Halong Bay

Hello there. I've been a bit fluey this week, hence the delay in updating the site (not that I need an excuse really). At least, I think it's flu. I seem to have a different set of symptoms every day. Tuesday was chills, yesterday was a day-long headache, and today it's more of an all-over bone ache. Whatever's infected me wants to keep me on my toes. Also, I recently got hold of a few seasons of 24, so I've literally be unable to pull myself away from the screen. If you're are fan, you'll understand. And now I have finally gotten around to writing, I don't have long as I have to go to Korean class in half and hour (although bed would be preferable right now), so I'm gonna make it a brief (or at least as brief as I'm capable of) photo-heavy post. I still haven't managed to recover anything from my camera's memory card, despite having run half a dozen data rescue programs on it already. One of them spent 8 hours analysing the blasted thing and still didn't turn up anything of worth. The photos taken on Christa's camera are better than mine, as she has the ones of us kayaking and swimming in the bay - I didn't want to get my camera wet so we took hers out with us instead. It was mostly cloudy as you can see, although we were blessed with a few glorious hours late Friday afternoon, and we could even see some stars in the evening, though not as many as I was hoping for. I don't mean to sound like I'm complaining though, because as we were up on the deck after our boat had anchored, laying in the semi-dark sipping our wine, smoking our cigars and trying to decide what animals the islands around us looked like...it was bliss. We could've happily stayed there for ever I think. This is sunset, kinda. Anyway, it's now 11:30pm (just got back from class), so we'll call this one a preview and I'll get back to you when I've got me copies of Christa's pics.

Vietnam

Preface Vietnam was fantastic. Christa agrees that it was even better than our Japan trip, and that was pretty damn great, too. We spent the first day in Hanoi, then rode the overnight train west to Sapa, where we stayed an all-too-short couple of days, then back to Hanoi, before going all the way to Halong Bay on the East Coast. The week before we left, I bought a brand new 2 gigabyte memory card at Yongsan electronics market in Seoul. On Wednesday evening, shortly after taking my 750th photo, the card froze up. The son of a bitch wouldn't let me take any more pictures, or review any that I had already taken. Naming Error. Naming Error. Naming Error. I'm still semi-hopeful that I'll be able to recover them (while Christa is in flat-out denial at the idea that they may be lost) but need a bit of technical wizardry which I've not been able to lay my hands on yet. Christa took some photos, of course, but not that many, as generally she relies on me, seeing as my camera is better, and she knows that whatever she takes a picture of, I'm just gonna take 5 more of from different angles anyway. With all this in mind, I'm gonna start from the end and work backwards, with the hope that I'll have had some luck with the photos by the time I get back to Wednesday. So, without further ado. Sunday We arrived back at the Village at about 8:30am yesterday morning. There's only a 2 hour time difference between here and Vietnam, but our flight had left at 0:45am, and I can never really get comfortable another to sleep for long in the tiny aeroplane seats, so I was pretty shattered. I was actually getting a little giddy from exhaustion when we did arrive home, and didn't think I'd need to sleep for long. Planning to get up again for lunch, I went to bed at 9am. I woke up again at 8:08pm feeling refreshed and slightly confused. Saturday After lunch we left the tranquillity of Halong Bay for the chaos of Hanoi once more. The traffic around the Old Quarter where most of the tourism is based is crazy. Everybody and their Grandmother travels by motorcycle, and it's not at all unusual to see three or four people on one bike. Our guidebook testifies to somebody witnessing seven passengers on one bike, and I totally believe it. Traffic lights and pedestrian crossings are rare, so crossing the street requires a definite strategy. Ours was to walk slowly enough that any oncoming traffic could avoid us, rather than the other way around. Panic and try to run across and you're toast. We had five hours to kill before we were due to leave for the airport, and since this was to be our third stint in the city, there wasn't all that much left that we wanted to do, so after a final bit of souvenir shopping, we decided to partake in our favourite pastime, that which we were doing, oh, about 97% of the time last week: we went for something to eat. Hanh (almost pronounced 'Hi') - our guide,at Halong Bay - had recommended two dishes that we were not to leave Hanoi without trying. Indeed, if we didn't try them, then we hadn't really been to Vietnam at all (at least so says the New York Times Hanh was quoting). The restaurant gave us the menu: We decided to go with the fish. With only the one dish on the menu, I expected they'd make a good job of it, and they certainly did. I'd love to defend Korean food, and there many dishes I love and will miss when I leave, but it can't really hold a candle to that of its neighbours. Vietnamese food is so fresh and varied, whereas Korean is usually pickled or fermented, and tends to rely on the same few core ingredients (pepper paste, soybean paste, pork, kimchi). I don't think I've seen a fresh herb since coming to Korea. Also, not that I'm endorsing French Colonialism, but it did leave the Vietnamese with a sound understanding of how to bake, unlike the Koreans, whose best efforts at bread and cakes mostly come out of the oven already tasting two weeks old. Anyway, the fish, with peanuts, fish oil, butter, and a handful of different herbs, was delicious. The place was so popular that we were practically being ushered out of the door to make room for the next guests while I was still drinking my beer. Stuffed as we were, we still had one item left on our list: Bún Chả. Hanh had said it was untranslatable into English, while our waitress' best attempt to describe it was 'green pork'. Put in such seductive terms, how could we say no? It was plainly just meatballs with dill (those people really love their dill), and we actually had eaten it a few days before, only we hadn't learned the Vietnamese name for it. And it was good, though far from the best we ate that week. I may write to the NY Times and tell them to get out more. The banana smoothie I drank with the meal was far more memorable! And sadly, with that final meal inside us, we waddled back to the hotel to await our taxi, and homeward bound we were.

