Videos

I've added video of the bull fight to the post below. I've also added a video to this post from Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam.

Sometime soon (when I figure out how to edit them down), I'll be adding a few more videos in the future. You can just click on the video label below (or right here) to find all posts with videos.

The Bulls and the Blood

Late in the week, I found out that some people I knew were headed down to Cheongdo to see a Korean bull fighting tournament. Quickly surmising that I haven't been on an out-of-province trip in a long time, I decided to make the trek down. After an early morning subway ride into Seoul and a 4.5 hour train ride to Cheongdo, we made our way via taxi to the bull fighting arena.

The bull fights in Korea are not the same as the bull fights in Spain or Mexico. Rather there are two bulls actually fighting each other. Well, not really fighting. More like wrestling. Actually, more like pushing. According to what I've heard, the bull fights in Korea date back over 1000 years. At that time, bulls would naturally fight each other for the right to chew on the best grass. When one farmer began bragging about how pushy his bull was, another farmer soon challenged his claims. And thus bull fighting in Korea began. The pre-fight action consists of each bull handler leading his fighter into the arena and trying to get him to engage in a match. Once the bulls engage, the battle begins and there is a head-to-head pushing match. Every once in a while, one bull will make a move to overpower the other bull. It seems that when one bull is finally able to get the other bull to run away, he wins the match. There also seems to be some scoring system involved, but I never figured it out.




Here, you can see the owners / handlers guiding their bulls in battle. The handlers would make hoots and haws at the bulls, and give them the occasional crack of the whip.













But the best part was not really the bulls. In addition to the bull fights, they had a full county fair going on, Korean style. Food stands surrounded the arena, with pigs on spits, corn on the cob, and whale meat soup. Like I said, it was Korean style. Vendors were also selling jewelry, face paintings, persimmon wine, and a whole host of other goods. They had some side show entertainment as well, including acrobatic performers, and an all-transvestite band. Kids, much to their chagrin, were also getting their pictures taken atop bulls. On Sunday afternoon, the entertainment was to include bull riding by American service members in Korea. Unfortunately, it was just a one day affair for us. After the festivities were over for the day, we headed to Daegu, where we spent the night revisiting some of my old joints. We even made it to the bus HOF, a bar built into a bus, that I had always wanted to visit when I lived there. All in all, it was a long, but enjoyable weekend adventure. I'm hoping the weather is nice enough next weekend, so that I can bike to Suwon. They have an old castle there, and lots of cherry trees which are supposed to be blossoming soon.

Ansan

The weather is getting nice enough to start biking again. After a few days of getting warmed up in town, I decided to make an out of town trip this weekend. My destination was Ansan, which is home to a large Asian immigrant population. I've heard about the wide selection of foreign restaurants there, but the realities exceeded all of my desires. In a short stretch, there is almost every type of Asian food one could hope for. Thai, Vietnamese, Mongolian, Uzbek, Indian, Bangladeshi, Chinese, and more, are all represented. To someone from outside of Korea, this may seem like faint praise, but for anyone living in Korea, you will understand the importance of this find. Incheon, with its 3 million people, doesn't have a single Mexican restaurant (there is a little food stand in one of the department stores that sells "empanadas," but they look more like steamed rice buns than empanadas). As far as I know, there aren't any Thai or Indian restaurants in Incheon either. Outside of Korean food, the only mainstays are Chinese-Korean food, Japanese-Korean food, pizza places, and fast food restaurants.

I ended up selecting the Thai restaurant this time, as I haven't had Thai food in over a year. I'm not exactly sure what I had was called, pad something or another (reading English words in hangeul (Korean writing) is bad enough, there's no way I'm making out Thai in hangeul), but it was excellent. No Koreanization (like adding octopus to every pasta dish, or putting sweet pickles in everything) of the food here. Just pure, unadultured, Thai food. And reasonably priced, at W8,000 (around 8 US$).

The bike ride itself was pretty good. It's only about 23km (14 miles) each way. There are a lot of little towns along the way, so I had to contend with plenty of stop lights. But most of the roads either had good sidewalks or ample shoulder room. There were only a couple of small hills to conquer as well. It's definitely on the top of my return list.

Some of the restaurants in Ansan. In order, you have Uzbek, Pakistani/Bangladeshi/Indian, Thai, and Mongolian restaurants.

Happy New Year

The Year of the Pig is upon us. Not just any Year of the Pig, but the Year of the Red Pig. And not just any Year of the Red Pig, but the Year of the Golden Pig. Possibly. It seems the Year of the Golden Pig rolls around every 600 years. It's an especially auspicious year to be born in. Trouble is, people can't quite remember when the last Year of the Golden Pig was. So some people have decided that this is the Year of the Golden Pig. Which basically means golden piggy banks are the in thing. Here's the one I got with my last box of cereal.

The New Year's festivities in Korea are rather dull. Everyone goes off to visit their families. There are no big parades or fireworks displays. The only good thing about it is that it's three days long. But this year, two of those days are on the weekend.

One Korean tradition is to eat Teok-guk, which is rice stick soup. The rice sticks are just concentrated rice, formed into little sticks. Once you eat the rice stick soup, you get a year older.

A Day in Seoul

The weather has been almost spring-like, and it's been a couple of months since I ventured to Seoul. So I went off for a day of adventure - culinary and otherwise. First stop was lunch at Everest, a Nepalese restaurant. There, I had some tasty nan and chicken masala.

Next stop was the Seoul Museum of Art for the Magritte exhibit. While they had a good selection of his work, the crowds made strolling and lingering an impossibility. The museum also does a substandard job of presenting his work. Information is printed in white text on a beige background, which is hard to see. Many of the quotes were presented only in French and Korean. I can usually get a general understanding from the French, but it would be nice if they included an English translations as well. There is also very little information on the individual works. Although, given their poor job of graphic design, and the already plodding crowd, this is probably a good thing.

Next on my list of things to do was visit Inwangsan, or Mt. Inwang, where the shamanists worship. The climb up was a little confusing, as the side of the mountain has been carved away and replaced by a large apartment construction site. But the cement truck drivers where helpful in pointing the way through the site. Once you get past the construction, you find yourself in a little "village" with traditional Korean houses. Climbing past the village, you begin to escape the sounds of Seoul, although sirens will occasionally shatter the silence. For all of the crowds that were at the Museum, there was an equal dirth of people on the mountain. I would occasionally pass by some people worshipping, but there were only a hand full of people hiking in the area. It was quite serene, and a welcome escape from the city below.

After hiking, I head to Gangnam, which is a very ritzy neighborhood of Seoul. The destination was Dos Tacos, a Mexican restaurant. The burrito was good, albeit a bit pricey compared to the US, and the horchata was excellent.

Finally, the day and night ended with a short walk over to Big Rock Brewery, which is a Canada based microbrewery. Beers are a bit expensive, at around $7 a piece (but hey, there's no tipping), but they were a tasty respite from the normal Korean swill.

A few more pictures from my hike.

Trees silhouetted by the setting sun


The city below


A really narrow house