The Seoul-Mazing Race

Shouts of “I”ve got a bottle of VODKA..whoop whoop!!”, despite having just signed a race waiver that forbade the possession or consumption of alcohol, was a pretty good indication of how the day ahead was about to pan out; full of rule breaking, alcohol consumption and endless high spirits!

Usually, spending my saturday dashing on and off trains, buses and cars and running all over Seoul as fast as my little legs can take me would be a SATURDAY FROM HELL.

However last Saturday was an exception. It was the date of the Seoul-Mazing Race, similar to “The Amazing Race” which I’m sure most of you are familiar with, but organized by NEH magazine in Seoul.

Our Geumchon crew

We started off in Yeoido park, bottle of vodka for one team, bottle of whiskey for the other…Rehydration is VERY important when running a 10 hour race around a jam-packed city on a scorching hot, summer’s day!

My team; Cindy, Jennifer and Myself lined up next to the other 34 teams, pumped and ready for a day packed full of challenges and surprises. CJ, the race organizer had given us our first clue (he told us, “your first clue is over there. You will find a bag of rice cakes which you MUST finish before we finding the next clue…)

BAM, suddenly he had lowered his arm and the teams were off. A stampede of Elephants racing across the park in search of a bag of dry, tasteless rice cakes. I too would have been with them if I hadn’t tripped over within the stampede and lost my shoes…! Great start, I know.

As one of the last teams to reach the rice cakes, it appeared there were no rice cakes to be found. What was first confusion and frustration quickly turned to delight when we were simply whispered the next clue and didn’t even have to eat any stinky rice cakes. Ka-Boom…we jumped in a taxi and were off to Noryangjin Fish Market for what which we knew would be a nasty eating challenge.

Me, Jennifer and Cindy "Geumchon Crew"

Eating fermented Skate fish..Bones and all GO JEN!

En route we landed ourselves with the coolest taxi driver ever, who proceded to sing a korean rendition of “Oh Danny Boy” once he heard I was from Ireland! Was such a hilarious journey I was sad to leave him as we leapt out of the taxi to be greeted with the smell of putrid seafood, raw fish and other awful smells one associates with an enormous fish market.

The challenge was to eat a full plate of Sambap; which is supposedly a “Korean Delicacy”, consisted of raw, fermented skate fish, fatty pork belly and spicy, fermented cabbage. As I don’t eat seafood and Cindy pulled her Vegetarian card, this challenge was left to Jen. As we saw her struggling and were anxious to get out of the rotten smelling market as soon as possible, we picked at the plate, flicking bits of foul smelling sambap over our shoulders whenever nobody was looking, until we eventually had an empty plate and were handed the next clue. SUCCESS! 

Next we had to jump on the nearest bus (after quickly deciphering the Korean hanguel and deciding it was going in the right direction!) to challenge number 3! We ended being guided (in reality in was more like chasing after!) by a beautifully dressed Korean Lady, who we ran after for 10 minutes straight through a high class department store and down into a place called “I heart Dalki”, a sort of creche/bakery inside the shopping centre. Here we had to pick a random child and get them to play charades with us guessing the words we were acting out…random was the name of the game here..seriously random.

On the subway..again!

One of our clues

1 subway ride and one crazy bus ride later and we reached our next challenge spot…the Kimbap challenge! (think of a large sushi roll or rice and veggies wrapped in seaweed)..where each team had to make two kimbap rolls and sell them to randomers on the street. This was pretty hilarious watching waygookins running around trying to push badly made Kimbap on innocent passers-by. Bit of a disaster for most teams who ended up just giving money from their own pocket to pay the Kimbap restaurant owner as nobody would pay for their crappy rolls!!

Fast forward through the “impossible to find” pit stop, a REAL pit stop in Burger King which could have cost us the race (no other teams stopped for lunch..! whoops!), a photo challenge in Gangnam, a tour of the Kimchi Museum and getting pelted by water balloons by my lovely team mate as part of a challenge in Jamsil Park, another quick rest stop and we were on the home straight!

Cindy rolling Kimbap for us to sell!

Back on the Bus!

Next up was a mad dash in yet another mental taxi to a TapHouse near Itaewon where we got some nice cold, home brewed beers to make the last stretch more bearable! There were 6 challenges left and 6 challenges that would very nearly make us crack. Very nearly make us quit, drop out, go home, scream, vomit, who knows what it nearly did to us!!

