Insam Festival

After our tour of Wine Korea, we stopped at the Geumsan Insam Festival.  Insam is the Korean word for ginseng.  Ginseng is a popular herb available in many different forms such as liquid extracts, powders, and capsules.  White Ginseng is ginseng that has been peeled and dried.  Red Ginseng is the same ginseng but left unpeeled and steamed before drying.

Ginseng is reported to have many physical and mental benefits.  It is typically used to improve such things as athletic performance, mental sharpness, and life span.  It is also used to prevent diseases and to treat various ailments such as headache, fever, asthma, and even cancer.

To read more about ginseng, visit a website such as www.herbcompanion.com

There were buildings of vendors selling ginseng products including supplements, teas, and candies.  Some bottles of red ginseng extract were hundreds of dollars!  We were handed samples at many of the booths we walked past.  I personally think that ginseng tastes like dirt but it's supposed to have amazing health benefits.  Johnnie and I must have consumed enough ginseng at the festival to add years to our life :)

Red ginseng foot baths...

Ginseng candy making and ginseng seed planting...

Singers and dancers performing on stage...

A somewhat disturbing street performer...

There were food vendors selling Korean food and snacks throughout the festival.  We tried some ginseng tea (yuck) and we ate some fried ginseng which was surprisingly tasty.  The thin parts of the root tasted like ginseng but the thick part tasted more like a potato.

Whole ginseng roots are often kept in jars or bottles of soju liquor or rice wine, infusing the alcohol with ginseng.  We've seen this at restaurants and bars and we tried it once... it's not an enjoyable drink.

Peeled white ginseng...

Yay for ginseng!!

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"I'm not sure that ginseng is any better for you or me than a carrot,

but just in case the Chinese are right, I grow it in my garden.  I stick

a root in a jug of gin and call it Old Duke's Gin and Ginseng."

~James Duke, USDA botanist

Bulgogi

Bulgogi a word heard often here in Korea. It literally means "fire meat" and refers to how the meat is cooked rather than the type of meat itself. There is beef bulgogi, pork bulgogi, chicken bulgogi, duck bulgogi, ...you get the point.

The meat (whatever meat it is) is marinated and cooked over an open flame at your table, thus the "fire meat" meaning. When the meat is nearly cooked, it is cut into bite size pieces using a pair of kitchen scissors. Although I've eaten at many bulgogi restaurants and am capable of cooking and cutting the meat myself, I'm rarely allowed to do it. Koreans at the tables around us are always allowed to do it themselves but I think the waitresses assume that foreigners either don't know how or can't do it right.

There is a process to eating at a bulgogi restaurant. Among the many side dishes, you will always get a basket of lettuce or other leafy greens. You take a piece of meat and wrap it in a leaf along with a bit of ssamjang (red bean paste) and a bit of any other side dish you want, and then eat it. It's like a miniature lettuce burrito of sorts! Rice is usually not served at a bulgogi restaurant unless you specifically ask for it. With all of the grilled meat and vegetables, it's a very healthy and not overly filling meal.

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"One cannot think well, love well, or

sleep well, if one has not dined well."

~Virginia Woolf

Dodamsambong

This past Sunday, a friend and I went on a tour offered by the travel service on our military base.  The tour consisted of three stops: Dodamsambong, Kosu Cave, and Chunju Lake.  We were both pleasantly surprised with the trip as everything was much better than we expected it to be.

We started our adventure at 8am.  Heavy traffic made the trip longer than it was supposed to be but luckily we had some DVD's to watch on the bus.

We stopped at a rest area after about 2 hours of driving.  Always searching for new and different foods to try, I picked a twisted cracker-type snack... mainly because I thought the cup was cute :)

There was a group of Korean Harley riders at the rest stop.  Zooming in on the photo below, I realized that the guy's arm tattoo is really a fake tattoo sleeve!  He's just pretending to be a tough biker ;)

I'm not sure how this guy can ride for any period of time with handle bars this high!  Zooming in on him, I found that his helmet is covered with extremely offensive stickers written in English.  Sorry, but I'm not putting the close-up of that on our blog.  I wonder if he even knows what they mean?  I hope the lady on the back of the bike doesn't since they're staring her in the face.  Not cool, man, not cool.

