Seoul: For Soul Food

We have been in Seoul for just a couple days, and already we feel at home and really like it here! We had decided to include South Korea in our 2013 trip after we stayed at the Korean Temple in Lumbini, Nepal because we learned enough about Korean Buddhism to be curious about it and because we were pleasantly surprised by how tasty the temple food was. It's spring in Seoul, with magnolia and cherry trees blossoming along with the azaleas.



Knowing us, you won't be surprised that our first posting is about the food! We're not sure why we hadn't tried Korean BBQ before, as there are a number of restaurants in San Francisco. It's great! We ate pork belly that we grilled at our table along with garlic, onions, and chilies.


Throughout the meal, the owner watched over us and made sure that we had everything grilling properly and that we ate things the correct way. Even as Pete took control of the grilling process, she would inevitably come by and put things back the way they were. She showed us how to dip the pork in a mixture of salt, pepper, and sweetened vinegar before wrapping it with the garlic, onions and chilies in shiso or lettuce leaves. So simple, but the flavors were wonderful.


Here's the wreckage after the meal. Pete wanted to be lying on the floor for this one.


Here is bibimbap, a hot pot stew of rice, octopus, mushrooms, lettuce, bean sprouts, onions, carrots and seaweed. Except for the rice, the ingredients arrived at the table raw, so we stirred them against the hot stone pot so they would cook evenly. Koreans don't serve "breakfast food" as we are used to, so this was our breakfast.


We ate mandu-jeongol stew of beef dumplings, noodles, mushrooms, greens and onions. Again it was cooked at our table so we could watch the savory broth simmer and enjoy the aroma. The dumplings were the size of a small child's head!



Here's what it looked like after it was cooked. We are wondering why isn't other Korean food available in the US? It is delicious!



The meals have been large so we are eating brunch and dinner with a street food snack in between. These "donuts" are called hatteok. They are made of glutinous rice with a sweet center of sugar, cinnamon and nuts that carmelize as the donut is fried. And yes, they are delicious!



Here's a picture of Buddhist temple food, which is all vegetarian and doesn't include onions, green peppers or garlic (because it's believed their heat causes distraction during meditation). We didn't know what many of the vegetables were. This cuisine developed after Confucianism became ascendant (14th to 19th century) and the Buddhist monks were no longer supported by the community. The monks had to fend for themselves and turned to foraging. Hence the use of roots, weeds, and what might've been bark in one dish. It was surprisingly tasty, though.



During the meal we watched a traditional dance performance. It featured about 7 or 8 different dances, costume changes, and traditional Korean music. Thankfully, audience participation was forbidden.



All the meals seem to be served with 5-15 side dishes called banchan. The banchan always includes several fermented dishes like kimchee, which tastes so much better than any kimchee we've eaten before.



Seoul has over 100 museums, and most of them are privately run. We gravitated to the food museums. At the Kimchee Field Museum we learned about the 3,000 year history of Korean pickling and saw the pottery containers used for making kimchee.



They had plastic models of over 80 types of kimchee. We were surprised to learn that napa cabbage has only been used since the 19th century, and that kimchee has four times the lactobacillus cultures as yogurt (making it a great digestive aid). Here's a picture of perilla leaf kimchee (we know it by the Japanese name, shiso).



They encouraged photos at this museum, so Kristina took advantage of the opportunity to ham it up. When Koreans pose for a picture and smile, they say "kimchee!" Here Kristina is trying to eat the kimchee rather than say it.



At the Tteok and Kitchen Utensils Museum we gained an appreciation for Korean "rice cakes". Tteok is not the dry version of rice cakes sold in the US, but instead it's like Japanese mochi. It's traditionally included in major life events like weddings. Here's a display showing a 60th birthday feast. We'd like to take this opportunity to wish our friend Tina-Darling a very happy 60th birthday!