First off was “The writing is on the wall” challenge in Insadong were we spent close to an hour waking around a spiral, 4 storey, outdoor market, in which the walls were plastered in grafitti and we had no ide what exactly we were looking for. Definitely the hardest challenge of all.

Eventually, after calling some buddies for help, we found the blue scrawlings and were on root to challenge number 11...the story of King Sejong! Here we had to enter the underground Museum and write out names in Korean using a traditional method then we had to pay our respects to the long deceased King.

Next up was one of the worst challenges of the day. As a team we had to consume a full tin of SILK WORM LARVAE. Usually even the smell of these creepy crawlies makes me want to vomit, but this time it was even soaked in their juices which was no help to my gag reflexes. Jen to the rescue again, helped by me and Cindy periodically filling our pockets with the grotesque smelling and foul tasting bugs, in a lame attempt to empty the can without really having to eat any!! Another SUCCESS!

Yuck Yuck Yuck

And onwards to the last challenge of the day…the beer tasting challenge! “I’ll take this one girls!”, I told my team mates! 5 beers later and I easily identified the mystery beer I was given. We even opted to sit in the restaurant drinking more free beer instead of rushing off to the finish line…at this stage we weren’t bothered in what position we finished aslong as we made it to the finish line! The finish line, ended up being in AN IRISH BAR(!!!) way south of the river which meant another half hour trip on the subway and another mad taxi ride, only to arrive in 18th place out of 35 teams! Not bad, not bad for a team of dossers, eh? 

We may not have won, we may not have completed all the challenges perfectely but one thing we did do is have a FANTASTIC day! It was one of the most fun, crazy, random things I have ever done and I will jump at the chance to do similar AMAZING RACES in the future!

Victory for Change!

I love pizza. You love pizza. I mean, when you think about it, who DOESN’T love pizza? I also like my pizza delivered as quickly as possible and with any luck, still nice and toasty. That said, I don’t love pizza that much nor do I require it so urgently that pizza delivery men should risk life and limb to deliver it to me.

Well known American corporation “Dominos Pizza”, up until TODAY in Korea, had a policy of “We will deliver it to your door within 30 minutes or it’s free”.

One can only imagine how road safety and cautiousness must have flown out the window for young delivery men on their little mopeds. In fact not a day goes by here in Korea when I don’t feel threatened by those crazy moped/scooter drivers speeding past me, cutting corners and often flying down the wrong side of the road or gliding across the footpath. It’s pure madness, dangerous for both the driver and poor pedestrians. Fast food arriving straight from the over is pretty awesome, but if it means risking lives than it is a luxury I can do without.

Change.org, the same website and organisation I feel wrote a very biased article about couchsurfing, started a petition a few days ago(thanks to TourAbsurd for the tip!), accusing Dominos and their over ambitious marketing ploys of causing the death and serious injury of 100′s of young men here in Korea. Today, after only 175 change.org members sent protesting emails to the directors of the multi-national company, Dominos have stopped the advertising campaign and their 30 minute guarantee at last.

Let’s hope that other companies, in Korea especially, take note and educate their drivers on road safety and encourage drivers to slow down. Well done to Change.org and to Domino’s Pizza for making the world a safer place, one small step at a time.

The Bul, The Dak and The Galbi

This is the first in a new series of posts entitled “The best of Korea” which I plan on posting weekly. Thanks to the great response to my post “The Food, The Bad and The Ugly“, which was about the “not-so-good” dishes they serve up in this fine nation. This first post will be all about what I LOVE about Korean food, “The bul, the tak and the galbi!”

 

Less of these "Hot Dogs" please Korea!

No 5 – Samgyeopsal

Samgyeopsal is a traditional Korean dish mainly consisting of very fatty cuts of pork, which diners cook themselves on a grill in the centre of the table. It is accompanied by Kimchi, yellow radish, garlic, lettuce leaves, peppers, spicy soup ,salt n pepper sauce and rice too if you request it. This stuff is seriously tasty, but try find a place that does the least fatty cuts as sometimes it can be a bit much.

