Buddha's Birthday in Jeongdongjin

Perhaps the best weekend of the spring for any expat teaching English in South Korea is the weekend of Buddha's Birthday. This year the holiday fell a few weeks after Children's day, so it was only a 3 day weekend in comparison to last year's 4 (or 5 or 6 days depending upon your school's preference) days. Fear not, my loyal readers. We had plenty of traveling action to fill the three days and had a great time exploring a new part of Korea that we both had no idea was actually there. Let me take you back in time a couple of months.

Sitting in the living room of our little villa, we were warm and cozy, and the thought that soon warm weather would come was really all that was was keeping us comfortable at the tail end of our first Korean winter. Both of us looked up from our bowl of soup and said in perfect unison and harmony "I want to go to the beach." Okay, that might be a bit embellished, but we wanted to go to a beach, and we knew that our best opportunity would be Buddha's Birthday. Realizing that we only had 3 days, we checked flight prices to places like Singapore, Taiwan, and Hong Kong to see if there was any chance of getting out of the country. Sadly all of the flights would have been quite difficult to catch from our hovel in Daegu, so we decided to stay in the country and head to a beach. For a while we looked at the little town of Mokpo at the far southwestern tip of the Korean peninsula, but ultimately we decided to go to Gyeongpo beach, far north in Gangwan-do, to spend a few days laying on a beautiful white-sand beach with theoretically blue water.

A small bit of research and asking around led us to the conclusion that what we should do is take a train (overnight) Friday night to Gangneung, and spend the weekend sprawled out on the beach. Easy enough. We booked the train tickets and a hotel room in Gangneung on Agoda.com, and thought nothing of it. Fast forward to May 25th.

Friday night we got off work, went for a run, and then had dinner at Bae Yun Bak (aka Happy Cow) behind our house. They have daeji kalbi now (pork!), so we enjoyed a fun Korean bbq dinner, packed our things, and headed to the train station to catch our 11:56pm train to Gangneung. We packed a couple of beers, and after having one of them passed out for an uncomfortable night's sleep on the train. When we woke up the next morning we were high up in the mountains, the sun was a red orb floating in the mist between the mountains, and the mountains had grown from the tiny little mountains around Daegu into towering, beautiful, oddly shaped behemoths that looked like the landscape from Kung Fu Panda. A couple of hours later, we disembarked in Gangneung, and realized something...our hotel's address had the word "Jeongdongjin" in it. The last train station before Gangneung was Jeongdongjin. Should we have gotten off there? Why did everyone else get off there? Hmmm.

So we waited around for the bus and found our way to Gyeongpo beach. It was beautiful, but we were really too tired to care. I stripped down to my board shorts, slapped on some sunscreen, and sacked out on the beach for a couple of hours. Carolyn did too.

Korean people in hiking outfits on a rock about 50m offshore.

Korean fishing boat about 5m offshore.

Korean tourist speed boat thrill ride.

I don't think that it's ever really advisable to make sweeping broad generalizations about a group of people, but Korean cultures roots do lead to an environment of conformity that I think makes it easier to make general observations about Korea and it's people. Thus I present to you with two lists of observations below.

Charlie's list of things he thinks Korean people like to do at the beach:

1. Ride things with loud engines. On this trip I saw people lining up to ride in loud little speed boats, rent ATV's, and of course the scooters are ubiquitous.
2. Shoot fireworks. This was one of the coolest things I've seen in Korea. Families would go buy a wad of fireworks, then go to the beach. You would see the mother stand back with a camera, and the father "pass the torch" (quite literally) to the child. One could certainly imagine the same thing happening 20 or 30 years ago with the father and his parents.
3. Wear lots of layers of clothing. It wasn't cool at all, in fact it was quite warm for the first two days of our trip. While the foreigners were wearing swimwear on the beach, the Koreans were wearing the finest and heaviest looking North Face/Black Yak/K2 hiking gear. The women had every inch of skin covered, and the men did as well. It's not news to us at all that the Koreans don't want their skin to darken, but it seems like there IS enough sunscreen in the world to prevent significant tanning action. Different strokes!
4. Wrestle. Typically men hang out with groups of men here, and women hang out with groups of women. It was fun watching grown men turn into little middle-school boys on the beach a bit. They got into some good wrestling and usually the wrestling match made its way to the water's edge where one of the participants would "finish him" with a plunge into the Sea of Japan.
5. Eat seafood. Every restaurant in the area seemed to serve the exact same thing. Hue. Basically sashimi, but the types of fish they use aren't as tasty.

Charlie's list of things he thinks Korean people DON'T like to do at the beach:

1. Generally get wet. The only Koreans I saw getting in the water for the most part were those being unwillingly dunked, or little kids fascinated with the mud.
2. Get tanned. See #3 above.
3. Swim. I think swimming just might not be a thing here. Everyone at home swims, or at least it seems that way, but Korea is so recently developed that I think swimming might still be associated with some scary things, like encephalitis.

As you can see, the "like to do" list is longer than the "don't like to do" list. I think the Koreans are generally a pretty congenial crowd, and at the beach it's all fun all the time.

