South Korea - Chapter 11: The Police and the Bamboo Forest
Jeannie and I have watched a lot of Korean dramas over the years. A few have included scenes in a forest with thick bamboo perhaps 20 feet tall or more. It seemed kind of otherworldly to me so knowing that we were going South Korea, I researched and told Jeannie that it was one of the places I wanted to visit. Since we had rented a car and it was on the way to our next destination, we headed out on the highway for a two hour drive to the Damyang Bamboo Forest.
Along the way, we stopped for lunch at an unusual Korean restaurant.
The fact that this huge lunch for four people cost only about $16USD per person was not what was unusual.
The fact that a few of the side dishes were things I had never seen before let alone tasted was not what was unusual. I can say that one looked and felt like a bath scrunchie (but actually tasted quite good) and still, that was not what was unusual. What was unusual was how you order your meal, how they deliver it and how they clear it when you’re finished. You order a main dish and all the rest of the dishes just come with it automatically. Side dishes are standard in Korea but this was exceptional. You typically get 3 to 5 very small dishes with the things like kimchi, fish cake, and a few others you can almost alway count on. This restaurant provides those plus a whole lot more. It was a few levels up when it comes to side dishes. They deliver it all at once by bringing the entire wooden tabletop on a cart with all the dishes already in place and slide it on top of the table at which you are sitting. When you’re done, they bring the cart back, slide the top off and take it back into the kitchen. I’ve never seen that before.
The food was quite good. It was also unusual in that it was big. By big I mean they had perhaps 25 tables and actual staff. As I have mentioned before, the typical restaurant here has as little as four tables and as many as twelve with a staff of one to three people.
It’s worth repeating that if you really like Korean food, Korea is an inexpensive vacation. Just remember that finding non-Korean food here can be challenging sometimes. I love Korean food but having it twice a day every day for even a week (let alone 25 days) is a bit much for me. I can handle how spicy it is (I have after all been married to a Korean for almost 24 years) but I would get tired of my favorite food if I had it twice a day every day for a week. At home I probably have a burger once a month. Here I have had a burger once a week. It’s the one kind of non-Korean food that is not terribly difficult to find. In Texas, Mexican restaurants are as common as heat in summer. Here in South Korea, I have seen a total of two. A week ago in Busan I saw one and getting a little desperate for almost anything non-Korean I looked at Jeannie the way your dog looks at you when it would really like to go for a walk. Her parents were with us so Mexican food was not on the menu. They are so accustomed to Korean food that I suspect my in-law’s thoughts on Mexican food are about the same as their thoughts about pizza: it’s not food.
Back on the road we headed for the Damyang Bamboo Forest. It took some driving around to actually find it because as previously discussed, typing things into a maps app in English is hit and miss here. It was Apple Maps in this case but Google Maps was equally unhelpful. Categories work better than specific names. We have discovered through trial and error how to type in parts of an address in Korean and get an approximate location. My ability to type Korean on an iPhone is definitely improving as a result of this trip. We finally stopped to ask for directions from a woman working in a convenience store who smiled and pointed then said in Korean that the forest is directly across the street.
It was quite beautiful.
Having said that, what these photos do not reveal is that the forest in on a hill side with the entrance at the bottom. It was a lot of uphill walking and while beautiful, it wasn’t beautiful enough to motivate us to expend all that energy. We stayed just a little over an hour. The most beautiful thing by far was the shot I got of Jeannie.
Regrettably, Substack reduces the resolution of the photos I’m including. It’s a great photo but the original looks so much better. I shot it using Portrait mode on my iPhone which defocuses the background so that Jeannie really pops. As my kindergarten teacher Mrs. Martin was fond of saying, “You’ll just have to use your imagination.”
We got back on the road to head to Sunchang where we were spending just one night because we couldn’t get in at our next stop until the following day. When we arrived, as has become the familiar pattern, we got close but still couldn’t find the address. Jeannie had noticed a police station not far from where we believed the building to be based upon the limited English from the AirBnB host. You’d think that since Jeannie and her parents are fluent in Korean, the host could communicate in Korean but when haven’t lived in the country for 50 years and you’re unfamiliar with the layout of the city, apparently knowing the native language doesn’t buy you much. So we headed off to the police station with the hopes that they might know where this place is.
Jeannie went inside while the rest of us waited in the car. About five minutes later, Jeannie returned, announced that she knew where the apartment building was, and that despite turning down their offer, the friendly police officers insisted on escorting us to our building. I think I can confidently say for all of us that this was, collectively, our first police escort.
This is a good time to mention that emergency vehicles in Korea (police, fire and ambulance) keep their light bars (the lights on top of the vehicle) on all the time it seems (though not for escorts apparently) and then signal that they are on their way to an actual emergency by using their sirens.
When we arrived at the apartment building, the two friendly officers, who themselves looked to me like they were right out of a Korean drama, insisted on taking us right up to our unit. It was either just a slow day at work and they were overly curious about us or they just were very friendly. I’m going with the latter.
With the door code both allowing us into the apartment and convincing the officers that we were not in fact up to no good, we dragged our bags inside and relaxed after all that walking around in the bamboo forest whose degree of beauty was not matched by its degree of incline.
The apartment was rather nice. Apartments in Korea are often quite small. This one was on the larger side. AirBnB units are often not very personalized but this one was an exception. It was obvious to me that the owner lives there. The bookshelves were filled with books. There were personal photos. There were cards to her from various friends and mementos from the many, many places around the world to which she has visited. I say she because from the photos and cards, the owner is clearly a single woman in her late 30s or early 40s. Whether for business, pleasure or both, she clearly likes to read and travel. My guess is that she rents her apartment out via AirBnB while she’s away. It’s a 3 bedroom apartment with two of the bedrooms occupied by two sets of bunkbeds. Given that here was no sign of four kids, I’m sure that’s designed to maximize revenue.
It had a washer so we took advantage of that and washed all of our clothes that needed washing. However, as is commonly the case, there was no dryer so we hung our clothes out to dry. Given that we were leaving in the morning, I was unconvinced that this was a good idea but Jeannie’s confidence was solid on this. Sure enough, all was dry the next morning. And I was grateful for a complete enclosed shower. It’s the little things. The town was otherwise unremarkable and we were only there one night anyway but the police encounter certainly made it memorable.