No 4 – Ddukbokki

When I first arrived in Korea I detested these squishy, stodgy rice cakes, believing them to be the spawn of satan. (Mainly due to the fact the ones I had were drowning in spicy pepper paste!) However as time goes on I am loving these little rice cakes more and more. If you are lucky, and they are cooked with some Tak Galbi for just the right amount of time, they are melt in your mouth sensational!

No 3 – Shabu Shabu

A boiling broth of vegetables brewing at the centre of the table, the perfect meal to warm you up on a cold winter night. Add a plate of delicious, thinly sliced beef to the hot-pot along with chinese cabbage, mushrooms and onions and you have yourself a feast. But WAIT..there’s more…along comes the bowl of delicious noodles which are added to the mix and it is topped off, last but not least, with some hot and steaming rice. When all is said and done you can drain the remaining soup from your bowl and be happy at having just consumed a 3 course meal, all in one. Mmmm shabu shabu.

No 2 – Dak Galbi (Chicken)

I had this for my birthday dinner and simply cannot get enough of the stuff. Dak Galbi is a mixture of chunky, marinated chicken pieces, chinese cabbage, rice cakes and hot pepper sauce, as always, cooked on a big hot plate in the centre of the table. Looking at all the delicious ingredients slowly cook is maddening as you just want to dive in and gobble it all up. A great dish for sharing with big groups and can be topped off with fried rice mixed into the leftovers and rolled up in snack size rice rolls. Deliciousssss.

No 1 – Galbi

Undoubtedly THE most popular dish in Korea. Galbi (Korean for ribs) can be either beef or pork and is cooked on a charcoal grate in the centre of the table. Getting to cut up big slabs of prime cut, raw meat with a scissors is a cultural experience in itself! Add to that up to 20 tiny side dishes( which will always appear, whether you ordered them or not) in which you can spend and age trying to figure out whats what! From tofu to radish, up to 5 different types of Gimchi, different sauces, a variety of vegetables, lettuce leaves, bean sprouts, sizzling soups, garlic, jalapeno peppers…you name it, they have it! The best type of galbi restaurant is one where you pay a set amount (10,000 won which is only 6 euro!!) and it is all you can eat! I meat lovers dream!

 

Slaughtered Alive

***Update***

The Taebaek Snow festival and Hwacheon Ice fishing festival have been cancelled do stop the spread of the disease.

Over 1.8 Million pigs have been buried alive in rural regions of South Korea in an attempt to stop the spread of Foot and Mouth Disease. This is reportedly the worst case in Korean history of the highly contagious virus, which can spread from hand to hand, from vehicles or even by air born dust.

Animal rights groups the world over have been left outraged as the truth about the mass culling seeps into mainstream media.  Guidelines set by the World Organization for Animal Health, which clearly states all animals must be killed in a humane way and must have stopped breathing before being buried, were blatantly ignored as truckloads of pigs (up to 40,000 a day in some areas) were dumped unceremoniously into mass graves, squeaking and squealing as the earth was piled in on top of them.

Slaughtered alive

Bringing the crisis a little closer to home (my home in Korea anyway), residents of Paju (where I live and which has also been badly affected by foot and mouth) have, according to The Korea Times “have seen their faucets start to deliver water mixed with blood since the beginning of the New Year.” Thank GOD I don’t drink my tap water, although even seeing that would be more than a little disturbing.

Now I’m no vegetarian, and as the daughter of a farmer, I know how devastating it can be to discover your animals have been found infected and that such virus can be an awful financial burden and can even destroy your livelihood, BUT this sort of mass killing makes me sad to the core. How can officials get away with such blatant law breaking? How can any country justify killing 2 million animals, and even worse allowing them to be buried alive??!

Only 120 animals tested positive to the disease. So why on earth, I wonder, were close to 2 million animals slaughtered? (10% of the total amount of livestock in Korea!!) As usual, as I’m sure you’ve already guessed, it comes down to Money.

 

 

Highway to Hell

 

 

Instead of opting to vaccinate all the animals, in an effort to save time and money, animals were instead slaughtered. Injecting the pigs with poison similar to the cattle was thought to be cost to much money and require too much time, as they required larger dosses than the cattle and there were simply not enough vaccines available in the country.

Since the outbreak began in November, price of Pork has risen 22% while price of beef has gone up 9% in supermarkets. In the last few weeks I have heard of masses of people in the likes of CostCo in Ilsan rushing to buy large quantities of meat before the price soars even higher.

