Foreigner Foodies - Day 4: Ganwon-do-deo!

I feared that on the morning of day 4, after the first night I had spent away with the film crew, there would be some attempt at rushing us into getting up and started with the day. I was relieved to find that we were allowed to wake under our own power, and were gently reminded of breakfast. Breakfast was nice and relaxed, as everyone woke up into the new day.

And what a day it was...

         Our only filming for the morning was a brief scene wherein we said goodbye to our friendly hosts (now outfitted in their own white hoodies), and we took a group picture under Leigh’s direction.

The foodies

Foodies plus crew

         It had been a slow morning, and it continued similarly as we rode the bus for 2 hours to our next destination which, we were informed, would be a famous 감자 (potato) restaurant. We filmed another rear-seat discussion of our destination and opinions, and then got some footage of us looking at the pretty scenery rolling past. That done, we separated along the bus to relax and look at the pretty scenery rolling past.

         It really was beautiful as we wound down sinuous roads bounded by snow-clad hills and tiny villages sprouting therefrom.

         Before the restaurant we stopped over at another of Gangwon-do’s famous tourist attractions – a meeting of two rivers, where locals build a bridge out of fresh pine every year, and a professionally-built metal foot bridge is adorned by an immense grey-steel crescent. The bridge seemed but a hammer away from a communist symbol, or a star away from being an Islamic one.

It's pretty though, right?

It looks one snapped cable away from rolling rightward and scything someone's house in two.

We were filmed making cairns and walking across the bridge (overactingly), but to a large degree the cast and crew alike seemed content to just take in the scenery. There was very little pressure or direction, and the setting was truly beautiful. Something about the quality of the air, I think, leant the whole panorama a very stark quality. This may have been a result of the temperature” One of the crew read the temperature at -15C. Wind chill was also brutal, and removing gloves so as to take pictures proved painful.

My and my cairn. With Nobuko!

Fleeing the ice dragon about to emerge from that portal in the ice.

Did I post a picture of our bus? We had a special bus with out own banner sticky-taped to the side of it!

We were glad to reboard the bus, especially as a number of Korean tour busses pulled in, threatening to swamp the popular site with scores of curious onlookers. It turned out we had been lucky to find it so empty, even with such inhospitable weather.

Time was running on, however, and I was eager to be home. This being Christmas Day, I had hoped to be home at the latest in the early evening so as to Skype home, unwrap presents, and chat with different people around the world. Yet the day rolled on, and that started to become more and more unlikely. Among the foreigners there was a slight undercurrent of tension, a barely perceptible frustration with the slow pace of the filming.

This became especially apparent when we finally arrived at what was originally intended as our luncheon spot, the potato restaurant. It was never explained why we sat in the bus outside the restaurant for so long, although after some time the camera crew did set up and film our final interviews early.

As the day darkened we were finally filming the approach to restaurant, and our reception and greeting.

The woman running the place was superbly friendly and, as if to make up for earlier delays, everything started to pick up the pace. The food was filmed quickly and it wasn’t long before we were sitting down to eat. A genuine piece of humour arose during the meal when we started to jokingly say 감자합니다 instead of 감사합니다.

         The meal itself was, well, very potato heavy. My favourite was definitely the 감자전 (potato pancake), with which I was already pleasantly familiar. Other than that there was a dish that looked and tasted a lot like 떡 (rice cakes), though it was made with potato starch rather than rice, and stuffed with sweet potato (or sugared potato – it was sweet and potato, anyway) rather than red bean or sweetened rice. The third potato dish was best described by Leigh (I think) as being the second dish, only exploded. In their interviews others leapt to defend it as being like mashed potato – I thought it was more like potato salad, but not as tasty as either.

         The producer was far quicker than usual to call a wrap, and the cast was quickly seated around another table having a dinner of their own (with far fewer potato dishes). It wasn’t long before we were saying our goodbyes, looking at our hosts remarkable rock collection, saying goodbye again, grabbing coffee, climbing onto the bus and then heading back to Seoul. We made a brief stop to drop Leigh at a local bus station, as he lived nearby, but finally were on the long, long, four-hour road to Seoul. Before leaving Leigh had revealed that he wouldn’t be joining us for the final two days shooting, on account of heading back to Canada for a delayed Christmas, and the producer revealed that on Tuesday morning we should arrive at the production offices by 3am.

         By the time I got home it was past 10:30, I was physically exhausted, emotionally and physically drained, and still had hours of Christmas Day Skypeing to do before teaching the next day. I was far too tired to recognize it, but I was dreading having to return to the filming in 29 hours.