Now, back to the story of our trip. We couldn't check into our hotel (which we knew was a train stop back, but it seemed like it might be close because the train was only about 10 minutes between those two stops) until 2pm. At 1pm we decided to preempt any potential problems and get to the hotel right away at check in time. We hailed a cab, showed him the address, and were horrified when he gave us a really confused look. Another driver came over who spoke a little English, they called the hotel, we piled in the cab, and drove. And drove...and drove...and drove some more. Most cab rides in Korea are pretty cheap. This one was about $30 and 30 minutes. But it got us there.

Our hotel wasn't at all on the beach as Agoda.com implied, but it was on top of a hill overlooking the sea. NOT BAD! The room was really clean for a "love motel" and we were situated next to one of the most ridiculous resorts you could imagine, a cruise ship on top of a mountain.

The view didn't exactly suck.

Ridiculous cruise ship resort.

We were both pretty tired by this point, but we wanted some more beach time, so we hiked down the mountain for about 15 minutes and found ourselves on the beach. The good news is that this beach was much prettier than Gyeongpo beach, there were way fewer people, and no motorized traffic aside from the occasional train going by. It was really, really nice. We walked around a bit and looked at the local stuff, like old ladies picking seaweed, seaweed drying on racks, and the beautiful blue Sea of Japan.

Seaweed getting its dry on.

Beautiful, uncrowded beach.

We even learned that the east coast in Gangwan-do is called Korea's "Romantic Road of Gangwan-do." You can learn so many useful things from tourist information signs! This is just one of them. As soon as we learned that we were on Korea's romantic road, we felt love in the air. The sky turned shades of pink, hearts started floating out of the flowers, and unicorns flew over in formation, dropping beautiful poops of Skittles and farting out rainbows.

Anyhow, we were tired. An overnight train ride isn't really any way to get a good night's rest, so we hiked back up the damn mountain, laid down, and crashed early. We woke up to see the sunset, but we saw a cruise-ship shaped hotel instead, and went back to sleep. When we finally got out of bed at about 9:15am it felt like we had probably slept until noon. 

What do you in Jeongdongjin? Well, in my experience, you slather on some sunscreen and go down to the beach. That's exactly what we did. We were happy to see other foreigners laying out in the sun and enjoying the weather, so we set up about 50 yards away from them and sunk in to enjoy the sun. But first something really important needed to be done. We needed to take cute pictures. 

Remember these commercials?

Well, noting that we haven't been so great about taking super cute pictures together in cool places, we decided to do our own version of this. So I present you with pictures of us and our beverages in front of the ocean.

Me: Iced Vanilla Latte, Her: Hot Americano (just like her fiance. har.)

Sharing a Kirin Ichiban. So cold. So good.

I also quite enjoyed a tuna kimbap roll seaside. Carolyn doesn't like kimbap so much because she doesn't really care for the taste of the kim (nori to all of you Americans who didn't know kimbap existed). I've got about a million things to say about kimbap but I'm going to save those for another post.

Tuna Kimbap: Sortof like maki-zushi, more like futomaki, yet altogether different.

Anyhow, this continued for quite some time. Share a beer, read, flip, sizzle. Share a beer, read, flip, sizzle. Snack on something. Repeat. Until a cold breeze blew in. Out of nowhere a cool breeze blew in and we both grabbed our shirts and shorts as fast as possible. We decided that it reminded us of our time in Florida and we recognized that there could be a storm coming. So we loaded up, hiked back up the mountain to the hotel, put some chairs and a table out on the balcony, pulled out a card game and another beer and some snacks, and watched a thunderstorm develop out to sea. We only got a few sprinkles, but between the two of us we carry around about $2,000 worth of camera, so it was a good idea to head up the hill anyway.

Our next adventure was to go over and see what this cruise ship resort was all about. We walked up the hill a bit to see if there was any way to cross over, and lo and behold, there was! So we walked into the parking lot of the Sun Cruise Resort (썬크루즈리조트 if you'd like to make a reservation) and headed up to what looked like the ticketing area of a Six Flags park. We realized that we could take an unguided tour of the resort for 5,000won each, and decided that hell yes, this is something worth seeing.

I remember laying in the house before going to work at Border's Books and Music in early 2001 watching some Travel Channel crapfest about Asian megaresorts and thinking, I should see one of those one day. After this, I feel quite okay about crossing that goal off my unofficial mental bucket list, because this resort was most certainly a) over the top in ridiculousness, b) pretty posh, for Korea, and c) in Asia. Check.

Anyhow, here's some pictures from our visit to the Sun Cruise Resort:

Feel the ridiculousness

Great view from the observation deck

These hands appear about to grope the bosom of the sea, or something.

You can't very well hate on this view.

Right next to this ridiculous resort is something that seems a little eerie though. When you live in South Korea, it's quite easy to forget that you live just on the other side of a 3km fortress-wall known as the DMZ. Gangwan-do is the province farthest north, and the very beach we laid on was the scene of a foiled North Korean espionage attempt only about 15 years ago. There are very real guard posts along the coastline, armed with very real machine guns, and manned by very real soldiers. While it's somewhat a reminder that South Korea lives on the edge, it's hard to be at all afraid of any potential conflagration when day to day life just continues no matter what. The North threatens a nuclear test, and we still all go to work the next morning.

Guard post. Eek.

After our visit to the Sun Cruise Resort we were both pretty hungry, and we had brought a couple buckets of ramen up the hill with us. Wouldn't you just know I used my ramen chopsticks for my kimbap earlier in the morning? What's a guy to do? Luckily the hotel had given us some vig for booking the room that made having an afternoon snack quite possible.

