Fortunately, you may remember that there is a train station across the street from my apartment. Friday night, in anticipation of waking up early for the trip on Saturday, Emily and I stayed at my place, drank red wine and put on Korean face masks. The face masks were amazing, even more so since they were pieces of cloth cut for faces that are shaped differently from ours. We had a heyday with her camera since we looked like serial killer mimes.
We successfully got on the correct train and began our journey the next day. Since my camera is dead, I decided to bring along my video camera to document everything. When I accidentally left it recording in the case until the battery went dead, I should have seen that as an omen of the things to come when we arrived in Boseong.
Once there, we set off for the festival. I believe most of you know how much I adore festivals. It really doesn't matter what kind of festival, specifically. So imagine my giddiness at the chance to go to a green tea festival in a town where they produce it in mass quantities. We were both high-spirited at approximately 4pm as we began following the arrows of signs we believed would lead us to the festival.
They led us to a freeway instead. With no sign of a festival. Yet we continued to walk on the shoulder of the freeway while cars whizzed past and the clouds began to look menacing.
Finally, we turned around to wait for a bus back to town at a bus stop we had passed. The bus never came, so we walked all the way back.
Instead of taking that opportunity to find a hotel before the rain and nightfall, we hailed a cab. We just assumed he would know we wanted to go to the festival when we repeated the Korean word for "tea" over and over. But he didn't know. So he retraced our highway steps all the way out to a green tea plantation, which would have been fine had it not been almost nighttime and raining.
So we got a green tea ice cream cone and then went to wait for a bus back to the town center AGAIN - our third time to try orienting ourselves. But the bus never came. Slowly, the Koreans that were waiting along with us began asking each other to share cabs back to the town. At this point, Emily and I were running short on cash, and the earlier cab was tres cher, so I tried to ask these two girls if they wanted to share a cab. Somehow that worked, and we made it back. At this point, Emily and I needed a cold beer before settling in for the night.
Then we began looking for a love motel. They are seriously everywhere in Korea, so when we didn't see any right away, we asked a girl we saw working in a bakery. Her boss told her she could leave and take us to a hotel, so we were really relieved to have her help. Except, we went to a couple different ones, and there were no open rooms because of the festival that we couldn't find. So we followed her back to the bakery where she said she would call a few other places. After a quick phone call, she said that everything was full and we were better just staying at her home.
At this point, Emily and I were still lugging around all of our stuff and were really disillusioned and exhausted so we just looked at each other, shrugged our shoulders, and accepted her offer. Her parents came to pick her up from work, and we climbed into the car too. The house was kind of a country house, so we knew we couldn't catch a cab out of there the next morning. We were at their mercy basically. Luckily, they were a really sweet family. The girl gave us her room to sleep in, and we were served snacks and coffee (that's about all you can hear in this video we made). We were in there ready for bed at about 9:30, scared to talk or leave the room for the bathroom. It was just really awkward to be in some one's bedroom you don't know. So we put on more face masks and went to bed early.
The next morning, I woke up, and on the way to the bathroom bumped into a man (we later determined this was the girl's father - not sure who the man from the previous night was) telling us he was going to run in a marathon. I pretended to be really excited for him, and they told us to come with them, so we got ready quickly and got into their family car for a second time. This time, however, it was just the man and his wife in the front seat and Emily and me in the back seat. There was no daughter to help with translations.
We drove for at least 20 minutes in the opposite direction from the way we wanted to be going, but at least we weren't captives at the house any longer. We parked in a parking lot and sat in the car for around an hour with lots of marathon runners walking by and stretching. At one point, the father pulled out his marathon information packet and asked us to print our names and then sign below. At first, I thought he wanted our autograph or something - he did seem pretty pleased we were there with him. Then it dawned on us that he was looking for our names in the program. He thought we were there to run the marathon with him.
Right then, I think Emily and I went into panic mode. Few times in my life have I ever felt so helpless and unsure of what to do. They were being so nice and hospitable to us, but we didn't know how to make a break for it. It took us a long while to get them to understand that we were not marathon runners. Finally, when the husband left to run, we knew it was our chance to get away. Emily told the wife that we had to get to the train station right away. She helped us find a taxi, and we were headed back, once again, to the town square that had become the epicenter of this nightmare vacation.
On the way back, we passed the green tea plantation that we had partially seen the night before through darkness and rain. We asked the taxi to let us out. Fortunately, the weather that day was clear enough to tour the beautiful green tea plants growing on the hilly terrain. I decided that even though this had been an overall disaster and even though we never even made it to the festival, the sight at the plantation made the whole trip worth it. See for yourself...
Of course, as we were waiting to board the train home, we saw a sign on a footbridge crossing above the railroad tracks that said "Road to the Green Tea." Darn.
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