This weekend, Jay and I went on our first organized tour, to the Punggi Ginseng Festival. Punggi is a small town near Yeongju, an area known for its ginseng and, from the look of their orchards, apples. We left early on Saturday morning to catch our tour's 7:00 am bus from Seoul. the tour group we used, Adventure Korea, had been recommended to us by other teachers at our school. It organizes weekend trips based out of Seoul and caters primarily, but not exclusively, to the English-teaching community. Anyone can go, and as such, our bus was full - 40 passengers, being foreigners from America, Canada, England, South Africa or Australia (mostly Canada though. Good Lord there are a lot of Canadians), all teaching English here in South Korea. Apprehensively, as Jay and I both normally are when large groups of native-English speakers gather together, we settled in, shocked to see so many caucasians in one place.
Our drive lasted about 4 hours, as Yeongju is significantly southeast of Seoul. Oh the way, we stopped at a couple rest stops for food. The first one we saw surprised us in that it was nothing like the bare-bones toilet-sink-bench variety that you find along highways in the States, but a full-blown center of shops, restaurants (people actually drive out here to come to work!), and restrooms, plus a decent-sized jungle gym for kids, a small garden, a "petting zoo" (3 chickens and a couple of rabbits, all looking bored out of their minds) and a designated stretching area with a large amount of diagrams and directions, just in case you were confused about how to best go about your specific stretching needs.
A few hours later we arrived at the Ginseng festival. It was similar in layout to the Palo Alto Art Festival or the Portland Saturday Market, but on a much large scale. First we had to dodge our way through the parking lot and the minor vendors, and then we came to the food. Oh, the food. Stall after stall of boiling soup, stuffed squid (with their own legs, nonetheless), roasting pig, blood sausage, pancakes, fish and other way too many varieties of food that shouldn't be allowed near breathing people. When I say "stall," the proper word is really "tent," as each place had plenty of tables and chairs to accomodate its diners.
After the food, we continued on through smaller stands where vendors sold gingko nuts, chestnuts, beads and trinkets. Next came 2 tiny restrooms, and along the river was a stand for pony rides for the kids (with this lovely carved item bobbing up and down in the water. The children seemed confused but everyone else found it either amusing or scandalous). This next area of the festival had 4 rows of tents selling ginseng roots, ginseng wine, ginseng snacks, and so on. Interspersed were also craft tents (pottery, weaving), photography galleries, history mini-museums, and the traditional tea ceremonies. Our group took turns (20 people at a time) on a large stage to properly learn how to peel ginseng roots. We were each supplied with a small "basket" [Ed. note: Jessie's writing appears to say "hash elf" - not quite sure what that is], a paper towel, a sharp bamboo stick (halved), and a ginseng root. Jay named his Betty.
We were taught to gently-but-quickly peel the skin from the anthropomorphic root using the sharpened bamboo. Everyone promptly made a minor race out of it as some Koreans with a film crew conveniently stopped by to marvel at the foreigners trying to peel ginseng. We were quite the spectacle. Afterwards, we got to keep our roots and taste some fresh ginseng. The Koreans believe this to be, quite simply, a miracle drug. It cures or aides in curing any illness, gives you energy, and (like all things in Korea that you would not want to put in your mouth - dog meat, abalone, silk worms, poisonous snake liquor) gives men "stamina". Perhaps that's why the "funny" wooden object from the river was such a sight here.
Ginseng tastes somewhere between a radish and a carrot, but somewhat earthier, maybe like potato skin. I wouldn't eat it on a regular basis, but it wasn't vile and it theoretically cures everything, so what the hell, right? [Ed. note: As of Dec. 2007, neither of us have yet to eat ginseng again. Maybe we're allergic, who knows.]
After exploring the area and a bit of Punggi, we returned to the food area for lunch - Jay and I shared stuffed squid with blood sausage (quite a good combination), then made our way back to the bus. We recovered our books and sat on some rocks lining the river where the buses were parked, reading for a good hour before we moved on. One thing about Adventure Korea: they give you ample free time.
During that time, a fearless dragonfly visited us and made friends with Jay.
We then went to a ginseng harvest and helped to dig up the roots - an activity accomplished with a scythe-like tool and done with care. Although we were told beforehand that we could not keep the roots we harvested, the farmers changed their mind and, along with a milky alcoholic ginseng beverage, they sent us off with one or two roots for each of us. We suspect this was due to the fact that many of us fell short in the caring of our roots and, in Jay's case, went for maiming the poor creatures instead....and chipped ginseng doesn't sell well.
After working the fields, we boarded the bus again and head for Seonbichon, our weekend accommodations. We stayed at a traditional Joseon-era village, with some slightly modernized amenities. That is to say, the buildings were preserved in the traditional architectural style that they had been built in some 100+ years ago, but they also had "ondals" - a glorious heating system that runs hot water through pipes under the floors on which we slept.
Before going to sleep we ventured into the mini-town of restaurants in the village. All were traditional style places, meaning that we took off our shoes and sat on a raised floor to eat (there were western tables and benches as well, but when in Rome...). The village seemed to be fresh out of meat - not just this restaurant, but the entirety of the region - so galbi and bulgogi were out, making the menu significantly more confusing. Luckily we sat by 2 other tour members, an older couple - a Korean woman and a Dutch man. The lady helped us to understand the menu and ended up with bibimbap (rice plus lots of side dishes and you just mix them all up into a glorious and very munchable mini-meal) and duinchang jiggae, which is a stew made with fermented soybean paste much stronger than the kind found in Japanese miso, and smells quite unpleasant. The taste however, is delicious, and once you realize this, the smell sort of grows on you.
After dinner we went to bed early in preparation for our hike the next morning. We got up at around 7, had breakfast provided by our tour (bread and PBJ), and most of us headed to Sobaeksan National Park. Those who didn't want to hike went instead to a temple for the day.
Our hike was supposed to take 5 hours (3 up, 2 down), but our leader was somewhat overzealous and made the trip in about 3 hours total. Jay and I held to the original plan with a moderate portion of the group in order to take pictures of all the lovely views. We were passed on a long flight of stairs from behind by a Korean woman (looking 40, so probably 60), who was belting out a song the whole way up, singing along with her little radio. And although the stairs were seemingly endless on the ascent, it was actually the descent that killed most of us (Jay and I both had shaking legs and my knees threatened mutiny).
The views were lovely and it was wonderful to get out of the city for a while. After the rest of us non-mountain goats caught up with the temple-bound group, we returned to the Festival to make some ginseng wine. Jay participated in this while I simply looked on in amusement; 20 foreigners get to peel ginseng roots again, this time with a much larger group of onlookers and a much more adament film crew, all in the middle of one of the most active tents. The instructor who was next to Jay clearly deemed his efforts futile and took the job from him to finish the job herself. The resulted in a his being the first to finish and proceed to the next section. He got up and went to a nearby table, where he was given a decorative bottle. It was filled with soju, Korea's hard alcohol of choice (basically Vodka), and gave the root to a man who plopped the ginseng root right on in, screwing a cap on top to keep it tucked away. Then he posed with the bottle for about five different (and giant) cameras before we made our way out.
When everyone was finished, we boarded the bus and headed back to Seoul. We were pleasantly surprised by how the whole experience had turned out and promptly signed up for a variety of other trips with Adventure Korea.
The wine bottle now sits proudly on our shelf. We doubt we'll be touching it anytime soon, as the taste of soju is absolutely unappealing to us and the prospect of adding ginseng to improve the taste seems somewhat counterproductive. Either way, it's a lovely souvenir from a lovely time. Hopefully if we go hiking more, we won't hurt as much on the way down or on the next day.