I MacGyver'd the shit out of this bucket of ramyeon.

So we headed back down to the beach, this time dressed in jeans and t-shirts because it got a bit cooler at night. We sat down on the edge of a flower box and people watched for a few hours. Night time is when the real action begins on a beach in Korea, and Korean families bring out the roman candles, rockets, and mortar shell fireworks to light up the night.

After taking a quick stroll over to the train station to get some non-seafood we headed back up to the hotel and played a few rounds of Clue: The Card Game, and crashed in bed pretty quickly after that. 

When we awoke the next morning it was almost a completely different beach! The temperature had dropped into the low 60's and high 50's, the sky was overcast, and the winds had picked up, kicking the surf up quite a bit. There would be no speed boat thrill rides today. If we were in the US we would have seen all manner of surfers riding the waves, but it's most certainly not the US. We started the morning with a coffee, and spent a few hours sitting on the beach reading in a great little swing. It was fun to watch the Koreans cut loose a bit. The sun wasn't out, so they were all wearing shorts and had abandoned the space-suit like cover they tend to wear on sunny days.

I left Carolyn on the bench for a bit to go over to the train station and change our tickets from Gangeung-Dongdaegu to Jeongdongjin-Dongdaegu. The ticket booth was pretty busy, and said it would cost more than it's worth for me to make the official change, just show up at the station at 4:01pm.

We hung out some more on the beach until it was too cold, and we found another coffee shop where we enjoyed a coffee and a toast. Toast at home is just plain toast, right? In Daegu "toast" means an egg and bacon sandwich on toasted bread. I was hoping for the latter. Instead I got what looked like 1/4 loaf of bread, unsliced, toasted and served with strawberry jam. Whatever. I ate it. 

As it got closer to 4:01pm we made our way back to the train station, had a sausage and a fried chicken on a stick to give our stomachs something to work with on the way home, and finally got on our train. The scenery was pretty nice on the way back, and I tried to snap a few pictures. I feel like the train takes you 7 hours north and about 50 years back in time. Korea is a beautiful country with gorgeous green mountains, huge temples, and tons of smaller towns. It's really easy to forget about that in your daily life in one of the bigger cities.

Kung Fu Panda temple in front of Kung Fu Panda mountains.

Farm house in coal country

I think a coal mine.

8 hours later we found ourselves back in Daegu, and about an hour after that we fell exhausted into our bed. This was a big trip for a weekend, even a 3 day weekend. I'm certainly happy that we've gotten to reconnect with the idea of adventure inside of Korea, as it's easy to forget that the different regions of the country really do have some notable differences. I for one had no idea how different the mountains would look so far north. While we dream daily of all of the adventures we're going to have all over Asia on our longer vacation periods, it's nice to remember that there's a lot of adventure left to have in Korea too! Our trip to Jeongdongjin was beautiful, and I certainly took more pictures than I could share in a blog post. If you'd like to see more, visit my flickr page.

A visitor from home!

The past week and a half was great in every way. On Friday, the last day of September, I took a vacation day and woke up early to go over to the Daegu International Airport to pick up my Mom! The airport isn't hard to get to, but it's a bit of a haul at about a 10 minute walk to the subway station, 40 minute or so ride over to Ayyangyo station, then about a 10 minute cab ride to the airport from there. I picked mom up and shuttled her home, and our visit began (on a very tired note for her...it's a 24 hour trip to get here, long haul no doubt.)

We had an easy dinner at Bae Yun Bak, the "happy cow" next door for a welcome to Korea meal of galbi, then crashed pretty early. The next morning we woke up and headed to Costco so we could get a floor mattress and our month's supply of chicken breasts. We turned around and went downtown for Jjimdak, which was well received.

Mom in the melee of Myeong-dong

The next morning we woke up early and caught the 8am KTX to Seoul. We shopped in Myeong-dong and Hongdae, stayed at the Savoy hotel overnight, and then visited Gyeongbokgung Palace and Insadong before taking the an evening train home.

Me and Mom in front of Gyeongbokgung

I lucked out and had half-days at work on Tuesday and Wednesday because of midterm exams, so I got a bit of extra hangout time with mom. Thursday and Friday were full days and we stayed home for dinner. We ordered a pizza and I made curry rice.

Saturday we headed out to Palgongsan, because Mom wanted to see some temples, and hell, we could use the exercise anyway. It was a PERFECTLY beautiful day with gorgeous clear blue skies and a temperature that was not too hot, too cold, but just right.

Sunday was Mom's last day in town, and it included a lot of hanging out, talking, television, and last minute shopping for gifts "from Korea" for the nieces, nephews, sisters, aunties, and the family in general. It was a great visit with Mom, and a great reminder of all of the good things we have waiting for us to come back home when we finally make the move back.

I wish I had more words for this particular post, but I keep getting caught up on "great, awesome, wonderful, fantastic" and other superlatives that describe how happy I was just to have a few days with my mom in this land far from home...so bear with the bad writing, and the next post will be better.

Back to Busan

I haven't been to Busan since we finished our orientation week in February. Carolyn has been back once or twice to visit Brittany, our friend from orientation, but otherwise we've not managed to get south on a weekend. We ended that streak of bad luck this weekend! Brittany invited us down to go to a baseball game (a wild experience that one must add to the list while living in Korea), and to a drink mixing contest at a GS 25 convenience store near Pukyong National University. More on that later.

