Following our recent tendency to write about “last” weekend one week later, I wanted to tell everyone about our venture out to Suwon last Sunday.
The city
Suwon-si is the capital of our province (Gyeonggi-do), and it only took about 15 minutes to get there by bus (once we found the right bus, of course). Our coworker had recommended we check out Hwaseong Fortress, which is the huge eighteenth-century fortification that still surrounds the city and it kinda looks like a poor man’s Great Wall with its long, curvy walls flowing up and down the hilly landscape. We didn’t quite know where to get off the bus, but thankfully the route passed right under a section of the huge stone wall, so that made it pretty obvious.
It was a beautiful day, very sunny and warm, so we took a bit of a hike along the wall. From the watchtowers up high, we had a great view of the city below—by design, of course—and found it to be very different from the other areas of Korea we have seen thus far; it looked like a little glimpse into the old Korea with its short, terracotta-roof houses, narrow alleys, and small areas of striped farmland.
When we got down into the city, we noticed the people seemed a bit older, and took things a little slower than people from other areas; a couple of old men were playing “Chinese” checkers at an outdoor temple-type-thing, and we saw a few people selling rice by the hat-ful on the side of the road. These are the sorts of things we haven’t seen in Suji or Seoul. The whole area seemed very quiet and peaceful, so we did what any gawking tourist would do: barge in with our camera and ruin the vibe. Well, not really. Hwaseong is the top tourist attraction in Suwon, so we were hardly the only outsiders.
The horror
I think Katie would like it to be noted, for the record, that the spiders in Korea are terrifyingly enormous. As we crossed a bridge over a small river, we noticed a few of these yellow buggers hanging out (get it?) and were a little shocked to find the largest eight-legged creatures we have ever seen outside of a zoo. They were definitely bigger than the Reichstag spiders we saw in Berlin last year, that’s for sure. We think they are some sort of Argiope, which are of course harmless to humans, but that doesn’t mean you’d be happy to feel one crawling down your neck. Hwuhguhsheesh!
The agony
We finished off the weekend back in Suji with a galbi dinner, complete with all the accoutrements. I couldn’t tell you what any of those accoutrements were, except that the innocuous-looking green pepper was anything but. Katie had taken a nibble off the end: “It’s not so, bad. Try it!”. What followed was an explosion of fire in my mouth, to be cured only by orange Fanta and crackers acquired hastily at the nearest convenience store. I felt like I was in a Looney Tunes skit, running around looking for a barrel of water to stick my head in. Seriously. It was really hot.
The pork, by the way, was absolutely delicious.
