Back on the road after our educational lunch, Paul and I continued driving south. I need to back up here and explain that there are really two main arteries exiting Seoul. Each crosses a bridge over the Han River and continues into the heart of Korea. When Paul and I started our journey, we used the bridges to navigate which road we needed to be on. Clearly, if you cross a named bridge and continue on your path, you are on the correct highway. My job was to look for the specific highway where we would essentially take a left and head east until we got to the national park and Land of 10,000 Budhas.
We drove and drove and drove. At first we were chatting so much that we hardly noticed the time. However, three hours passed, and we still hadn't passed the correct highway. I became nervous that we had missed it, and I consulted my map. I needed to orient myself. Most of the signs we passed were printed in Hangul, which I could not read. Occasionally, we passed a sign with romanized letters for major cities, but I could not find any of the same cities on the map. At about 4 hours, we passed a sign for Daejon. I found 'Taejon' on my map. "I think these cities are spelled wrong on my map," I said to Paul. He looked at me like I was crazy. Why on earth would that be? We passed a few more signs. "I'm pretty sure I'm right. My map says 'Taejon', but I'm sure we're in 'Daejon'." He didn't believe me until we passed a sign for a World Cup stadium, which was on my map.
How could this be? By now we had been driving about four hours, and were clearly at least two hours or more past the point we should have switched highways and headed east. How could I have missed that? So now that I was oriented, I started looking for highway numbers. None of them were on my map. What?! We were passing signs for highways, but on our map the numbers for the highways were completely different. Not even close!
To be fair to me, the navigator, the map that the Army was issuing to Soldiers was out of date. Like a couple of YEARS out of date. Korea hosted the World Cup soccer tournament in 2002. Prior to that, they renamed all of the major highways, giving them different highway numbers. Also, at some point, I'm not sure if it was prior to the Olympics or World Cup, they changed the romanized letters that were used for the sounds in the Korean language. So 'P' became 'B', 'K' became 'G', 'T' became 'D', etc. Check out literature from 20 years ago and contrast it with literature now, and you'll see what I mean. This is not that hard to figure out if you know what happened, but if you are taking your first roadtrip after only being in the country for a month and your only lifelines for navigation are highway numbers and occasional romanized names for major cities on the highway signs, it can be pretty confusing.
But of course, all this we learned later, when returned to work and consulted with our Korean friends on Monday. At this point, we were still thoroughly lost, well-beyond our anticipated turning point, and far too late into the day to take a four-hour detour to our original destination.
But we had started our day prepared for a hike, and no out-of-date map was going to stop us! So we took the next exit and I started looking up for the most natural (to me) point toward which to hike. Paul wasn't sure this idea would work, but I had already figured out that outdoor spaces are treasured in Korea, and where I found a green hill, I was likely to find a trail. It wasn't long before I spotted a hill that looked like it wanted to be hiked. I could see a structure on the top, so I thought that made it more likely that we would find a trail. We navigated our way through the town until we got pretty close to the hill, and parked along a side street.
I had no sonner opened the car door, when an old monk rushed up to me, chattering in Korean and took my hand and started pulling me up the sidewalk. The only English words I heard were, "My home" a few times. As Paul got out of the car, I saw him become alarmed. Our conversation, which took place while the monk was still talking to me and pulling on my arm, went something like this:
Me: Come on, let's see where he's taking us.
Paul: Are you crazy? Who is this guy?
Me: I don't know, but I can tell he wants to show us something.
Paul: We can't go somewhere with a stranger! And what if we can't get back to the car?
Me: I'm pretty sure he's a monk. I'm sure he's fine, and we won't get lost.
Later Paul told me he followed me out of fear that if he didn't, he'd never see me again, and it was probably safer to stick together.
It turned out that the monk wanted to show us his home. Isn't that amazing in itself? Would you ever pull a stranger out of their car to take them to your home to show it off'?
But first, we needed a translator. When we got to his house, he gestured for us to wait outside. At this point, Paul is ready to leave, and I'm saying, "Look around; this is incredible!" After a moment, the monk returned with a younger woman. She was his daughter. He had woken her up to come talk to us. He was SO proud of her, and just kept grinning. The poor woman was just a little older than us, and was married to a member of the US Navy, who was stationed in Okinawa. She was visiting for a couple of weeks, and had just arrived at Inchon Airport (outside of Seoul) after a red-eye flight and had driven the four hours to get home. She spoke excellent English and confirmed that her dad was a monk and he wanted to show us his hermitage. She was very friendly and gracious, given the fact that she had just been woken up to greet and entertain strangers. It was a lot like a kid bringing home two stray dogs.
The hermitage. The shrine up the steps was used as the setting of a popular Korean movie.
After viewing the shrine, we set off on our hike, but not before the monk insisted we take his umbrella because it looked like it was going to rain.
We still don't know where we were, but our destination is on the hill in the background.
We made it! We obviously were not the only people at this spot, but we were probably the only ones who were there in search of the Land of 10,000 Budhas.
We hiked for about an hour before reaching an outdoor exercise area. I find these a fascinating cultural phenomena. Sometimes you can hike for a couple of hours before suddenly emerging at one of these things. That's Paul bench pressing, but truly many people use the equipment in these fitness areas.
On the way down the mountain we passed another temple and wondered if the Land of 10,000 Budhas would become our Holy Grail.
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