Andong Mask Festival!

AHAHAHAHA... information service for the handicapped, the old, the weak. and foreigners.

OMG, I love these live infomercial things they do at fairs. I get so sucked it... I sware its one of my favorite activities at the Wisconsin state fair. lol.. I'm lame... I know.

ZORBING

And Welcome to the mask festival!

Lots of big masked statues...

This masked figure is eating a drum stick. AHHAH... oh how I love Korea... everything is so funny here.

Visitors to the festival will enjoy the many performances of Korea’s traditional mask dances. These dances are an important part of Korea’s heritage, in particular the byeolsingut talnori dance, which has been designated an Important Intangible Cultural Asset of Korea.

To be very clear this dance is the 49th Intanginle Cultural Asset of Korea.

The dance-drama, with musical accompaniment, exhibits considerable ribaldry, with the lions fighting and simulating intercourse; the butcher acting out the sacrifice of a bull before try to sell its heart and testicles; the old widow at the loom sadly singing of her solitary life; the lecherous, apostate monk stumbling upon Pune, a flirtatious young woman or dancing girl, sniffing the ground before running off with her; the nobleman and scholar attempting to win Pune's favors by boasting of their good-breeding and learning, while she flirts with each in turn by killing his lice, before the proceedings are interrupted by a tax-collector; followed by the reenactment of a wedding ceremony and the ensuing wedding night that is so lifelike that minors and women are not allowed to watch.

 

Well, I stole that off the internet but as you can tell its quite a story. Lol... pretty bazar especially when you have no idea what's going on. But I politely looked over a Korean mans shoulder because I saw that his program was in English... he was nice enough to let me read it so it made wayyyy more sense.

This guy is carrying the weird masked baby on his shoulders.

This thing was hilarious! It was a little mechanical machine pulling the carriage... but the wiggled really funny and its Hello Kitty wearing a wrestling shirt.

One of the things I really wanted to do at the festival was make my one mask... So I did! Here is the blank mask. and the fun ideas that they gave you...

Finished product! I feel pretty good about my mask making abilities!

This is my friend Charles and the mask he made!

After we enjoyed the mask festival in town and headed out to the Hahoe Folk Village to see the display of traditional Korean fireworks. This was probably my favorite part of the whole weekend. I mean where else in the whole world would I see traditional Korean fireworks other than in Korea.

They did the fireworks in 4 different ways. First I have to "set the stage" so you understand the whole set up... You sit on the hill of a river bank. There is a river that cuts in between the hill and  across the river bank is a mountain with a rocky cliff face.

 

http://www.sherwinvjones.com/gyeongjublog/2011/06/traditional-fireworksandong-mask-festival/

That is a link to someone else's blog that had a video of the fireworks! Since my pictures are not the best. There's no lanterns in the video but it shows the strings and the barrels of hay and the singers as the fireworks are going on!

 
1.. LANTERNS IT THE SKY!!!!! This is one of the only things I've ever wanted to see ever.

1. The hung stings from the cliff face to where we were on the opposite side on the hill and strung up pine cones with sap or some sort of material and lite them one fire. They twirled the rope bringing it further across the river. It looked like a waterfall of fire. Pretty amazing.

3. On the top of the mountain they were lighting hay bails on fire and throwing them off the cliffs side. People would count: 1, 2, 3 DROP IT and down it would go... pretty epic.

4. They lite lanterns on fire and sent them floating down the river. Individually all these fireworks were beautiful... all together it was pretty crazy amazing!

 

After the fire works we made our way back to a bar and enjoyed some drinks with the masks on! Pretty great weekend!

Suncheon Adventure

 

We had a long holiday weekend for Chuseok so Michael and I decided to take a nice little trip to the Jeolla province. we had a few plans... see the tea farm, go to the wet land park... bum around.. well we were surly in for a treat! We left Busan in the morning and what should have been a 2 and a half hour bus ride took 4 thanks to all the holiday traffic. When we arrived we were ready to

Go so we checked out the tourist info booth place and talked with a Korean boy going to the Park. We decided to share a cab with him. Well we wound up at this garden expo... not the Suncheon Bay wetlands. Well, we checked it out. This place was for real the most bizarre garden park I've ever been to. First, the tickets were $16.00 but they gave you a foreigners discount so it should have been $12.00 but they gave us child tickets for $8.00. WIN! Not gonna argue with that kind of a discount so we went for it! Then they even had an extra special entrance for foreigners with no line.

Here's the Suncheon Eco-park

I love English signs in foreign countries.

 

Here are the Willy Wonka hills. They were these beautiful spiral man made hills are the Eco-park... first Eco-park I've been to that was man made.

It looked quite silly watching people.

