Seoul and South Korea as a whole are undoubtably modern. But less than a century ago, much of what makes the country so modern today did not exist and people lived much more simply. Farming was by far the most common occupation and people lived in villages, not cities.
Having not left the city limits in months, it’s hard for me to comprehend a world without LTE service and Wi-Fi in the subway. I decided to escape from Seoul, with its omnipotent television screens beaming down on most intersections, to a more traditional location. The Yongin Korean Folk Village was the perfect choice for a quick escape from the city.
A period reenactor making “ppeong twigi,” puffed rice, a traditional Korean street food. “Ppeong” represents the sound of the contraption when making the snack; watch this video to hear for yourself.
Located in Yongin, Gyeonggi Province, just an hour south of the city, it is very easily accessible from the center of Seoul. There are numerous folk villages all over Korea but this is one of the most popular and most fully realized.
A rock at the entrance of the village onto which people tie their messages and wishes, a common sight in ancient Korea.
The folk village is a fantastic look into historic Korea, with houses, food, scheduled musical performances and traditional ceremonies, all representing the different eras in Korean history.
A parade of dancing drummers commemorating the coming harvest. Further proof that Korean history has the best headgear.
The townsfolk staff walk around in period clothing and farm animals are on hand to show subsistence farming of the day. It’s a surprisingly large place; walking the perimeter of the village can take about an hour.
A Choga-jib, thatched roof house, representative of peasant houses in southern, warmer regions.
Being able to walk around the different styles of houses is immensely interesting. Different layouts and designs are used for different regions and classes of people. You can even play with some of the farm equipment used to make food such as rice cakes.
A traditionally themed 7-Eleven near the entrance of the Korean Folk Village acts as a suggestion not to take your trip inside too seriously.
It does have a bit of a tourist trap feel; the 7-11 with a traditional, Korean-tiled roof is one of the glaring examples – even though it is by far my favorite convenience store on the peninsula. In many ways a trip to the Korean Folk Village is a trip to a theme park trying to pass as a museum. But it’s a much better way to see Korean history than looking at miniatures and artists’ renditions, as you would do in a museum.
All smiles during a harvest ceremony in the Korean Folk Village.
The best way to get to the Yongin Korean Folk Village is to take Seoul Subway Line 1 to Suwon Station. Then, take exit 5 and once outside of the station you will find a tourist information office. There, you can get a ticket for a free shuttle bus that will take you directly to the Korean Folk Village. The staff is multi-lingual and can guide you to the bus stop in English, Korean, Chinese or Japanese.
Those were the words that I kept repeating to myself, sometimes replacing the word “hell” with more sinister, unpublishable expletives. I was sitting in the Rancho Marsella restaurant at Playa Marsella, a remote beach that is 20 minutes down a dirt track from San Juan del Sur, Nicaragua, wondering where Camilo, a local cab driver who had taken us to the beach and had my $1,200 camera in his trunk, had gone.
Camilo had told me that he planned to hang out at the beach and would be ready to take us back to our hotel whenever we were ready. He seemed eminently trustworthy, so I didn’t think twice about stowing my Nikon D7000 in his trunk after I had taken a few photos of the empty crescent shaped beach.
After an hour of lounging in the beach’s only tiny patch of shade with a group of Italian backpackers, I went to the beachfront restaurant to use the bathroom and noticed that Camilo wasn’t around. I assumed that he must have gone for a walk or a swim, but an hour later when we returned for lunch and saw that he still wasn’t there, I checked the parking lot and saw that his car was gone.
No!$#@!*
No one at the restaurant knew where he went or had his phone number. I had his phone number written in my notebook, which also had all my notes for the stories I planned to write, but that was inside my camera case – in his trunk. I knew his name but had no idea where he lived or what his license plate number was. We were too far from town, down a brutal, rutted track, for him to try to pick up other fares, and he had explicitly stated that he wasn’t going to leave the beach. Was Camilo off taking photos with his new camera somewhere?