Cursed

Bloody typical. It was mid-30s and sunny earlier this week! In any case, me and Christa are off to Vietnam on Saturday morning. We'll be back very early next Sunday, and I'll be here with a full report...um, well, we'll cross our fingers and say...sometime that week...

Muse!

Were awesome. You really can't tell in the following videos, but they were. In fact, all you can really hear is the crowd singing and clapping (it took me ages to figure out the rhythm we were supposed to be clapping in the last video because I was messing with my camera instead of paying attention to Matt!) but the sound was excellent. They deserve all of their many awards. My seat wasn't the best, I was kinda far back (but Chamsil gymnasium isn't huge so it didn't really matter) and I was worried that I was gonna stiffen up since I arrived an hour before the band was due to start and they didn't appear until another 45 minutes after that, but once they did come on I was totally unaware of time passing, I could've stayed there for hours... They rocked. The energy! The music! The noise!

Jejudone

According to legend, Jejudo is an island inhabited by 18000 gods. Now I don't know exactly what we did that ticked them off, but it seems that every last one of those sons of bitches was out to ruin our vacation. Maybe I exaggerate. It wasn't all bad. The day we flew down happened to be the first full moon after the lunar new year so there had been a three-day fire festival going on (Jeongwol Daeboreum Fire Festival), which we just arrived in time to see the climax of. We wouldn't have known anything about it, except Dayna's Canadian friend Troy has been working on the island for the last couple of months, and coincidentally he'd bought himself a car just the day before we arrived, so he generously battled his way through the gridlock surrounding the event to come and get us. Unfortunately we'd already missed the pig-catching, pony-fighting and ploughing demonstrations, but we did get to see the main spectacle, when a large hill/small mountain is set ablaze - in recognition of the traditional method of insect extermination which may, I'm not sure, still go on): Here's a video: Saturday was in fact a beautiful day - it was sunny, it was warm, it was everything we had been promised: But it did not last. Sunday saw torrential rain all day long. If it hadn't been for Troy and his wonderful car, I don't what we'd have done. As it was, we made it round the museums of sex and chocolate (Jeju is the place for honeymooners in Korea, as typically they don't get much time off work so can't go far, so many of the tourist spots are designed to get them in the mood), a botanical garden (am I the only one who thought pineapples grew on trees?), and some caves which the Japanese used to hide bits of submarine back in the day. Here's Tinky Winky at the Chocolate Museum, where we did not get free samples! Don't go there! There wasn't even much to buy at the shop. Boo! Where Sunday was wet but humid, Monday was frigid but dry, which is lucky since mine and Dayna's umbrellas had both snapped already. Unfortunately the wind was still blowing hard, meaning that our plans to visit Udo (Cow Island) had to be scrapped as the ferries weren't running. Udo is famed for it's aging population of female divers - they dive 20 minutes down to the seabed collecting shellfish, holding their breath for 2 minutes at a time. We went to see some waterfalls instead. Of course, there's a legend: seven nymphs came down from heaven for a paddle one day, something like that... Dayna putting on a brave face about twenty minutes before packing in and heading back to the motel. Though they were kinda pretty, they just weren't worth the cold, which none of us had packed appropriately for. I soon followed Dayna's example and retreated back to our room for a good hot bath. Tuesday it was cold still, we even got a few snow flurries. This is when we finally had to admit defeat: the island had beaten us, and we were never going to make it up Hallasan. At 1,950 metres, Hallasan is South Korea's tallest mountain (actually a dormant volcano) and hiking it had been the centrepiece of our itinerary, so we were pretty bummed when the tourist information people strongly advised against it. Instead, we visited yet another museum. Here's the highlight of Dayna's day: But me and Christa did finally get to eat some decent sushi after pining for days - we just had to foist vegan Dayna onto Mary for a couple of hours in order to get away with it! We all met up again later to drink and warble away the pain of it all: So all in all? Better than working, yes, certainly, but were we sad to leave? Hell no.