With the government concentrating on vaccinating the remaining 13 million animals, the “meat market” has opened up, welcoming imports from Australia and America, albeit at much higher prices.

The overall cost of the crisis is expected to cost the Korean government BILLIONS of dollars, but can you really put a price on a life? Or should I say 2 million lives?

Kimchi is to Korea what Potatoes are to Ireland

Kimchi is to Korea what Potatoes are to Ireland. It is an absolute neccesity. It is a part of their culture, a part of their lives and they would be lost without it. Now, thanks to bad weather and sky-rocketing prices Korea is on the brink of a Kimchi Crsisis. Napa cabbages and Radish, the two main ingredients to make Kimchi, are in high demand. 
 
The price of the precious vegetable has climbed over  fourfold over the last few weeks, from about 2,000 won up to 15,0oo won or more for a single head of cabbage. Queues of up to an hour long can be seen at the local farmers markets in central Seoul, as women wait patiently in line to buy the imported Chinese cabbage at a reduced price. 262.6 tons of Napa cabbage, the first batch of a 1,500-ton deal, has been imported from China to ease the shortage of the staple vegetable dish. The shortage has pushed the price too high for some customers to justify buying it while other people are buying it in bulk because they simply can’t live without it.

Woman queuing for hours to buy the coveted cabbage

 When I asked my boss’s wife what she would do without Kimchi she replied, “I can’t imagine eating a meal without Kimchi.” “It’s a part of my life, I think I would die without it”, she laughed. I can see where she is coming from. In Korea,Kimchi is served with every meal, similar to our love for Potatoes in Ireland.

Restaurants usually give it away as a side dish for free, although in recent weeks some places feel the need to think twice about this, and charge a nominal fee. Last week, when a friend and I went out for dinner in Munsan, the chef came to check if we wanted Kimchi or not with our meal, so that it would not be wasted. We did the right thing  and said no, saving the pungent cabbage for people who actually like the taste!

According to some newspapers, there have have been reports of cabbage rustling in rural areas, which is pretty crazy if you think about it and I also heard a man got arrested for stealing a few heads of the much coveted vegetable!

Would you pay 15,000 won for this cabbage?!

My boss says the governement and a huge river reclaimation project they have been working on is also to blame. The project, which involves reclaiming much of the land around Koreas major rivers and setting up a canal system, greatly supported by korea’s rich businesses, has meant the land where vegetables used to be grown is no longer available.

Korea’s population is ever increasing but the land mass is remaining the same, thus there simply isn’t enough space for Koreans to grow enough food to feed their 40 million odd population.

An assortment of Kimchi dishes

The Kimchi shortage, in my opinion, could actually be a blessing in disguise. The huge levels of consumption of the spicy side dish had lead to mass cases of stomach cancer amoung the Korean elderly. The cabbage, which is fermented in hot red chillies, is eaten by kids from a very young age who contibue to eat it up to 3 times a day for the rest of their lives.

The acidity in the food is extremely bad for them and should really only be eaten in small doses, not daily with every meal. Although realistically, cabbage or no cabbage, the Koreans will no doubt find substitute such as radish or cucumber to mix with their spicy chillies which they continue to eat religously.

The FOOD, the BAD and the UGLY.

Korea has some weird food. This is not an opinion piece, this is fact. My boss just told me a new Octopus restaurant opened in Munsan today. No, it’s  not a seafood restaurant, it’s an OCTOPUS restaurant, as all they serve is various types of Octopus. And if you didn’t already know this, Octopus is served to you alive, wriggling and sliming on a bed of leaves. Instead of a big ink squirting, monster that you may be able to contemplate gobbling up, why not opt for a plate of baby octopus salad… a collection of cute,  baby eight-legged morsels of fun.

Baby Octopus Salad

A popular snack in Korea, especially for hikers who are in need of some protein in a hurry, is to eat some silkworm larvae. That’s right…silkworn LARVAE served to you right off the street. Even as you walk by the street vendor this rancid waft of boiled bugs fills the air and you have to try not to gag at the sight and smell of them. Scorpion, eyeballs and yak’s penis are naught  in comparison to these nasty little things.