And more of the Willy Wonka Park.

They had giant flower structures. These ones were my favorite, fish\guppy looking things.  

There were all these separate gardens to look like different countries. Really they are Koreas interpretation of what they think each garden looks like.

I cant figure out how to twirl it but here is the rock garden area.

more of the rock garden

pretty little waterfall in the rock garden

 

Here is the Thai garden.

 

A Thai style house.

Here's the India garden.

Here's the Chinese garden

These flowers were everywhere in Suncheon. They are magic lilies.

more Chinese garden

The Chinese garden is pretty BA.

in the middle was the recycling garden.

ahhhhhhh succulents! I love succulents.

ahahahahahahaha. The American garden is decorated like an outdoor patio.

Here was our beautiful, wonderful accommodation's for the few nights we were there. $35.00 a night it not to shabby! Technically this is a Korean love motel... so you can rent them for the night for cash and you have to be a male and female to rent the room. Which was pretty perfect for Michael and I. I should have gotten some photos of the room because it was pretty pimped out. We had a giant flat screen TV, a mini fridge, a water machine, lots of women things like hair dryers, shampoo, conditioner, lotion, body wash, face masks... you no pretty much everything... even a whirl pool tub... that didn't work. Overall, great place to stay and really clean.

 

The next day we headed to the Byeonsan green tea farm.

lol, this lady was wearing the hat so I took a photo because its the exact vision I had in my head.

Here I am in the rows of tea

They forest was really pretty too

They hills are alive with the smell of green tea.

aweee, Michael and I

and again... I couldn't decide which one I liked better

They hill you had to climb to the top. I kept telling myself. By this time I should understand that everything in Korea involves climbing up a mountain... really everything. There's no way around it... and its actually kinda nice, if you are properly prepared. Like if I knew I was going to climb up a mountain I wouldn't wear flip flops. The next few pictures are after I  trekked up to such a wonderful view.

BAM. Look at the view! There's oceans and islands in that view!

and one with me and the nice scenery.

Here's the waterfall.  We decided to take this off the beaten path way down because a waterfall was written on the map.. I was thinking a WATERFALL... and this is what we got.. lol. More like water dribbling than water fall but... I guess I'll take it. But, really flip flops... going down this way meant that the ground was quite wet... and have you ever climbed down a mountain in wet flip flops... it was not pleasant. Moral of the story: wear shoes.

From the tea farm we went to see the beach from the top of the mountain..... Busan's beaches are so much better. These ones were like weird wet land beaches.

Suncheon city board walk by the river at sunset.

So in the travel guide it talked about a LED Park so we went to check it out. The Park was pretty goofy looking, like all year round crazy Christmas or something. But it was defiantly a sight to see. To our surprise there was performances going on that night and we sat down to watch.

Band performance

Crazy light up tree

Here is either a middle school or a high school performing traditional Korean drumming and dancing.

Do you see that ajuma? Ajuma is the Korean word for old lady. During the performance she decided to get up and join in too. And when I say during the performance I mean right, smack dab in the middle of the performance. It was quite amusing to watch. This Ajuma was breaking it down and having a pretty amazing time.

The boy has this ribbon on the top of his hat that he kept flipping around, well the ajuma was all up in there too.

lol, I wasn't even paying attention to the kids anymore all my attention was on this twerking ajuma.

she was right in the middle of the action.

Then these Hanbok wearing pretty ladies came and sang.

pretty fans

look at her go!! shes loving it!!

twerking. work it girrrrllll

omg, its so funny. she was loving the music... maybe to much soju?

Here's the park at night.

me in the rainbow tunnel

 

this ones with flash... so you can actually see me but I think I like the other one better 

ROAR

 

This I named the "under the sea" tunnel

The fairy tree

 

The next day we joined a Korean day trip group that took up to a movie set, Seonamsa temple, Nagan Fortress and Suncheon Bay. I've always wondered what it would feel like to be the random foreigner on a tour... I mean they spoke only in Korean so we were pretty much just along for the ride. The tour guide was super sweet and she really tried her hardest to translate and give us information about the places we were going to. They gave us a crazy discount on this too, it was only $5.00... for a full day trip... $5.00 for a charter bus, a tour guide and admission into all these places... again WIN.

First stop, film set!

Here are some Korean movie posters for films that have been shot here.

Here's old Seoul.

I don't have too much to say about this place... pretty cool stop. Lots of empty buildings for the movie set.  

This is the tour bus...

Second stop, Seonamsa Temple and Seungseongyo Bridge

Here's the group being educated while Michael and I looked around, sometimes laughing about the strange tour we were on.

Seonamsa is a beautiful temple located at the west end of Mt. Jogyesan. You have to walk about 1 km from the entrance to reach the temple.

