While Teresa and I are now permanently back in the US (sigh), my commitment to making sure that people do not overpay for their produce remains! For the benefit of those living in Songdo or Incheon I provide this info on produce markets at which one can buy fruit and vegetables at much lower prices than in the major grocery stores.

The  Namchon Wholesale Market, though a longer trip, is especially less expensive, and a lot of fun. (See The Produce Sublime for my Korean language class project related to my love of going to this market.)

Dream City Produce Maket

Here is a good one close by in Songdo, in Dream City.

View in Kakao talk map:http://kko.to/O6luxqWYo Veggie market is near the northeast corner of the intersection pictured.

Incheon Wholesale Fruit and Vegetable Market

This one is farther away in Incheon, but is enormous.  Maybe 2 – 3 football fields of sellers.The prices are cheaper than the Songdo fruit and veggies market above, though some may not think not cheap enough to justify the trip.  But the experience of a really big, bustling market, to my mind, alone makes the trip worth it. The market is fun, and the smells are great. (Qualification: if you do not like crowds, you will not enjoy it so much).

View in Kakao talk map: http://kko.to/uChQFqiDM

Note: this market only sells in the afternoon to individuals.  The rest of the day it is only for wholesale buyers.  It is closed on Sundays.  Check website for times. https://www.incheon.go.kr/gm/index (In Korean: open in Chrome or Papago translate, or get a Korean speaking friend to advise). I believe it opens to individuals by 1 pm and closes at 3 pm, but always safer to check any updated hours.

You can get there by bus (one transfer required), subway and bus, or you can take bus or subway without transfer and do about a mile walk.  You can also bike, if you are comfortable.  A good part of the ride is on a full bike path (not along side a rode) that goes along a canal.  Other parts of the ride are on paths along streets.

Some wholesale market photos:

 

 

 

 

 

 

Spring 2024 was our last season in Korea. We made a number of trips, but were so busy we lacked the time to post about them. Now back permanently in the US, we post about these trips to preserve our memories of them and, we hope, for your pleasure. Written some time after the trip itself though, these posts will be more pictures, less prose.

In April we made a very quick trip to Japan (as one does) because one of my favorite jazz musicians was playing at the Tokyo Blue Note, with his great trio. Avishai Cohen is an Israeli double bassist who blends “Middle Eastern, eastern European, and African-American musical idioms” (John Fordham, writing in The Guardian; quoted in Cohen’s Wikipedia entry). Give them a listen:

We thought we would just stay for one set, but we enjoyed the music so much we stayed for both. After the show we had a chance to chat with the drummer. We were sitting near a friend of hers, who introduced us. And we also waited in line to buy a CD and have it autographed by the band.

Before we left Tokyo the following day we had some time to explore, since our flight did not leave until the evening. We went to Ueno Park, which was quite lovely. Inside the park there is a special section devoted to peonies:

On the way out, we found a great food street just on the other (east) side of the Ueno metro stop. We ate outside Japanese izakaya food, little tasty bites. I got a bunch of sashimi, and Teresa varieties of grilled skewers.

Readers of this blog may recall that our last trip to Japan was mixed bag. Tokyo the second time around was much better.  Here’s to second chances for all of us!

Spring 2024 was our last season in Korea. We made a number of trips, but were so busy we lacked the time to post about them. Now back permanently in the US, we post about these trips to preserve our memories of them and, we hope, for your pleasure. Written some time after the trip itself though, these posts will be more pictures, less prose (well, this one turns out to be pretty talkative after all).

For my 60th birthday, we decided to travel to Mongolia. It would be a memorable place, and also a kind of substitute for visiting China, which, by the time the covid pandemic ended, had become inhospitable for US citizens (though opinions on this question vary).

Mongolia was really interesting and completely worth seeing, but the idea that it was a substitute for visiting China was ill-informed. Mongolia may border China, but one of the most interesting things about it was how different it seemed from other Asian countries we knew. The capital city, Ulan Baataar, felt more European, a result of the Soviet influence on Mongolia from the early twentieth century.

We were also fortunate to see an exhibit in the capital square of Mongolia’s traditional architecture, which we always thought was called a yurt. However, we learned that yurt is the Turkish word for this structure.  Mongolians call them “ger,” which simply means “home.”  The ger we saw were likely more beautiful than the average nomad’s structure, as they were also meant to showcase traditional Mongolian arts and crafts.