Fountain Park at Busan Station

Carolyn at the jjajamyang restaurant

Mandu

Saturday morning we slept until about 9:30am and headed to Daegu Station to catch the Mugungwha train to Busan. This is the slowest, cheapest train, but it only takes about an hour and a half to get to Busan, for 7,000W. That's cheaper than a bus ride to Mt. Palgongsan, well, nearly cheaper. The ride was easy and smooth, and we arrived at Busan Station right at lunch time. Brittany took us out for jjajamyang (noodles with black bean sauce) and steamed mandu (pork dumplings). The dumplings were good, but the homemade noodles were my favorite part. After the large large meal we headed to a street vendor for what amounted to  a freshly fried patty of funnel cake batter (well, not really but it's the best explanation I can come up with) filled with sugar, sunflower seeds, and nuts. It was the best thing I've eaten in at least a week.

Lotte Giants at the bat

Doosan Bears Fans

Cool street view from the stadium

After lunch it was time to head to the stadium to see the Lotte Giants battle the Doosan Bears. Baseball teams in Korea are owned by the big, big companies, and the crowds don't cheer for the "Giants" or the "Bears" but rather for Lotte, Doosan, Samsung, Kia, or whatever company owns the team. It's something that wouldn't fly with the public at home, but when the same few companies make EVERY product you use, including the home you live in, it might be a bit different, no? The crowd was a spectacle worth the low price of admission. Every cheer was coordinated and in perfect synchronization. The intensity, ferocity, and synchronicity of the cheers was something I haven't witnessed before. The teams didn't seemed very well matched, as Lotte was up 8-2 by the end of the fifth inning when we left to attend to the important business of a GS 25 drink making contest.

GS 25 is a convenience store that sells pretty much what any convenience store you're accustomed to would sell: drinks like coke, beer, hard liquor, soju, wine, seju, plum wine, champagne, milkis, coffee, and capri suns; and snack foods like fried chicken, roasted squid, and those lovely Crunky candy bars. Since I knew this was going to be a contest I decided to keep it simple and make a variation on a Cuba Libre, simply using whatever limeade was available instead of lime juice and subbing soju for the rum. It was a hit, and we unofficially won the contest. Sadly the rest of the evening is somewhat of a blur of dancing, darts, beer, and making fun of interesting fashion choices.

We headed back to Daegu today after a relaxed day of sleeping, eating, and generally being lazy (that's what I did, you can check out Carolyn's blog for the details on her day when she posts them) and now we're laying in bed. Carolyn's asleep and I'm blogging. It's a tough life we live here, but someone's got to do it.

2011 Boryeong Mudfest - Just go with it.

I knew that any chance of keeping my dignity was gone as soon as a twenty something giggling Korean dude turned around from a tub of mud and smeared me with Boryeong's magical healing mud. Then he giggled some more. He turned back to the vat of mud, grabbed another handful, and smeared my face for good measure. I laughed too. The Boryeong Mudfest had begun in earnest.

I guess to explain what the mudfest is about I must talk about the mud. You know those mud-masks that are good for your skin? Boryeong produces one. It's famous...at least in Korea, and is good for your body condition. In short, Boryeong produces some cosmetic mud and hosts a festival every year to promote their product. Strangely this festival over the past 14 years has turned into more of a gathering of foreigners than a Korean event, but it happens in Korea, and plenty of Koreans do participate in the mud slinging (friendly, of course). Here's the story of our trip to the mudfest.

Babehoney knew that she wanted to go to this festival since before we even sent our applications in to our recruiter to come work in Korea. It seems that every foreigner who spends time in Korea must attend the mudfest during their first year as a rite of passage. Babehoney looked up some different ways to get to Boryeong for the festival and decided that a good bet for our money was to go with Adventure Korea. We used Adventure Korea for our rafting trip on the Hantan River, so we're familiar with them and like the quality of their product and service. I think we paid something like 85,000wons each for the trip, which included basically transportation, morning activities on Saturday, and our accomodations. Not bad.

Saturday morning we woke up early at about 6:00am to get ready and head to Banwoldang Station (about a 30 minute subway ride) downtown to catch our bus to Boryeong. The trip was easy, and we started our 3.5 hour bus ride with comfort. We made a stop at a service station (Korean roadside rest stops are amazing, by the way) about halfway through the trip.  We didn't go straight to Boryeong city, but first to the Boryeong mudflats where the cosmetic mud is harvested. 20,000 Republic of Korea Marines also do training at the mudflats annually. There were several activities here.

First we changed into "military" garb, or as I'd call it, a tiny long sleeved t-shirt and a pair of BDU pants with a broken zipper. After changing we slipped on socks (to protect against any bits of shell, etc) and stomped into the mud. We played soccer in the mud (which was hilarious. The Americans are definitely not as into it as the Brits/Irish/Saffas/etc.) which was where I got my first taste of it when I tripped over another player. Literally. My first taste of the mud. It wasn't too bad. We also did "marine training" which was about 5 pushups, some leglifts, a mud fight, and then watched some people mud wrestle for a bit before we decided to shower off. They had open air showers with coooooooooooold cold water. It was actually quite invigorating. We loaded back up on the bus and rode into Boryeong City.

