Pictures (top to bottom),river boat at Sungcheon, temple view at Dolsan-do, river delta at Sungcheon, prow and shadow, midnight feast
The tired diesel engine clears its throat, sending an ominous black plume from each of the two exhausts which crane their necks backwards in curiosity at what lays beyond the coked confines of their iron kennels at the stern of the deck before they let out a number of laborious groans which soon give way to a reluctant chatter that is, in turn, duly answered by the stirring of hesitant propellers below the murky waterline. As we leave the harbour I tell myself that the sun is doing its damnedest to desiccate us despite its early altitude, I later concede that it isn't even trying and the plight of those ill equipped for such an onslaught is soon sponsored by the cool sea breeze. Some time thereafter the din of those exhausts seems to strike the perfect note, they sing the groggy to sleep beneath their canvas canopy whilst those with more inclination to the vertical opt for a comfortable bench and an ice cream. I make my way past the cabin to the prow, upon which I find my friends, Moon Hee, Ji Hae, Young Mi and Jew Hyun. So there we sit at the furthermost, all of the labour is behind us, even the cutwater plies its trade in our wake and the calm of the ocean puts me in mind of reflection after the dynamism of previous weeks. The girl's English is good but our mutually limited vocabulary gives us only the reach of rhizomes, broad but shallow, yet on this occasion we feel no need to speak, we are sharing the beauty in silence, the unravelling coastline on the port side, the open ocean to starboard, the rhythm of our gentle pitch and the still unknown pleasures of our destination. Sometimes our words can frustrate us, sometimes they mislead, among the greatest casualties of miscommunication are some of our greatest traits, humour, philosophy, and passion, but here just in these moments, my connection with these people seems far reaching and as deep in nature, as any root may plumb, here, and now our understanding wants for nothing, nothing that is but an ice cream.
Communication
"That's the glory of foreign travel, as far as I am concerned. I don't want to know what people are talking about. I can't think of anything that excites a greater sense of childlike wonder than to be in a country where you are ignorant of almost everything. Suddenly you are five years old again. You can't read anything, you have only the most rudimentary sense of how things work, you can't even reliably cross a street without endangering your life. Your whole existence becomes a series of interesting guesses."
The immortal lexicon of Bill Bryson, and rarely has a justification for cultural naivity rung truer in my mind. Of course encounters of the childlike kind can lose their lustre when one finds ones self immersed in such a state for any great length of time but for those seeking to reaquant themselves with feelings of yore, you could do no better than a stint in the orient, where the cultural and linguistic differences are so pronounced that even the most rudimentary of tasks can prove taxing. All of which presents the Guest English Teacher in Korea with a multitude of paradoxes with wich to contend.
For example, the occasions on which I have understood what exactly is transpiring around be have been refreshingly rare and as an exercise in imagination, there is little more entertaining than filling the blank swathes of ones understanding with fictionalised narratives and humerous conjecture. Even as I write there is a heated exchange raging between two teachers just feet away from me here in the staff room, one which I am attributing to the somewhat alien presence of peas in the batch of sticky rice cakes which, this break time, found its way to the teachers office for our delectation. On the one hand, the mathmatics teacher is clearly unhappy with this blatant misuse of the spherical legume, and feels strongly that it has no place in what is essentially a desert sweet, but, on the contrary, the head teacher argues that, whilst the humble pea may traditionally have been served alongside savoury dishes and in salads, its sweet flavour and nutritional value more than justify its re-formatting in such a way, and further more - though she concedes that this amalgamation may, at first, seem unorthadox - she insists that he embrace what she considers to be the future of grain-pulp based snack foods for his own benefit. As you may imagine such deductions are not easily made and there are times when one simply wishes for a scenario in which one can understand and be understood. These are felt most keenly - for me - during those social situations with Korean friends when one wishes to convey or understand in something more than a superficial way.
Teachers Trip
Such was the case last weekend when I joined the teachers on their annual jolly, In knowing accordance with Bryson's own philosophy, I had no desire to learn in advance where exactly we were going and decided rather, to simply sit back on the coach and adopt the pleasingly vacant smile you often see on the faces of the elderly and infirm as they are wheeled along the promenade on their annual summer exodus from the care homes in which they otherwise seem to fester, the one that says, "I have long since ceded all control of my life and dignity to others and the only expectation - nay hope - for me here is that I neither dribble, or soil myself... a hope which I may or may not fulfil, such is my whimsy". At least I think that is what they are saying because this is much the way I felt on the bus heading south that day though I should mention that the Maekkolli was flowing within minutes of our departure from the school, and, on a vehicle with no bathroom and a piloted by a sadist with a disinclination to stop for the weak urinary needs of a westerner, the prospect of incontinence started to seem less a choice than an utter certainty.
In retrospect I felt compelled - by sheer beauty - to learn the names of those locations we visited and I can now tell you, with confidence, that we had stopped in Jinju city, followed by the phenominal Suncheon Mud Flats, an outstanding area of natural beauty and home to the country's largest reed bed and some improbably orange crabs and rather ancient looking rockhoppers, (as a footnote to this I would like to add that it is the only nature reserve I know of where you can eat the animals you have seen in the cafeteria afterwards). Thereafter we did just that, before alighting at a traditional Korean red clay house where we indulged in a midnight sashimi and watermelon feast (pictured above, and all washed down with yet more Maekkolli... a little cognac too), before turning in for the evening.
The following morning, the sick and weary who made up our number trickled out of their earthen abodes, some dragged their reluctant bodies, like penitent pilgrims, across damp boulders and over rock hewn steps to the spectacular temple which sat like a bird's nest on the steep flanks of the adjacent mountain, for others, the pre-arranged rendezvous with breakfast was all their alcohol embalmed veins would allow.
Repaired - by varying degrees - after our appointment with some exquisitely broiled blue crab and, of course, rice, our bleary eyed phalanx made for the nearby jetty where we stopped for some impossibly contrived photos and then boarded a small and charmingly dilapidated ferry which would take us on the final leg of our journey from Dolsan-do to Oedong-do where we would board the bus for home.
