World Flavor

A tower in Nassau next to Fort Fincastle. You can see some street vendors at its base. I was in the Bahamas in January 2009 as part of a Royal Caribbean Cruise.

Seoul International Fireworks Festival is a yearly fireworks competition held on Yeouido, an island in the Han River (the place where the 63 Building, the tallest building in Seoul, is located).

This year it was on October 8th, and I was in attendance.

I didn’t watch on Yeouido itself; I didn’t want to brave those crowds. So instead we walked from the National Museum of Korea at Ichon Station to a park along the Han River near there. Of course, that route and the park was crowded too.

We had to crush through a tunnel but despite the massive amounts of people, the crowd was surprisingly civil. I never felt in danger of being crushed. People weren’t in a huge rush but they weren’t giving you any personal space either (that’s typical in Korea, though).

But when we got to the park there were places to sit (on sand, though… glad I brought a random shirt, which I sat on). The fireworks festival was already going on. There were displays from Japan, Portugal, and Korea. I have no idea which one(s) we saw. But I do know that as we were leaving, it was team Korea.

We left before it was over in hopes that we could beat the rush a bit to the metro (and we did to some extent). On the way out we ran across a random English radio show being broadcast. They had an American guy from Boston on singing “Americano” by 10cm.

It was a nice time with pretty fireworks.

I had heard some good things about ExOfficio’s line of travel underwear. When I found them on sale at Amazon.com, I decided to try them out. I ordered the bikini brief in white (and later, also in nude).

My first impression was that they look nice! The material is obviously synthetic by touch but they are still attractive looking. The cut was similar to Victoria’s Secret’s bikini style. They are also extremely comfortable. My first test of them was a simple hand washing in my bathroom sink. They are easy to wash. I squeezed them out a tiny bit then hung them randomly in the bathroom to dry. They were mostly dry at 9 hours and all the way dry at 14. I didn’t really check them in between 9 and 14 hours so I’m not sure when they were actually fully dry.

Now that I live in Korea and have no dryer, only a rack that I set up, it is really great to have these. They are definitely the fastest drying of any of my underwear. I think if you really wanted, if you were on the road long-term, you could make do with about 3 pairs of these in a cycle of washing and drying. I might try this some day.

My verdict: I’d definitely recommend them!

I’m reading the book “Korea Unmasked” by Won-Bok Rhie (huge thanks to Jeonghee Lee for lending it to me!) and it is a really interesting look into the Korean culture and mindset and why it got to be how it is. One thing from the book is why Chinese, Japanese, and Korean chopsticks are different lengths.

A lot of Chinese food is fried so the thinking is that they developed longer chopsticks to avoid getting hot oil on themselves. In Japan, however, rice used to be rare and expensive so it was mixed with other grains, making it less glutinous and harder to pick up with chopsticks. So Japanese people began holding their bowls close to their mouths and had to shorten their chopsticks in turn to avoid poking themselves.

Finally, Korean chopsticks didn’t need to be either particularly long or short so they are in between. However, Koreans have traditionally made soup to extend the use of meat, which has been in the past very rare and expensive. With soup at every meal, a spoon was added to the necessary utensils at a meal. Now Koreans eat rice with a spoon – I’m guessing just because it’s a lot easier. Everything but rice and soup though, you eat with chopsticks.

I’m still figuring out the blog format here and I’m not sure how much I like Friday’s feature of Interesting Facts. Mostly I’m just not particularly excited about it. I’ve got some other ideas though, listed on this poll. I’d like to see what you think!

This week we’ll learn two very important words.

So that was ne (네) and anio (아니오) – yes and no. Use them wisely.

Indian food is one of my very favorite cuisines. In the US, I ate it all the time, whether it was going out to Rasika or buying cans of prepared food or cooking it up myself.

Moving to Korea, I really like the food. But I still get cravings for Indian food, among other things.

Both Korean food and Indian food can be said to be spicy. But we have to clear something up here – which type of spicy do we mean? There are two kinds: hotness and amount of spices (we could call it flavorfulness, but that’s not a word).

Korean food is hot spicy. Go into a Korean grocery store, and you won’t see many spices as we think of them beyond varieties of pepper (other than imported stuff for foreigners in some places). But hot red pepper is in absolutely everything. Garlic is plentiful and easy to find, but interestingly it’s not really used as a spice as we know it. It is put into things uncooked to add strong spiciness or comes as a side dish for galbi and other barbecue meats.

Indian food, on the other hand, is both kinds of spicy. It’s not always hot spicy but it is always flavorful spicy. That’s part of why I love it so much. There are so many varied flavors, it’s like an explosion of taste in your mouth.