(Click on an image for a larger photo slideshow.)

We spend one day on the Mongolian steppes, where the nomads really live. Our tour guide was the former Mongolian ambassador to the US, who is now seeking to work with Mason on educational collaborations. He is apparently a quite well known politician in Mongolia, since after we had lunch with him a stranger came up to us and asked us if we knew with whom we were eating. “He is a famous politician,” the man said. “Was he a good politician?” we asked. “Yes, he is one of the good ones,” the man said.

On the way to the “camp” (really a kind of hotel) where we had lunch, we stopped at an enormous status of Ghengis Khan, whose empire briefly extended all the way to Hungary in the west, and Vietnam in the south. The large statue had a stairway inside of it, so that one could climb to the top.

Just outside the statue grounds were men who, for a small price, would let you hold their hunting eagles. Teresa did an excellent job–those birds are heavy!

The next day in town, I tried my hand at a hunting eagle. I had considerably more trouble.

Teresa kindly offered that my bird was more skittish than hers.

We had for lunch at the camp a traditional Mongolian lamb barbecue called “khorkhog,” in which the meat is cooked by packing it with hot stones, along with some vegetables. Originally, the meat was cooked in its skin, but now a cooking pot is used. This method was efficient for nomads who could not carry a lot of cooking equipment. The presentation was impressive:

When the khorkhog is served, so are the rocks that are used to heat it. It’s customary to pass the lamb-grease-coated hot rocks around. You cannot hold them though because they are very hot. You need to pass them from hand to hand before getting burned. While just traditional in a restaurant in the spring, passing around the hot stones on the wintry steppes must have been quite welcome.

We had intended to have lunch at the camp and return with the ambassador, but the countryside was so striking that we decided to stay the night at the camp, especially in hopes of seeing the impressively starry skies we had heard about. As it happens, the night was too cloudy for many stars, but we did get to hike around the steppes and appreciate its severe beauty.

Our final night in Mongolia was my actual 60th birthday. We were looking for a really good, memorable restaurant to eat at. But we had stayed longer than we planned at the “State Department Store” (the main department store in the city, its name from the Soviet day), and by the time we started looking for restaurants, they were all closing (it wasn’t that late, but I think it was Sunday night). If we had eaten at the first restaurant we came to we would have been okay, but we were picky at first, not realizing how little time we had. Then as we went to each restaurant and heard that the kitchen was closed, it became more and more unlikely that the next one we tried would be open.

In frustration we went back to our hotel to ask for advice. The desk clerk told us that the only restaurants we would find open would be Pizza Hut and KFC. Ugh. “Nothing else?” we asked. He thought: “Do you like Mongolian food.” We brightened: “Yes! We like Mongolian food!” “Okay,” he said, “there’s a 24-hour Mongolian chain restaurant not far from here.” “Is it good,” we asked? “No, not really.”

The hotel clerk was right. It was not good (though it was not terrible). It was, however, remarkably cheap. I think the dinner for both of us was something like $7.00.

Even if dinner was not great, the trip was. And if you had told me at 50 years old that I’d be spending by 60th birthday not just in Mongolia, but at a 24-hour Mongolian fast-food restaurant, I would have been surprised and happy. In the event, I was.

 

Spring 2024 was our last season in Korea. We made a number of trips, but were so busy we lacked the time to post about them. Now back permanently in the US, we post about these trips to preserve our memories of them and, we hope, for your pleasure. Written some time after the trip itself though, these posts will be more pictures, less prose.

Teresa and I (like everyone else!) loved Jeju, and really wanted to go back before leaving Korea. We did so in March, as part of Teresa’s birthday celebration. We knew just where we wanted to go this time, Seogwipo, on the southern coast, our favorite location when we stayed there last time. This trip was a short one—just a couple of days—but sweet.

The big difference this time around was that rather than going right on the Olle trail to segment 7, we went left to segment 6 (the Olle trail is a famous walking trail that circles the island along the coast). Left was good! We saw great coastline, made somewhat moody by the early spring day. Mostly blooming was yellow canola plants.

There was also a waterfall on this segment of the Olle trail, Jeongbang Falls, the only falls on Jeju that drop directly into the sea.