Silk Worm Larvae

If creepy little bugs aren’t your style , you could have some dried squid, probably the most popular Korean Food out there! My students son’t stop eating it in class. It is available in every 7-11, supermarket and roadside stall you see. It is a popular snack as it is an excellent source of Selenium, (anti cancer element), Riboflavin (eliminate Anemia and Migraine headaches), and Vitamin B12 (reduce chronic fatigue syndrome). A fine replacement for a Cadburys Dairy Milk or a nice banana don’t you think?!

Dried Squid

When I was in Busan over Chuseok, I came across something in the fish market and had no idea what it was. All I knew was that it looked absolutely gross, and if you look at it you too, surely, would find the thought of swallowing it enough to make you sick. Over the last few weeks I have seen it everywhere, in all the seafood restaurants and in big, fish tanks outside stores. It is known as ‘sea cucumber’ or ‘sea slugs’. In restaurants, they chop up the slug, still alive, into pieces that you can dip into red pepper sauce… while it is still wriggling a bit. Quite similar to the Octopus dishes, I guess. Whatever you’re into!

Sea Slugs

Saving the best for last, the dish Korea is known for, and that had caused much controversy is…dog meat, which is considered a culinary delicacy here. I’m not going to exaggerate and say that it’s ‘readily available in all restaurants’ as it’s not. But it is here and you could probably get it in any Korean town or city if you really wanted it. My boss and his wife have both tried it , never to have eaten it again. Or so they say anyway! They don’t just get any dog off the street or someones pet and cook it up..they have pupose built dog breeding centres, to provide restaurants with the meat, which actually makes it even worse. It’s really awful to think of eating dog, man’s best freind. Woof Woof.

Dog Meat

BON APPETTIT MY DEAR FRIENDS!

Frustration Station

Gah. Korea really drives me crazy sometimes. It’s not that there is in fact anything wrong with Korea, I just get frustrated that Korea isn’t more like home. Which is stupid, I know. But when you are tired and hungry and are walking around the supermarket for what feels like hours and can’t find ONE SINGLE THING you are looking for, I want to scream.

I had a long day, I had no lunch due to a bit of a mix up at school and was looking forward to cooking up a mean chicken stir fry for dinner. I’m sick of eating out. Especially when Korean restaurants must be the most homogenous in the world…you will be served the EXACT same thing in every single place. Oh, sorry you want choice? Well piss off to another country loser.

So anyway I want to cook. I go to HomePlus to buy all the ingredients. They have no chicken. NO CHICKEN. WTF?! Koreans love chicken. Homeplus is the biggest supermarket in Munsan, where is the freakin chicken?! I look for rice. Koreans LOVE rice. Rice is normally everywhere. But can I find rice here? No, no I cannot find any rice anywhere. Gah.

So I somehow end up spending 30,000 won on crap, none of which I can actually cook for dinner, and leave feeling drained, snapping at my boss saying that “half an hour shopping in HomePlus is more stressful that 8 hours teaching!”, and continue to tell him my woes about not finding what I wanted. He just laughs and says “Bastards” which makes me laugh. He is my boss afterall! Ahhh Korea.

Breakfast of Champions!

On saturday morning, my friend and I decided to go for breakfast in Hongdae. Let’s not lie…I was seriously hungover along with every one else wandering around the streets of Korea’s number 1 party stop (read as Korean equivalent of Dublin’s Temple bar…but much, much crazier).

In Korea, it can be quite difficult to fins what you are looking for. When you wnat a drink and head to a bar, you are greeted with table service and most definetely expected to order food. When you end up in a restarant (well at least what I would consider a restaurant) you will often be expected to but drink along with your food. Well at least that’s what everyone around you is doing. Bottles of Soju need to be drank!

After an amazing night of Karaoke in a luxury Noraebong, drinks in a not-so-aptly named Hoe-Bar, and dancing on furniture with American Army soldiers at 3am (all of which is beautifuly illustrated in my friend Brooke ‘s blog post here) all I wanted to eat was some toast or maybe even a delicious full Irish breakfast.

Sadly what greeted me, as I ordered something random from the all-korean menu, was …a dead fish. That’s right,not some sort of fish dish in a sauce, or tuna on toast…but a WHOLE,dead fish with eyes and tail intact. As in all Korean restaurants, despite what you order, they will bring you endless side dishes which you most certainly did not order. In this case I was given two types of fermented cabbage laced in hot chilli paste (called Kimchi), some sort of other cabbage dish and a soup that smelled like something had died in it (the fish pheraps?!).