Boryeong City is small, and reminds me a bit of Panama City Beach, Florida, but with no tall hotels. Our hotel was nice and clean and had a padded floor, but no beds. That's pretty common here. We got situated, changed into mud-clothes, and headed out to the beach. Honestly, for a small town in Korea the beachfront was really a happening place. The beach itself is beautiful with views of the East China Sea and small offshore islands. It's not at all what I would expect a beach to look like in Korea, but then again, what in Korea turns out as you might expect it to anyway?

We ran into a couple of friends as we worked our way North on the beach towards the festival, and had no trouble finding the center of the action. The mud park was in full swing with giant inflatables (covered with mud) crawling with tons of people (also covered with mud). The admission fee was 5,000W and despite our best efforts we never even made it through the gate. After getting a mud rub-down we were distracted by some noise on the main stage, so we had a look.

There was a dance contest, limbo contest, and several foreign men who thought that gyrating in their tiny bathing suits was hilarious. Alcohol just has its way with some people, I guess. The prize for the official events was a trip to Jeju-do, which is a much nicer prize than a lot of the participants might have realized.

While we were watching the activities on stage Carolyn complimented this man on his fashionable sweat sleeve that looked like a tattoo. He told us he was the owner of the stage we were watching and asked us a few questions about how we heard about the festival and how we got to the festival, where we were staying, etc. We took photos together (that's like shaking hands) before he suggested we join the crowd and get sprayed down by his giant fan-truck, Optimus Prime. He also said that Transformers 3 was a wonderful movie, for good measure.

Optimus Prime cracked me up. Not because it was a fan spraying mist and water on people, but because the people, 80% or so who didn't speak Korean, instinctively knew to go stand in front of it, raise their arms in the air, and start screaming. Say what you will about mudfest being a load of debauchery, but any time you get a group of people together and say you're going to spray them with water (or mud), they're likely to turn into a group of kids. We would have joined the melee, but...well...we had to pee. So we headed back to the hotel room...and took a nap.

We woke up a little after 6:00pm, took a quick, cold, shower and headed back towards the festivities. We even wore nicer-ish clothes and decided not to get muddy again. Some friends of ours who live in Busan also came up for the festival, and after a few phone calls we were all in place. We met some real nice guys from the U.S. Air Force and had a relaxed time while the sun set over the East China Sea. We had a bite to eat, gave our friends a chance to clean up, and headed back out to watch some famous K-pop Girl-band do their thing before a big fireworks show.

The fireworks show was honestly unbelievable. I have no idea how they packed so much ordinance onto one little tugboat. Some of the explosions lit up the sky for what seemed like minutes, and made shapes that hung in the air like something out of a Harry Potter movie. I know that fireworks and whatnot were invented in this part of the world, but damn, you would have thought we would have caught up by now. They put on what was probably the best fireworks show I've ever seen.

After the fireworks we looked around for a place to get some booze and do some dancing. A few clubs had signs on the door that said "Koreans Only," which honestly, is fine. Sometimes they can seem a bit xenophobic, but I think that if the business owners would want to pass on the money they could have made on the foreign crowd to keep their club less rowdy it's their choice. The foreign crowd was pretty boozed up by this point and quite rambunctious. We found a street party right outside of our hotel and joined in, and had beers, conversation, and bad dancing until about three o'clock in the morning.

Carolyn and I both felt a bit rough this morning, so we slept in, loaded our bags on the bus, and got a slow start on the day. We started out with a huge bottle of water and a walk up the beach. We found a cafe called Orange, and so had every other foreigner in town for the festival. A little over an hour's wait after we ordered, I had a waffle with mixed fruits, and Babehoney had toast and eggs. We met up with our friends one more time to say hi, but they had to head back to Busan a little earlier than our departure. The majority of the day today was just some ultra-relaxed beach combing and general recovery from last night. We found a place to order a pizza, sat down, relaxed, and got back on the bus to Daegu at about 4pm.

The bus pulled into Banwoldang Station at about 8pm, we headed home with a quick stop at BBQ Chicken (the Daegok-dong BBQ Chicken has the best fried chicken in the frickin' world!), got home, showered up, and Carolyn promptly passed out. She's snoring next to me right now while I finish this post up. The Boryeong Mudfest made for one hell of a weekend, and I'd recommend that everyone who comes to teach English in Korea attend it once.

Travel Buzzkill

So, what could be the ultimate buzzkill in living abroad? Could it be serious illness (well, probably), surgery (I'm sure that'd be a buzzkill), unexpected bad news from home (yeah, that would be bad too), craving a cheap breakfast taco from the Taco Cabana and knowing there's no way you could fulfill that craving without at least a 24 hour flight (that's pretty bad)? No. The ultimate travel buzzkill (aside from the previous ones actually happening) is waking up one day when you're trying to be cheap on cash and realizing that your new foreign environment feels domestic.

Right now Daegu feels oddly a bit like Fort Lauderdale, except the mountains are much prettier than the ones in Fort Lauderdale (because those are landfills.) There's no good reason for this other than we're going on a big trip in a few weeks and don't want to spend the money required to go out and eat new things and see sites and such. I also think that learning to read Hangeul, while greatly helpful during our time here (especially with menus and such) kinda ruins the foreign mystique of all of the signage. There's nothing quite exotic as realizing that the sign for "Eyemart" is just "Eyemart" spelled out in Korean phonetics, right?