The next day we hiked up one of the lower peaks of Hallasan, the volcanic mountain at the center of Jeju. Most hikes up Hallasan take at least a half day, but this one was just a couple of hours. Since we had to get back Jeju city to fly out that evening, it was a good choice. The top of the mountain was very windy! On it was also a Japanese bunker from the time when the Japanese had colonized Korea. We looked inside the bunker as well.

We had a bit of time in Jeju city before flying out. We walked some along the coastline there, and went to a pork barbecue restaurant to have some of the black pork for which Jeju is known. You might say even “for which it is famous,” since this barbecue grill had its own spotlight! We topped off our time with a grapefruit bingsu dessert.

We weren’t sure if we’d be able to make it back to Jeju before we left Korea. We’re glad we did!

Readers of Adventures in Korea may think that our travels are always happy. They would be correct, until this trip to Japan, which did, at least, end better than it began.

We were supposed to visit three places: Sapporo, for its ice festival, Niseko, for a day of skiing, a return to Sapporo for another day, and then some days in Tokyo. A lot of traveling.

A couple of days before we were scheduled to leave, Teresa did not feel well—a bit of stomach upset, some fatigue and a low-grade fever. We were not sure if we should go.  By the morning of our trip, Teresa was feeling better. I was feeling a bit tired, so we decided we would go, but cut out the skiing in the Niseko part of our trip, and just stay in Sapporo until going on to Tokyo.

By the time we transferred planes in Tokyo, I was feeling worse, and by the time we landed in Sapporo, it was clear that Teresa and I were playing a gastroenteritis version of A Star is Born, and that my star was now ascendant.

Teresa’s own illness had been mild. I had hopes mine would be as well. We searched for our hotel, walking about a mile in the snow and cold. Those who visit ice festivals cannot complain about snow and cold. Sapporo’s winter beauty was meant to be a main point of the trip. We failed to fully enjoy that beauty as we failed to find our hotel, tried again, then discovered, as T.S. Eliot wrote, that “the end of all our exploring ….will be to arrive where we started. And know the place for the first time,” since it turned out the hotel was about 100 feet from the place we started out!

Out again for dinner, after a day of travel, we wanted ramen. We found a place and I cautiously ordered the lightest ramen available. Its quality of lightness, though, mainly lay in the glistening fat on its surface. I shivered on the way home, from the cold and what was by now a rising fever.

By the following day that fever made it up to 102, and I clearly would not be eating anything like ramen again soon. I spent the entire day in my hotel bed. My illness turned out to be quite a bit worse than Teresa’s.  Feeling quite well,Teresa spent a good part of the day doing errands for me and working at a coffee shop.

The following day we had to find a new hotel, since our current reservation ended with our now canceled Niseko leg, and they did not have room to extend our stay. Though still feverish, after 24 hours of rest I was feeling well enough to travel to a new hotel, which we found without too much trouble.

More bad luck. We left our bags at the new hotel before we could check in, and looked for a place to get coffee. On the way, I slipped in the snow and fell hard on my side, my arm managing to poke into my side and cracking two ribs—as diagnosed three weeks later. And there was no skiing on this trip, which would have been a more glamorous way to break some ribs. For about 20 seconds, I lay in the snow just off the street, unable to get up. A kind citizen of Sapporo looked alarmed. I rallied and let her know I was okay. On to get coffee. When we returned our room was ready and we were able to rest. It is a mark of how tired I was that rest came, despite fever, stomach cramps, and now, two fractured ribs.

Were we having fun yet? No. But we remained determined. We had not yet found the ice festival, except for Teresa’s few glimpses of people carving ice cranes while she was doing her errands. We headed out to the neighborhood with the ice carving part of the festival. I was feeling a little better.

The street with the ice carvings was already quite festive, and even more so with its carvings.

I had my first significant meal following my arrival ramen, though I still tried to eat very cautiously. For Teresa and me eating the local cuisine is a large part of the pleasure of traveling, and it was hard to give up.  Wisdom (and Teresa) would have had me eating Saltines—or their Japanese equivalent, lots of plain rice. I opted for sushi, for which Sapporo is quite famous. I figured that sushi was pretty good for what ailed me: lean and delicate. (A doctor later informed me otherwise.) This sushi was the best I had on the trip. I also had my first taste of salted cucumbers, which I really enjoyed, and ate different versions of through the trip.  Teresa was enjoying grapefruit highballs.

