This is a shot of the folk village we stayed in. It was definitely an experience! Each of those little grass huts is owned by an older Korean woman, and she rents out rooms to people who want to stay in the folk village. It was traditional style bedding again, so there were four women piled into a relatively small room with a pile of blankets to sleep on.
Near the entrance to the folk village was this giant, massive tree. It's definitely the biggest tree I've seen in Korea.
There were random bits and pieces of machinery sitting around. It made me feel right at home!
There were these poles with faces carved into them sitting in various places. They were working on carving these guys. The poles stand about 12 feet tall, and I think they are to represent the spirits of the ancestors as they watch over the village.
There were two parts to the village. One was the poor part and one was the rich part. The poor part had thatched roofs on the huts. The rich part had private gardens with walls and tiled roofs. It was so beautiful!
There were a couple of stores where you could buy various spoons and things. They are all hand carved.
The folk village was basically a walled city. There was a wall that you could walk around and there were North, South, East and West gates. This is the North gate.
After the folk village, we went to the green tea hills. I've seen some other green tea fields in Korea, but these were pretty awesome! The hills were massively huge. Unfortunately, this wasn't a great year for green tea in Korea. It got too cold this winter, so there were sections of tea bushes that just lost their leaves. I'm told they'll grow back, but it definitely hindered some of the photography opportunities.
After we toured the tea hills, we went to another small tea plantation. This other place is quite famous for pioneering a new method of tea preparation. They get gold nanoparticles and mix them in with the water they use to water the tea plants, so the gold gets absorbed into the leaves. It's supposed to have phenomenal health benefits. It also sells for about $1200 per box. It's pretty crazy stuff. The woman and her husband own the plantation, and it's been in their family for 300 years. The guy in the red shirt was our fearless leader and organizer for the trip.
Stacks of gift boxes of $1200 tea.
We got the chance to pick and roast our own tea leaves! It was seriously awesome!! This is the giant cooking device for roasting the tea leaves. We all had to wear special aprons, double layer gloves and arm protectors because we used our hands to roast the leaves. It was definitely hot work! We were too busy trying to keep our leaves (and our hands) from burning to take pictures, so you'll just have to imagine.
After we roasted the leaves, we each took a giant straw mat and placed a white sheet on it. Then we cooled the leaves by tossing them up in the air and started to shape them by rolling them in a clockwise motion. The roasting and cooling process happens 10-12 times and the rolling process happens 6-8 times. It was a lot of work to make tea!
We were divided into teams, so here you can see the fruits of our labors after the first roasting/cooling/rolling round.
I was part of team 2. Isn't it lovely? ;)
We also had a tea ceremony at the plantation. These are green tea flavored rice cakes. I don't normally like rice cakes. I try to avoid them in Seoul. But these were really delicious! And they were pretty too.
We were served two kinds of tea. The darker tea on the left is a fermented green tea and the lighter tea on the right is normal green tea.
We found out part way through the tea ceremony that they were actually giving us the gold infused tea. Each cup costs about $30. They just kept refilling our pots, so we kept drinking. I think I drank 9-10 cups of tea. The whole tour/tea making/tea ceremony only cost $15, so they must be getting a subsidy from the government for promoting tourism or something. The tea was good, but I didn't feel compelled to pay $1200 to bring a box of it home with me.
After all of the tea excitement, we piled back into the bus and headed back to Seoul. It was definitely a fantastic trip! I was completely exhausted by the time we got back, but it was a lovely time with some great people!
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