Adam's Visit + An Interesting/Frustrating Week

I’m writing this on Friday with an hour and a half left in the work week.  It has been a very, very long day for a couple or reasons I’ll get later.  I have a decent amount to say so I apologize if it isn’t well-written, and I’m in a shitty mood so I apologize if it isn’t funny.  But with that said let’s get going.

Friday afternoon started on a high as Adam came to visit.  He get’s pretty decent vacation (6 weeks), so he took a trip to Asia.  He started in Seoul, visited me in Busan for a long weekend, and is currently in Thailand.

Anyhow, I saw him shortly after coming home from school.  We have been video chatting just about every week, but it was cool to see him in the flesh.  We were meeting some friends for dinner later, so we decided to head to the Dugout for some nachos and a beer.  One beer turned into three, as we ended up meeting Nick, Doug, and other Adam (Max and Gah Yeong went to Japan for the long weekend). 

From the Dugout we headed to Sarey BBQ, one of my favorite places.  It has some very hearty, tender pieces of pork (I could have sworn it was beef until I was told otherwise) which you dip in some delicious sauces.  We gorged ourselves on meet, and shared a couple beers and sojus as well.  After dinner we had a beer at the convenience store but then decided to just call it a night – Adam was jetlagged and Doug had to get up early for a trip the following day.

Saturday we did a beach day.  Adam and I headed to Haeundae, where we were surprised to see a bunch of very cool sand sculptures.  The weather was great except for the lack of a breeze, which made it just a tad hot.  However, dipping our feet in the cold water seemed to be the perfect remedy.

For dinner we met up with Nick and went to a restaurant in Kyungsung that has unlimited fried chicken for 6,000 won and unlimited beer for 5,000.  Unsurprisingly, this turned into another gluttonous meal.  We concluded the meal with a beer at Gwangalli – Adam really enjoyed seeing the Gwangan bridge all lit up.  But again, we called it an early night as we had a very early travel day the next morning.

I booked a Sunday day trip to Geoje Island through a travel company.  To my dismay, I learned that it left from Seomyeon at 6:20am.  That entailed waking up at 4:45am to make sure I caught the subway at 5:35am.  Ugh, brutal.  Another unfortunate detail that we learned day-of is that some people are picked up in Changwan, about an hour outside of Busan.  That means we can’t take the new bridges to get to Geoje, which adds an hour each way.

So the ride to Geoje took about 3 hours, during which I apparently slept on Adam.  But it was well worth the wait, as the views from Geoje were spectacular.  Rocky cliffs, gorgeous water, and we lucked out with great weather.

The first leg of the trip was the best.  We took a boat ride to Oedo Island, which is a privately owned island with an incredible botanical garden covering the entire island.  Very pretty, but packed with people.  And they all wanted pictures everywhere.  I did manage a sweet “Big Vagina” (Curb) picture under a tree that looked like kinda like a tree-sized vagina.  The boat ride was fun too – we took some detours to see some very impressive sea cliffs.

After about an hour and half at the island, we took the boat back and got some soup at a local restaurant.  It was a spicy fish soup, and was quite good.  The bathroom situation, however, wasn’t quite as good.

After lunch we went to the Windy Hill, which was just a hill with a windmill.  I didn’t quite see the novelty, but I guess they don’t really have windmills here.  The area was again very pretty, but again very crowded.  I would have loved to hang out and soak in the view if there hadn’t been people everywhere.  But people were everywhere.

From the Windy Hill we walked to another area to see -- a hike down to a rocky area right by the water.  Again, it was packed with people and we decided not to make the whole trip down.  I did check out a museum that was called the “Theme Museum” or something like that.  Outside were terrible statues of horses, soldiers, discarded amusement park cars, and other stuff like that.  It looked like one of the worst museums ever.  I didn’t go inside though, so I couldn’t confirm.

From there we went to the POW Camp museum, I did go inside.  This one, I can confirm, was one of the worst museums ever.  I mean, it’s an old POW Camp that held well over 100,000 soldiers.  I thought it would be somber, and informative.  Instead it was totally hokey and uninformative.  Just a bunch of bad artistic recreations, a live band playing smooth jazz, and one of those “stick your head in the hole” to pretend to be a POW photo boards.

From there we headed home.  Though I didn’t really like the 2^nd half of the tour, the whole thing was totally worth it for the boat ride and Oedo Island.  Oedo was spectacularly maintained.

The ride home took almost 4 hours because of traffic.  We were treated to a beautiful sunset at the rest stop, though.  And it was a blessing to have a TV on the bus, because we got to watch the Lotte Giants game.  Once we made it home, we got a BBQ dinner at Obutan and then went home.  I showered and crashed immediately.

On Monday Adam and I went to Jagalchi.  Adam really liked the fish market – it’s really something you couldn’t see in America.  For lunch we had some fresh eel.  I’m guessing it was caught that day.  And it was delicious.

After checking out Jagalchi we went back to KSU to play screen golf.  Screen golf is a blast; I really need to do it more often.  We drank some beers, hit golf balls into a screen, and I won a bet so it was free.  Can’t argue with free.

