Exchange Day 75 - In search of persimmons and tea

I saw this online brochure not long ago about an Apple Festival that'll be happening in November in Cheongsung, a city out of Busan. Other than juicy big red apples, the brochure promised hands-on activities such as apple picking and apple pie making. My friend and I both loved apples and were craving for some farm experience, so we were both really keen on going there for a short trip.

We searched online for ways to get to Cheongsung from Busan and found out that there were only two available buses everyday - one at an ungodly 07:40 (ungodly because the bus terminal is two hours away from our dormitory) and the other at 13:20. As if this wasn't troubling enough, there were no direct buses back and the only way to get back was through a complicated series of walking and a total of three bus transfers. Reluctant as we were, we had to cancel our Cheongsung plans.

Since all the Singaporean exchange students will be going away this weekend, my friend and I (the sole survivors) decided that we have to go out too and we began furiously planning an adventure into the wee hours of last night. After much painful searching, we finally found another village that supposedly had a Daebong Persimmon Festival in Hadong, Gyeongsangnam-dong. Well, if we couldn't have apples, I guess persimmons were better than nothing at all.

To get to Hadong, we had to take an inter-city bus from Seobu Bus Terminal in Sasang, which was on Line 2 of the Busan Metro. There's a bus to Hadong from the Terminal once every hour with the first bus at 8:00 and the last bus at 19:00. Standard tickets are priced at 11,100W for a single trip and we bought tickets to the 13:00 bus. Since we had some time to spare, we decided to grab lunch at the food court.

There was a wide selection of food at the food court and they even had gelato and Manchurian cuisine. We met another friend on our way and since there were three of us, we ordered two large sets to share. Like all the other food courts in Korea, we got our meal tickets from the counter and waited for our number to be called on the TV monitor before picking up our food. Lunch was really delicious and cost only 13,500W for everything!

You wait for your receipt number to be called, then proceed to the respective stalls to collect your food.

(clockwise) Bean paste noodles, bean paste fried rice, fried prawns in sweet chili, spicy seafood noodle.

'Jjajang' in Korean refers to a salty black bean paste, so jjajangmyeon and jjajangbab are both variations of the bean paste dish, with one using noodles and the other using rice. The bean paste noodles (짜장면) tasted like the ones in the homely cafeterias I've eaten but the bean paste fried rice (짜장밥) was really out of this world. I haven't tried any bean paste fried rice from the local cafeterias though but this one was really delicious! The bean paste wasn't too salty and actually I could have just eaten the fried rice on its own, although the bean paste was a pleasant addition to the rice.

There were seven fried prawns in total so each of us could have at least two of those tasty morsels, which made me really happy. The chili sauce wasn't too spicy and the dish was really appetising! The spicy seafood noodle (짬뻥) on the other hand was much spicier and tasted a little like tom yam soup. I'd recommend this to people who want to try 짬뼝 but cannot take spicy food well. The ones in local cafeterias are much much spicier so this is a good gauge of your tolerance level.

Seafood yaki udon, which came with a raw salad and miso soup.

Udon's always satisfying and I've been wanting to try yaki udon (stir-fried udon noodles) for so long now and I'm glad I finally got my chance! Thank you for not ruining my impression of yaki udon and making my first experience wonderful! The udon was springy and the sauce was really tasty although it had a spicy aftertaste. The salad tasted like air and should be eaten with the vinegarette but I like eating air. (pun intended)

After a quick lunch, we boarded the bus and were off for our adventure! The bus ride to Hadong took a total of two and a half hours but along the way we chatted merrily and were bespectacled by the awesome scenery so time passed really quickly. A kind lady sitting at the seats adjacent to ours gave us a tangerine for no reason at all (we didn't even talk to her, she's so nice!), which reaffirmed my belief that the world is a bed of a roses. In deep appreciation, we ate the tangerine immediately and it was a juicy treat.

Our bus was waiting for us at Gate Number 8. Buses (and trains) here do leave right on time, so be sure to be early! I feel like I'm at the airport going away on a trip. Cheap thrill. 

Unlike the KTX, the bus conductor will check your tickets so be sure not to lose it.

Look at all that leg space! 

Getting to Hadong was just part one of getting to our destination. From the Hadong Bus Terminal, we had to take another shuttle bus into the Agyang Village. There's a timetable at the ticketing counter that tells you the schedules of the buses but you could also just ask the staff if you can speak a little Korean.

The Hadong Bus Terminal ticketing counter. The big timetable at the top tells you the schedules of the inter-city buses and the smaller ones pasted on the glass windows tell you more about local shuttle buses.

Our bus wasn't due for another half an hour so we decided to explore the vicinity. Almost every house in this neighbourhood had a persimmon tree grown in its backyard so we were convinced that our destination was near. We were gaping at the houses and their trees when we saw an ahjussi harvesting his crops. I greeted him in response to his friendly smile and he gave us a persimmon from his tree, which I shamelessly and elatedly accepted. It felt like a big overripe tomato in my hands and the whole journey I held it so cautiously like a newborn for every klutzy move might not only bruise it but result in a messy explosion.

Before this, the only persimmons I have ever seen were neatly packed into cartons in the local supermarket. I'm living the scenes in the storybooks now!

