Our first full day in Andong and it was time to find the festival site. This looked set to be quite an adventure after the fun and games we had finding the hotel!

From the main street we could see massive balloons in the air with the festival logon on, we figured this had to be the festival site. All we had to do was walk towards the balloons – easy! Luckily the following balloons trick worked well and after walking up a road with some rather grimy shops lining the sides, then thinking we’d hit a dead end and finding alleyway with traditional Korean houses on either side we came to a road that took us to the festival site.

We could feel the atmosphere building as we got closer to the site. We rounded a corner and were confront by dozens of food sellers lining one side of the road – not anything I would be trying though; deep fried chicken claws are not for me!At the entrance to the site was a stand with festival information leaflets – in true Korean style they had produced English versions of most things. A smiling old man said: “Hello,” and gave us the English language leaflets. It was a good start to the day as it is rare to find older Koreans so willing to be kind and friendly to us oe-guk-in (foreigners (pronounced weygook!)).

We wondered into the site and were mesmerised by the number of shops, walking further into the site we discovered more and more shops, all selling some very pretty things – this looked set to become an expensive few days!

One of the first things we saw (that wasn’t a shop) was labeled on the map as ‘fantastic rock exhibition’ and the map description was pretty accurate. Inside a large marquee were lots of unusual rocks, all highly polished and elegantly presented. Some of my favourites are pictured below.

As we left the exhibition the men running it asked if we would like a coffee. Feeling hot because of the heat outside it wasn’t an offer we relished but being in Korea the only polite option was to accept. A thin middle-aged man with graying hair made us a coffee as his remarkably similar looking friend attempted to make conversation. However the language barrier proved a problem, as neither of us could understand what the other was trying to say! They gave us our coffee and motioned for us to sit down. We were handed the guest book and asked to sign it. As we opened and began to write Koreans began gathering around to see how these strange white skinned, blond haired beings wrote. In the book we thanked them for their hospitality and commented in the exhibition in English. The reached for our phrase book and caused much whispering and giggling in the assembled crowd as we wrote kamsa hammida – thank-you in Korean.

After spending a couple of hours familiarising ourselves with the festival site we decided to get some lunch and have a look over the program to see what performances we would like to see.We were astounded to realise that pretty much everything was free! It was free to get into the festival site, it was free to walk around the shopping area, all the mask making activities for kids were free and it was free to watch performances on four of the five stages! The fifth stage was the maskdance stage and did charge to get in but it was 4,000 won (about 2.50GBP) for a day pass! Amazing!

The food area was unlike anything you would see in England. On one side of the street was the pavement where some restaurants had seating areas and others just had dirty looking old men sat grilling fish to sell in the restaurant. When I say grilled fish, I mean a whole fish sliced in half, put between two wire plates and held over a BBQ! The other side of the street was lined with restaurants inside marques. Everything was make shift and there was none of the sterile stainless steel you get so used to seeing in the UK. You could see everything that was going on in the cooking area (it was at the front of the marques). Food was stacked in plastic bags in fridges, vegetables were being washed in plastic bowls on the side of the street. Ready made Kimbap was stacked high on tables with nothing protecting it from the flies. But hey, it was no worse then the regular restaurants in the towns!

Walking down the street everyone was desperate for us to eat in their restaurant. However we once again had the ordering problem (not speaking Korean) and decided to go to somewhere with a picture we could point at. We managed to order ourselves ?? (i dunno what it’s called!) something I have eaten before. It is like a very thin omelet with loads of spring onions and squid. It is served with soy sauce and the usual Korean side dishes of (usually fish) soup and Kimchi (a pickled radish dish that Koreans eat with everything).

After lunch we headed back to the main town to get some money before the banks closed for Ch’usok. The went back to the hotel before exploring the festival by night….

* Posted by j150vsc on 01/11/2006.