I started to panic and curse myself. Bringing a $1,200 camera to a beach in a poor country like Nicaragua is a bad idea, but as a writer, I take my camera everywhere because you need good photos to accompany stories. Still, why had I given him the temptation of leaving the camera in his trunk? There were no more than a half dozen people on the huge beach, so even if I was in the water, what was the chance it would be stolen?
“He’ll come back,” said Jen, my wife. “He probably got bored sitting around.”
I hoped she was right but feared she was wrong. He wouldn’t be able to get $1,200 for my camera, but its value still probably represented a few months work for him. And something Camilo said on the ride to Marsella stuck in my mind. “We are poor people here in Nicaragua,” he said. The words just kept rattling around in my head. We are poor people.
After 15 or 20 minutes of fretting, one of the guys at the restaurant suggested that Camilo might have gone a mile or two up the road to watch a youth baseball game. But we had passed that game on the way to the beach and when I asked Camilo if he liked baseball, he said “no.”
Still, it was worth a try, and one of the men at the restaurant drove down to the game on his moped and five minutes later, returned with Camilo, who looked aggrieved. I have never been so relieved to see a taxi driver in my life.
“I just went down to check out the game,” he said.
I told him that there was no problem but clearly the guy on the moped must have explained that I looked pissed off because Camilo sat on a step near the bar looking angry while we ordered drinks. I bought him a drink but I could tell he was hurt by the fact that I had doubted him.
On the way back to town, he pointed out his house, a typically humble, working class affair that had a small store attached, and said, “That’s where I live.” He might well have added, “I may not be rich, but I am not a thief.”
Over the next few days, Camilo drove us on a few more outings – to Granada, the ferry to Ometepe and around town – and I even had a chance to visit his home and meet his son, Camilo Jr. (see photo). We became friends and I came to realize that he’s an honest man. My fear that because he came from a poor country he might seize the opportunity to take my camera was unfounded and wrong.
Five days later, we encountered a similar situation upon our return home to Chicago, but this time, Jen and I reversed roles. After a long, grueling day of travel from Granada, Nicaragua, to Chicago, via Houston, our little boys were asleep in the cab when we arrived home at 11 p.m. We were dressed for summer and the temperature outside was below freezing, so Jen and I decided to carry one sleeping child each into their beds and then return to the cab to get our baggage.
But by the time I got back outside after delivering my 3-year-old into his bed, our driver, a young man who appeared to be from East Africa, had what looked like all of our baggage out on the sidewalk and was getting ready to pull away. He mumbled something along the lines of “You’re all set,” and pulled out, just as my wife was bounding into the driveway warning that she had left her backpack and purse in the backseat.
I hadn’t realized that not all of our baggage was in the trunk and apparently our driver didn’t either but it was too late, he was gone. My wife had her work laptop, our passports, her driver’s license, cash, credit cards and more in the bags he had just driven off with.
Jen was on the verge of tears because only some of her work documents were backed up and the loss of this computer would be catastrophic for her. I recalled the young man’s name and we had an emailed receipt from him in my inbox. My wife wracked her brain and thought she remembered the name of the taxi company – Choice Taxi – but wasn’t 100% sure.
We called Choice and the dispatcher initially seemed less than helpful. She claimed that she had no list of company drivers and, even with the guy’s name and a description of the car, she was unable to confirm if he worked for them. She promised to make an announcement over their radio for him to contact her but said that since it was Friday night and their office was closed, we might have to wait until Monday, when the owner would be available, to track the driver down.
My wife kept calling her back every 30 minutes, pleading with her to make more announcements while I researched the cab situation at O’Hare airport. There are dozens of companies, perhaps more than 100, and without a cab number or license plate, trying to find a specific driver is like looking for a needle in a haystack. We called the police and all they could do was offer to take a report for insurance purposes. We found a website where you can email a complaint about a cab driver but that was it.
By 1 a.m., after we had waited two hours for the driver to respond to his dispatcher or return to our house, we called to cancel all our credit cards. My wife felt certain that the driver or perhaps a subsequent passenger had decided to pocket her stuff. But I felt like we’d get our things back. We knew the guy’s name, after all, so he wouldn’t risk his job to steal a laptop, passports and credit cards. And most people who are getting into a cab are unlikely to turn into thieves just because they see some valuable items on the floor of the cab.