We checked out the snow carving part of the ice festival the following day, as I continued slowly to improve.

Another good place we visited was the Sapporo clock tower, which had been moved to a more central area in Sapporo.  Originally, the clock tower, which fronts a somewhat large building, had been part of the Sapporo Agricultural College, co-founded by the same person who founded Amherst College, which was also originally been created as an agricultural college. (I did not know that.) The Sapporo college produced many founding fathers of Sapporo’s modernity, and we enjoyed reading about them. (A woman’s school was proposed, and then canceled.)

 

We decided to use some of our extra time in Sapporo to take a day trip to Otaru, about 45 minutes away by train. We stayed at this snow globe of a town last year and enjoyed it a lot.  We especially wanted to visit to buy more bravely the glassware that is one of the town’s specialty crafts, and we did, including something for me that we are counting as Teresa’s present to me for my upcoming 60th birthday.

By the time we flew back to Tokyo the following day, I was feeling much better, nearly 100%, at least with respect to my stomach flu—the ribs continue to hurt as of this writing over three weeks later (I’m told it takes about 8 weeks to heal fully.) We arrived to our hotel in the Asakusa neighborhood, which we really liked. Asakusa is quaint and has an older Tokyo feel, but is not too far from the city center.

We had two days to explore one of the largest cities in the world. We did what we could. I love fish and fish markets, so our first stop was the Tsukiji Outer Market, a famous fish market in Tokyo. I found it a disappointment. It feels much more like a set of boutique stalls for tourists (think the old Quincy Market in Boston) than a real market (apparently, that is the “inner market,” to which only professional traders in fish are allowed). The fish was fine, but not especially good. I had better shasimi in Sapporo.

We enjoyed our next stop more, the so-call “scramble square” in the Shibuya neighborhood, supposedly the most crowded street crossing in the world. I’m not sure if that’s true, but there was a lot of energy there and in the neighborhood around it.

While there, we saw signs up for Taylor Swift’s concert in Tokyo, which was in the news because of its date near the Superbowl.

We ended the day by leaving the glitz and consumerism of the scramble square area for a different part of Shibuya, the quiet park that surrounds the Meiji shrine, which honors the the Meiji emperor, who founded modern, imperial Japan in the later 19th-century. The park has a broad walk with rows of stately trees creating an arch over it.

Since we enjoyed this beautifully constructed park so much, we decided the next day to visit Tokyo’s Shinjuku Gyoen National Garden. We enjoyed this visit very much. The park has lovely walks and sculpted trees. It also showed off some very early spring—Tokyo is much warmer than frozen Sapporo, and warmer than the Incheon/Seoul area of Korea as well.  We saw some flowering trees and early daffodils.

We also went to take a look at the Imperial Palace and its grounds. It was not worth the trip. One cannot get very close, and the grounds and the palace itself are not that compelling.

We got around everywhere by subway. The Tokyo subway system is extensive, but not as easy to use as Seoul’s. There are fewer signs in English, some lines are excluded from the regular subway pass, and elevators and escalators are more rare. Be ready to take the stairs!

Finally, we ate some ramen at a restaurant very near our hotel. This was my victory ramen, as I had mostly avoided this soup (I made an exception for a lighter soy-based version when we first arrived to Tokyo) since the unfortunate meal of my first night in Sapporo. We were about to fly out of Tokyo, though, and I wanted to enjoy some rich Tokyo pork ramen before leaving. I was pretty sure I now could handle it. It was good.

So I left Japan only partly broken. I have some good memories, my stomach is better, and my ribs will heal.

In February of 2020, we had plans to go to Thailand. We canceled them because of that new virus–there were 12 cases at the time in Thailand–and we were not sure of the risks. Three and a half years later we finally made it.

We went over the Chuseok holiday, which fell at the end of September in 2023. Unlike the canceled trip of 2020, which was to Bangkok, this trip went mainly to Chiang Mai, a city in the northernmost part of Thailand. It is a place of mountains rather than sea and beaches. It is also much quieter than Bangkok, but quaint and historical.

The center of the Chiang Mai is surrounded by a square moat and the remnants of a wall, both constructed to protect the city.

While in Chiang Mai we enjoyed Thai f00d—restaurants are very cheap in Thailand— walked around ornate Buddhist temples, and saw lavish Buddhist religious art.

