Will The Real Korea Please Stand Up?

This is a very long and VERY detailed account of one night in Andong...

The people of Korea really endured themselves to us in Andong, where we went out to dinner with a friendly English teacher we met while eating lunch our first day there. Going out to dinner with this stranger turned out to be the best decision of the trip up to that point.

We were hunched over a street cart scarfing fried things and rice noodles in spicy red sauce when we noticed a white dude do a double-take upon seeing us, walk by us, then come back by and say hello. Andong is a smaller city, with a population of about 180,000. This guy seemed surprised to see foreigners he didn't know and he cheerfully asked us why we were in Andong. His name was Davie, and we talked to him for 15 minutes or so. As we parted ways, we asked if he had any suggestions for dinner in town. He invited us to dinner with him that evening, if we wanted, and he scribbled his name and number on a piece of paper. We told him we'd call him later in the evening after we finished our one sight in Andong: The Hahoe Folk Village.

We left Davie and our lunch cart behind and caught a bus to the small, river-side folk village about an hour outside of Andong. We explored it and the nearby mask museum for a few hours and enjoyed the old-style homes, touristy appeal, sheer cliffs, and learning about the village culture and mask dances that have made it one of Korea's major tourist destinations. Located in a little blurp of land in the bend of a river, the village is a UNESCO World Heritage sight and quite pretty. It is known for its straw roofed homes, unique layout dictated by class (highest class in the center, with the lower classes surrounding it, spiraling outward in a circle), and carved wooden masks for their famed mask dances. The town was nice and the mask museum had the most amazing collection of masks (from Korea and around the world) we'd ever seen. The museum also had detailed descriptions about the histories and plots of various mask dance performances, which ranged from predictable love triangles to perverted acts of lust. The museum was perfect since we didn't have a chance to see one of the weekend-only dance performances (and it was air-conditioned, always a bonus).

We returned to Andong, where we rested and caught up on emails, and this blog, back at our love hotel (more on these later, for now here's a link), the charming Aroma Motel.  Around 7:30 we ventured out to a pay phone to call Davie, not knowing what to expect for the evening.  Davie told us to hail a cab and ask to be taken to the "Lotte Mart" (pronounced "Low tay martay") near his apartment where he would meet us and take us to our choice of dinner spots. So we hailed our first cab of the trip and Jeff said, "La te mar ta." The cab driver didn't understand Jeff's butchering of the simple two word destination. Jeff got it right after a few more tries, and off we went!

About ten minutes and $4 later we arrived at the Lotte Mart and Davie was waiting outside.  We chose daeji galbi (Korean pork BBQ) and chatted more with Davie as he walked us through his neighborhood toward the restaurant.  He enjoyed teaching English in Korea, but had been burning out a bit recently.  He was honest about the aspects of Korea and Korean culture he liked and disliked, which we appreciated.  He didn't like seeing his students struck in class, or the way women are treated as second class Koreans.  He explained Korean social hierarchy: The oldest men are at the top, next are elder sons.  After all ages of men, come women.  Foreigners are below all Koreans, and despite what they say, they really seem to dislike the Japanese.  Davie's accounts of Korea's general attitude toward foreigners helped explain the pushy grandmas and the phenomenon of multiple line cutters who cut in front of us in train and bakery lines as though we weren't there.

We were seated at the restaurant by this point in our conversation. We sat on thin cushions on the floor at a low table with a large round grill in the center.  Davie paused the conversation to order three portions of the daeji galbi, and we soon had the meat, condiments, and bonchon (sides to be eaten while the meat grills)
in front of us. The grill seemed to run on gas and corn, which was loaded into the table top and funneled down into the burner underneath a clear window. Very neat, since you could watch the corn level drop as the fire raged and your meat grilled. Davie explained what each item on our table was, and how to eat them.  He showed us how to lay the pork on the grill, flip it, and cut it up when it was ready. The restaurant staff was scary efficient about changing our grill when they deemed it too burnt, and each new grill was unbelievably clean. We happily grilled meat, wrapped it in the provided lettuce with chili paste, salad, and garlic while we chatted with Davie more about teaching in Korea, how he found himself there, and his take on Korean culture.

Davie was also patient in teaching us a few key Korean phrases that made our future meals easier and more comfortable. "Eiga Juhm tuh jissayeo," means bring more of this, when accompanied by pointing to an empty dish. All of the condiments and bonchon are refillable, making the low low price of eating out in Korea even lower. Jeff tried first, stumbled over his words, lost confidence, mixed the phrase up horribly, made a fool of himself, and made the waiter boy laugh.  He did understand somehow and brought more raw garlic, which we grilled with the meat and ate by the clove (we still reeked days later). Annette tried our new phrase when we
ran out of the very tasty green onion salad (a favorite of hers). She fared much better. The boy helping us still chuckled, but she managed to say everything correctly and didn't get flustered like Jeff. We had also ordered a bottle of soju, traditional Korean rice liquor, and Davie showed us how to pour and receive a pour properly, as you never pour your own drink in Korea. To have one's glass refilled, one holds it out either with two hands, or with the right hand and the left arm folded, hand over your right breast. The pourer pours the same way, either with two hands or with the right, left hand over chest. To toast, you touch glasses and say, "gumbai!" the soju doesn't taste like much except watered down vodka, as it is about 20% alcohol. It lacks the ricey or fruity flavor of sake, but is pleasant when sipped in small amounts with the meat and spicier sides (like the kimchi we grilled with the garlic and pork).