For dinner I wanted to show Adam Busan’s Indian fare, but our place was closed.  So we grabbed Mexican instead.  Being from California (and having been home recently, not abroad for 9 months), Adam understandably wasn’t impressed.  After dinner we said goodbye, as I had work the following morning and he had a flight to Bangkok.

OK, so on to this week.  Taekwondo was fun this week.  I had a lot of trouble practicing Forms 1-6 (they kept getting mixed up in my head) but on Wednesday, as we do every Wednesday, we practiced nunchucks and falling.  I started to sorta get the hang of nunchucks, though I’m still pretty bad.  But I’m really getting the hang of falling.  I hopped over an obstacle about 4 feet high, landed via flip/roll, and popped back up to my feet several times without a problem.  Yesterday, however, we had a test with the gym Master and I did worse than I ever have before.  I just skipped a significant portion of From 3 when doing it with the group.  It was embarrassing and frustrating, especially since I’d worked hard practicing all week.

But on to the juicy bits – why I’m pissed off right now.  Well, two reasons.  The first is I’m almost positive that my co-teacher lied to me as to secure a vacation she wanted to take with her husband.  So we have four weeks of vacation this summer.  For two of the weeks we need to teach English camps, and for the other two weeks we get vacation.  A few weeks ago, she told me that my supervisor informed her that the schedule was Camp-Break-Camp-Break.  Since she presented it as a fact, I just said “Okay.”  I’d obviously prefer Camp-Camp-Break-Break, but that seemed to be something I should take up with my supervisor, not her.  She said that the reason for the staggered schedule is that many Korean families take vacations during the first break week. 

Now the thing is, my contract continues one week into the second semester of this school year (school years start here after winter break, not summer break).  This is due a scheduling anomaly, as this semester they stopped having schools on Saturdays (they previously had school two Saturdays every month).  This caused them to cut summer break short, and, in turn, made my contract carry over for an odd week.

So when I first heard the schedule, I didn’t care too much because I figured I could take my two weeks of vacation the last two weeks of my contract.  But soon after pursuing that strategy I learned that I will have to be here for the last week of my contract.  Weird, but Korea is weird about that kind of stuff.

Anyway, when I learned that I decided to try to get proactive about a Camp-Camp-Break-Break schedule.  When I raised it with my supervisor (the first time we had class together, a few days after I’d first heard the camp schedule), she told me that the co-teacher in question had told her that I said I was ok with any schedule.  I thought this strange, as she had never asked my input – she simply acted as if the schedule had been made.  Even stranger, my supervisor told me that the co-teacher was in charge of making the schedule.  Remember, my co-teacher had told me that my supervisor had made the schedule and already submitted it.  Anyhow, I just assumed it was a miscommunication and said I’d talk to my co-teacher.

So when I talked to my co-teacher and explained my preference for Camp-Camp-Break-Break, she told me that she would talk to my supervisor.  I thought this strange, so today I checked again with my supervisor.  She told me that she was certain this co-teacher was in charge of making and had already submitted the schedule.  WTF.  My new theory is that when she talked about the busy week of vacation, she just wants to take one with her husband.  All my friends have the Camp-Camp-Break-Break schedule, so it can’t be that big of a problem.  Worse, they are planning a trip to Laos and I will be very upset if I have to miss it.  I haven’t confronted her yet, but I will after blowing off steam writing this post.

The second reason I’m upset is because a university job fell through and I got torn a new butthole for it.  For some background, I’d told one of my co-teachers (different from the one in the previous section) that I was interested in a university job, if possible, and I emphasized that it was because I wanted the great vacation.  I also told her I wanted a job in Busan, if possible.  A few weeks later she said a contact of hers found a job in Daegu, and wondered if that would be ok with me.  I told her that it would be fine provided it had enough vacation to avoid the brutally cold winters and hot, humid summers.  But apparently that point was lost on her, because when I got an email with the job description it had four weeks vacation.

So today I told her today that I wasn’t going to take the job.  I said something like “I got an email from the school in Daegu, but I haven’t responded yet because I wanted you to hear this from me first.  After a lot of thinking I decided I’m not going to take the job.  I feel terrible about it because I know that you put in a lot effort, and I don’t mean to seem ungrateful because I really am appreciative of your efforts.  However, the job has about ¼ of the vacation I was expecting, and vacation is the main reason I was looking into these types of jobs in the first place.  Right now I am young, healthy, and single, and I have a tremendous opportunity to travel the world.  I want to do it while I can.  However, I feel like I must not have made my intentions clear, so I want to apologize for that.  That’s 100% my fault.”

To my surprise, her response was to say “Yes, I think it is your fault!”  She went on to say that I should have known that, without a Master’s Degree, I could never get a job with a good vacation package.  She also apparently spoke on my behalf of getting a Master’s Degree back in the States with a scholarship, yet I never asked her to do anything of the sort.  While it is certainly a very nice gesture that I really appreciate, I don’t see how she can be mad at me for not wanting to do it.  She also kept asking me these questions that I didn’t know how to answer.  “You know I had to beg my Professor to help with your resume, right?  You know I planned to get you a scholarship, right?  You know I wrote you a letter of recommendation, right?”  I wanted to say “No, woman, I didn’t know that, nor did I ask you to.  I simply asked you pass along my resume if you know of any job opportunities.”  But instead I just said “Yes, and I’m really sorry.  I feel terrible.”

