Korea Trip - Part 1

After a L---O---N---G flight across the rest of the Pacific Ocean to Tokyo, it was another 2-hours to Incheon. Easy trip through immigration and customs, pick up the luggage, and out to the little tour bus that would become so very familiar over the course of the week.

(I think I'll break my no-photos-on-the-blog page rule, and throw in an appropriate one now & then. Great apologies to my dial-up readers... I will eventually post our trip photos in my Picasa album, but I'm having some trouble with it so give me a few days to get it figured out.)


Inside, the bus was wildly decorated in pinks & purples, gold trim, tassels & curtains - definitely exotic! Everybody's luggage was piled up in the first rows, so we couldn't see the driver at all, or out the front window. There were tinted windows all around, and fold out seats to fill the aisles for the other 4 people not shown in the above photo. It was already dark so there wasn't much to see anyway on our long ride to the coast.

Slept really well that first night, at the Sunrise Hotel. Beautiful room with a spectacular morning view overlooking the bay full of fishing boats.


Mike & I had a lovely morning stroll along the boardwalk; Dr Park joined us for some of it and others did tai chi on the ocean's edge.

After packing our bags into the bus, we headed around the corner to breakfast at one of the many fish restaurants in this Sunrise Cove area. The owner was the same friendly man who'd smiled at us on our walk. There was a huge banquet laid out for us, complete with their specialty: live octopus boiled right before our eyes! Okay, I want full credit for this one: When I was served my portion of octopus head, cut into quarters with a pair of scissors, thus turning the delicious broth all inky, I was able to actually summoned up my inner Bourdain/Zimmern... I took up a piece with those slippery metal chopsticks they use in Korea, brains sticking out and everything... and I must say, it was surprisingly delicious! I ate the whole thing! Also had chrysanthemum leaves with sesame seeds, but that doesn't sound nearly as exotic now.


Korea has a great highway system, each section with its own toll-gate, and all criss-crossing eachother. Tunnels take you right through the mountainous regions. Once you pull off the highway, the roads are still good but very narrow, which is why we have a small tour bus: so it'll be able to navigate the country roads where the farms are. There are lots of rivers, and irrigation canals in some areas. Rice and vegetables grow everywhere and anywhere that's big enough to grow something, even in the cities.
Our first farm visit was in DamJin at Mr Choi's apple orchard, all covered in bird netting. These trees are only 2 years old and already producing big juicy Fuji apples! He also has a huge IMO making machine that does the work of several weeks in a couple hours. We got to see this in action, and by the time we returned from our orchard walk, the finished product was coming out. Mr Choi also has quite a large array of solar panels to generate electricity, both for the farm and for income as he sells the excess power back to the utility company.

Loaded with a bucket of apples for the road and packets of fresh apple juice, we were on the road to the next place: Mr Kim's persimmon farm in the "Path to Heaven" area. It is an absolutely beautiful place farmed by this gentle man who led us up the hill through his orchard, and gave us a little talk under the trees about his methods and relationship to the land. Meanwhile, all around us honey bees buzzed and a half-dozen workers quietly harvested the ripe fruit by hand. We all got to wander about and find our own persimmons to munch on - super soft, tender and dripping with juice on the first bite... or crisp and crunchy, like an apple.
One more farm today. As the sun was setting we pulled in to Mr Park Sang Oh's strawberry greenhouses. Unfortunately, there had been a recent leak in the irrigation system and Mr Park really needed to attend to that, so he couldn't spend much time with us there. We peeked in at some beautiful lush strawberry plants (not fruiting at this time if year, too bad). Mr Cho gave us a little talk about Natural Farming, translated by Dr Park.

We headed out just as darkness fell. Went to have dinner at the Double Bridge Barbeque Rib restaurant and soon Mr Park joined us to give his farm talk and share a delicious kahlbi dinner. There was so much food! We learned that Mr Park is the president of a 53-member farmers co-op, and they all do this Natural Farming method! The restaurant specializes in food produced this way... no wonder it was so tasty! Dessert was persimmon tea (more like soup) and it was superb, spiced with cinnamon and a little ginger.

And finally at the end of a busy day, we pulled into the Green Hotel, a seedy little place - well, not too little: we were on the 5th floor! - what they call a 'Love Hotel'. You can guess what that means... and if you need a hint, here's our bed for the night:

Hot pink & silver wallpaper, shall we say 'interesting' little night stand objects for our 'pleasure', a too-hot room, and a faint odor of cigarettes... We aired the room, turned on the a/c, and fell sound asleep.

To be continued...

Home Again, Safe & Sound

An Nyung Ha Se Yo! ...which is actually slurred together to sound like: anyoahsayoh (accent on 'ah').

We made it home safe & sound, though sorely sleep-deprived. Until last night, we had gone 78 hours with a grand total of maybe 5-6 hours of sleep, none of it deep and not all at once. We are still working on catching up and readjusting to Hawaii timezone. It felt soooo good to sleep in our own comfy bed, I can't even begin to describe it.

The trip was wonderful! We both loved Korea, learned tons, made friends. I took 512 photos which I am already working on. And Mike took 404, some of which were short video clips. (Don't worry, I won't post them all!) I'm really glad we got to do this, to immerse ourselves in such a foreign culture. And I'm really glad to be back home again, too. I will write all about it after I get a bit more sleep.

One bad thing: my camera got cracked somehow on the way home. :-( As our girls both said, good that it was on the way home. Mike says he is getting me a new one for my birthday! :-)

Okay, that's it for now... need... sleep...