The pounded rice can be steamed, fried or boiled and flavored in a multitude of ways. After the museum, we stopped for tea and tteok at the cafe. Pictured here are plum with red bean paste and pumpkin which had pumpkin seeds too. Tteok is less sweet than we are used to for desserts.



We also went to the Leeum Museum, which had a big contemporary art collection. We especially enjoyed the temporary exhibit entitled "Good Labor Bad Art" by the Korean artist Gimhongsok. This piece called "Canine Construction" looks like it's made of garbage bags, but it's actually made of bronze; Gimhongsok is forcing the viewer to confront pre-conceived ideas about whether ordinary materials can be art, and asking the question: if the piece is made from expensive material does it validate the art?



We are looking forward to returning to Seoul as there are many other places we want to visit, including several museums with Buddhist art collections. And there are a few more unusual museums we hope to check out: there's a museum devoted to chicken art (all the art is about chickens, not made by chickens), and the TrickEye Museum has 3D models of famous paintings that people can pose with or modify in other ways. We also learned that the Buddha's birthday will be celebrated May 11th and the temples are already decorating for the event.

Bangkok Redux: A Feast for the Senses

We had scheduled a scuba diving trip for the Similian Islands, but it was cancelled due to bad weather. Because we had enjoyed Bangkok so much when we visited in March, we decided to go back for five more days. We had a great time eating our way around the city and looking at art. Here we are on Koh Kret, aka Pottery Island, where there are no cars. We found it hard to believe that we were still in Bangkok as it was so peaceful and pastoral. We even saw crops growing along the bike path as we rode.



On Koh Kret they still make pottery in the traditional way.



Back in the heart of the city, Bangkok has colorful paintings on buildings like this close up of the Hong Kong Noodle Company.



The Bangkok Art and Culture Center had an exhibit on Buddhism called "Dharma Silpa: A Study of Buddhist Philosophy and Creativity in Contemporary Art", which was wonderful. These pieces looked as if they were made of rawhide, and we found their translucence beautiful.




The newly opened Museum of Contemporary Art had 800 works of art with the vast majority created by Thai artists. This image was part of an exhibit on land art that was created last year in honor of the King's 85th birthday. The piece was conceived by Suriya Namwong.



This painting entitled "Glamorous Night in Bangkok" by Preecha Panklum had a great feeling of movement.



And we saw movement like this while were in the streets. This photo was taken while we were eating street food one night.



We tried the pork belly, which was called crispy pork with noodles.



And we went to Chinatown one night because we had heard good things about the food available there.



This fish was steamed in a wok then dressed with a lime, chili and cilantro sauce, and it tasted delicious.



We were just about finished for the night when we came upon this vendor selling pork spare ribs. We couldn't resist. They were outstanding!

 

We would pick the street food stands that had a lot of Thai people eating the food.



Everyone in Bangkok seems to eat street food!



The cooking action is often hot, smoky, fast, intense, and seemingly chaotic. It's a great show to watch while sitting at a street side table waiting for your food. And of course the smells are often exceedingly tantalizing.

   

On another evening we ate a seafood soup with abalone, squid, shrimp and fish balls.



Even the dishes are washed on the street.



We went to the Thong Lor neighborhood, which has regular restaurants that tend to be new and vibrant. We started with this amuse bouche Thai style where chilies, lime, ginger, shallots, fried garlic and peanuts are wrapped in a leaf and eaten in one bite. It's a taste of the main Thai flavors.



We enjoyed pomelo (which is like grapefruit) salad with prawns; and duck with red chili paste, eggplant and basil.

Our return visit to Bangkok made us appreciate this vibrant, exciting urban megalopolis. We are now headed off to Seoul for a three week visit of South Korea.

Chiang Mai: Celebrating Sonkgran

Greetings from Chiang Mai, Thailand. We were here to celebrate Songkran, which is the new year’s celebration in Thailand and other Southeast Asian countries. This year Songkran was officially celebrated April 13^th-15^th, but it seems many Thais take vacation and celebrate for a week or longer.