I've been feeling the urge to get out of Korea since we started looking at Bali. Don't get me wrong, I like Korea, a lot. It's a pretty nice place to live. It just didn't feel shiny and new anymore. So I think the problem is that we need to do some new things to remind us that this place is really not that much like home. I think we're on a pretty good start to this mission next week with the Boryeong Mud Festival. Normally there's no way in hell you could get me to slather myself in mud for fun, but I really want to do something different right now, and you know what...that's different. Sure it's going to be a bunch of westerners getting drunk and mudding without a pick up truck, but we don't do that at home either. Throw in the fact that it happens on the East China Sea and suddenly it's very exotic.

The next weekend we're headed down to Busan for a weekend. It'll be fun, since it's the 2nd largest city in Korea and it's situated right on the Sea of Japan. Once again, throw in a foreign body of water and all of the sudden the plan becomes exotic. This will be fun for lots of reasons. One of those reasons is that our friend BritBrit lives in Busan and we'll get to try her favorite eateries. The 2nd reason is that we can pre-tan a bit (also in Boryeong) for Bali. I'm particularly excited to just get the hell out of Daegu for a bit.

This is a really small country, and it would be so easy to see a whole hell of a lot of it by the time we head home. There's giant penis statues somewhere on the east coast up north and there's all sorts of great temples and stuff to see. Have I even mentioned the incredible singing highway in Anyang? Haven't been there yet either. There's plenty left to see in Korea that I'll probably never have the chance to see again once we've left here, we just need to get out and see it.

Now, to prove that we're not slouches, here's a list of cool stuff we've seen and done.

• 1 week in Busan at Pukyong National University
• Climbed most of the way to Gatbawi on Mt. Palgongsan
• Been to Dongwhasa Temple on Mt. Palgongsan
• Climbed Mt. Apsan
• Jinhae Cherry Blossom Festival
• Taekwondo World Championships in Gyeongju
• Toured Seoul
• Rafted the Hantan River
• Joined a Taekwondo school (we're orange belts now. Yeah, we're dangerous.)
• Watched local talent at the Dongseongno Festival

Yeah. We're not slouches. We just need to re foreignify Korea. Maybe after we get back from Bali :).

Thinking About Visiting Me?

Yay! If you're reading this you're probably thinking about visiting me. Here are the pertinent details.

The airport code for Seoul is ICN. I think your cheapest flights will land here. After you land at the airport you need to find the Seoul Airport Railway. It's the dark blue line on the Seoul Subway map. You're actually landing in Incheon, so it should be easy to find at the airport. The subway cars are big with room for baggage and racks on this line, so you don't have to worry about fighting for space (too much. It is Korea though so be ready to give up your personal space.)

Get off of this line at Seoul Station. Take the escalators up to the Korail station. I would allow about 2.5 hours to get from the airport to Seoul Station. This should leave time for bathroom breaks and picking up something tasty and familiar to eat in the station before you get on the train.

You can buy your KTX (bullet train) tickets online before you come. (There is a small English button in the upper right corner. You want the KTX from Seoul to Dongdaegu. If KTX isn't available for that day you can take the Saemaul train, but it's quite a bit longer at 3.5 hours or so.) Buy them in advance to ensure that you have a seat. It should cost no more than 45,000 won for a standard fare. I think for a bit more you can get a nicer seat, but it's only an hour and 45 minutes to get to Daegu. Try to get the seats in the middle of the car that face each other too. You can buy the tickets and make sure to have a seat 3-4 days in advance easily. Sometimes there's festivals and stuff that make it harder to find a train though, so earlier is better ;).

You'll have to check in at the ticket counter with your passport to pick up your tickets. Have your printout and the passport of whoever made the reservation handy. At Seoul Station they will most likely know enough English to help you. If not here is the useful phrase written in horrible romanization to help you out.

"Say-gay saram dongdaegu gada" - "three people going dongdaegu"

If you missed your train because of a delay don't worry, changing reservations is only about 800 wons each. That's less than 80 cents.

Now, grab your snacks and get on the train. The KTX is super cool. You'll get to see the southern part of Seoul and Gyeonggi-do, the province that is basically Seoul Metro. It's HUGE. You'll cross the Han river on your way out of Seoul, go into a tunnel, and when you come out the landscape will be whizzing by at 300km/hour. You will make stops in Daejeon and Gumi, I think. Stay on the train. No one will ask to see your tickets as long as you're in your assigned seat.

They will make an announcement that you are approaching Dongdaegu. Get your stuff and head for the doors. You won't know which door will open until you've arrived and it actually opens. Go up the stairs to find yourself in the lobby of Dongdaegu Station. Look for the tallest guy in the area. It's probably me.

From here we'll probably need to take the subway or two cabs to get you and your bags to our place. If you need to stay at the Novotel or some other hotel in Downtown Daegu we can get you there from the station pretty easily. We'll also make sure and have subway cards for you when you get here and give you our phone numbers so you can call us if you get lost. :)

Now that you're here, we'll take you for dinner somewhere nice. You'll probably want a restaurant with chairs since you've been flying for 24 hours, but we can find places with floor seats if you want the authentic experience.

30 Days to Go

Ah. Final exams. The joyful time of year where I don't really have to work, but rather just sit at my desk while the kids do the hard work and I play around on the internet. This is good and nerve-wracking.