Gyeongju (part 3)

Monday was our final day in Gyeongju, and the weather was perfect: not a cloud in the sky, and the warmest February day I've ever known. Spring officially started in Korea a couple of weeks ago, but it felt like summer today. At one point while we were cycling around a holiday resort on Bomun Lake I felt almost like we were in the Mediterranean. Later in the day Christa would remark that the path were were following, across a patch of farmland and through the narrow back-streets of the town, was evocative of Mexico. These were not comparisons I ever imagined making when we came. Indeed, we did both return home with a little colour on our cheeks, so I swear I'm not exaggerating. Our bus wouldn't be leaving until almost 7pm, so we had a full and exhausting day of tandemming ahead of us. After a decisive bout of rock-scissors-paper ('gowi, bowi, bo' in Korean), I climbed aboard the back seat and we were off. This is Bomun Lake. It's artificial so nothing to get excited about but it was our first stop. It's pretty large and there's a load of touristy sites along one side. We stopped for ice-creams. There were a crazy number of mini-bikes and diddy 4-wheelers flying around the resort. It was like being at the dodgems but with no walls or rules. Everyone was zipping around our ankles (bearing in mind we were up on the tandem), from the old: ...to the very young (spot the kiddo): We'd plan to go around the lake and continue South and finish up doing a huge loop, but we went a tad off-map so had to improvise a new route en route. There's so many tombs and shrines in the area that it was no major problem anyway. This is Historic Site No. 172, one of the five (supposed) tombs of King Pak Hyeokkeose, founder of the Shilla kingdom and ruler for 61 years. After he died, his body ascended to heaven, only for it to fall back to earth again seven days later. It is said to have fallen in five parts, hence the multiplicity of mounds. This is Christa up a tree. Here's a shot of some bamboo I defaced. It's not that easy to write on bamboo with a bent keyring, although Christa's was much neater than mine to be fair. The illegible (even to Koreans probably) Korean at the top should say 장 혁, or Jang Hyok, my Korean name. Hyok either means 'strong' or nothing at all, depending on who I ask. I just picked it because I like the sound; it was suggested by one of the Korean staff here, his best friend having the same name. Most Korean given names have two syllables so the kids sometimes tell me I can't be called that but I know better. Carla gave me the family name Jang. I only found out later that it's also the same name as a famous Korean actor. Christa's name is 이 수정 , or Lee (pronounced 'ee') Sujeong. Sujeong means crystal in Korean. We also went to the tomb of a general and the birthplace of a dragon, which were interesting to us (well, no, the dragon thing, not so much), but you don't need to see any more photos of hills I think. And so it was time to say a sad goodbye. We did not want to say goodbye, Sujeong in particular being very depressed at the thought of returning to Seoul. Here's the courtyard of the lovely little place we stayed Saturday and Sunday nights: And the cosy kitchen/loungey area we had inside: And our trusty bike, which we gave a name to, but who's name I've now forgotten: (Can I say "who's" when I'm referring to an inanimate object? Someone rephrase that sentence for me.) And, uh, we came home. PS. We have no children here next week so no work for after tomorrow until next Friday! We only found this out for sure yesterday but if we can get the plane tickets in time (Christa's off to the travel agent tomorrow lunchtime) we're going to Jeju Island for a few days! And Dayna's gonna come too! Yay!