Anyway, awful day.  I’m going home now.

Jirisan National Park – I made a huge mistake

Early rise on Saturday to take an 8am bus to Jinju.  In Jinju we (Doug, Nick, and I) transferred to get to Daewonsa, which is where we were camping in Jirisan National Park.  I’d packed all my stuff – a sleeping bag, sleeping pad, water, and some clothes – into a bulky duffel bag because Nick had been told that the campsite was very close to the bus parking lot.  Well, when we arrived at the Daewonsa stop (around 11:45), we checked our map and saw that our campsite was right next to Daewonsa Temple.  Unfortunately, Daewonsa Temple was 2km away.  So I threw the duffel on my back (like a backpack, which hurt because the straps aren’t comfortable) and made the hike.

Unfortunately, when we reached the temple (which was quite pretty) we quickly realized that the campgrounds were nowhere in sight.  Flummoxed, we doubled back and still found nothing.  Feeling defeated, we decided to just stay at a campsite that we’d passed on our way up.  It clearly hadn’t been used in a while, but we figured there was no recent we couldn’t sleep there.  But, since we all had the feeling that we weren’t technically supposed to be staying there, we decided to hide our bags and wait until dark to pitch the tent.

After setting down our bags and enjoying a snack of fruit and almonds, we headed to the stream right by our campsite.  Our time there was my highlight of the weekend.  We hiked around the rocks, admired the phenomenal scenery, and didn’t see anyone for probably 3 hours.  After a while we were all feeling thirsty, so we wandered back to the convenience store by the bus stop to get some beers.  Then we headed back to the creek to enjoy them in peace.

After our beers, we did some more wandering.  This time we took a more challenging course and ended up in a bamboo forest.  Man are those trees strong.  Though the difficulty of our route wasn’t overly apparent on the way up, it reared its ugly head on the way back down.  We all fell into the water on separate occasions.  Doug got the worst of it, falling down to his waist.  Nick soaked a full shoe, while slipped after a jump and dunked half my right foot (also banged my shin pretty good).  After falling we decided to call it quits on hiking for the day, particularly given the arduous trek we would be taking the following day.

To kill the remainder of the day, we figured we’d head back to the Ranger station and try to find the location of the mystery campsite.  On our way back to the main road a Ranger in a truck saw us on the forbidden campgrounds, which freaked us out a bit.  We didn’t think we’d get in any trouble, but the prospect of pitching and then having to move a tent sounded just awful.

When we got to the Ranger station, we saw a sign pointing to the campsite, which was just across the creek via a neat little bridge.  Mind you, the Ranger station is just by the parking lot, so the hike we did to the temple in the morning was all for nothing.  We groaned and wondered how we’d missed the sign on our way up (it’s pretty big), our best guess is that the Ranger truck was parked in front of it.

Anyhow, we checked out the campsite and it was pretty nice.  Plus there was only one other tent set up so we’d still get some decent privacy.  We decided to move our things there because the Ranger had seen us earlier and we didn’t want to be booted in the middle of the night.

For dinner we went to a nearby restaurant and got duruchigi, which is usually pork in a savory brown sauce but here it was served with veggies in a spicy red sauce.  This, of course, was cool with me as the meal was delicious.  The only problem was the atmosphere, which was awful.  The restaurant was family owned, and one of the family members was some crazy old dude who couldn’t speak any English and wouldn’t leave us alone.  We left the second we finished our food.

Back at our campsite we were just hanging out getting ready to go to bed when our camping neighbor came over to us bearing the gifts of food and booze.  He gave us some bbq pork and veggies, four bananas, a few clusters of grapes, and two bottles of makkoli.  He didn’t speak great English, but enough to get by.  He worked as an airplane mechanic for fighter jets (F-52s if memory serves correctly) and was super nice.  After 15 minutes or so he went back to his campsite to go to bed.  We thanked him profusely and then decided to do the same.

We set our Sunday alarm for 6am.  I felt pretty good when the alarm started buzzing even though I’d only slept so-so (it got chilly overnight and there’s the whole issue of sleeping outside in a tent).  After taking down the tent, packing up our bags, and eating a quick breakfast of almonds, bananas, and beef jerky, we were all set to leave when our friendly neighbor came by to offer us coffee and hot chocolate.  He’s probably the nicest dude ever.

After hot chocolate (Doug and Nick had coffee), we headed out around 7:30.  Given the numbers I’m about to tell you, it’s hard for me to imagine why I’d so thoroughly underestimated this hike.  Well, probably because I hadn’t looked up the numbers before we embarked.  All I thought was “I’m a fit young man, I’ll have no problem.”

Well I had a problem indeed.  The hike was 14km each way, with 1900m elevation at the peak.  We estimated that our campsite was around 300m elevation, which means we went up 1600m.  But that doesn’t tell the whole story, because the hike went up and down a lot.  I’d say you have to add at least 30% to calculate what we actually hiked, which is 2080m.  If you’re a math man, you’d probably like to think of our hike as 14km along the x axis and 2km along the y axis.

