Day 85: Mystical & Magical

This weekend was definitely my best weekend yet here in Korea, (yes I know I say that often!) and one of the best Ii've ever had in my life. Absolutely completely amazing...

Me and the gang had signed up for a package weekend tour down to the SW corner of Korea for an incredible cultural tour. I woke up at 6:30am, was thankful there was no red-wine headache from last night's dinner party, and rode the train to Seoul Station to meet up with my friends and the tour at 9am. This was going to be my first real train trip in Korea (and only the second ever in my life) and I was completely stoked!

We had a big gang out for this one - myself, Brad, Andrea, Steve, Amy, Emilie, Meighan, Jess, Kim and Jeremy. We met up with our tour (about 40 ppl in total) at the ginormous post-modern KTX terminal at Seoul Station and boarded the KTX high-speed train to Gwang-ju. The KTX is Korea's most ambitious engineering project to date, with the goal of installing high-speed bullet trains across the entire country. Phase 1 alone cost $1.5 billion CDN, and just opened in April. The train was ultra-modern and bright and clean and so comfortable. Soon we were out of the city and sailing smoothly thru green picturesque countryside. The only thing that was disappointing was that although the train *was* fast, it did not travel at it's full speed capacity. The trains have a full speed capacity of 300 km/hr, but until the entire project is finished, they only travel about half that speed. Still pretty speedy though!

We arrived in Gwang-ju in early afternoon and took a bus to Boseong where we got to check out the Green Tea Festival that this small city hosts every year. This province of Korea is known internationally for its very high quality of tea, and so this festival aims to promote the local products. We got to wander through the festival and watch the tea being prepared from leaves, and even got to engage in some hands-on tea leaf sorting and drying - was quite fun actually! Later on there was tea samples of the many many varieties of green tea, and as the token foreigners at the festival we got first pick at everything. We were honoured with a green tea ceremony where these older women who basically dedicate their whole lives to growing and preparing green tea served us some delicious tea in this elaborate, beautiful ceremony. It was so graceful and elegant and the preparation for serving takes a good 10-15 minutes with every single move being an art form in itself. Wow!

After trying the tea we checked out the rest of the festival, which sells an endless variety of products made from green tea - candy, clothing and linens, make-up and facial-cream, even meat and vegetables and other foods soaked or prepared with green tea. One corner of the festival was a pottery area where pots and cups were made my hand on one of those crazy spinning clay machines, using mud and clay with green tea in it. Well this was another hands-on exhibit that people could try out and they wanted a foreigner to demonstrate how it all worked. Everyone else was too shy to get up in front of the small crowd and try it, so I volunteered myself!

It was so much fun, but also SO MUCH harder than it looks! You have to spin the wheel with your foot, and it takes a lot of energy and rhythm just to keep the wheel spinning consistently at a fast-enough speed. So while kicking the wheel every 2 seconds you have to concentrate on molding the wet clay with your hands, up into this blob-shape that (in theory) eventually becomes a cup or bowl. Well I started off alright and everyone was all impressesd as my blob started to form a bowl-shape, but that's when disaster struck and suddenly without warning a hole burst through my clay and the whole thing fell apart back into one messy blog right before my very eyes. IT'S SO TRICKY (and messy)!!! It was really funny though and I was the 'star' for being brave enough to give it a go. It's definitely an art form that takes a lot of skill and practice!

After the festival we got back on the bus and drove to where we would be spending the night - at a small but beautiful Buddhist temple high up in the remote hills near Boseong. The temple was incredible - its architecture was simple yet stunningly beautiful, and you couldn't ask for a more breathtaking setting - surrounded by lush, green, misty hills. It was a rainy weekend and with the temple and the mists the whole temple complex had a very 'Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon' feel to it. Mystical and magical.

We had dinner at the temple (in the 'eating building') which was a vegetarian Buddhist meal prepared for us by the monks. It was actually very delicious, with lots of familiar Korean dishes, and some new ones as well. After dinner we went down to the Tibetan Museum which the monks have assembled over the years, just next to the temple. It was a small but amazing museum full of hundreds of pieces of Buddhist relics - pottery and scriptures and paintings and blankets and sculptures and figurines and of course many little Buddha statues. What was especially great was that our visit to the temple coincided with the visit of this famous Tibetan monk! He led us through the museum and described everything to us, and explained a bit about Buddhist beliefs and philosophies, and about the current suffering and margilization of Tibetans. Buddhism is banned and criminalized in Tibet, which has been occupied forcefully by China since 1953. Very sad, indeed, as the Tibetans are probably the most peaceful and friendly people on the planet. After the tour through the museum we were rewarded with a live Pansori performance - a very old, traditional style of Korean music, using vocals, drums, and story-telling. Completely enchanting!

At this point it was getting close to 10pm which is bed time at the temple. The boys and girls on our tour had to sleep separately, so the girls went to bed in the building where we had dinner, and us boys got shipped off on the bus to a 'male hermitage' located just down the road. The hermitage was a simple building partioned off into 4 rooms. For sleeping, we were given a few matts and pillows and we slept on the heated floors, totally Buddhist style. It wasn't the most comfortable sleep, but with the warmth coming from the floor below, to the sound of the rain falling outside, to just knowing that I was in the middle of these beautiful forested hills in rural Korea in Asia, it was peaceful and inspiring. How lucky am I for being able to experience something so different and so beautiful!!!