A daebong persimmon from the generous ahjussi!

After another half an hour ride, we finally reached the Agyang Village! The bus ride was a comical one as the bus stewardess (yes you heard right) and bus driver overwhelmed us with their overzealous welcome and we were embarrassed when we realised we had to buy a ticket for the bus ride, which we didn't. We ended up paying in cash, which amounted to 1,500W per person.

Along the way we saw an abundance of persimmon trees, which we plotted to steal from if we could make our way back and beautiful marshes which glittered under the sun. Our objective was to join the Persimmon Festival at the village and also try its local delicacy, a type of clam that can only be found in the marshes of their local river. Other than persimmons, the village is also well-known for its green tea and tourists also go there to visit the Hwagae Street Market, Choe Champan House of Pyeongsa-ri, Ssanggyesa Temple and the Maeam Dawon Tea Garden.

As Murphy would have it, we couldn't find our way to any of the above attractions but we did stumble upon a traditional teahouse, where we enjoyed some very fragrant black tea. (later as I'm writing this post, I found out that this teahouse was the Maeam Dawon Tea Garden so we didn't actually go home achieving nothing)

A golden tree near an elementary school.

It says right there "The Maeam Tea Culture Center" but we didn't know that it was a tourist attraction as the place looked uninhabited.

Being inquisitive tourists, we walked right in anyway. 

The tea leaf garden-plantations of the Maeam Center.

The alfresco area of the Maeam teahouse, which would have been great during Spring.

The front of the Maeam Teahouse.

Tea is available at 2,000W per person in the teahouse from 10:00 to 18:00.

The teahouse owner, thinking that we were Korean, told us that the Tea Museum was closed for repairs but we were free to have some tea in his teahouse in very fluent Korean. Thankfully his English-speaking Korean friend realised his folly and explained what he said in English we could understand. The owner was very embarrassed when he realised that we were foreigners much to our amusement.

One of my friends was from London and how could we pass up the chance to have tea when we're travelling with an English friend? So we enthusiastically accepted the teahouse owner's invitation to have tea and my friend was really pleased by our accidental discovery as the tea served resembled her English tea back home. We had an amazing afternoon tea chatting and munching pretzel snacks (that another friend brought), pretending to be English (just me) in the serenity of the tea fields and mountains.

The indoors of the teahouse.

Visitors who really like the tea served can buy tea leaves back as a souvenir.

Where we sat. The teahouse owner was apologetic that his teahouse was really small, but we were so amazed by the decorations inside.

A traditional room where tea cultural experience activities might have been held.

Our black tea! The teahouse owner had to help us as we didn't know the proper procedures for serving tea but we realised that there wasn't anything fanciful or special to it. We could have just done it ourselves.

Buses didn't come around the village that often and we were afraid that we would miss our bus back to Busan so we decided to head back towards Hadong early since we couldn't find anything else to do at the Agyang Village. Coincidentally, we boarded the bus that brought us to the village with the enthusiastic bus driver and bus stewardess and they semi-dragged us on board the bus. We found out that the 1,500W we paid previously was for a round trip so the trip back to Hadong was free! It was really funny how the bus driver exclaimed in bits of English that the ride was free and we didn't have to pay, while the bus stewardess (very) warmly welcomed us back on the bus.

Hungry for a good dinner, we headed towards the Hadong Marketplace in search for local fare. We found many bakeries and fast food outlets before we reached the Marketplace but we were determined to not to bow down to commercial joints especially since our itinerary failed badly, so we weaved in and out of the streets looking for local cafeterias.

At long last we managed to find a street of small restaurants and we settled on one that sounded most bustling and popular. We asked if we could go in and have a seat but the shoplady started waving her hands flaccidly and animating her movements with Pokemon sounds. If we were in a pokemon battle, she would have KO'ed us. "Shop Lady used Confusion. It was super effective!"

Befuddled by her advances, we stepped right in and we soon found out what she was so expressively trying to tell us. This video tells all.

Although our dinner was highly barbaric, cruel and disgusting, it was unforgivably delicious. The other customers in the restaurant, apparently high on soju, were boisterous and so friendly that we felt at home almost immediately. They gave us food from their tables and we had so much fun conversing and laughing as if the language barrier didn't exist at all.

Through numerous confirmations with the shoplady and searches on the Internet, I found out that our dinner was actually 언장어 (frozen eels) cooked live in a tantalising hot sauce. Their shape looked like eels to me but I thought eels had eyes and all they had were suckers so I didn't dare to be sure. From my previous experiences with unagi, they didn't taste anything like eels, they had the chewiness of octopus tentacles and really just looked like some sort of alien life form to me. In retrospection, I wouldn't be surprised if the shoplady revealed herself to be a half-alien with tentacles for feet.

Where I watched my food die right before my eyes, and I ate it.

The shoplady was the pretty lady in blue and we found out that the remaining customers were all single moms who owned shops along this street.

After our dinner, we took a photo with the remaining customers and the shoplady and bade farewell to our newfound friends with sincere hugs and well wishes. The bus ride home, although so long I took three naps, felt warm and blissful. :')

xoxo, ❀