To make things even more difficult, the trail isn’t particularly well maintained.  I’d say over 70% of the hike is navigating through rocks.  Every single Korean we saw had hiking boots, hiking poles, and gloves.  We had running shoes.  I spent the whole day terrified of spraining an ankle (I partially rolled it more times than I can count), especially on the way down. 

After hiking for 3 hours, I was very, very tired and very, very aware of the fact that we were only halfway to the top (and then would have to come all the way down).  It was at this point that I realized I’d made a terrible mistake and wanted to go home.  And when I say I wanted to go home, I mean I really wanted to go home.  The neurons which cause children to wail this phrase repeatedly were firing out of control inside my skull.  It took a significant amount of self-control to not vocalize how much I wished I’d never gone on this hike.  This part of my brain didn’t shut up until we were back at the campsite.

The coolest thing about the experience, though, was getting a taste of what it’s like to be just utterly exhausted.  I’ve tuckered myself out playing many-a-sport and going on many-a-hike, but I have never felt this drained.  There was a point when I was climbing a staircase at a snail’s pace and I realized that I was literally going as fast as I could.  Though I wasn’t quite this tired, I think I’m beginning to have an idea of what’s going on in movies when the dude is staggering along in the dessert and then finally collapses.

It took 6 hours to reach the peak, which, while beautiful, was a complete clusterfuck.  There were probably 200 people up there.  I wish we’d stayed at the 2^nd to last peak, which was empty and only about 100m lower in elevation.  It had effectively the same view with none of the people.  Instead, we reached the peak around 1:15 and had no time to relax.  We had to get down to catch our bus.  So after a short 15 minutes for snacking we headed back down the mountain.

While I could turn the trip down into a paragraph of complete sentences, I’ll just share the notes I took when I got home: “whole way back feared I’d sprain an ankle.  wanted to cry.  knees on fire.  got back at 6pm.” 

OK, I won’t leave you hanging on the wanting to cry part.  After about a half an hour, we passed a sign and Nick says “Damn, we’ve only gone 1km.”  My immediate reaction was an intense desire to just burst into tears in helplessness and despair.

Thankfully, we made it down injury-free.  Back at the campsite I immediately changed clothes, but it didn’t do much good because my body was sweaty, smelly, and covered in dirt.  Back at the convenience store I got snacks to tide me over and we took a 6:30 bus to Jinju.  We transferred busses in Jinju and got back to Busan around 9pm, where we all devoured some McDoozers.  After fueling (albeit when Regular when this baby is supposed to run on Premium) I took the subway home, took a most amazing shower, noticed that I’d burned my back (first time in years, my mommy raised me right), and slept like a rock until the agonizing sound of my alarm the following morning.

DMZ and JSA

Friday

We took the KTX to Seoul, which takes just under 3 hours.  Nick lent me a fascinating book on Scientology (Inside Scientology by Janet Reitnam), which made the time fly by.  That Church is thoroughly fucked up.

Anyway, we got to Seoul and went to our hostel.  Nick booked us a hostel in a phenomenal location, just 15 minutes by foot from the train station and 20 minutes to where our tour left.  The hostel was really well-reviewed, but unfortunately our room had cockroaches L (thank goodness they were of the small, baby variety.  I’m genuinely terrified of the big ones.  The fact that they can survive the radiation of a nuclear bomb is terrifying).  So neither of us slept too well.

Saturday

We had an early rise at about 6:20 to give us time for a shower and breakfast before the tour.  We stopped for a filling breakfast at the nearest MacDoozers (Bacon Egg McMuffins are delish) and then went to our tour pickup.  The tour left from the Lotte hotel, which was one of the ritziest hotels I’ve seen in quite some time.  The lobby features impressive statues and restaurants.  Nick and I, initially disappointed to find our hostel without sufficient toilet paper (we both needed to make a poopie), were treated to a couple of absolutely luxurious thrones in the lobby bathroom.  I’m talking full baday and everything.  Hadn’t had been treated to a warm water rinse where the sun don’t shine since Japan.  I’d be lying if I said it wasn’t nice.

At 8:00 on the button we headed out on our tour.  The first stop was the DMZ (De-Militarized Zone, ironic because, despite a mutual agreement for zero military personnel, it is the most militarized place in the world), which was mostly cool but had some fluff.  The biggest highlight was probably the 3^rd tunnel, which is a tunnel North Korea had built to try to secretly invade Seoul, but, thankfully, was discovered by the South.  The scary part is that military experts believe North Korea has probably built 50-100 tunnels.  South Korea has found 4. 

Some other cool stops included Freedom Bridge, which was used to exchange POWs during the Korean War.  The bridge had thousands of ribbons attached to the walls, which our guide told us were put by South Koreans for separated family members stuck in the North.  I also like the Dora Observatory, mainly because I took pictures I wasn’t supposed into North Korea.  And I got to see some North Koreans working in a farm via binoculars. 

The most useless thing was visited was Dorasan Station, which is the northern most train station in South Korea.  The train tracks actually go into the North, but trains obviously don’t run there.  The only reason it is part of the tour is because apparently Bush visited in 2002.  Hilariously, we read the speech he gave there in 2002 and from the beginning Nick predicted “I’ll be he mentions 9/11.”  Just as we were starting to lose hope, we saw it in the 3^rd to last paragraph.  Classic Dub-ya.