The good:

• I have plenty of time to come up with an awesome idea for my 3 day Summer Camp in 2 weeks.
• I won't have a headache at the end of the day.
• I get to eat whatever I want for lunch, because the cafeteria is closed.
• There's plenty of current events to become an expert on what with the U.S.'s potential to cause economic calamity by not raising the national debt ceiling.
• Sometimes friends and family pop onto facebook and it's good to chat a bit.
• It's fun to read about our chosen vacation destination online. Travel blogs are always fun and interesting to read.

The nerve-wracking:

• I'm having trouble coming up with awesome ideas for my 3 day Summer Camp in 2 weeks. Eek!
• The current events I tend to read about make me angry...or at least agitated.
• Sometimes friends and family DON'T pop onto facebook and chat for a bit.
• Reading about vacation destinations online makes me want to go on vacation NOW NOW NOW. But there's still 30 days (exactly 30 days) until we get to go.

All in all though, these are perfect days at work. You see, I like my job. In fact, I like my job quite a lot. This could be confusing to explain. The job I have right now is great, but I don't really enjoy working. I'd rather read about travel, travel, play video games, read about the U.S. national deficit, ANYTHING, other than work. So, sitting at a desk for a few hours without doing any actual work is perfect. Plus I don't really have any extra money to spend at the moment...I'd rather spend it somewhere like...Bali.

Next weekend we're traveling to Boryeong, a city on the West Sea (if you're in Korea, the East China Sea is the West Sea, and the Sea of Japan is the East Sea) with some sort of magical superhealthy mud. The point of the trip is to get slathered in mud and hang out with other foreigners, but it sounds like a pretty good deal of fun. I'm mainly looking forward to seeing a new place. Daegu is nice but all the buildings look pretty much the same, all of the stores carry the same product, and it doesn't feel very foreign anymore. On our trips to Seoul, Jinhae, Gyeongju, and the Hantan River it's always been refreshing to see some new sites. This is our last in-country trip before our big summer vacay, too. 

Anyhow, I know the updates have been a bit more mundane lately, but with the rainy season weather and our fairly busy schedules (taekwondo 3 nights a week, something almost every weekend) there hasn't been much time for pondering, contemplation, and weak self-realizations necessary to maintain the awesomeness of a blog. In just 40 days or so you will be bombarded with pictures and text that describes the magical island of Bali, so stay tuned!

Rafting near the DMZ

If I was reading my own blog prior to moving over here I'd be taken aback by the stupidity present in this post's title, but I'm not. I'm writing my blog after doing exactly what the title says. This weekend we went rafting in the northern part of the country, and it was absolutely beautiful. We even had a surprise drive by the DMZ, more on that in a few paragraphs. First, I must tell my story.

Friday was a busy, busy day. I normally have between 2 and 5 classes a day, with at least one break of an hour or more at some point during the day. Friday I had 6 straight classes and no breaks other than lunch. I also did a bit more talking than usual because we were doing speaking tests and I had to pull answers out of some of the kids. I was already worn out when we got off of work, quickly packed our bags, and made our way across town to Daegu station to catch the 6:10pm Saemaul train to Seoul. The train was about a 4 hour ride, but the Saemaul train is a bit larger and has more comfortable seats than the KTX, so it was okay. We arrived at Seoul station and made our way to the Hongdae Guesthouse in Hongdae for the night.

The Hongdae Guesthouse is owned by a very nice lady named Mary who would give you the shoes off of her feet if you said you liked them, and was a nice enough place to get a night's sleep. If you're over about 5'6" tall though you should be very careful, as you'll hit your head on the ceiling in any of the stairwells. I found that out myself. We slept a few hours and got up at about 6:00am to get ready to make our way to the bus that was going to take us rafting.

We met the bus at Hongik University subway station and loaded up. There was music playing from the mid-late 1990's (but it was in English so it was kinda fun) and we headed for the northeastern reaches of the country. Gangwando is a beautifully green province with a ton of mountains (the whole country is mountainous) and beautiful emerald green rice paddies. The bus ride was smooth and the driver did a great job of not making me queasy.  About 3 hours later (including a stop to pick more people up at the bus terminal and a rest area) we were at the Hantan river in the town of Cherwon.

We met a few Canadians and a Brit who we shared a raft with and hiked our 10 person raft down to the water. The water wasn't cold, but it was refreshing, probably around 80 degrees Fahrenheit. As soon as the boats were in the water the splashing commenced. I love how a group of 22-35 year old people turn into children as soon as you give them the ability to sling water at each other. The river wasn't running too high or too fast, so the rapids weren't so exciting, but the trip was a ton of fun. We had a chance to hop into the river to swim a bit and jump off about a 20' cliff.

After we finished the trip we had a meal, took a shower, and headed off to find a bridge for people to jump off of...with bungee cords of course. I wanted no part of bungee jumping but it's fun enough to watch and there was a small store with ice cream. The surroundings were so beautiful and quiet compared to the city too. Here's a look at what was across the street from those who chose to jump, bounce, and dangle...pretty dang serene!

