The Great Wall of Suwon

This is what it's come down to: a desk piled high with roach killer. For the last few weeks, our apartment hasn't felt much like a home, thanks to an infestation of giant cockroaches. They've been dropping from the ceiling, crawling on our cups and just generally making themselves at home. It's hard to sleep at night when we can hear them scurrying around our apartment, and when we do sleep we often have cockroach-related nightmares (or worse- I dreamt that we had a scorpion infestation last week!) Anyway- on top of this, the new semester of school has left us both feeling drained and wanting to get away for the weekend, so on Friday night we went to Suwon, our home away from home.

Though we usually stay at the Lucy, we decided to try another hotel on our favorite Love Motel strip- the Pink Panda. We were given the Pink Panda: Black Edition room, though it was curiously decorated with pictures of the Pink Panther and was more pink than black.

Even though we've stayed in dozens of love motels, I'd never noticed that the cars in the parking lot all have their license plate numbers hidden. This helps to keep what happens in the love motel on the down low. I guess most people that go to these places aren't in it for the whirlpool and big screen viewing of Oprah like we are.

We decided to spend the day hiking around Hwaseong Fortress. The Fortress is essentially a wall that surrounds what was once central Suwon. It was built over 200 years ago by King Jeongjo, who had planned to move the capital of Korea to Suwon. That didn't quite work out, but the scenic fortress walls are well worth a day trip to Suwon. We'd hiked there before, but that was almost 5 years ago, so we'd been looking forward to getting a weekend with nice enough weather to do it again.

Just as we were about to start our hike, I was approached as I left the washrooms by a young guy wearing a Samsung t-shirt.

Guy: Hi, how are you? Do you know Samsung company?

Me: Yeah, sure.

Guy: Do you want to do commercial about Samsung electronics? You can dancing with us.

Me: (Nearby, I can see one of his co-horts already getting dressed up in some ridiculous blue costume because he's sure I'll say yes) No, thank you.

Guy: Come on, it is simple dancing. We will teach you salsa (guy starts to salsa dance).

Me: No no no no no no no... have a nice dayyyyy (running away)

I don't like to dance. A lot. Anyway, we started our hike at the Paldalmun gate (there are 4 gates along the wall) which means we started out by hiking straight up 1000 stairs.

Once that part is over, the rest of the wall is an easy hike. There's lots of little towers, platforms and structures along the way to look at (like the one above).

Some more pictures from our hike:

A nice view of Suwon from the top of the fortress.

Lots of flags along the way.

Stopping for a sammich.

Lovely Suwoncheon Stream.

There's an absolutely humongous cathedral nearby. It's black, very gothic and looks like the spookiest church ever.

There are a few random activities to enjoy along the way: there's a trolley ride, museum, dog soup restaurant, Korean archery and even adjoshis playing croquet.

The humorously named Bongdon: five chimneys that puffed out warning signals to locals just in case someone was coming to plunder all of Suwon's famous yumyum galbi.

After about an hour and a half, the trail ends at a traditional food market. There were a lot of butchers set up there, as well at many fruit and vegetable vendors, and the ubiquitous groups of ajummas selling dried things from seeds to peppers to stingrays (as seen above). From the vendors to the little makeshift restaurants with tarps for walls and menus printed in marker on old cardboard, it feels like this area hasn't changed much in the last 50 years.

Yep, you could buy just about anything there, even... pig heads? For a minute it was like being back in Taiwan again, as I don't think pig heads are a very popular food item in Korea.

It was time for us to head back to Seoul and our cockroach nest of an apartment. If it weren't the last weekend before pay day we probably would have splurged on a second night at the Lucy or Pink Panda, but what can you do? I wonder if leaving a pig's head at the front door would scare all the bugs away? It might at least get the landlord's attention for long enough that he might spring for a little fumigation...