We took a day tour to Doi Inthanon National Park, which features the highest peak in Thailand. In and near the park we saw a waterfall (I think Mae Ya) and hiked around a rain forest that was humid and cool at the same time, because it is so high up.

 

The tour included a visit to the monuments and gardens dedicated to the previous Thai king and his wife, and then to a very rural village settled by the Karen people, a distinct ethic and linguistic group that live in the Myanmar – Thailand border region. In addition to farming rice and raising small animals, they now grow and sell coffee as well as make clothing to sell to the tourists who come through. We brought both coffee and some beautifully woven scarves.

Though we spent most of our time in Chiang Mai, we did have a couple of nights in Bangkok. We enjoyed the night markets, rode one of the the water ferries that carry people through Bangkok, and walked around the Bangkok Grand Palace area, which was close to where we were staying. We also visited the popular Khao San road area, but it was not to our taste, being something like the Bourbon Street of Bangkok, but even more amped up than its New Orleans cousin—if one can imagine that. We had museums on our to-do list but unfortunately they were closed on the days we were there.

We were continually struck by how Thailand reminded us of New Orleans, where Teresa grew up. Not just the warmth, humidity, great food, beautiful architecture, and devotion to pleasure (most of it much more pleasing than at Khao San), but also the sense of romantic decay. A lot of Thailand is moss covered, rusting, cracking, and the like. This romantic decay is atmospheric in the way New Orleans’s decay is as well. It’s a strong contrast to Korea, and especially an area such as Songdo, which is all new and glistening, though some think it lacking character. Good bougies, we were ready to return to the latter.

And now, because this blog post is so late, we offer an MCU-like teaser to our 2024 trip to Japan, which we just finished, and which will have its own blog post soon. Japan is the opposite of Thailand’s Big Easy, especially as we spent most of our time, in February, on Japan’s cold northern Island, Hokkaido, for its annual snow festival.

One of my favorite short trips in Incheon is to its massive fruit and vegetable market. We go about every other week.  For my final project in my Korean 201 course, we had to create a video about a favorite place in Korea, so the produce mart was my subject. The script for the video is just below. You can also skip to the English translation, which is below the pictures of the market.  If you want, you can also watch the video.

I should note that this script got some helpful feedback and correction from my Korean instructor.

남촌농산물도매 시장 가 봤어요? Homeplus에서 쇼핑하면 과일과 야채가 아주 비싸지만 남촌 시장에서는 더 싸요. 시장이 아주 커요.  크기가 IGC 캠퍼스하고 비슷해요. 시장에서 과일과 야채를 아주 많이 사도 돼요. 시장에서 과일과 야채에서 나는 냄새가 좋아요.  시장 냄새를 맡을 때 시골에 있는 것 같아서 기분이 좋아요.  과일과 야채의 무지개 색깔이 아름다워요.  그리고 시장에서 과일과 야채의 가격을 외치는 것을 듣는 걸 사람들이 좋아해요. 서로 부딪치는 사람들이 많이 있지만 큰 군중을 좋아하면 괜찮을 거예요.

시장은 캠퍼스에서 좀 멀어서 갈 때 많이 사요.  큰 쇼핑백을 둘이나 셋 가져오면 일주일치 과일과 야채를 살 수 있어요. 저는 집에 오렌지와, 토마토와, 애호박과, 오이와, 감자와, 다른 과일과 야채를 가져와요. 한국 딸기가  맛있어서   딸기를 삼 월에 살 수 있을 때  특히  좋아해요. 시장에는 둘 큰 건물이 있어요. 한 건물에는 야채가 하고 과일이  다른  건물에는 있어요.  저는 집에 되돌아갈 때 요리한 거 시간이예요.

오전에는 회사원들만 들어가도 돼요. 하지만 일반 사람들은 못 들어가요. 오후에는 일반 사람들이 들어가도 돼요. 시장이 월요일에서 토요일까지 열지만 일요일에는 닫아요.