Our prayers were answered at 1:30 a.m. when the dispatcher called us back to say that Yosief had (finally!) responded to her calls over their radio system.
“Please tell him to bring us our things tonight,” I begged. “We’ll give him a reward.”
We were overjoyed but also shattered from exhaustion and worry. Nonetheless, we stayed up until Yosief finally arrived at our home at 2:30 a.m.
All of our belongings were intact and I thanked Yosief, who said he was from Eritrea, profusely. I resisted the urge to ask him why he hadn’t responded to the radio calls sooner and felt I probably knew anyway – he spent most of our ride from the airport on the phone and was probably similarly preoccupied while my wife was crying and fretting over her laptop.
I asked Yosief if I could take his photo but he held the reward envelope up over his face and declined.
“That would not be good for me,” he said.
What did we learn from these incidents? Most taxi drivers, even poor ones, are honest. But it’s still a good idea to jot down a license plate number or cab number and know what company you are patronizing when you get into a taxi. And it’s an even better idea to back up your computer as often as possible.
Note: Camilo put the fear of God into me at Marsella Beach, but he charges very fair prices, speaks fluent English and is an honest, trustworthy person. If you want to hire him to drive you around while in Nicaragua, please contact him at (505) 886-72336.
It’s no secret that the demand for ivory in Asia has led to the slaughter of countless elephants in Africa. Whole herds have been decimated over the past decade and many African countries have watched their elephant populations dwindle to historically low levels. But on Sunday, the fight against the illegal ivory trade got a much needed boost when the Prime Minister of Thailand announced that her country would take major steps to end the sale of ivory for the first time.
Speaking at the annual Convention on the International Trade in Endangered Species of Fauna and Flora (CITES), Prime Minister Shinawatra said that her country’s goal was to fall in line with “international norms” in regard to the sale of ivory. That means banning the sale of any products made from the substance, which is currently freely sold throughout Thailand. Some of those products are made from the ivory harvested from domesticated elephants, but because demand is so high there, much of it comes into the country illegally from Africa.
According to the World Wildlife Fund, Thailand is second only to China in terms of the amount of illegal ivory trafficking. Because the sale of ivory is so common there, the country is often used as a destination to launder illegal ivory being funneled into Asia from Africa. If Prime Minister Shinawatra has her way, all ivory sales will be banned, making it much harder to smuggle elephant tusks into Asia. In the long run, this could help lower demand and lower the number of elephants that are being killed in the process.
Unfortunately, the Prime Minister didn’t share any details to her plan. At this point we don’t know how soon a ban could go into effect or how widespread it will be. Still, she seems committed to ending the sale of ivory in her country and protecting the remaining elephant herds both at home and abroad.
Venice is widely thought of as one of the ultimate romantic destinations, especially in Europe. Today’s Video of the Day, Around Venezia, captures the charm of the The Floating City’s beautiful canals and colorful architecture. Venice’s trademark gondolas are included, too, but what I like about this video is how it goes a little deeper than typical videos about Venice to show the beauty in objects that might seem mundane in other cities: a reflection in a puddle or clothes hanging out to dry. In less than two minutes, the video has me wishing I was walking around Venice on a sunny day-but who wouldn’t want to be in that situation?
Finally, we have a confirmed opening date (March 22) for our “Birth of a Hotel” feature property, Capella Washington, and, surprisingly, it isn’t the personal assistants or the rooftop pool at the hotel that are generating the most buzz – it’s the hotel’s food. The Grill Room and The Rye Bar will open on March 22 alongside the hotel and area foodies are already salivating over the locally influenced cuisine.
Highlighting both food trends (farm-to-table, hand-crafted cocktails, and locally-sourced ingredients) and a focus on high-touch, high-quality service, the hotel’s new restaurant is aiming to be Washington, DC’s new go-to destination for discerning food lovers.
We got an inside look at the space – and the chance to help choose the correct mixture for the special rye-based sauce that will complement all of the hotel’s meats. Below, you’ll find a gallery of our visit.
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[Image Credit: McLean Robbins and Capella Washington]