Emily Rose Buck's etribes LifeSite

The Korean Folk village

I had been out last night with some work friends for a sushi dinner and I don't think that this one particular slimy raw fish had particularly agreed with me, so when I woke up at 6.30 this morning I certainly didn't feel like going into Seoul. However Kat, Jenna and I had all booked ourselves in to see the doctor (an English speaking one) to organise getting more malaria tablets and our Japanese Encephalitis injections. I am glad that it is all sorted but it did end up costing me 100,000 Won (sixty GBP-Rahhh) We enjoyed a delicious western lunch in a 'sandwich shop' (I thought they were unheard of in Korea) and then headed off to Suwon to visit the Korean Folk village there. When we arrived in Suwon we found out that we had just missed the bus to take us there, so sat in the sun and waited for the next one for the next hour, and then almost missed that one too. Luckily the traffic was busy and we managed to run and catch up with it. The bus was only supposed to take 5-10 minutes, however it was more like an hour before we arrived. Anyway it was a great place when we got there, much bigger than I had imagined. Apparently it is 243 acres, with more than 260 houses from different regions and set in the culture of the later Joseon Dynasty. There was a river running through the middle of the whole thing, whereby you had to cross via a thin stone bridge or stepping stones, I must admit I was rather nervous when I crossed it as I didn't fancy falling into the filthy looking river despite the hot day.

We had left it quite late in the day to actually get to the village so once we were there we had to rush straight to the performing area so we could see the last showing of the performances that day. We watched two young and tiny girls doing some acrobats and jumping amazingly high on the Traditional Korean Seesaw, it was hilarious to remember how useless Jenna and I were when we had a go on one back when we went ice fishing. We then watched a man walking and doing acrobatics on a single rope trapeze. While watching this performance a woman actually took off with my bag, it had got tangled around the wheels of a push chair and she had unknowingly dragged it through the dirt for about 20 feet before I had managed to catch up with her. My bag is now scratched and filthy. Nevertheless I enjoyed the show. The final show we chose to watch was 'horseback riding' whereby horses ran around a ring while nimble little men did acrobatics, such as headstands, and shooting impressively at targets with arrows. It was all rather amazing.

We had wanted to take a ferry boat onto the river or just a donkey-led cart but there was simply not enough time left in our busy day, so we then headed back to catch our bus, only to find that we had missed the last one by just ten minutes. Just as we were giving up hope, we saw a service bus at the other end of the car park, heading back to Suwon, we ran as fast as our sweaty legs could carry us and thankfully made it, over two hours later I was eventually home. Brian and I had planned to see 'Pirates of the Caribbean-At worlds end', unfortunately so had hundreds of other people and all the tickets had sold out for the next three showings :( Instead watched 'Next' staring Nicolas Cadge, whereby he can see the future, it was quite clever but I didn't like the ending. Luckily on Monday night I managed to get tickets to see Pirates of the Caribbean, despite its bad reviews I really enjoyed it, I found it pretty hilarious and certainly a lot better than Spiderman 3 which I dragged myself to see last month.

• Posted by emily1183 on 31/05/2007.
• emily1183's site