Punggi Ginseng Festival!

Last weekend I went to the Punggi Ginseng Festival with the Adventure Korea tour group I have used a few times in the past. A few weeks ago I had run into a friend of mine in Seoul, who I had met on a previous trip, and he told me that he and his wife were going on the trip and suggested I join them, so I did.

We left early Saturday morning and drove the ~4 hour trip to Youngju, in the East of Korea.

Here is the link to my facebook photo album for all of the pictures.

Here is a map showing the province it is in. It's somewhat close to the coast about in the middle.


When we got to the festival, we were greeted by a camera crew who kept telling us to smile and give thumbs up and say 'i love ginseng'. We were ushered to a stage where we were split into groups and told we were going to have a ginseng peeling contest. Only apparently it wasn't just a fun contest, it was part of the festival's entertainment for the day. We had an audience. And that camera crew was all over the place. 'Look up here!' 'Smile!' 'One more time, hold up the ginseng!'
I was terrible at peeling the ginseng but the 2 guys in our friend-group of four were among the four winners of the contest (of about 40 contestants, all foreigners on the trip with us). They were rewarded with ginseng products, naturally.

Then we were given about an hour of free time to look around the festival (and we had a camera crew following us the whole time) and then went back to the bus to drive to the ginseng field, where we were to learn how to harvest ginseng.
The mayor of Youngju was there to greet us, and he gave a little speech about ginseng and the history and its importance. Then he led us to the field where little old ladies showed us how to dig the ginseng from the ground with heavy-duty garden tools.



Don't forget about the camera crew. They were a constant presence. They had ridden out with us on our bus and recorded the mayor's speech to us. As we were walking to the field the mayor and I fell into step beside each other and chatted a bit. The cameras ate this up. They surrounded us and followed us, taking pictures and recording everything. He joined my friends and I at our ginseng patch and they went wild photographing the mayor and us working together. Afterward, I chased him down to get a photo with him.



And the camera crew saw the great shot and surrounded us again to take their own pictures. 'look this way!' 'look over here!' 'hold up the ginseng!' 'say Sambata!' (Sambata is what you say when you find a good ginseng root. They loved us saying that too.)

Here is a picture i took of the paparazzi shooting my friends Anthony and Austin. Just to give you an idea.


Anyway, we soon went back to the festival and had more time to look around. There were ginseng product-related booths everywhere, as well as a bunch of apple-related booths. One booth disaplayed at LEAST 30 varieties of apples. I didn't know this kind of variety existed in Korea. I was so excited. Usually you only see one kind, occasionally two. Later, Cassie and I went in on 10 bucks worth of apples together. We got 40. 40 apples. I am still not sure what to do with my 2 dozen apples (i had bought 5 earlier in the day) but dang it, it was a good deal. Normally you can buy 4 apples for 5 bucks in the grocery store.

After the festival we headed to our hotel. It was a hanok. Which is a traditional style of Korean home. So it's kind of a compound around several courtyards and it is rows of rooms lined up next to each other. The doors and windows are covered in a rice paper, and you sleep on the floor. It was really, really neat. There was a traditional Korean village (kind of like a Living History Farms/Fort Snelling situation with actors in period dress) on the grounds.

There was a group of men there with their sons, on a father-son retreat hosted by their church. They were really friendly. We talked to a few of them as we sat and watched them play a sport that was a mix of soccer and volleyball. They told us how Korean culture mandates that employees not only work very late, but must go out to drink with their boss and coworkers quite often and when they go, they have to keep up. Korean men in general are really good fathers and involved and enjoy spending time with their kids. But these men told us that this office culture keeps them away from their kids more than they would like so this retreat was a really pleasant and enjoyable, and somewhat rare chance to spend a solid quality weekend with their sons. We enjoyed chatting with them.

The next day our group split up. About half of the group went to a nearby national park for a hike while the rest of us went to a famous, very old, buddhist temple. I chose the temple because a mountain hike just didn't seem like it would be enjoyable after a few hours without proper dress. Besides, I had missed the temple stay last week and wanted to visit a temple. So the boys went on the hike and Cassie and I went to the temple.

It was really beautiful. The weather has that crisp fall quality to it and it was sunny, and a perfect day. We hiked up the mountain to the temple (luckily only 20 minutes, but it was very, very steep) and enjoyed looking around at the shrines and scenery. We had lunch at the base of the mountain and then went to pick up the hikers before heading home.

It was a really fun trip. The group overall wasn't as awesome as when we went to Namhae, but they were still pretty nice and we had a good time. I definitely will do more trips with this tour company. It was fun seeing my friends again, they are people I had met in Namhae, plus they brought their friend who recently came to Korea. They had worked together in the Peace Corps and convinced him his next stop should be Korea, so they got him a job at their school.

So if you were wondering, the previous weekend in which i had awesome plans of going to Busan, and doing a temple stay, and staying in the fanciest hotel in Korea, went to shit because I came down with some terrible illness. It hit me hard. I could barely get out of bed for 3 days let alone think of going to Busan. Luckily though after 3 days of nothing but rest I had mostly recovered and perhaps now, hopefully, knock on wood, I'm through with being sick for a good long while. because i've had it!

What else is new...

my bike was stolen. That took me by surprise. it was locked up on a busy sidewalk. Damn kids. But luckily another friend of mine from Namhae has offered me an extra bike she has, so this weekend I'll go visit her in Gangnam and she'll take me to get my haircut and i'll pick up the bike.

My students continue to tease me about the K-pop band and singer I like. It's still effective sadly. But honestly it's mostly funny. And I am just glad they are speaking English and coming up with creative ways to tease me, so I am just going to go with it.

I'm finally taking Korean lessons! It's a long story but i actually have 2 teachers so I end up having lessons 4 days a week, so that' pretty cool. Hopefully I'll start improving for real pretty soon.

That's about it these days. Hopefully i'll stay healthy for a while and can keep doing fun things again. I don't like sitting at home all the time.

Hope all is well out there! Keep in touch!