After a spectacular lunch of bulgogi, we headed to the JSA (Joint Security Area).  In the DMZ we just toured the border of the DMZ, whereas during the JSA part of the tour we entered the DMZ and went all the way to the North Korean border.

Our first stop was Camp Bonifas, where we had to sign a waiver that North Koreans may kill us on the tour.  We also watched a brief presentation about the history of the JSA, most notably about the ceasefire signed in 1953 (note that it’s a ceasefire and not a treaty, thus the two countries technically remain at war), the Axe Murder Incident in 1976 (during which two US soldiers doing tree-trimming (the trees blocked visibility into the Northern side) were decapitated by North Korean soldiers wielding axes, see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Axe_Murder_Incident), and the Soviet Defector Incident in 1984 (during which a Soviet citizen ran across the border demarcation line while on a North Korean tour.  North Korean soldiers chased him while firing, and South Koreans fired back to protect him.  The Soviet survived, but fighting left one South Korean dead and one wounded.  On the Northern side, three were killed, five wounded, and eight captured.  Shots were heard from the North 20 minutes after the firefight, which reports state was the execution of the tour group's commander and one of his key subordinates).  After the presentation, we boarded a military bus and headed to the JSA.

On the way, we passed some rice fields, which belong to residents of Daesong-dong, the South Korean village in the DMZ.  Also known as Freedom Village, the village boasts a 100m high South Korean flag.  The village is under UN control, and as such, residents don’t need to pay taxes.  And that’s no small potatoes, because our guide said the average family pulls in a cool USD $80,000 annually.  But they’re under constant threat of being kidnapped by the North and have a curfew, so it isn’t all sunshine and rainbows. 

We also saw Kijong-dong, the North Korean village just south of the boarder.  Not to be outdone, Kijong-dong has a 160m tall flagpole, the 3^rd tallest in the world.  The village is also known as Propaganda Village, as it entirely uninhabited and, apparently, never was.  It was simply built for show.

When we got to the JSA, we saw the Freedom House and Peace House, South Korea’s two buildings within the JSA.  I’m not quite sure what they are used for; our guide said they were for “talks,” but there is a shared conference room whose midsection lies along the border, and apparently that is where talks are held.  Anyway, the Freedom House was pretty and impressive (this is the building which has one side facing the North Korean boarder), whereas the Peace House was just a building.

Between the two buildings, though, is a circle of grass with a small statue, and our guide told us that it was the site of the shootout in the Soviet Defector Incident.  That really made me cognizant of the imminent danger we potentially faced, especially if a stranger did something stupid.

We were led from the busses through the Freedom House and into the shared conference room.  In the middle was a table, with three microphones in a line in the middle, a UN flag on the edge, and South Korean soldier standing, at attention, in line with the flag and the microphones.  Our guide explained this line represented the border between the North and South.  Looking out the window, we could see a concrete line marking the border, with concrete on the Southern side and dirt on the North.

It was a thrill to stand in North Korean territory, albeit for only a couple of minutes.  Nick and I got a photo with a guard to remember the experience.  I’m pleased to say I nailed the facial expression (a mixture of “hey this is pretty neat” and “holy shit).  I really wanted to knock on the door leading to the North Korean side, but there was a guard about 10 feet from the door which we weren’t allowed to walk past.  I did get some shots of North Korean land though the window, though.

After seeing the conference room, we stood on the patio outside of the Freedom House and took some pictures of North Korea.  Their main JSA building was maybe 150 yards away, and had a guard looking at us in binoculars.  I wish I had a better zoom on my camera, because even zoomed all the way in (12x) the dude is still a bit small.

Once the other group finished going through the conference room, we headed back to Camp Bonifas via bus.  On the way out we saw the site of the Axe Murder Incident (a memorial, the tree is now gone), and the Bridge of No Return, which Koreans were allowed to cross after the Korean War.  But their decision of which Korea to live in was final; once they crossed they couldn’t cross back.  Hence the Bridge of NO RETURN.

Back at Camp Bonifas I checked out the gift shop, but the selection was disappointing.  I did buy the Old Man some golf balls though, which came with some tees.  The sticker on the bag of tees is hilarious – it has a golf club crossed with an AK47 and says “The Most Dangerous Game” or something silly like that.  Needless to say, that sticker is mine.

After getting back from the tour, we meandered back to our hostel.  On the way we walked through Namdaemun market, which was absolutely packed and had lots of yummy looking food.  We decided we’d head back there later after cleaning up and visiting the N Seoul Tower.

After a shower, short rest, and some coffee at our hostel, we took the cable car up to the N Seoul Tower.  We’d been there months ago during our first visit to Seoul, but the wait to get to the top was over 3 hours so we decided to skip.  This time the wait was about an hour, which was cool with us.  So we grabbed some snacks, a couple of beers, and soaked up the gorgeous evening weather.

An hour later we took the elevator up, which had a super cheesy space video with some music.  Nick and I laughed out loud at it.

The view from the tower was spectacular.  Seoul is sprawling city.  It brought me back to the view I had on Semester at Sea from the Tokyo Tower (though Tokyo is even more sprawling).  There was also a urinal with a window to look out at the cityscape.  Classiest pee I’ve taken in quite some time, and I’m the classiest of urinators.

