S. Korea – Wayfaring: Still

It was our inaugural trip together as man and wife. Fondly coined the ‘Mini Honeymoon’, we chose a country close by to vacation for a week, postponing the honeymoon proper to Europe till spring the following year. Hallyu (한류) was still in its infantry stage but was interesting enough to arouse our curiosity, hence the decision on a package tour to South Korea (the mister’s first visit and my second within a year). Incidentally, it was the first package tour we signed up for: prior to that, we were always travelling independently to nearby countries like Malaysia, Hong Kong and Thailand.

Alas, we forgot to factor in the fact that we would be travelling during the school holidays. Whilst I’m not certain how this works in other countries, it is almost always a bad idea to travel during the school holidays here in Singapore: the packages are decidedly more expensive, the tour groups larger and the tour buses noisier. Unless one works in the education profession or has school-going children, it is perhaps more sensible that everyone else avoids travelling during that period. Never mind that you love children (we both like our nieces and nephews enough) because being stuck on an aircraft or a tour bus with fretting children can become an unpleasant experience.

That said, the children in our tour group were very adorable when they were not behaving like gremlins. In fact several of them liked playing with us because we entertained them, unlike their harassed parents (who were very grateful to us for the short respites). We also met some interesting characters on the trip, for example one of our fellow group mates was the President of F4 Fan Club in Singapore. She was there on a vacation with her father, sister and brother-in-law (left her husband and children behind in Singapore). Once on a long bus journey, she confided that she was tempted to slip away to some place on her own because F4 would be there! In the end her plan didn’t materialise because her elderly father felt it wasn’t safe since she didn’t speak any Korean.

One of the more interesting sights during the tour, in my opinion, was this manual raft-like ferry boat (갯배) we took in Sokcho (속초). Unlike most other fuel-powered ferries, this particular one requires passengers to help out by means of pulling a special hook along a cable laid across the channel in order for the ferry to move. Being one of the abled-body young men on the ferry, the mister volunteered one obligatory run and then promptly came running to tell me that it wasn’t as easy as it looked. 😆

Winter Sonata Scene — *Re-enacting a scene from Winter Sonata.*

We were brought to several notable locations in Korea within the week including the 38th Parallel monument, Everland Resort, Lotte World, Yongpyong Ski resort, Mount Sorak and so on. Too much to take in, too little time, but that’s the way it is with package tours. It took us quite a while to figure what we wanted out of our travels (after 3 more package tours), but once we crossed that slight impediment that is sheer laziness, we never looked back (to package tours).

One major reason why people tend to stick to package tours is the fear that they don’t speak the language and therefore cannot communicate with locals or find their way around. A valid concern, except that our recent travels have proven otherwise: it is possible to survive with plain English coupled with plentiful gesturing. After this trip, we visited Seoul twice more on our own without knowing or reading a word of Korean, and survived. Of course, things improved vastly the 3rd time when we returned armed with my basic Hangul reading and speaking skills: we got lost less often, and we could give cab drivers very specific instructions so we didn’t have to walk too much. It is possible to explore a country without speaking their language. Just be ready to put up with inconveniences like more walking and getting lost more often. Me thinks that can be part of the fun anyway.

The first fall of snow is not only an event,

it is a magical event.

You go to bed in one kind of a world

and wake up in another quite different,

and if this is not enchantment

then where is it to be found?

– J. B. Priestley

Without a doubt, winter is irrevocably and undeniably my favourite season, for a myriad of reasons: Christmas would be around the corner (for the Northern Hemisphere, that is), I almost always prefer cold to warm weather and, who doesn’t have romantic notions of a White Christmas, cuddling with your loved one by the fire with the aroma of roasting chestnuts permeating the whole house? Why, even Winter is my best-loved concerto from Vivaldi’s Four Seasons. ‘Nuff said.

Oh wait, there is but this one little problem – that we hail from a region that doesn’t get to experience winters (we should be very worried if we do). The closest we have are the northeast monsoon rains from December to March that help bring down the ambient temperature by some: from an average of 32°C to 27°C. Snow, the all-essential element for a white Christmas, is however conspicuously absent.

There is a famous saying: ”If the mountain won’t come to Muhammad, Muhammad must go to the mountain”. Since we can’t have things our way, we must then bow down to the inevitable. Well yes, we have since long resigned to our fate; while we don’t get winters here, our beloved country has provided us with much in return. For the winter experience, we always have the option of travelling.

Honeymoon First Snow — *Encounter of ‘first snow’ when we were at Sincheon Walking Street.*

There is snow, and then there is first snow. Apparently, the Koreans decided that first snow (첫눈) should be set apart from other snows, and the logic of this completely eludes me. If you’d ever watched Winter Sonata (겨울 연가), you would have noticed that the motif of first snow was repeatedly emphasised in the said Korean drama series, especially whenever the two lovers met. It must be a certain significance known only to the Koreans.

Determined to uncover the basis of the Koreans’ obsession over first snow, I delved deeper with the aid of the internet. Nothing useful showed up, possibly because I typed and searched in English – I have a strong hunch the concept must be best explained in Hangul (한글), which unfortunately, is a language I was not familiar with at the time of writing this post. From what little information unearthed, I deduced that first snow could refer to first love, meeting of lovers or that witnessing first snow with your beloved means that this will be an everlasting relationship.

Whichever the case, fact is everyone gets excited over the first snowfall of the winter. Years back during our mini honeymoon to Korea, we witnessed Seoul’s first fall of snow while shopping along Sincheon Walking Street (신촌동). Understandably, we tourists hailing from the Tropics were squealing away in delight, but I was surprised to find the locals equally excited: some started dialling and speaking on their mobile phones informing their loved ones about it while others got busy taking snapshots.

Considering the romantic connotation of first snow, I take witnessing it on our mini honeymoon as a good augury for our marriage.

TRIVIA:
South Korea (officially known as Republic of Korea) has a temperate climate with 4 distinct seasons. Their winters are notoriously long, cold and dry while their summers are short, hot and humid. They are however, less vulnerable to typhoons than Japan, Taiwan or the eastern coast of China. The country is warmest in July and coolest in January. On balance, South Korea sees 116 days annually with measurable frost, and on average, one can see frost throughout the whole of every January.

Category: S. Korea

Of First Trips and Many More

Of First Snow