The traditional way to celebrate involves visiting elders to pay respects, and visiting a Buddhist temple to offer blessings to the Buddha, to make a donation and to receive blessings from a monk. Here Pete is pouring jasmine-scented water onto a statue of the Buddha at Wat Chedi Luang. The water that has touched the Buddha is considered blessed, so it is then poured onto people’s shoulders so that they are cleansed and blessed.

In this picture the monk is giving a blessing to a Thai man. The monk has a brush in his hand that he dips in water and flicks onto your head and shoulders. There are also piles of string bracelets in front and to his right. These are part of a practice called “sai sin” that predates Buddhism. We received our bracelets from a monk who chanted while he tied the string, then he sprinkled us with water.



There are over 300 wats (Buddhist temples) in Chiang Mai. We visited perhaps 30 of them throughout our stay. Most of the wats are remarkably similar architecturally. Here is Wat Pan Tao. These sand sculptures are built and decorated with colorful streamers for Songkran. The sand represents the dirt from the past year and these stupa-shaped sculptures are destroyed after Songkran as a purification.



Wrapping with sashes seems to also be part of Songkran. Trees, stupas and spirit houses have special fabric wraps for the new year celebrations. These are the red, green and white sashes at the bottom of the spirit house.



A Buddha statue from Wat Phra Singh (one of the biggest and most-visited temples in Chiang Mai) was paraded Saturday morning. It was on an ornate platform with wheels that was pushed by volunteers from the temple to a square.



These monks led the procession.



At the square were students from the arts college of Chiang Mai dressed in traditional costumes. The men played percussion instruments and the women danced. Check out their fingernail extensions.




Saturday afternoon was the Songkran parade with more than 50 wats participating. Buddha statues were put on trucks and driven through the old city.




Pictured here are the more traditional Thais who wore Hawaiian print shirts and carried buckets with cups, so they could pour water on the Buddhas, and then receive water back from the floats. They also blessed the people at the parade by gently pouring a small amount of water onto shoulders and saying “Sawatdee Pee Mai Tukohn”, which means Happy New Year everyone. Here is what it looks like when written in Thai: สวัสดีปีใหม่ทุกคน.



The parade quickly turned into a water fight! During the four hours that we watched the parade, everyone we saw was completely soaked.



Of course we joined in and were appropriately armed!



Outside of the parade route, the old city streets were also filled with people who were part of the world’s largest water fight. The streets that lined the moat were particularly wet, with people using buckets to pull water from the moat. We saw people diving into the moat and swimming too.



Trucks with families cruised the streets. The trucks had their own water sources: big buckets or trash cans. Some of the water containers had ice in them – being hit with that cold water was quite a shock!



Pete switched from a water gun to a pail, as it was more effective at dousing the folks in trucks as they drove by! The water fight continued for two more days. Being wet felt great, as the temperatures have been in the high ‘90’s.



The kids were some of the most relentless water warriors. The boy and girl were in front of their family’s business (which was closed) and they sprayed everyone who walked past. The two boys threw several buckets of water on us as we were trying to take this photo.



Water guns with backpack reservoirs were very popular amongst both the tourists and the locals! The little girl has Doraemon, the manga and anime robot cat character. In addition to these models we saw Angry Birds, Sponge Bob, Mickey Mouse, Tweetie Bird and Winnie the Pooh.



It may be of interest that the majority of photos in this blog were taken with our waterproof Go Pro camera that we use for scuba diving. It has a fisheye lens, so the photos have a curved aspect to them.

We liked this graffiti painting, and noticed how it echoes a motif commonly found in the Thai wat staircase entrances to the temples: the naga (mythical water snake) is emerging from the makara’s (mythical crocodile/dragon) mouth. The street painting looks more like fishes, and the bigger fish may be eating rather than disengorging the smaller fish – what do you think?