After the tower we went back to Namdaemun, but it was dead except for some street dining.  So we decided to get some chicken skewers, pajeon, and beer.  The food was quite yummy.  Though the atmosphere was significantly dampened by the fact that a bum was just harassing the very friendly lady who cooked for us.  He came up and asked for food, and she offered him some egg and rice cakes in sauce (very filling) and water.  But he kept yelling and, presumably, asking for meat.  He wouldn’t leave, even when the vendor, who was being exceptionally patient, tried to shove him to get him to leave.  A male patron tried to get him to move on to no avail.  Eventually the police had to be called.

After our late dinner we wandered in search of bar.  Shockingly, as Namdaemun is in the center of the city, we found zilch.  Apparently it just isn’t a bar area.  But we did get a bunch of dudes asking us to go into a “Business Clubs” (not sure if it’s a mistranslation of “Gentleman’s Club” or they are trying to attract business men, either way they are strip clubs), a pimp offering sex, and even an entrepreneurial women in her mid-30s (she approached and asked where we were going.  When we said we were going to our guesthouse she has “Can you bring a female?”).  Despite being unable to find bars, we weren’t too disappointed because we were exhausted.  Though we were disappointed to have to wander around for a half hour after getting lost.

Sunday

I decided to take the slow train home to save $$.  It takes 5 and a half hours, but has bigger seats and is about $25 cheaper.  So I slept, read about 80 pages of Inside Scientology, and looked out the window.  The landscape is really, really beautiful.  And mountainous.  Seriously, almost the entire time I was looking at mountain ranges.

I got home around 5pm.  I did laundry, cleaned up my apartment, watched the documentary Man on Wire, which is about the French wirewalker Philippe Petit who walked between the Twin Towers in 1974, and then went to bed early.

Brown Belt and an Eventful Weekend in Daegu

On Tuesday I got a Brown Belt!  That leaves me nearly four months to get a Black Belt, from which I’m merely two belts away.  Next is Red, and from Red I go to Black.  And once you go black you never go back.

 

Anyway, let’s get on to tales from the weekend, as they are plentiful.  On Friday I got some Mexican food with Nick and Doug.  The place, O’Taco’s, has some damn fine fajitas.  Also we filled up a card, so next time we go we get a free quesadilla!  Nice-uh.

Anyway, after our delicious meal we went to the local convenience store to get some beers.  Suddenly, this crazy bald guy comes up and sits next to us, asking if he can “finish this here,” referring to his beer.  Now we’d had an encounter with this guy months ago, and he is literally nuts.  I scanned the faces of my compadres when he sat down, and the look both Nick and Doug’s faces can be summed up as the classic “God. Damnit.” facial expression.  I’m sure I was sporting it as well.

Anyway, I forget exactly what we were discussing, but it was something that had to do with politics and, as political discussions often do, implicated race.  So the guy sits down and the first thing he says is “I think racism is bad no matter what.”  Because I thought it was funny and also hoping he would maybe leave, I said “Well you’re with the wrong crowd, because we are all really racist.  Our group motto is ‘If you ain’t white, that ain’t right.’”  Well this guy quickly changed his tuning, somehow making a segway between how horrible feminism wants to make men subservient to women to using the term “feral blacks.”  We all exclaim about the offensiveness of that term, and he backtracks saying our reaction was “knee-jerk.”  A few minutes later he saw a black guy that came over to say hi, and we laughed about him being a chameleon.

A few minutes later, he starts ranting crazily again about how society is coming apart at the seams and that there’s going to be a race war.  He kept telling us to “Put the pieces of the puzzle together.”  As Doug described it later, “He kept calling our reactions ‘knee-jerk’ and going on about the puzzle pieces.  It’s like, ‘Listen dude.  You’ve been going on for 20 minutes and you’re not making any sense.’” 

Anyhow, the race war comment really reminded me of a scene from one of my favorite movies, In Bruges by Martin McDonagh.  There is this scene where everyone is doing coke, and this dwarf starts going about an impending race war.  Colin Farrell’s character (Editor’s Note: He is surprisingly excellent in this movie) starts asking the dwarf about which side groups would fight with.  How about the Vietnamese?  The Mexicans?  Would the black midgets fight with the whites or the blacks?  Would all the white midgets fight the black midgets?”  Anyway basically asked the crazy guy these questions and it took him a bit to realize I was toying with him.

On Saturday Doug and I headed to the train station with the hopes of catching a 9am train.  Sadly, Adam was a little late so we took the 10am instead.  We decided to wait outside the station, where there is a very nice promenade area with plenty of seating and a gorgeous fountain.  As is often the case with public areas, there is also a collection of homeless people hanging around one of the corners.  Anyhow, Doug and I were just sitting around talking when we see an older guy, who didn’t really look homeless, start to smack one of the homeless guys with an open fist on the back of the head.  He smacked him several times, and then seemed like he was going to walk away.  But just as that was winding down, a younger guy (also not homeless, likely the older man’s son) shoved a different homeless man to the ground.  The homeless man went down very easily, and when he was on the ground the man who pushed him kicked him in the face.  It was nuts.  Thankfully, the aggressor didn’t take it any further.  But it was still a crazy thing to see shortly passed 9am on a Saturday in a public square.

