Our first trip with Adventure Korea, a company that organises trips for foreigners, proved to be a fantastic day jam packed with new experiences.

After an early start we were tired an hoping to sleep on the bus on the way to Hwacheon, where the festival was held. But after the excitement of Emily arriving just as the bus was about to leave her because of problems with her train and the bus playing, at a loud volume, the first decent western music I’d heard for a long time sleeping was out of the question.

We arrived at Hwacheon and found the festival was held on top of a frozen lake. But there were parts of the lake that weren’t frozen at all, we figured that for parts to be frozen and parts not, and to ensure the safety of the thousand of festival goers, the lake had to be artificially frozen – but we couldn’t figure out how!

We were taken to the part of the lake dedicated to ice fishing were hundreds of people were looking into small holes in the ice.

We had been given an ice fishing rod at the bus. They looked a bit like misshapen fly swots with brightly coloured bait on the end of some twine! We hijacked a ready made hole, it looked like far too much effort to build our own, and joined the masses kneeling on the ice and peering into a small hole. But after a significant while, we hadn’t even seen a fish, let alone caught one!

As we were starting to get board the guy next to us caught a fish and we amused ourselves marvelling at his wares, wishing we could catch something and asking how he did it. We were slightly disappointed to find out that there was no skill involved what so ever and he had no idea how he’d caught it. But it did prove that somewhere under the ice there were fish swimming around and, as vigorously as you can, we went back to peering in our hole and trying to catch a fish.

Just as the monotony of unsuccessfully fishing was taking hold the organisers of the trip came and asked if we would pose for some photos for them. With noting better to do we obliged and were given a fish each for our trouble. The next hour was spent shamelessly posing for photos with fish in their last throws of life.

Once we tired of taking photos of ourselves we invited a couple we had met to help us eat our fish and set off for the cooking area.

We took the fish to a man we assumed would gut it, but he just sliced the fish rubbed some salt in and wrapped them in tin foil. One of our fish had been fatter than the others with a squidgy stomach, we had assumed she was pregnant. But as he cut her stomach a brown sack poked out through where he cut, then burst spilling some manky looking brown stuff everywhere. Unfazed the man simply changed the tin foil and said she would be fine to eat!

We found a space in an open fire chucked our now prepared fish into the coals and waited for them to cook. After about 15 minutes we took them off the fire and found some rocks over looking the festival site where we sat and consumed the fish that 30 minutes ago were gasping for air as we posed for photographs with them! Unwrapping the tin foil we opted not to eat the one that had been ‘pregnant’ but feasted on the other two who were absolutely delicious, and sooo fresh! Whilst we were eating a Korean man came over and gave us the left overs of his meal, this included some bean paste, raw fish, lettuce leaves, and Soju. Apparently giving away your unwanted food is the done thing in Korea, waste not want not and all that. I tried the raw fish and it was ok but I couldn’t get past the fact it was raw so didn’t eat very much!

After lunch we wondered around the festival and tried out some of the activities.

We came across a tent where you could dress up in traditional Korean dress – a Hanbok. (A previous post about the Hanbok can be found here).

The we came to an area where you could take part in traditional Korean games. One of those games is called Nol-Ttwigi (Korean See-saw) and involves two people standing on a see saw type thing and seeing how far into the air they can propel one another. The idea is to jump and propel the person on the other end as far into the air as possible. This game is traditionally played by women and it is said to have originated during a time when a woman’s place was firmly within the home. Women would use these see-saw’s to try and propel themselves high enough to see over the walls of the family compound to catch a glimpse of the world outside.

After this it was time for the bare hands fishing. Dressed in shorts and a t-shirt we had to stand in knee deep ice cold water and try and catch fish with our bare hands. After having pneumonia Emily, sensibly, decided not to do it. But Kat and I took the plunge.

The pool was a small circle full of very, very cold water. Getting into the water wasn’t too bad and it felt ok on you legs. The problem was the intensely cold stones on the bottom of the pool. After a few minutes your feet were so cold that walking in the water was immensely painful. We were told the best place to find the fish was at the sides, but after only catching sight of one and just about getting hands to it before it swam off i was convinced there were very few fish in that water. I am ashamed to say that after a while the pain in my feet became to much and like a proper girl I bailed, got out of the water and tried to spot fish whilst sat on the side. I am proud to say that I was by no means the first one out of the water and once I had regained some feeling in my feet I went back in for a second go. But once again the cold in my feet was incredible and I was very glad when time was up and we were able to head back the the changing rooms. I have never been so glad of extra hot under floor heating.

Once I had regained some feeling in my feet we headed back to the bus and home.

* Posted by j150vsc on 22/02/2007.