After the last jumper jumped, we loaded back on the buses for the long ride back to Seoul. They said that traffic would be too heavy to go back the way we came, so we went  along a different highway and all of the sudden the landscape became very barren. Then I noticed a barbed wire fence. I said to Carolyn, "Do you think that's the DMZ?" and she responded uncertainly. Then, across the street from the fence I noticed dozens of South Korean Army Artillery pieces pointed towards the fence. The tour guide confirmed a couple of minutes later that we were in fact next to the DMZ, and that the small buildings we could see on the other side, just 3 kilometers away were North Korean bunkers. It's so strange to see it so well developed on the South side, and so barren in the North, and it's also quite the experience to peer into a closed country with your own eyes. 

Now, a word about the DMZ. I think the big thing that people know about it is that it's a border. It's a border that sometimes journalists seem to "accidentally" cross. There's no freaking way you could accidentally cross it. Exhibit A: Huge guard towers. Do you think the South Korean soldiers are going to let you cross the DMZ and cause an international incident? Hell no. Exhibit B: It's 3 kilometers wide. If you "accidentally" started to cross it, you'd have some time to figure out your mistake, right? Unless your stride is SUPER long. Exhibit C: To "accidentally" cross the DMZ, you would have to "accidentally" sneak through or climb over a 15-20' tall barbed wire topped fence. Good luck with that. I always suspected that the reporters who got themselves in trouble weren't as innocent as they portrayed themselves to be, and when I saw the actual DMZ, I kinda believe it to be a fact, not just my supposition.

Anyhow, about a half hour after turning away from the DMZ we were in Seoul again, and not long after we were at Hongik University subway station. We headed back to Seoul Station, picked up a quick to-go meal at the Burger King, got our butts onto the earliest KTX we could, and headed home. 3 hours later we stumbled into the apartment and went straight to sleep until noon on Sunday, and just kinda stayed home after that.

After this small adventure I'd recommend Adventure Korea Tours for the rafting trip for sure. It was a ton of fun and a lot of great scenery, and you know what, it was fun to hang out with other 왜국인 (waygooks...foreigners) for a while :).

The Jinhae Cherry Blossom Festival

sakura sakura

noyama mo sato mo

mi-watasu kagiri

kasumi ka kumo ka

asahi ni niou

sakura sakura

hanazakari

sakura sakura

yayoi no sorawa

mi-watasu kagiri

kasumi ka kumo ka

nioi zo izuru

izaya izaya

mini yukan

This weekend Carolyn and I went to Jinhae, a small naval port west of Busan, for the annual cherry blossom festival. I've always thought of cherry blossoms as a Japanese spectacle, but seeing as Jinhae was a Nihon Kaigun port during the Japanese occupation it only makes sense that the town would be covered with cherry blossoms. We took the saemaul train after work on Friday and arrived in Jinhae at about 10:40pm.

Even under complete darkness it was obvious that the cherry trees were blossoming in a huge way. It was obvious that the town was painted pink with these delicate, beautiful flowers that only stay bloomed for about 10 days before they peacefully float away in the breeze. The festival at night was quite brightly lit, and several people were shooting off fireworks in the night. It was quite active and exciting. After months and months of working to get ourselves to Korea we were finally in a festival that we could absolutely not be at anywhere in the United States.

After stumbling around the festival for a bit we decided to find a place to sleep, and the only place available was a Korean LOVE MOTEL. A love motel is a place you can rent, umm, by the hour. We had luck finding a place to stay, but were amazed by the amenities. The room came complete with a circular shaped bed, a table and chairs (complete with fresh stains...) and a half empty bottle of control lotion, a half empty bottle of "Exciter" lubricant, and a can of bug spray. Classy to the end. After midnight I had the unique experience of listening to a sailor from the navy base (I'm pretty sure an American) get his money's worth from one of the working girls. I was tired enough to sleep until about 8:00am, when we got up, got ready, and headed out to join the festivities.

The first thing we did in the morning was pick our jaws up off of the ground, as the cherry blossoms were out in full force. The streets were all lined with cherry trees, and the weather was gorgeous.

We immediately climbed the "year" stairs, which get their name from the simple fact that there are 365 of them. From the top of these stairs you could see the entire waterfront surrounding Jinhae, and many beautiful blossoms. It was an astounding sight to see, with streaks of pink in and around the city, and covering the sides of the hills and mountains in the distance. You could see into the Sea of Japan, where the distant islets and mountains hung like mysterious clouds on the horizon. What an amazing sight.

Unfortunately ever since the earthquake in Japan a month ago our internet service in Korea has been somewhat unreliable. If you want to see more cherry blossoms you should go to my flickr page where you can see the rest of the day's photos.

We also met up with some friends who teach english in Busan, and after spending the day cruising the festival and sipping on soju we went to a no rae bang (singing room) for some Karaoke action. I might have sung "Toxic" by Britney Spears, among other horrible songs. We finished there at about 3:30am and headed out to grab a bowl of noodles. Hot udon on a cold night is an amazing treat. Then we started looking for a place to sleep. The Motels were all full, unfriendly, or expensive, so we tried to find a jjimjilbang, which we were unsuccessful in locating. Luckily the dude from Busan we were with is a total computer gaming nerd and knows PC bangs pretty well. We pulled into Bobo's PC zone a little after 4:30am and slept in nice comfy chairs until about 7:00am, for the huge fee of 3,000W each. Super cheap. Then we boarded our train for Daegu and headed home.

The festival, the blossoms, and the time we spent with friends were all amazing, and I can't wait to do something like this soon. Very soon. We're going to Seoul this weekend.