September 10 until September 18

Good Samaritans

We leave Ho and his forest cabin, grateful for his friendship and hospitality and that of the Hong-family. Peter’s head is nearly twice its normal size thanks to yesterday’s giant wasp’s sting. His head feels dizzy and nauseous, a strange sensation. Ho is even more frightened than we were. ‘This kind of wasp is very dangerous,’ he told us yesterday. ‘If it had stung you in your neck or on the crown of your head, you wouldn’t have been here anymore!’

We say goodbye to our Good Samaritan, and continue the journey to Daejun where Wooki, who invited us to celebrate the three-day Chuseon (Korean Thanksgiving) with his family, resides. The route of course predominantly leads through the seventy percent mountainous area of the country.
These days we do little else than climb, descend to the bottom of valleys, then push the pedals again to conquer the next mountain. On the more level parts farmers tend to apple orchards and half-open ginseng greenhouses. Even in between the village dwellings, on the tiniest pieces of land, people have created vegetable gardens.

Just before Daejun we meet a Korean couple on recumbent bicycles, who lead us into the city via quiet roads and bicycle paths. The man rides an Optima Condo imported from the Netherlands; ‘the only one in the whole of Korea’, he proudly tells. They leave us near the zoo at a “Buy the Way”, one of the grocery chains in Korea, where Wooki is going to pick us up three hours later.

A luxurious, black Opirus sedan drives by, makes a u-turn and passes us a second time. We go into the shop to buy a cold drink and sit down on the shop’s terrace, where the car’s passengers present us two bottles of energy drinks. Paul and Elizabeth, both in their early fifties, invite us to celebrate Chuseon with them. Unbelievable, they don’t even know us!
Imagine: it’s Boxing Day, you go to your local supermarket, see two foreigners wandering about, and you think: jeez, let’s invite these guys to celebrate Christmas with our family.

They are very disappointed to hear we have a prior engagement, give us their business card and insist we visit them after Thanksgiving, which we promise to do.
At five thirty a happy Wooki picks us up.
‘My house is your house!’ this Good Samaritan proudly says. ‘And I didn’t plan any activities for today or tomorrow, so you can do whatever you like!’ This sounds very attractive and we thank him the way he thanked us a hundred times in Tibet, two years ago.

The following morning, at breakfast, Wooki cautiously informs us that his plans have changed somewhat since we last met. In two weeks he will go on a cycling tour, therefore he wants to visit his family for Chuseon by himself now and afterwards will drive to his girlfriend in Seoul. In the end it dawns on us that we are not welcome to stay at his place any longer at all.
We are very disappointed, expected to be able to stay at his place for at least a couple of days, to do our laundry, work on our website and have some rest. On the other hand we start to understand some of the Korean communication, which for us is very difficult to comprehend. Our Dutch directness and openness is unknown in this country of veiled contacts.
Wooki phones the couple we met yesterday. Paul and Elizabeth only need five seconds to decide we are welcome to stay with them. Two hours later they arrive by tandem at the same spot we met yesterday, it seems like we have known each other for years. We are fiercely hugged and welcomed.

Paul and Elizabeth live with their two sons in one of the many luxurious apartment buildings in the centre of town, the ultimate place to live for many Koreans. They are of the Roman Catholic faith, something that can’t be overlooked in their tastefully decorated house filled with statues and pictures of Jesus, Maria and other saints from all over the world. The apartment has four bedrooms, a large open kitchen joining the living room, two bathrooms and an indoor balcony filled with fitness equipment. The bedroom with massage-chair and huge television is ours. Wow, they are the mothers of all Good Samaritans.

They take us to a Korean restaurant for a fantastic meal, then to an ATM to get money. The Standard Chartered ATM immediately swallows our bank card, to never return it. This is the third time this happens in Korea; three weeks ago in Seoul, yesterday at another bank in this town. The ATM’s are very hungry in this country. Paul calls the emergency number and ten minutes later we see how the machine via some grips and secret codes turns 180 degrees. This is the first time we see the inside of an ATM. In contrast with our expectations there isn’t a nimble-fingered Korean inside the machine after all, but just a number of steel drawers, a turning mechanism and a small conveyor belt. Our European bank card apparently drops through a slit in the conveyor belt: it is weighed and found wanting.

Paul and Elizabeth are fascinated by our journey and want to know the tiniest details. Friend Veronica is called and we talk non-stop. When they hear we raise money for the charity organisation War Child their eyes start shimmering. All three of them want to become donor and together we fill out the necessary forms on our website. These Good Samaritans have hearts of pure gold.

After breakfast the next morning they leave to visit Poul’s ancestral home for Chuseon. We stay, completely flabbergasted, behind in the large home we are allowed to consider ours for the two days to come. Is this real, or are we dreaming?

Monday night the family is home again, presenting us with a large ice-cream cake to celebrate the younger son’s, Andrea’s, birthday. Paul made rice-cakes from freshly harvested rice himself; soju and ginseng-wine flow continuously. The atmosphere gets merrier and merrier, until we stumble to our beds, tired and slightly intoxicated.

In the morning we take it easy. Elizabeth keeps roaming through all of her cupboards and drawers, looking for gifts to present to us. After two rosaries, two two-dollar-notes, two t-shirts and a notebook we shout: ‘Stop!!!’
This helps, for a couple of minutes at least.
In the afternoon the four of us stroll through the pretty Gyeryong-San National Park, where hundreds of sportsmanlike-clad hiking-crazy Koreans practise their favourite pastime.

Just before our departure Paul prepares an extended Western breakfast. He and Elizabeth promise to visit us in a few weeks time, wherever in Korea we will be at that moment.
With a three-month-visa for a country 2.3 times the size of the Netherlands we don’t have to hurry. Aranka and Rob, with whom we cycled in Nepal and India, will be proud of us: here we cycle distances in two days we used to do in a single day in most other countries.
We are on our way to another National Park: Deogyusan. The day we leave Daejun we find the most beautiful place to bush camp in Korea ever: one hundred metres off the road, in the middle of the forest on a level stretch of grass. We sleep like roses for eleven straight hours. Are we getting old?

Passing the silliest, most cheerful and less frightening scarecrows ever, in the middle of THE ginseng area of the country, we peddle - listless because of the easy pace – into the village of Muju. Like most places in Korea Muju has a small service office for tourists. A great gesture, although it is a pity most staff members of these offices do not speak a word of English.
But not in Muju though.
Michael Kim, a young and enthusiast guy who likes to travel himself, speaks our second language almost perfectly and is especially helpful with brochures, information and maps of the surrounding area.
We are allowed to use their computer to surf the World Wide Web.
Get cold water to drink.
A cup of coffee.
Where in the world, apart from Korea, can so many Good Samaritans be found?