차가 없으면 버스로 갈 수 있어요.  지하철도 탈 수 있어요. 그런데 아직 버스로 가야 해요.  버스로 가고 싶으면  IGC 캠퍼스에서 연세대 정류장까지 걸어서 가고, 303-1 번 버스를 정능로사거리 정류장으로 타세요.  537 번 버스로 갈아타고 남촌농산물도매시장채소동 앞 정류장에서 내리세요.  오십사 분쯤 걸려요. 저는 자전거로 가는 것을 좋아해요.   자전가로 사십 분 걸려요.   남촌농산물도매를시장을 한 번 꼭 가 보세요.

저는 시장에서 쇼핑하는 걸 끝날 때 자주 “러시아구에” 가요. 러시아구는 가까운 문학산 인천에 있고 시장을 안 멀어요.  거기만, 저는 사랑하는 음식을 살 수 있고 다른 곳 인천에서는 살 수 없어요. 러시아구에 동유럽과 유태인 음식이 있어요. 러시아구에서 훈제 생선과, 살라미 소시지와, 절인 고추와 절인 토마토를 사요. 델리카트슨 잔치예요! 또, 러시아구에 많이 유라시아의 식당이 있어서 저는 쇼핑한 걸 끝날 때 매우 좋은 우즈베키스탄 식당에서 밥을 먹어요.

시장에서  러시아구까지  가고 싶으면 4 번 버스로타세요. 방죽골 정류장까지 걸어서 가고 버스를 타세요. 함박도서관 정류장에서 내리세요. 쉬워요.

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Have you been to Namchon Agricultural Products Wholesale Market? Fruits and vegetables are very expensive if you shop at Homeplus, but cheaper at Namchon Market. The market is very big. It is similar in size to the IGC campus. You can buy a lot of fruits and vegetables at the market. I love the smell of fruits and vegetables at the market. When I smell the market, I feel like I’m in the countryside. The rainbow colors of fruits and vegetables are beautiful. And I love hearing people shout the price of fruits and vegetables at the market. Lots of people bump into each other, but if you like big crowds you’ll be fine.

The market is a bit far from campus, so I buy a lot when I go. Bring two or three big shopping bags and you can buy a week’s worth of fruits and vegetables. I bring home oranges, tomatoes, zucchini, cucumbers, potatoes, and other fruits and vegetables. I especially like it when I can buy strawberries in March because Korean strawberries are delicious. There are two large buildings in the market. There are vegetables in one building and fruits in another. When I go back home, it’s time to cook.

Only businesses are allowed to enter in the morning. But ordinary people cannot enter. Ordinary people can enter in the afternoon. The market is open Monday through Saturday, but closed on Sunday.

If you don’t have a car, you can go by bus. You can also take the subway. But you still have to take a bus. If you want to go by bus, walk from the IGC campus to the Yonsei University stop, and take bus 303-1 to the Jeongneung-ro Intersection stop. Transfer to bus No. 537 and get off at the bus stop in front of Namchon Agricultural Products Wholesale Market Chaeso-dong. It takes about fifty-four minutes. I like to go by bicycle. It takes forty minutes by bicycle. Be sure to visit the Namchon Agricultural Products Wholesale Market.

I often go “to the Russian District” when I finish shopping at the market. The Russian district is located in Incheon, near Munhak mountain, and is not far from the market. Only there can I buy the food I love that I can’t buy anywhere else in Incheon. The Russian District has Eastern European and Jewish food. I buy smoked fish, salami, pickled peppers, and pickled tomatoes in the Russian district. It’s a delicatessen feast! Also, there are many Eurasian restaurants in the Russian district, so I eat at a very good Uzbek restaurant after shopping.

If you want to go from the market to Russia District, take the number 4 bus. Walk to Bangjukgol stop and take a bus. Get off at the Hambak Library stop. Easy.

When we told Korean friends we were going to visit Mokpo for this spring break, almost every one of them asked us, “Mokpo? Why Mokpo?” We were a bit concerned. Apparently, Mokpo is not a big tourist destination, even for Koreans.

Here’s why we picked Mokpo.  Our theory of Mokpo, as it were.

• We loved Yeosu, and Mokpo like Yeosu is in the south of Korea. But it is further west, and we have not much explored the west coast of Korea.
• Mokpo was also the site of some important Admiral Yi naval battles, and Teresa is a big Admiral Yi fan.
• The southwest of Korea is historically interesting and is famous for the quality of its food. Mokpo is a big fishing area and Robert loves fish.
•  Mokpo is surrounded by hundreds of inhabited and uninhabited islands, and we thought it would be fun to explore one.
• Mokpo is the terminus of one of the KTX high-speed rail lines, so easy to get to.
• We read that Mokpo was not a big tourist destination, and we liked the idea of going somewhere out of the way.