Shortly after we sat down at the restaurant (still not sure what it was called) a woman and her family sat near us. She said hello to Davie in English, and smiled and waved, making funny gestures. Davie smiled, laughed and waved back. He told us that a little while ago he had bowled a 208 and that the woman had seen him there are must have remembered him.  The kids, two of them, and the woman kept smiling and saying hello to Davie at regular intervals throughout our meal. We finally finished our feast (which was about $18, including the soju) and got up to leave. The woman and her husband motioned us over as we passed. They had a few bottles of Fanta, which they made clear they wanted to share with us. We smiled and after our polite declining was rejected ("Are you sure?  That is too kind!") we sat with them. We got to practice the polite way to hold our glasses as they poured. We learned that the boy was 10 and his sister was 7.  The girl was excited to say a few words in English to Davie, and both were obviously excited and nervous - they giggled, climbed on dad, stood up and say down anxiously.  The wife and davie chatted in broken Korean and English. The wife also asked us a few questions. In Korea social standing is important, so they ask polite questions to determine signifiers of where you stand.  Age is important, as is marital status. Both husband and wife were interested to learn our ages (Davie reminded us to add a year, which is how Koreans count years - from zero up) and excited to find out we were married. She sweetly asked if we had any kids. We said we didn't yet, which is why we were able to travel. Jeff smiled and said, "soon!" making a cradle with his arms and rocking it back and forth. The wife seemed to like this, she smiled and tittered a bit.  Unprompted, she told us that she and her husband were both 37.

Davie, Jeff, and the Kind Family

We drank our Fanta, and at some point someone brought over a beautiful cake from a local bakery. The cake came with candles and a cake cutter. We didn't pay it much attention, perhaps one of the kids had a birthday coming up or maybe it was for children's day, which was a national holiday the next day (May 5th).  We sipped our Fanta, careful not to finish the glass before we left because an empty glass must be filled, and they had been generous enough already.  Davie politely wrapped the conversation up and we said goodbye. As we stood up to leave, bowing and thanking them profusely for the Fanta and hospitality, the kind family surprised us again. The wife picked up the cake and offered it to Jeff with both hands. "For you! For you!" she said smiling and pushing the cake toward us.  We protested emphatically, smiling and blushing.  Davie protested. We both protested. We smiled and bowed and tried to say that we couldn't possibly take the cake. Both mister and missus insisted.  What should we do? We knew that sometimes offers and gifts, like an invitation to one's home, were polite nicities ment to be declined.  We also knew that it could be deemed disrespectful to decline a gift. We had no choice but to accept the cake. We were flattered, confused, and embarassed. Davie paid for dinner as the girl giggled and ran between us and the kid's playroom (ballpit!) spouting broken English questions at Davie. We think she was flirting, as she wanted to shake his hand over and over but wanted no part of a handshake offered by Jeff. Ahh, young love.

Outside we asked Davie if anything like that had ever happened to him before. "A free beer here and there, but I've never been given a cake before. That was crazy! I have no idea what that was!"  Neither did we. The kind family was all that and more. Thank you for the cake, whoever you are. Gams hamnida!! (Thank you in Korean) Davie wanted to take us to a Korean bar, and we wanted to buy him a drink or two since he sprung for dinner (again, $18 for delicious BBQ pork, endless bonchon and condiments, and an unforgettable night out in Andong! All of that would have been a bargain at twice the price!). We walked to the bar and Davie showed us his neighborhood -massage parlors and nail salons that didn't offer either services, strip clubs, "dick clubs," and all manner of new things.  As with dinner, we appreciated English explanations of both the area.

You have to shake the bap

We landed at a bar called "Wiz."  Davie taught us how to order beer and we picked out food too. Apparently you can't drink without eating in bars.  Annette ordered something from the food menu that none of us knew what it was (turned out to be bibimbap in a tin that was to be shaken vigorously before eaten). She executed perfectly, and Jeff ordered the beer - getting all the words right but baffling the server when he pointed to the food page. Insert head slap here!  We unconfused the server and got our MGD-like Cass promptly. The table to the side of us was occupied by a few younger folks, who had a young girl with them (she looked about 3) despite the smoke and the fact that, well, we were in a bar. One of the young men at the table started talking with us in English. We chatted a bit, met his sisters and their husbands and the little (tired) lady. Our relationship to one another was important again, and their whole table lit up when Annette and I said we were married (they kept asking whether we were all friends, and we concluded later that they weren't totally comfortable until they knew what Annette's relationship to either of the men was).

We certainly wouldn't have come this far from the train station or our hotel for dinner had we not met Davie. We would have missed out on the cake, meeting the kind family, and learning the ins and outs of the Korean dining experience. Certainly Davie helped make our one night in Andong one of our most memorable since we'd been in Asia. We thanked him over and over, and he said he likes to pay forward the kindness he received upon moving to Korea.  Our night with Davie was something we really needed.  We hadn't yet felt a connection to Korea and this night opened the country up to us.  From Andong on we approached Korea with a whole new perspective!