Breakfast of Champions!

Moments like this you can do nothing but laugh, and dream of some sizzling sausages, scambled egg and crispy bacon cooking at home in Cork, that better be waiting for me when I get home in 11 months!

Hard times in Korea!!

So I can’t sleep so thought I would have a bit of a rant. Its 4am and I have to get up in 4 hours for work. Gah.

I always write about the positive side of travelling. Most people do. You upload the good photos and the photos that show you having the most fun. You update your facebook with the marvels of your new adventure. But what about the hard times? The times when you think

“Man why do I do this? I could be at home eating my mumsRoast dinner but instead I’m stranded in middle of nowhere South Korea eating bloody jelly fish!”.

So lets talk about the tough times. For me, today was truely a crap day. Firstly its like 34′c and 100% humidty. So the minute you leave your air conditioned room you start to swaet. You step into the street and you are already wet with sweat, its sticky and uncomfortable and you feel mingin. Next you realise the place smells. Yes there is a real awful smell. No, not from the sweat…but here in Korea there is just this weird smell. They ferment a lot of their vegetables and it creates this awful waft that drifts through the streets.

Next…no one speaks English. I am in rural South Korea. I can see the mountains of North Korea from my bedroom and am nearly 2 hours from Seoul. I had to get a bus to Munsan today which prooved more than a little difficult. I wait at bus stop. Bus comes. I ask driver “Munsan?”. He shakes his head and wave his hand saying no. Off I get to wait for next bus. “Munsan?” He shakes his head and says few words in Korean then “Seoul”. Crap I get off bus again and wait another 20 minutes. Say to women next to me, “Munsan?” “Bus to Munsan” *point at bus”. She says all buses go to Munsan,I could have got last 2 buses aswell. Gah.

Ahhh Korean food. Don’t get me wrong I love spicy food. But they live by it…every dish is accompanied by dash of chilli and red pepper sauce. They have all sorts of side dishes you are obliged to taste..some of which look like gelatine gone wrong. I went for  korean bbq with my boss. They had no menus and as you just order what you like, my boss ordered for me. He ordered me Tofu! Who the hell goes for a bbq and orders Tofu. A huge platefull of tofu.

As the travel stomach bug. New country, new food, new time zone. Everyone has been there. That awful case of diaorrhea that you can’t avoid. Feeling sick in a strange country sucks.

Koreans seemingly have no manners. If you hold the door open for them, which I always do out of habit, don’t expect a thank-you. It’s not that they are being rude, its actually their culture. It still annoys me though.

But without the bad things we could never appreciate the good things so here is to tomorrow being a better day.

Korea: First Impressions

This is going to be super short as I’m totally jet lagged. I arrived into Incheon (Seoul) International airport around 4pm and was promptly met by a rep from my school who put me into a taxi and off I went to Paju.

It was all a bit strange as neither the rep nor the taxi man had a word of English. The journey took about an hour and was eye-opening. From endless sky-scapers and the 20km long Incheon bridge we headed into rural korea, mountains and green rice fields. I was dropped off at the school where I will be teaching. First impressions…its really small but immacualte…state of the art classrooms, beautifully decoarated and full of resources.

The head supervisor (who owns the school and is my boss) , the principal (his wife!), one other assistant and I all headed out for traditional Korean food..which if you didn’t already know, is super spicy. We all sat on these cushions on the ground and the waitress seemed to bring out ENDLESS dishes from seaweed to peppers to crabs to jellyfish(!!!), spicy cabbage, and the main dish which was cooked at the table on hot coals was marinated pork. It was delicious!

Traditional Korean dishes

Just when I thought we were done the next course arrived, chewy green noodles in a bowl full of ice. My boss was explaining its all to do with ying and yang..the balancing of hot and cold and different foods have a different energy. It was all very interesting but I was just too tired to take it all in!

I’m now in my hotel/motel which is bizarre. It has everything I could ever need from a computer, a HUGE flat screen tv, hairdryer, accessories. a phone, freshly filtered drinking water but…no wardrobe?!

I have to get up early for school tomorrow so bid you goodnight.