But how would theory stack up to practice? Was going to Mokpo a good idea?

Our first day in Mokpo we visited the major fish market, climbed Yudalsan, the rocky mountain that overlooks the city and then took the Mokpo cable car to a nearby island.

Frequent readers of this blog know that we (and by we, we mean Robert) love pictures of artfully arranged fish. We (and by we, we mean Robert) are sure our readers do too. Here are a couple from the Mokpo fish market.

At the market, we ate at a fish restaurant on top of one of the fish stalls. The seafood was indeed super fresh, as the server we saw carrying around a live octopus in each hand attested. We also suspected this was a good restaurant, because we saw a shuttle bus drop off about 15 elderly men and women to it. They must have come from a geriatric center or home for a day’s outing. We figured they knew something.

The meal was enormous–you can see all the small plates below. The fish soup was terrific, the seafood in it extremely fresh and tender, even the octopus. Robert was less of a fan of the raw fish. The go-to fish in Mokpo is skate, which is what this restaurant served. The taste is good, but the texture a somewhat tough. It is not buttery, which is one of the big pleasures of sashimi.

After lunch we hiked up Yuldansan. Along the way we stopped at a statue of the Korea war hero Admiral Yi Sun-shin, who, it is said, covered a large rock on Yuldalsan with straw, in order to make the enemy believe they were looking at huge supplies of rice, and therefore that Yi had many men. Believing themselves outnumbered, the Japanese did not attack, but returned to Japan. The rock is now known as “provision rock.”

The top of Yuldansan has excellent views of Mokpo. From the top it is a short walk to the Mokpo cable car Yuldansan station. We boarded there, and took the cable car to nearby Gohado Island, which we walked around, before returning on the cable car.

The next day we took a ferry to one of Mokpo’s many islands–this one known as the “Romance Island” (its actual name is Oeldaldo, but when there are hundreds of islands, and some of them are competing for tourist visits, you need a brand). We walked the circumference of the island, visiting its beach and taking a nap there.

The last day we headed home. Before we did, we visited the Korean National Research Institute of Maritime Cultural Heritage. The museum has just a few galleries, but their content is wonderful. They show some shipwrecks from about 1300 to 1600, all discovered and salvaged in the last several decades. These ships were mainly bringing Korean pottery, known as celadon, from the site of its manufacture in the south to the rest of Korea. All this pottery was preserved in the shipwrecks, mostly intact, and a lot of it is displayed in the museum, along with the remainders of the ships themselves.

 

Last, before we left, we had lunch at a place recommended by a colleague as exemplary of cooking in Jeollanam-do  the southwestern province where Mokpo is located. The hot stone bowl bibimbap was excellent—really fresh ingredients—and super cheap too.

So is Mokpo worth visiting? Yes, we think it is. We enjoyed the history, sights, walks and food—and given the amount of food we ate, it’s good there were lots of walks.  We do not think it is as magical a place as Yeosu though.

We continue to enjoy our time in Korea, where even less sensational destinations provide so much interest and pleasure.

This winter break we traveled to Hokkaido, the northern island of Japan, where winter is still winter. Robert got to enjoy some nostalgia by reliving his memories of winter in Chicago during the 1970s and 80s.

Usually when we travel in Korea or Asia, we are exploring places far from home. But visiting Hokkaido pleasantly reminded Robert of the place in which he grew up, a place that, largely because of climate change, doesn’t exist in the winter anymore. That place was continuously cold and had frequent snowfall and streets covered with snow from December through February. Here it was in Otaru, Japan, the city we visited.

More memories: piles of snow continually heaped up from shoveling, snow falling in the lights, snow gathered on tree limbs,  snow in a landscape of grays and browns, snowmen and snow art, ice and cold.

Otaru is not the major city in Hokkaido; that’s Sapporo. We visited Otaru at the recommendation of a colleague at Mason Korea.  She recommended it as quaint and a place popular with Japanese tourists.  We think it was a good recommendation.

Otaru was a major banking city in late nineteenth and early twentieth-century Japan.  A legacy of this history is a lot of western style buildings.  It was also a major city for trade, glass works, and herring fisheries.

