Biking Through The Cherry Blossoms

This weekend 5 of my co-workers (Marie, Nicole, Jessica, and Ashley who are foreign teachers and Ellen, who is a Korean supervisor) and I went biking through the cherry blossoms in Gyeongju. Gyeongju was the center of the Shilla Dynasty from 57 BC to 935 AD. The town itself is full of burial grounds for the kings and queens, which is what the grassy mounds are in the pictures. Shilla took over Baekje and Gogyryeo in 676 AD, unifying the three nations. Shilla was later conquered by Koreyo, the Koreyo Dynasty was then replaced by the Joosen Dynasty (the last dynasty before the Japanese occupation). Some see Shilla as the beginning of modern Korean, but of course, this remains up for debate. The area is often called the 'museum without walls' due to all the historical sites in the area.

We left Seoul at 6:15 am Saturday morning and started the roughly 5 hour long bus ride to Gyeongju. We arrived in Gyeongju around 11 am and immediately went to pick up our bikes. As we walked down a short alley to our bike rental place, we were greeted by a Korean wearing a full suit - only in Korea would a man running a bike rental shop out of a rusty tin shed wear a full suit to work. The bikes weren't top notch, but they weren't awful either. They did have handle breaks and multiple gears, as well as bells to ring (which didn't turn out to be as helpful as we thought they would be.) In general Koreans don't pay attention when walking on sidewalks. They tend to change directions without looking either way and often ignore anything going on around them. So despite the 6 of us all ringing our bells, and the fact that there were tons of other bicyclists out, we were constantly having to swerve to avoid running into people who walked into our path or slamming on our breaks to avoid running into someone who wouldn't get out of our way. (Luckily there were no incidents...besides Marie running into a large flower pot).

After making our selections, we were told we needed to head to 'the tower' to take a group picture. 'The tower' was actually the Cheomseongdae Astronomical Observatory, a building that used to be used for, of course, astronomical observations. After wandering the area for awhile, we decided to get directions and head on out. We chose to take the longest, most challenging route on Saturday and an easier return route on Sunday. We got directions from the guy running the trip and headed off down a blossom-lined street. We quickly learned never to follow his directions again, as right off the bat he sent us in the wrong direction. Of course, when we later heard him asking someone else who was lost if they had 'gone down the street with all the cherry blossoms' we realized he just had trouble giving directions in general. The ride itself was absolutely gorgeous. Literally every street in the town was lined with cherry trees that were blooming. The sun came out mid-afternoon, allowing the temperature to reach the low 60s and we were able to comfortably bike in t-shirts and capris.

We spent the entire afternoon biking through the area, around a lake, and finally ending up at our hotel about 6 hours after we started biking. Along the way we stopped for lunch at a small 순 두부 (sundubu, a tofu soup) restaurant. After eating our soup we sat outside enjoying some ice cream and the sun, when Ellen told us that some older ladies who just walked by had commented on 'those naked white girls.' Nicole, Ashley, and Jessica were all wearing tank tops which are perceived by many people from the older generation as being inappropriate to wear in public. Interesting to note however is that many of the Koreans wear extremely short mini-skirts all the time - to work, as well as in public in general. No one, older generation included, deems these as being 'inappropriate'. In fact, when we mentioned to Ellen that you would get sent home if not fired, for wearing a skirt like that in America and many women don't even wear them that short at the clubs, she was extremely shocked and surprised.

While biking that afternoon I also discovered that I had made a poor bike choice. About an hour into our ride, my bike started switching gears whenever it felt like it. This wasn't too bad at first...but then it started switching from the highest gear to the lowest gear. This made peddling quite challenging and was especially problematic when we stared going up hills. About 4 hours in, my bike chain started falling off every 30 minutes or so. This was frustrating to say the least (although it did provide us with pretty consistent breaks to catch our breath and give our bottoms a break from the seats). At one point, as I was crouched on the sidewalk, putting the chain back in place, one of my co-workers mentioned that there was a guy taking pictures of me. I didn't really think much of it, since Koreans seem to always be taking pictures of us, but my co-workers insisted I need to look. I looked up to see an older Korean guy, sitting in the driver's seat of his car, waiting for the red light to change, taking pictures with a HUGE zoom lens. Seriously, this was paparazzi style. I turned back around and finished fixing my chain, but felt a little weirded out. I don't know what he wanted super close up pictures of a white girl fixing a bike chain for, but hey, keep your eyes open when checking celebrity pages in case he thought he was getting a great candid shot of someone famous!

After trekking up a monster hill, we arrived at the hotel and had a little time to kill before dinner. The buses were heading back into town and then we were free to disperse for dinner. Nicole, Marie, Ashley and I decided that after our rough ride we would treat ourselves to western food for dinner. The guy running the trip had mentioned that there was an Italian place 'downtown' but failed to give us directions. Figuring we were smart enough the figure out where downtown was in a small Korean town, we headed towards the lights, confident we would get there. Cut to the next scene, 20 minutes later, when the four of us are sitting on the curb of the street corner, pouring over a city map. Luckily, there were two cops sitting in their car about 10 feet away. We decided to take a gander and see if they knew any English. Well...not really. After several failed attempts with pointing and gesturing, we said "Italian" and one immediately replied "Pijja hut?!" (Pizza Hut). Deciding this was as close as we were going to get, we gave him an eager yes. Turns out it was still a 20 minute walk from where we were. I think the cops could sense our disappointment (or our extreme hunger) because next thing we knew, one offered his seat to Marie and opened up the back door for the rest of us to get in. So we made it to Pizza Hut, by way of a Korean police car with its lights flashing.

Pizza Hut was well worth it, we ordered a family sized pizza and an appetizer sampler. I mention this because we were all very excited about the sampler - it had chicken wings, potatoes skins, quesadillas, and so on. I was the first one to grab a piece of the quesadilla, which I eagerly bite into, excited for delicious chicken and cheese. So you can imagine my confusion when it tasted like hot dog. We peeled one apart and sure enough, Korean Pizza Huts make their quesadillas with hot dogs. WIK. We took a cab back to the area where we were meeting our bus and upon exiting the cab, discovered a police car behind us, with no other than our two cop friends! I think they were extremely puzzled by the fact that we managed to eat and get back to that part of town in the span of 40 minutes!

On Sunday we were able to get later start and took an easier way back to town. We choose a path that went through rice paddies and was mainly flat to slightly downward (much different than our mostly uphill trek by city streets and crowed highways the day before). It was colder on Sunday and very gray, but we still enjoyed ourselves. We successfully navigated back to the lake and then biked around the other side of the lake. We also saw the weirdest thing while waiting to cross an intersection. There was a police officer whose sole job was to stand by a box at the corner of a traffic light and flip a switch when the stop light needed to change. Huh...can't imagine that job is too exciting. We stopped for lunch at a little galbi place and then rode the last part of our journey back into town. We hopped on the bus, and rode the 5 hours back to Seoul, making it in around 10 pm.

Overall we rode about 21 miles or so over the course of the two days and had a lot of fun. It was a refreshing change to get out of the city and get some good exercise. Winter has been unseasonably long this year, Saturday being one of the nicest days we have had yet this Spring. (Even tomorrow the high is only 46). My case of cabin fever has definitely increased 10 fold after getting out in the nice weather and I am beyond excited for the weather to stay warm consistently so we can partake in more outdoor activities! The good news is that Marie, Jessica, and I have another trip planned this weekend, to some islands off the west coast of Korea, where we are going to do some more biking and hopefully enjoy some more great weather!