Though we have no idea what started the fight, Doug and I are inclined to believe that the two aggressors were not unprovoked.  I’m not justifying their actions, but they were there with their family.  I can’t imagine that they just said to themselves “Hey, want to beat up a few of those hobos who are just chillin’ over there?”

Anyhow, after the early excitement our hour of waiting passed uneventfully.  At 10am we hopped on our train and 45 minutes later we were in Daegu.  We grabbed some snacks at a convenience store and then got tickets for the city bus tour, which would take us to the hike we wanted and to a temple.

Our first stop was the Gatbawi Hike, which was awesome.  Steep and challenging, the hike featured were several cool shrines to see on the way up, a fun climbing area off the stairs where we could escape crowds, and the Gatbawi Shrine at the peak.  Gatbawi apparently means “Stone Hat Buddha,” and that’s exactly what you got at the peak of the climb -- an old Buddha statue with a square hat.  I find it strange how Buddha seems to be worshiped as a deity here.  He explicitly said he didn’t want to be.  But I suppose Jesus also made it pretty clear that you were supposed give some scrilla to the poor, a point seemingly lost on today’s Republicans.  But I digress.  The most fun part of the hike was on our way down (at the beginning, still near the peak), where we took a trail that split from the stairs and allowed for some free climbing.  In that area we completely lost the crowd and were treated to some spectacular views.

We had to hurry down the mountain to catch our bus, which only runs every hour and twenty minutes.  We passed a dude hiking barefoot.  He must have the toughest feet in Korea.  The idea of personally making that climb without foot protection is unfathomable.  I think I’d turn back after 50 yards at the most.

From the Gatbawi trailhead we bussed to Donghwasa temple.  The entrance had these huge colorful warriors which were pretty neat.  They were almost identical to the ones I’d seen in Jeonju all the way back in the orientation trip.  I wondered about their significance in the Buddhist religion.  I know the religion doesn’t have any gods, so I was curious as to their meaning.  But apparently I wasn’t curious enough to bother googling it, seeing as I haven’t done so.

The temple stood out for the scenery.  I’ve kinda gotten to point where temples in Korea run together.  The first ones I saw were very impressive, because the details really are quite impressive, but I suppose I’ve just become habituated.  But what separated Donghwasa was its gorgeous mountain location, with several impressive views of the lush mountains/hills surrounding the temple grounds.  And it certainly didn’t hurt that the weather was beautiful.

But the highlight of the visit was a large standing Buddha statue located at least a half mile from the entrance (the grounds were huge and quite scenic).  I would estimate that the statue was 60 feet tall, and it stood in a large square with colorful hanging lanterns, with a really neat walk around the back of the Buddha that had warrior statues carved into the walls.  There were also two tall shrines more towards the front of the square which, at least aesthetically, I could have done without.  But I’m guessing they represented something important.

After we finished admiring the Buddha statue, we realized our bus was leaving in about 5 minutes.  Not wanting to rush (and I honestly don’t event think we could have made it), we decided to relax and have a beer at a park near the temple entrance.  The park was expansive and beautiful, with several sports fields, a cool fountain several children were splashing around in, and some beautiful trees with pearl white leaves. 

Once our bus came, it was about 30 minutes back to the train station area.  We all slept.  Our guide, a really friendly man who didn’t speak much English but more than made up for it in enthusiasm, guided us to the subway and wished us goodbye.  He told us to come back and drink soju with him, which I’m not sure if I’ll have time to do but I’m certain would be good fun.

We took the subway to our guest house, which was located right downtown.  After a shower and a short rest, we headed to the bar/restaurant area.  I think all three of us had the same immediate reaction: holy Toledo the girls here are smoking hot.  Everywhere you looked the girls were just gorgeous.  It was crazy.  Anyhow, we stopped admiring just long enough to eat dinner at a BBQ place.  I gave the waitress my number but she didn’t call me.  I think I’m 0 for 3 on that now.

Post dinner we basically roamed the streets and bounced around bars.  And man the girls were gorgeous.  I was actually on top of my game, but stung with terrible luck.  The first girl I talked to was at a table with two friends.  They were all quite cute.  After Doug, Adam, and I discussed how cute they were for a few minutes, I decided to approach.  I went with a good one I’ve been using lately, in which I ask the girl the last letter of the English alphabet.  Canadians call the letter Z “zed,” while Americans call it “zee.”  It’s always interesting to hear what Koreans are taught, and it works great as an opener if I’m out with Doug.

Anyhow, I approached the girl who I thought was the most attractive at the table and posed the question.  Then I asked the other girls, and hailed over to Adam and Doug to weigh in.  After maybe a half hour of talking to “my girl,” I could tell I was “in” with her.  Not necessarily because I’m a genius at reading women or anything, but because she took my hand and put it on her leg, and then continued to keep her hand on top of mine.  Sadly, after a short while it became apparent nothing was going to come of it.  She lived with her parents, who were calling her and wanted her home.  Also her friends were lukewarm with my friends.  So eventually we just separated.

