A Double V and Two Noughts: Time Machine: Destination 1796

We took a little trip back in time today as we made our way to Suwon, a city that's just a 20-minute bus ride from Seoul (provided, of course, that there's no traffic--more on that later). Somehow I'm coherent enough to write this at 11 PM, seeing as I was probably about to pass out from heat exhaustion earlier in the day. I'm still a little delirious from that, so if I don't make sense at times, you have been warned.

One of the most impressive sights was Hwaseong Fortress (화성), the still-standing fortress protecting King Jeongjo's palace in the middle of Suwon. Quite an impressive feat; the wall by itself stands about 20 feet high and runs three-and-a-half miles long, enclosing about half a square mile of land. Though I tried to capture as much of a traditional view as I could, you can see an interesting side-by-side view of the fortress walls with the high-rises that line the horizon. Kind of an old-meets-new kinda thing, I guess. You can actually see it better in the picture below, though very faintly so. I could've spent the whole day just in this one spot, right under a small pavilion nearby, but there were other (read: more exciting) things to do.

If you notice in this picture to the right, you can see what looks like archery targets near the far right of the picture. In fact, that's exactly what they are; there is, in fact, an archery range right by the fortress walls. We got to use traditional bows and not-so-traditional-looking arrows for a short period of time. Considering 2,000 won (~$2) each got us 10 shots, it's definitely worth it, even if you end up embarrassing yourself when it comes to actually shooting the arrows. A quick tutorial later, and you're already firing away--I only wish I got more arrows, because I would love to learn how to do this in the long run.

The targets in the above picture were 140 meters away from where we took our positions. Obviously, since (I'd venture to guess) none of us had ever handled a bow and arrow before, we shot at much closer targets (about 30 meters away from our spot--see left). That's supposed to be a bear's head we're aiming at. The video game geek in me got excited at the prospect of shooting arrows just like in the Zelda games, although one thing was soon very clear--I'm just as bad of a shot live as I am in the video games. Although my accuracy leaves much to be desired, I hit the target maybe four or five times out of my 10 shots, which I guess isn't so bad for a first-timer (considering every one of us overshot the target at least once). Not to mention the bowstring hit me in the arm a couple of times...that left a mark.

Break the targets! (Or at least hit them.)

Link, if he were real, would've been disappointed with most, if not all, of us--we had to go scoop up our 10 arrows after our quivers were empty, and discovered that a lot of them wound up well past the targets. I actually thought about shooting my last one at the far targets just to see how close I could get to them, but I guess I was too absorbed with trying to hit the close ones to worry about that! There's just something funny about seeing a bunch of arrows sticking out of the ground behind the target, though...

The next few stops after the archery range were a little fuzzy, due to the blazing hot heat interfering with my memory for a little while. I do remember taking a trolley around the fortress and near a huge statue of King Jeongjo (it had to have been at least 30 feet tall, probably more) and walking all the way down to the main palace grounds. This was also around lunchtime, so we stopped at a local restaurant to try the famous Suwon kalbi (수원 갈비). Because the BBQ would've burned holes in our wallets and made us smell like it afterwards, we opted for a much more inexpensive option: kalbitang (갈비탕) and naengmyeon (냉면); short rib stew and cold noodles, respectively. I went for the kalbitang, which was quite good (if a little labor-intensive to eat).

After lunch, we went inside the main palace, Hwaseong Haengung (화성 행궁), which is evidently the site where they filmed the classic Korean drama "Daejanggum" (대장금). The heat was starting to get to us, though; on the bus to the folk village (which was another 15-20 minutes away), most of us were completely knocked out!

Yet somehow, we were ambling through the folk village (read: staggering through in a dehydrated stupor...or maybe that was just me) without much of a problem. My camera battery died (again) about halfway through our visit there, which was another letdown, but by that point I was too tired to do anything about it. Another downer, too, was the fact that all the performances were finished by the time we got there.

I did, however, manage to snap some slice-of-life photos before the battery fizzled out on me...