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.
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| 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.
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| The foodies |
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| 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.
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| It's pretty though, right? |
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| 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.
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| My and my cairn. With Nobuko! |
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| Fleeing the ice dragon about to emerge from that portal in the ice. |
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| 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.
