet potato - as you can see, purple all the way through. It tasted like any other sweet potato that has been oven baked, so it really only is the color that sets it apart.

Autumn

That herald and brightener of the wayside during autumn in both South Africa and here in Korea is the cosmos. I know of some gardeners who cultivate this wonderful flower, but most of us just enjoy the spectacle as they wave at us from unlikely corners and verges, nodding their heads as if saying: 'Yes, we know summer is over and autumn is here, and soon winter will banish us, but isn't it glorious while it lasts?'

Of course the crops are ripe and ready everywhere, almost begging to be harvested.

The orchards are not only flaunting their ripe fruit, in the case of the grapevines they are also releasing a heady smell, the promise of wine and juice, as you walk past. It intoxicates the senses and beguiles you into slowing down, winding down, getting into the pace of life getting ready for the winter sleep.

And it wouldn't be autumn in Korea without seeing the graves being spruced up for Chuseok. This five day festival is a thanksgiving for crops, honoring ancestors and just having a good time all rolled into one.

The practice of going to the graves early in the morning, bearing plates of delicacies to share with the ancestors to thank them for the past year and ask their blessing on the year to come, is one that draws everyone in a family together.

A final visit to the vineyard. The sight of them decked in autumn colors is surely on a par with a spectacular sunset!

Icheon Pottery Village

A place I've meant to visit for quite a while now is the Icheon pottery village. This is a place where craftsmen throw their pots and fire them in the traditional wood burning kilns, like the one shown above, and where they each have a shop showing off their wares.

The trip there takes about an hour by express bus either from Seoul or Suwon.

This little shop had some of the best celadon ware on display at quite reasonable prices. Celadon is a glazing technique developed by Chinese potters to mimic jade, that lucky and heavenly stone, in vessels that ordinary people could own. The artists are two brothers, Kim Bu Yung and Kim Ha Yung.

The glazes vary from a delicate bluish green to a darker aquamarine hue, and good celadon ware has a depth to the glaze that makes you feel as if you are gazing into it. These ones certainly had that.

This shop, belonging to Hyang Ro Bit, also displayed some of the rami cloth quilting made by his wife. Rami cloth is similar to linen, but is stiffer and more airy at the same time, and is used for summer hanboks, as opposed to silk and brocade for winter ones. Unfortunately the shop itself was not open yet, so I couldn't go in (yes, I know, the door is standing open, but that was to get air into the shop!), and had to content myself by snapping a picture that is less than perfect due to the reflections in the windows.

This shop belongs to one of the female potters, Hyu Li Min, and this display of plants complemented the flowery designs of her work on the big urns in the background.

This shop specialises in kimchi pots. The kimchi pot is made with thick red clay walls, then it is glazed with an iron rich glaze to give the almost blackish brown colour. They come in all sizes - small, ornamental or gift pots to the big, serious ones that will hold the kimchi for a whole family.

If you're ever wondering how to spend a pleasant morning, if you like pottery and pots, and if you want to buy some truly unique pots from the artists, you could visit this delightful place.

DMZ visit

All that was needed to convince me I'd travelled back in time and was at a stope entrance at Grootvlei gold mine back in South Africa was the sound of the drills and the rattle of the cocopans as they trundled ore out, but then reality struck home - I was standing at the point where South Koreans had intercepted a North Korean tunnel dug under the Demilitarized Zone, or DMZ.

North Korean soldiers or slave labour had dug, chiselled and blasted this tunnel and three others under the 4 km wide stretch of border with the intention of either infiltrating or attacking the South. That is, the South Koreans have discovered four tunnels - there may be some they have not found.

We headed down the tunnel from this point to the place where the last (or first, depending on your point of view) of three barriers blocked the tunnel. A steel door, barbed wire and a small window through which you could see the next barricade. The thought of the recent saber-rattling that had been done by NK suddenly did not seem so far away or unlikely to erupt into real warfare.

This peaceful fountain, with its oak tree and bushes, stands outside the barracks and post where Korean soldiers keep watch over the valley. On a clear day you can see all the way to the NK watchpost on the other side. The Korean on the stone of this fountain, 망항수, means watchport.

The juxtaposition of this buddhist bell tower and the camouflage brings home just how commonplace it has become - over fifty years of watching each other across the border, at times the leaders talk and then they don't, but we watch and live our lives here.

Here I am under the ROK sign on the wall of the barracks.

The visit was surreal on many levels, not least of which was the thought that tourists come here every day, looking out across the border at what is, after all, merely a prolonged cease-fire. I think this is what I sensed that day - the Korean war is by no means over. I pray that it soon will be, and that the unification so many Koreans dreams of will become a reality.

Water, water everywhere...

No, this is not some weird moonwalk or some more Caribbean Bay fun - it's a long exposure taken to try and capture the water flood that followed on two days of solid, and I mean solid, rain!

The bus we were on spent 40 minutes here as people argued about whether we could move from the high ground we were on here, to the lower parts and get through the water.

Here is a video showing the bus driver and several passengers and police arguing. The telegraph pole at the end is significant - normally you can see about 2 meters of black and yellow stripes. Eventually we did edge our way through, passing a less fortunate bus canted at 45 degrees in a ditch!

Caribbean Bay

So after the last weekend's fun, Sean and I dragged a reluctant Christine (so it was mom and the  two kids!) to Caribbean Bay. Up above you get a panoramic view of one of the pools and the supertube (watertube?) winding its way down the hill. I tell you, the one thing that is tiring is climbing those steps to build up the potential energy so that you can translate it into kinetic energy - talk about physics in action.

Speaks for itself, doesn't it?

This is the bottom of the Boomerango slide, and a fraction of the crowd that was waiting to ride it.

One of the fun experiences - having a bucket containing about a 1000 liters of water dumped on you! Luckily it splashes onto a little balcony of evenly spaced boards first!

The wave pool, from the deep end. No, I'm not in the water, there is a ledge here. You'll notice that all the people here at the deep end are in life jackets - apparently Koreans either cannot swim or are too lazy to tread water. So you hang there in your life jacket, bobbing up and down like a duck as the waves pass beneath you...give me Clifton, or Blouberg Strand, or Jeffrey's Bay any day!