Tuesday – Let The Travels Begin

When Ida emailed me and told me she was coming to visit, I furiously began researching. I wanted to make the most of this. A week together of girl time, to travel, see the country, go off the beaten path, bond. I re-read my Lonely Planet. I googled Korea. I read web sites. And made a draft itinerary. I emailed it to her, she said it sounded great, so we decided to go with it.

Cha Bat – The Tea Plantation

First stop. Boseong. The tea plantations. It didn’t look that far on the map. I mean, Korea is only the size of Indiana. Indiana isn’t *that* big of a state. It’s manageable. Three buses, 2 taxis, and 5 hours later, we arrived at the tea plantation entrance. The bus dropped us off on the road and the driver pointed. We started walking down a road. “Girl, I don’t see any tea plants. This better not be another Wood Artifacts Complex.” Ida, trust me. This was featured in the Daegu City foreigner information ‘Between Friends’ pamphlet travels of the month section. Even as I said the words, I wished I could pull them back into my mouth. Please let there be a tea plantation. Please. Please. The article said it was over a million square meters of tea plants. It would be hard for that to disappear over night. But then again, an entire Wood Artifacts Complex seemed to….

We walked down the road, passed a souvenir shop (all tea – good sign), and kept walking. Then, out of nowhere, there were the hills. Covered with millions and millions of tea leaves. Which look remarkably like hedge. We walked among the hedges. That’s really all you could do. We climbed a hill. Took a picture from the top. From the middle. From in between the rows. Then walked down. After 45 minutes of walking, we pretty much had covered the whole public area. Hmmm. Well, shall we grab a cuppa tea? I smiled. We headed to the tea shop. We were both hungry. But the tea shop was just that. A tea shop. One thing. Tea. One price. Specialization at its best.

The ajumaa came to the table. I asked her for two cups of tea please. She turned to Ida and started rapidly speaking Korean. This had been happening to us since Ida’s arrival. Even though I initiate the conversation, the shopkeeper or waitress replies to Ida, who is Filipino/Chinese, and begins rattling off Korean. Ida would usually just stare, then I would say, Miguk imnidda. The first time I said it, Ida turned to me and said, “What did you just call me?” Calm down, sister, I only said you were American so they would stop speaking Korean to you.

The ajumaa returned with our two cups of tea. She explained we could refill our pot three times with water and get three pots of tea from the tea leaves currently there. We drank our first cup. Not bad, but not great. We poured the second tiny cup. Better. A bit more flavorful. Then the third cup. Ugh! So bitter. I guess that couple of extra seconds steeping does make a difference. Bleh!

We paid and left. There was a restaurant on the way back to the road. We decided to try it. We sat down and I read the menu. Let’s see. This section is bottles of whiskey. This section is coffee. This section is entrees. I don’t know what any of them mean. We looked around. There were only two other tables with people at them. The women behind us were eating ice cream. The people at the table by the window were eating food. Ida got up and walked past them. She came back. “It looks decent. A stew. A cutlet.” Okay. I called the waiter over. We’ll have what they’re having. He took our order and left. A while later the food arrived. Not bad. But not great. Sort of neutral. Like cardboard. We were both so hungry we ate without complaint. Upon paying our bill, he gave us 6 complimentary boxes of tea bags. Score!

We walked back to the bus shelter at the road. I read the signs. According to the signs, there were two buses that stopped here. We wanted to go back to the Boseong terminal, to catch a bus to Yeosu. I didn’t know where one of the buses was headed. The other would take us back to Boseong. The bus that we didn’t want to take was scheduled to arrive first. It came, it stopped. I got on, just to see if maybe there was a shortcut. That maybe it went directly to Yeosu. I asked the driver and he literally pushed me off backwards off his bus. Okay. Guess that bus isn’t going the way we want to.

Across the road a car stopped. A young man/boy got out. He spray painted something on the ground. I yelled to him. Shillye hamniddaaaaaa! Excuse me! He turned, surprised by my appearance. Yeosu odi-imnikka? Which way to Yeosu? He ran across the road and in broken English and Korean explained we needed to take the bus to Boseong, then change there. Just what we thought. But confirmation is good. I smiled and thanked him and sat down on the curb to wait for the bus. He ran back across the road, got into the car with his partner, and drove off. Less than 10 minutes later, he pulled up beside us, rolling down the window. “Get in. We take, bus station. No bus.” I looked at Ida and shrugged. He seemed harmless enough. She shrugged. We got in the back seat. We tried to make conversation, but it pretty much stopped after my information – English teacher, Daegu, 6 months, and his – student, just out of military, Gwangju. Wait, we did learn they were either marking for a new highway to be built, or marking the new highway that was just built. We couldn’t quite tell either way.

We went back to town, his friend the driver stopping every so often to ask where the bus terminal was. Turns out they weren’t from these here parts. After a few circles, a few detours, we arrived back at the bus terminal. Our friend went inside with us. He ordered the tickets for us, then walked us to where we would catch the bus. He wanted to wait the 5 minutes with us. Again, I tried conversation. After a couple of sentences, I was stumped. Ida offered him a bag of beef jerky. It was all we had left. After much insistence on our part, he accepted. Five minutes never passed so slowly. I would think I had thought of something to say, start to utter something, then realize I didn’t know all the words. So I would smile broadly. He would return the smile. We would look at our feet, the walls, the sky, then he would start something, utter a word, then stop. The nervous smiles would continue. Our bus finally arrived. We boarded, and he stood at the station, waving until the bus pulled away.

On the bus (completely bedecked with lime green and pale lavender ruffles) Ida commented to me, “Girl, you really need to work on your conversational Korean. You know, those few lines that could help pass the time. Cocktail party Korean.” Riiiiiiight…..