Glass making is still an art in Otaru. We visited several showrooms set up in old warehouses.
We brought a kerosene lamp that we will one day take home—very carefully— to Virginia. This showroom also had displays of music boxes, another Otaru craft.

Outside the glass and music box showroom is a modern (for an industrial town at the turn of the twentieth century) steam clock.

Besides snow, Otaru offered another love of Robert’s: fish. We visited the marine area several miles north of the city where the fisheries once thrived (alas, much of the herring was used for fertilizer, not food), and had a meal at the remaining fish restaurant, lured in with the sight of herring being smoked on stakes.  More fish was being grilled inside.

After lunch we hiked up the nearby hill for views of the bay.

Otaru is also famous for its sushi. It was a bit tricky finding a sushi restaurant that had food other than raw fish, which Teresa does not eat, along with stronger flavored cooked fish. It might have been just as well though. The hardcore sushi places served what looked like some pretty exotic and intense fish. Robert isn’t sure he would have enjoyed it. In any case, the sushi meals we had were excellent.

Full confession: Teresa enjoyed Hokkaido, but this trip was really one for Robert. In addition to snow and fish, there was skiing, another love from Robert’s childhood. Hokkaido is famous for its high-quality snow. And while we (no doubt biased) generally prefer Korea to Japan, there is no contest when it comes to skiing. The famous Korean ski resort we visited last year, where the 2018 Winter Olympics were held, reminded Robert of mediocre skiing in Pennsylvania. Skiing in Niseko, about two hours from Otaru, reminded Robert of the best skiing he has experienced in Colorado or Utah.

The skiing was great, but the pictures from it are not, since it was snowing pretty hard a lot of the time, and cold and wet to operate a phone. Also, Robert was pretty focused on skiing. Here’s what we’ve got.

All was not lost for Teresa, who worked on some writing at a nice coffee house the day Robert skied. Also, the B&B where we stayed was a lovely winter hideaway with cozy fire and a restaurant that featured Nepalese food. (You can click on the images for larger views.)

Also at our B&B, this celebration of the Japanese toilet.

Winter in Hokkaido, Japan was indeed magical. We wish you magic wherever you look for it.

For Chuseok this year we visited Gapyeong, a vacation area of mountains, rivers and lakes just outside of Seoul. It was a good place for a quick getaway.

We visited two places, Nami Island and the Garden of Morning Calm. Nami Island is by far the more famous and more popular of these two places.  It became famous as a romantic site in one of the first really popular K-dramas, Winter Sonata. An island in the middle of the Bukhangang (the North Han River), it is reachable by a five-minute ferry ride (or there’s a more expensive option to zip wire in; these are tourist places). The island brands itself as its own nation, the Republic of Nami.

Nami Island has some lovely walks, particularly its lanes of trees. And it has lots of whimsical statuary and such that makes it a great place for families. If you do not have kids to entertain, you may find it, as we did, somewhat overdeveloped. Nonetheless, we enjoyed it.

The next day we went to a private arboretum, called in English “The Garden of Morning Calm.” This name comes, apparently, from a phrase often associated with Korea, “The Land of the Morning Calm,” coined by the early twentieth-century Indian poet Rabindranāth Tagore. (I say “apparently” because I have also read that the phrase is a translation of the name for the last Korean dynasty, the Chosun, but I think that claim has less authority. I would like to find the poem by Tagore and learn about its origin.)

In planning the visit to Gapyeong, the trip to the arboretum was an afterthought compared to the visit to Nami Island, but it turned out to be the highlight of the trip. This arboretum is beautiful, and we very much recommend it.

In addition to the varieties of trees, flowers and architectural features, the beauty of the place lies in its situation in a valley, so that the controlled nature of the arboretum is framed by the wild nature of the Korean mountains. Because those mountains are not tall enough to be sublime, the garden does not not quite create a play between the sublime and the beautiful (for you English eighteenth-century fans), but it is close.

Speaking of close, this arboretum, like Nami Island, is a completely doable day trip from Seoul, or even Incheon, though travel from the latter is long enough to justify an overnight. Gapyeong is not the most sensational place we’ve visited in Korea, but it was still a lot of fun, and is reachable from Incheon for a subway ride of less than $3.00! Can your subway do that?