Here is a fancy bridge. In the book it said "it lies beautifully like a giant rainbow."

If you go along the valley, two rainbow shaped bridges appear; the large one at the back is Seungseon Bridge. Seungseon Bridge is designated as National Treasure No. 400, and it is Korea’s most beautiful arched stone bridge. Because it blends in so well with the valley below, it is often used as shooting location for movies and TV shows.

 a small oval-shape pond called Samindang. There is a small isle inside the pond, and an evergreen on the isle makes for beautiful scenery.

Ilju Gate

Then various temple buildings come out. The big timber blocks of the temple buildings are impressive, and they blend in elegantly with the surrounding mountains. Anywhere you look, the structures harmonize with the nature surrounding them

more magic lilies.

Buddha in a bowl.

There was something special about this tree

The newly engaged couple on the trip thought we were married... lol, it was funny. They actually seemed kinda sad and confused when I explained we were just friends.

600 year old tree

Third stop, Nagan Fortress

traditional Korean todem poles

Nagan Folk Village (Historic Site #302) remains the best preserved of the walled fortress towns of the Chosun period (1392 - 1910). The town was often plundered by Japanese pirates during the late Koryo period, so an earthen wall was constructed in 1397. According to records, villagers replaced the earthen wall with a stone one in 1424. The walls are 1.4 meters high and gates offer entry on the east, west, and south sides. Four protruding battlements offer defense against invaders.

traditional dressed drummers

super pretty drum tower

 

I was standing on top of the wall... which you will see in the next picture.

 

Wow, theres the picture I promised. What you can tell is it was in the 90's and I was sweating profusely.

 

Here's a picture of the whole village

Inside the walls are many well-preserved houses and other buildings. Most houses consist of two or three grass-thatched buildings, a yard, and a vegetable garden. The buildings represent living quarters or storage facilities that can serve as a place for animals, storage of ash, and toilet facilities. Although the tops of the surrounding walls have deteriorated with time, they have been restored and the whole village and its walls have been collectively designated as an Historic Site. Many of the buildings once housed in the village are being rebuilt. One unusual aspect of the town is that it was inhabited by a number of different clans rather than having one dominant one.

The cool part of this traditional village is that families actually live here in the traditional housing.

A praying mantis!

The village has about 280 residents. Unlike other folk villages in Korea, the residents actually own their land and houses. Because of the town's designation as an Historical Site, the residents must constantly maintain the condition of the buildings. The straw roofs need to be replaced on an annual basis and cannot be modernized with tiles. Although tourism has been rising, the residents continue to maintain a haven of Korea's past within their walls.

strange little phallic statues

 

There were tons of super beautiful walkways wit flowers on a dirt path. Then you would come past a family selling Japanese pears and Persimmons and handing out samples. It was a nice little place to visit.

This is the old way to torture people.

 

Action shots.

Michael laid down so I could take a picture of him and there was a Korean man with a stick that started to beat him. HHAAHAHA, for real. It was really funny. I need a picture with his reaction because it pretty much made my life. It was quiet wonderful! Korean's are so silly.

More torture statues

The general handing out some punishments.

Here's the last shot of the protecting wall. Pretty cool place.

Last stop: Suncheon Bay Wet Lands

You could take a nice little boat tour of the wet lands.

The reeds blowing in the wind.

The field of reeds in Suncheonman Bay is thickly covered with reeds taller than a full-grown man. It is the biggest colony of reeds in Korea. The image of the entire field swaying in the wind is as dazzling as waves on the sea.

Some people like wave machines.. I want a reed field sound machine... it was quite tranquil.

The field of reeds is home to many plants that thrive in damp conditions, like the common reed and the starwort. Among all of the world’s wetlands, Suncheonman Bay is widely known for attracting the largest number of rare birds

In the field of reeds..

Then there were mud flats and you could see the wet land area in the distance. We just kept walking not sure where the path was taking us.

Guess where it lead... up a mountain! :p This time I was prepared.. I was wearing some shoes.

 

CROP CIRCLES... oh wait it says welcome.

First little peek of the wetlands.

and BAM there they are... wetlands. pretty beautiful, hey?

other views...

and again close to sunset...

and just to balance it out another one with me in the picture. lol.

 

Then we were off back home taking the late bus to Busan. :) What a wonderful trip. One thing that defiantly kills me so far about Korea is how quick you make friends and then how quick you are to say goodbye. Michael is home now, after 4 years in Korea, he decided to return back home to Oregon at the end of his contract. I've been lucky to meet some wonderfully awesome people in Korea so far and I know once I get back to the states it wont be long before I plan a trip to go visit Michael and Oregon!