Of course, I’ve never had Indian food in India because I haven’t yet been to India. I’m sure Indian food in America is adjusted to suit American palates. Just as in New Zealand, Indian food is less hot spicy because it seems they like hot spicy a bit less there.

So how is it adjusted in Korea? Remember that most foods in Korea are hot spicy, and Indian food is sometimes hot spicy. I think that Indian food in Korea is more hot spicy than in America but less flavorful spicy. Talking with my coworkers, many of them dislike Indian food because it is too full of flavorful spices.

To be fair, many places in Korea claiming to serve Indian food are actually Nepalese restaurants. However, I’ve also been to a Nepalese restaurant in the States and it was similar enough to Indian in its preparation of Indian dishes that I think my analysis is not too flawed. Of course, there are some uniquely Nepalese dishes, which some places here in Korea serve, but I haven’t tried them yet.

I have also only been to two Nepalese/Indian places so far. One was Bihanee in Bupyeong. The other was Everest in Yeongdeungpo, Seoul. I preferred Everest because it seems to maintain more of the flavorful spices than Bihanee does. Bihanee’s Paneer Butter Masala was blander than I’d like (and had only 3 pieces of paneer! shame). On the other hand, the Chana Masala at Everest was spicier than I’m used to but still nice and flavorful.

The naan does not get changed much here – it is your faithful old naan. However, the rice is a different story. Korea has its own rice, which is short grain and usually kind of moist and/or sticky.  This doesn’t pair that well with saucy foods. Basmati rice on the other hand is dryer and soaks up the sauce, which is what you want. So far all the restaurants I’ve been to have both – but basmati rice is more expensive. My advice, pony up for basmati rice, it’s totally worth it.

Speaking of expense, Indian food in Korea is not much different in price from what it is in America. A main dish is about 7000 to 9000 Won, naan is 2000 Won, and basmati rice is 2000 Won. At Bihanee you can get a two-person feast for 30,000 Won – a great deal I think.

You can buy the canned prepared Indian food similar to what I’m used to at certain import shops. There was one of those down the street from Everest and there are numerous ones in Itaewon, Seoul.

Poutine from the Eat Wonky Truck in Washington DC. I wish I could get some fries covered in gravy and cheese curds right now…

Jeff and I traveled to Gyeongju on Saturday, October 1st (the 3rd was a day off) and got there mostly too late to see anything. However, on Sunday, we got out sightseeing. Our first destination was Bulguksa Temple, a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

Bulguksa Temple is not right in town, but there are a couple of city buses that run to it (bus 10 or 11, 1500 Won). It takes 40 minutes to an hour to get there on the bus. When you head up the hill from the car park, you first see a row of food and souvenir vendors.

Next you get to the ticket booth and buy a ticket – 4000 Won per person. Through the gate is a nice-looking pond, then another gate with large wooden carved dudes in it.

As you approach the temple, you can see a stone tub off to the right where you can drink or fill a water bottle.

You can then see the temple itself.

You walk around the back to get into the temple complex. It is full of cool stuff.

If you continue around, there is an area where people build little stone piles or cairns.

You then come to a large bell.

Finally you can check out a gift shop. The temple is absolutely beautiful and I definitely recommend a visit. The buildings and sites are very well marked and described in Korean, English, and Japanese.

On October 9th, Jeff and I decided to discover whether the food festival that Jeff’s co-teacher told us about existed. So we headed to Munhak Stadium which is on Incheon line 1 (as opposed to Seoul line 1…). We got there and soon saw a bunch of tents.

The first one we walked to was full of baked goods.

We noticed that it was branded as a global food fair.

The first sign of this was tortillas!

There were a lot of tents giving out free samples. I got something in a tortilla, flying fish roe, and coffee, among other things. Nearby there began tents full of food. The first one was Korean food…

…followed by a line of different country tents, with food examples and information about the country.

We then found a tent full of models of healthy school lunches. It also had a chopsticks using competition which we returned to attempt. You had to move dry beans from one bowl to another. Jeff won against an old Korean lady but I didn’t win.

Next was a tent full of food from a fancy chef contest, or something. Later on they started throwing out all the food/giving it away. I neglected to get a whole cake, or anything actually.

There was a tent showcasing alcohol of the world as well.

And of course, there were tents serving food. Sadly I have no pictures of those. There was a tent for each of the countries that were represented in the other tents. Jeff got a kebab from the Turkish tent. There were also a whole bunch of tents selling Korean food. We got some samples from them – octopus, ddeokbokki, etc. There was a pottery tent and one selling water dispensers. There was also twist potato on a stick, which I got.

Image courtesy of Jeff Bergemann.

Finally, there were some cool performances. We saw women in skimpy outfits dancing, guys in Native American garb singing, etc. Overall it was totally awesome and I’m glad we were told about it (there was ZERO info online, which is fairly typical for Korea…).