It's been quite a day. We started with breakfast at our new fave place, the Paris Baguette, about 3 blocks from the hotel. I had something sort of like a bagel dog with melted cheese with onions and peppers plus a lovely chocolate donut. We'll have our last breakfast there tomorrow.
Then it was off (finally) to the Sangju bike museum. Wow!! What a place! It's huge!! The previous photos I'd seen didn't do it justice. You'll have to await the photos to appreciate it. However, though it has a lot of bikes, I doubt if there was anything there older than 1920. Lots of replicas and modern bikes. It's clear they need my help! But, the building, signage, fittings, etc. are beyond first class. Clearly, money was no object. It's really incredible. Unfortunately, we were only there for about 1 1/2 hours, if that. I spent most of my time taking pictures.
Then we went to the big equestrian center, not far from the bike museum, where last year's Davis visitors saw the world dressage championships. We rode horses around and around inside a large indoor riding facility. I felt like a 4 year old at one of those pony rides at the fair.
Then we went to lunch back in town at a very traditional restaurant where chicken was the specialty. After appetizers, it was brought to the table (we were seated on the floor again) in the form of very hot, steaming soup. Each of us got one of these with one smallish chicken in each. We were instructed to chop up the chicken with our spoon and chopsticks (the de rigeur service at every Korean meal). Inside the chicken was rice, onions and other stuff. Then we transferred the meat, rice, etc. to smaller bowls from which we ate --separating any bones into another plate. It was, basically, chicken rice soup, but was tasty and, given that it was somewhat dreary weather with the sun only poking through occasionally, well-suited to the day. Ginger wine was served along with the soup, and it was surprisingly good.
After lunch, because we had some time to kill, we were told we were going to a place where "bamboo salt" was made. Well, that sounded like going to watch paint dry to some of us, but Korea is full of surprises.
The drive there was through very scenic rural Sangju with all kinds of crops being grown in small farms. The most striking crop, seen just about everywhere, was rice, which is a bright yellow and about to be harvested. And, as Sangju is famous for rice, silk and persimmons, one could hardly get two minutes out of town and not see rice fields and persimmon orchards always within view.
Well, it turned out that the bamboo salt operation was fascinating. It was a small operation. There were lots of bamboo cylinders, each about 3" inner diameter and maybe 18" long. They pack them with sea salt, tamp the salt in by pounding the bamboo pieces on end, by hand, against a solid surface. The ends are sealed with clay, then the cylinders are cooked in very hot wood-fired ovens until the bamboo is incinerated, of course. The salt is melted into large "crystals". Then it's broken up into small chunks (smaller than gravel), put into new bamboo cylinders and the whole process is repeated --7 times! The salt gets infused with the gasses or vapors or whatever from the vaporized bamboo. Some is packaged in granular form, sort of rock salt size, or it's ground into a fine powder. It's used in cooking. Sung says his wife uses it in a number or recipes. It's not cheap --like $40 for what looked like 4 or 5 ozs. We each got a sample vial with a couple ounces. It has an eggy, sulfury flavor. We were shown around the place by the owner. After the tour, we went into his house (which Sung said was a plus because the interior was a very traditional Korean home). We sat on the floor around a table while the owner explained the whole process and all the benefits of the product. He was a real huckster. We all agreed afterward that he should have a booth at the state fair, microphone in hand, fleecing the gullible. No doubt it has culinary uses, but he pulled a "parlor trick" worthy of the best snake oil salesman to pitch the health benefits of the salt. But, it was most entertaining.
Then we went to Gyungcheon-dae, a large park that offered mountain bike rentals, among other attractions. We didn't do that, but we hiked up a long staircase to a tower that offered great views of the surroundings. The first part of the climb involved removing shoes and walking about 100 yds. through a surface made up of roughly marble-sized ceramic balls that were supposed to massage the feet. While they might have served that purpose, they mostly just hurt the four of us, who bailed out before the end.
The park is also home to the Sangju museum, which was nice, quite large and very impressive.
We then went back downtown and watched a very traditional parade through downtown Sangju, the annual celebration for the provincial governor. Lots of marching groups in various traditional costumes and such. But the highlight for me, the aerostat fan: a small, one-person yellow blimp low overhead, following the parade. Very small, extremely maneuverable. I've never seen such a thing. It was amazing.
Next we went to a persimmon orchard owned by a city councilman we'd met officially the day before. It had, according to legend, the oldest persimmon tree in Korea at 750 years old. If you want persimmons from the tree, which provided fruit for royalty for centuries, they will cost you about $10 each. Then we were shown the persimmon museum, under construction and due to open in 2013. It, too, was huge and impressive.
Sung and one of his compadres took Richard and me shopping at E-mart, a Korean equivalent of Walmart, only nicer. According to Sung, Walmart opened several stores in Korea but couldn't compete with E-mart. There are no Walmarts in Korea now. It was a large store (like a Super Walmart) with indoor parking.
We then went back to the site of the ongoing Persimmon Festival at the same large park where we became honorary citizens. Lots of food vendors. We wandered around a bit, and then decided on one place to eat. The eateries were like those at Davis farmers market, only set up for a week's run under extensive EZ-up type canopies. Sung does all the ordering, and we start off with two huge bowls of mussels to eat and soju to drink. Shortly after we got seated, a torrential downpour begins, which was a complete surprise to me, because moments before I was admiring a view of the moon. It was really coming down. We had to move to the next table over because of a leak adjacent to our table --a pouring leak.
More food was brought to the table: kimchi, of course, rice, sort of a vegetable fritter thing we always call the Korean pizza, barbecued pork --lots of pork. All really good. More soju. Then we were joined by the young Korean lady, Joy, we met the first night at the park. Sung, Richard, Michael J. Fox (what we dubbed one of hosts, Kim Sung Pik, because he was clearly the Korean doppelganger of Fox and because of his job as aide to the mayor) and I had run into her at E-mart and invited her to join us. She speaks pretty decent English. She brought one of her female friends, who spoke no English that we could determine but was pleasant company. They said they were starved, so more food was ordered (more of same). I was sated before they arrived, so I just stuck with the soju. Us white guys finally left a little after 9. The rain had stopped so we elected to walk back to the hotel, a 15-minute perambulation. We told the girls to stop by the hotel and we'd give them our huge bouquets we'd gotten the first night, if they wanted them. They were driving and came by about 10 minutes after we got back. Peter, Richard and I felt sort of silly standing in front of the hotel during that time holding these things, but we figured none of the locals would ever see us again. The gals liked the flowers. It started drizzling again while we awaited them.
Went upstairs and packed. Rain picked up. Thunder and lightning. Brief, but very intense downpour.