South Korea, Here We Come!

An Nyung Ha Se Yo! That's 'Hello!' in Korean. Gotta practice our few phrases, y'know.
Man Na So Ban Gap Soop Ni Da. (It's a pleasure to meet you.)

We are sure getting all excited about our trip to South Korea!!! The reality of it all is just starting to sink in. Only a few days before we leave! Those of you who know me will realize that this means we are, of course, just about all packed. Our at-home support team is all lined up, so the chickens will be looked after and things will run smoothly at the hale while we're gone. No worries!

We're flying out of Hilo this Sunday morning, on Hawaiian Airlines to Honolulu. From there we switch to Japan Airlines which is supposed to be the cream of the crop. We have a layover in Tokyo but not enough time to go out into that big city, darn it. Maybe next time - hehe! Then it's a shorter flight to Incheon, the big airport outside Seoul. To return, we reverse all this, and will arrive back on the Big Island on Halloween.

It's a 19 hour time difference from Hawaii, which works out to -5 hours & the next day. There's that pesky International Date Line in there just to confuse things further, don't you know. We were told to pack an alarm clock, and I'm sure we will need it!

From Incheon, we'll be heading south into the countryside and farming communities of ChoongNam, DangJin, DamYang, GokSeong, SoonCheon, JeonNam, GoSeong, GyungNam, and then back to Seoul. We get to visit persimmon & strawberry farms the very first day! It will be Ah Joo Jae Mi It So Yo! (Very interesting!) This is supposed to be the best time of year to visit, weatherwise, but it'll probably still feel rather cool to us. Kinda like San Fransisco temps. Sounds lovely!

Yong So Hae Joo Se Yo (please excuse me), but we will most likely be incommunicado for the duration of this trip. Our cell won't work in Korea so we're not even bringing it. We're not bringing the laptop either. But we WILL both be taking LOADS of photos! And I promise to write again very soon after we return.

An Nyung Hi Ga Se Yo! (Good-bye!)
Liz

It's Official...

We bought our tickets to South Korea!! Whoo-hoo!! :-D
I was as surprised as you are now when Mike said, "Let's do it!", but I wasn't going to say no, now was I?

At the end of the month, we'll be joining a group of Big Islanders to do a Natural Farm Tour in this country that we'd never even thought about visiting before. What an opportunity! It'll be a 6-night whirlwind tour of many farms across the southern countryside, staying at little local hotels, eating traditional foods, and learning a lot more about Natural Farming.

We got interested in this all of this when we attended a Korean Natural Farming Method workshop that Rozett's, a local nursery, was hosting. Dr Hoon Park was the main speaker, and there were a couple others as well, all practicing this method here on the wet side of the Big Island - so we know it works locally. He spoke of and demonstrated various techniques for creating IMO, Indigenous Micro-Organisms, which is an integral part of Natural Farming methods. This workshop was so interesting that just about all the 60 people in attendance stayed for the entire 4 hours - and it was scheduled to be only a 1-1/2 hour class! I took over 20 pages of notes!!

One very interesting fact that was revealed is that the Big Island of Hawaii had a larger population, and was completely self-sufficient, in ancient times. Now, we are so reliant on shipping goods here that there is only a 3-day food supply in the grocery stores! That's insane! You know that I have a well-stocked pantry, good farm girl that I am, and we are learning to grow more and more of our own produce, as well as finding places to glean wild fruits from the jungle. But there is so much more we could do to make our little 1-acre farm more productive - and that's where these IMO's come in.

It's a long, involved process that I won't go into here. Suffice it to say that by increasing the micro-organisms and using them to speed up the decomposition of organic substances, we are thereby creating enzymes, and making nutrients more available to the plants. This in turn balances the ecosystem and increases the productivity of the garden. Everybody wins! It's all done with whatever natural stuff you have on hand: egg shells, old cooked rice, fish scraps, chopped sugar cane, weeds, bones, vinegar, ocean water... They all have their specific uses in Natural Farming. It's a very good compliment to the organic farming we've long done, an enhancement really, to make everybody grow that much better.

IMO is even used to keep down the smell of pigs & chickens. It's true! We visited a pig farm in Kea'au that uses this method. Even with 20 pigs, there was absolutely NO smell!! I couldn't believe it! We will be integrating this method with our chickens; in fact, one of the farms we'll visit in Korea is a chicken farm.

Back to the trip: Dr Park will act as interpreter and has made all the arrangements for our guides in Korea, the farms we'll visit, lodging, meals, transportation, etc. The l-o-n-g flight over is on Japan Airlines. We'll have our passports stamped 'for real' this time. (We begged the officer at the Canadian border to stamp them for us to commemorate our many trips across the border when we lived in Idaho; he laughed but did it anyway.)

Let the lists begin! hmmm, I need a folder for all the papers... and I better call someone to look after the chickens... and we oughta get some iodine tablets... and... and... :-D

Summer Pics!

At last! Here are some of the highlights of our summer 2009:
http://picasaweb.google.com/elizacacia/Summer2009#

Still keeping this blog free of photos which can take ages to download for those on dial-up. I know, I've been there. Very grateful for our high-speed!

In these pics you will join us for our 3rd of July Backyard BBQ Bash... drive all the way up Mauna Kea to watch the sun set... meet new grandbaby Kirsi... spend time with our adorable grandchildren in Idaho... check out our first ever harvest of garnet yams... hike through the woods... and take a look at some of the flowers blooming now in the garden.

Enjoy!