Our first destination stop was Dodamsambong.  Here there are three large rocks sticking out of the South Han River.  According to The Official Site of Korea Tourism, the legend of the three rocks of Dodamsambong is this:

There once lived a couple who loved each other but had no child.  They found a mistress because they wanted to have a baby, but once the she had the baby, she began to mistreat and taunt the wife.  The heavens saw what was happening and turned them all into stone.

A statue of the cartoon mascots of the town.  Those are some massive eyebrows!

"It's like the Bellagio fountains in Las Vegas," said our tour guide.  Umm... nice but not quite.

We hiked up thousands dozens of stairs to see a natural stone bridge called the Stone Gate of Danyang.  There was a pavillion near the top with a nice view of the area where everyone stopped to catch their breath and cool off a bit.

Our next destination was Kosu Cave.  It was a crowded area with many small souvenir shops and restaurants near the cave entrance.  Before touring the cave, we first all went to lunch.  Our bus driver led us to a restaurant tucked away behind the rest where there was a meal set up and waiting for us.

The main dish was pork bulgogi which was accompanied by the usual array of Korean side dishes.  There was one side dish I've never had the chance to try before... very tiny dried anchovies.  I did eat some but they were a little too fishy-tasting for my liking and the eyeballs were a bit disturbing.

Related Posts:
Kosu Cave
Chungju Lake

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"If you want to keep your memories, you first have to live them."

~Bob Dylan

Insadong, Seoul

We've switched over to an iMac this year and I've been working on importing and organizing all of our photographs from the past ten years.  It's a big task but it's been fun going through old photos!  Now that the photos are organized, I can see that we have way more photos from 2011 (in just the past eight months) than in any other year yet.  Having this blog has given me a reason to take more photographs that I normally would and of things that I typically wouldn't have photographed in the past.  As a result, we have an amazing photo record of our life this year and will in the years to come as well.

I have more photos than I can count and while organizing them all, I've come across many that I really like and almost forgot that I had taken!  Back in April I took a trip to Seoul with a friend and we hit up the Hangang Spring Flower Festival, the Dongdaemun Fabric Market, and Insadong.  I never published the Insadong photos in a blog post so I thought I'd revisit it today.

Insadong is an arts and antiques district in Seoul.  It has one main street (a 1/2 mile long) running through it with countless small alleys branching off of it.  There is a great variety of shopping here.  Along with artwork and antiques, you will also find handicrafts, art supplies, frame shops, stationary stores, pottery and porcelain shops, book stores, a few clothing shops, and traditional souvenir shops.  Insadong also has lots of restaurants, cafes, coffee shops, and tea houses.  The best places for food and drinks are hidden in the little side alleys!  The main street is closed to traffic on weekends making it more crowded with visitors and street vendors during that time.

My friend and I walked down many little alleys looking for a place to eat and settled at this little restaurant.  There are so many alleys and restaurants in Insadong that it would be difficult to find again!

There are a lot of little side dishes in a typical Korean meal.

Seafood 'pancakes' are (in my opinion) delicious and worth trying while in Korea.  It's a layer of green onions topped with seafood (usually including shrimp, squid and octopus), covered with some sort of batter and cooked.  One is always more than enough for two (or more) people to share.

A little disturbing to look at and a little difficult to eat but this fish was really tasty!

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‎"The slower you go, the more you see."

~Author Unknown

Cartoon Restaurant Signs

Cartoon signs are very common here, especially on restaurant signs.  I snap photos of them once in a while and have a little collection going.  Notice how many of these characters are giving a thumbs up?  I can't say that any of these signs increase my desire to eat at the restaurant... except for maybe the chicken and beer :)

This could be a dumpling or an onion...

Hot

Hotter

Hottest!  Not sure I want to eat here...

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"Red meat isn't bad for you.  Now blue-green meat, that's bad for you! "

~Tommy Smothers