Friday, September 30, 2011

Hwaseong – The Fortress we thought we'd never find

One thing I'm learning about Korea is it's a very small world of foreigners. It's amazing what happens when you tell someone you're in Korea and they say 'Oh, I know someone who's there, or I'm going there too..'. Come to find out a guy who I went to Chapman University with and who's also from Portland just moved to Korea about 2 weeks before I did. He messaged me on facebook and we decided to make plans to meet up and go visit Hwaseong Fortress in Suwon. Well, needless to say this was a bit risky as neither of us have cell phones yet. So, we decided to meet up at a specific Subway stop and go from there. It took me about 45 minutes to get to this particular stop. I decided to sit in the main waiting area and play 'spot the foreigner' to find him. 30 minutes later, no sign of Eric anywhere. Well shoot I'm thinking to myself I came all this way for nothing. I decided to go on a quick walk around the city and then return to the subway station. I came back and still no sign of him. I decided to just throw in the towel and head back home, but as I was headed to my subway line there he was sitting right in front of the exit area. He had been waiting the entire time I was there so we think we must have just missed each other. Now that we found each other it was time to figure out where this fortress actually was.

We weren't really sure where to go, but decided to just start walking in the direction we thought and look for food along the way as we were absolutely starving. Well of course when you're hungry you can't find food anywhere. We were getting really frustrated at this point, but luckily we kept walking and finally found a small Korean restaurant to eat at. Luckily, I had eaten at a similar restaurant previously with one of my co-workers so I knew how to order 2 things off the menu. Felt pretty cool ordering in Korean for the first time by myself.

After we ate we had to keep walking to try and find the fortress. We stumbled upon this awesome area that was basically a big market place. Lots of street vendors selling all sorts of random stuff and lots of activity and people. P.S. There are people EVERYWHERE in Korea. So many people it's ridiculous! We came upon this traffic circle and in the middle was a walled in mini temple thing that had construction stuff going on all around it. We were thoroughly disappointed and saying to each other 'this cannot be it...we came all this way to see a traffic circle sized temple under construction'. We decided to keep trekking along, because according to my guidebook this fortress was supposed to be extremely long and have tall stone walls and be totally awesome.

 There are people and cars everywhere...all the time!
 Entrance to a big open marketplace area.

Finally we arrived and it was definitely worth the journey. 

We had to walk for a while around the wall to find an entrance.  Hwaseong is over 5 kilometers in length and the wall averages nine meters high. 
These lookouts were all along the fortress wall.

There are buildings, houses, a road, and much more within the walls of the fortress.

This is another pavilion area along the fortress.

Looking out from inside one of the command posts.  Kind of cool to think about the soldiers in the fortress years and years ago who would spend there days looking out to see if any enemies were approaching.  Hwaseong Fortress was building in 1794 to give you a time frame.

It's hard to see but there's an outline of a cool looking temple atop the mountain. 


There is beautiful artwork and design inside the lookouts and pavilions.  The colors are really beautiful.

It's really crazy to look at an old fortress tower and behind it see numerous high rise buildings and in front see large buses. 

Say 'Kimchi'!  This was one of the larger pavilion areas.

Haha, some old Korean guy was walking around with his dogs.  Pinky and Orangey...their ears and tails are literally died those colors.  Seems like animal abuse to me.


More cool artwork on the sides of the towers.

Another picture of the mountaintop pagoda.



Hwaseong Fortress was designated a World Heritage site in 1997 and is undergoing some renovation.

Coming home, I decided based on a map in Korean that it would be faster for me to take a bus home versus the subway, because the subway route was very out of the way. It took a bit of time, and luckily there was a bit of English on the bus route sign that said 2 different buses would be heading to my city (Bundang). I had no idea where it would drop me off and the bus system is mostly in Korean and when they saw the stops it's all in Korean. So I decided to just hop on and see what would happen. I asked the bus driver 'Bundang? Bundang?' and after a few times of my terrible Korean accent he nodded his head yes. Well...alright then here I go. Side note – Something I find really humbling is when I ride the subway or the bus and I'm the only foreigner. It's really interesting to feel like the minority and opens your eyes to how many people are treated in America and all over the world. Anyway, so I'm on the bus and it's been about an hour which I assumed it would take roughly that amount of time. So I just started looking around for street signs (which are written in English) and any landmarks or things that might be noticeable about my city. I was sweating bullets the entire time, because I don't have a cell phone and taking taxis isn't easy for me yet. There it was....in all it's glory..a sign that I understood for a subway station in my neighborhood. WOW, I've never felt so happy in my life. I got off and new exactly where I was and had only a few block walk to my apartment. It seems really trivial how excited I got from riding a bus home, but let me tell you it's real difficult..so I gave myself a few pats on the back for that one.

Lesson Learned from today - Perseverance is the key. Just keep going even if you think it's not going to work out.

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