Shortly after, my eyes met with a gorgeous girl maybe 10 feet away.  She gave me a big smile, and, knowing I shouldn’t hesitate, I approached her.  She was from Japan on an extended visit to see her boyfriend, who was a foreign teacher.  But they’d broken up (I’m not sure how long ago), so now she was just on an extended visit.  Things were going great initially (she was very flirty, touchy, etc.), but after just a couple minutes of talking her friend grabbed her arm and said they were leaving.  I should have asked for her number but I was so surprised by how quickly it disintegrated I just said “See ya,” and watched her walk away.

My bad luck was contrasted with Adam’s phenomenal luck.  Around 1am, we were just walking around when Adam ran into a guy he knew (by sight only, not his name) from Frisbee.  Adam plays in Busan and this other dude plays in Daegu, and there was recently a Korea-wide tournament, which is where they’d met.  Anyway, we’re all talking to the Frisbee dude, and suddenly a gorgeous girl walks up and says to him “Why don’t you introduce me to one of your cute friends?”  The guy said, “Oh, ok, this is my friend Adam.”  Then the girl just grabs his hand and says “You’re with me tonight.”  WHY HAS THAT NEVER HAPPENED TO ME?!!

We ended up crashing at the guest house around 3am, and were up by 10am to catch a train back to Busan.  The Gwangan bridge was open for pedestrians until 2pm, and I really wanted to walk across it.  Unfortunately, I’d gotten some bad info.  Because I got there around 12:45 only to learn that the entrance had closed at 10am.  That was really disappointing, because there is a cool tower in Daegu and crazy Eastern medicine market that I would have loved to have seen.  Instead, I rushed back for a bridge walk I had no chance of making.  So instead of exploring a wild market with lizard tails and other fun remedies, I just did laundry, cleaned my apartment, got some shopping done at MegaMart, and went to bed early.  Curse you, bridge walk.  I’ll see you in hell.

A Lazy Spring Weekend

The title to this post is a tad misleading.  The weekend wasn’t particularly lazy, but I didn’t go anywhere.  Given the long travel to-do list I have, I consider it a lazy weekend if the weather is good and I neglect to go anywhere.  I did try to go to Geoje island, which is supposedly just an hour and a half from Busan, but no one cared to join me.  The logistics seemed a bit difficult for a non-Korean speaker, so I opted not to tough it out alone.  Instead, I tried to make the most of my days off in Busan.

On Friday I went to my first Lotte Giants game of the season with Nick, Doug, Max, and Gah Yeong.  Despite losing I Deh Ho (their best hitter) to Japan and Mr. Goatee (their best pitcher, and not actually his real name) to the military, the Giants are in first place.  Given their popularity, surprising success, and the fact that it was a Friday game, the place was packed.  Gah Yeong got us tickets online, but for some reason Korea doesn’t scan tickets so you still need to get your tickets at the door (a surprisingly slow and stupid system in the generally super-efficient country).  Even with no money exchanged, the line was over 40 minutes.  As a result, even though we arrived over a half hour before the first pitch, we didn’t get inside until the bottom of first.  The game itself was fun, though Lotte played terrible defense and got blown out.  We left in the 7^th with the score 14-8.  The final score was 20-8.

After the game, Doug, Nick, and I were going to go out, but Nick and Doug were tired and decided to stay in.  I still had some energy, so I texted Josh and Fernando.  Josh was far away but Fernando was in Gwangalli, so I went to meet him.  Strangely, even though we spoke over the phone, he was nowhere to be found.  I called and texted him, but got nothing.  So after waiting around for 10 minutes I jogged home.  I surprised myself by running about a mile and a half without feeling too winded.  I guess Taekwondo is improving my cardio.

I started my Saturday by watching the Intouchables, a French movie I’d been told to see.  It’s about a wealthy paralyzed man who needs a new personal assistant, and he ends up selecting a poor black guy who at first seems totally unqualified.  Although it seems impossible, they end up becoming great friends.  It was a sappy feel-good, but I’m a sap so I enjoyed it more than I’d care to admit.

After lunch I went to Haeundae with Doug, where we played volleyball and beach soccer.  When I say “played,” what I really mean is “practiced,” because with only two people you can’t really get a game going.  We just passed the volleyball around and then did a soccer shootout. 

But the highlight of the beach trip had to be this group of weird Euro people.  I’d seen them a couple times before, and I still have no idea what the hell their deal is.  It’s a group of probably 10 guys, all dressed in speedos (one had a man thong), all really fit and really tan.  They have this area set up where they play garbage techno music and play beach soccer.  For the life of me I can’t understand why they live in Busan.  They clearly aren’t teachers.

After the beach Nick, Doug, Max, Gah Yeong and I got dinner in KSU.  We went a fried chicken place that had unlimited fried chicken for 6,000 won and unlimited beer for 5,000 won.  It was awesome, but turned out to be a bit of a curse.  We’d meant to go out afterward, but found that we were all too full to do any more drinking.

On Sunday I went to the Dog Café with Nick, Max, and Gah Yeong.  And no, it is not a café where you eat dogs.  It’s a café where you play with dogs.  For 8,000 won you get a smoothie/coffee/tea (I got a smoothie), access to a dessert buffet, and unlimited petting of super friendly dogs.  It was quite nice to play with canines (I hadn’t done so in over 7 months); definitely something I miss from home.

After the Dog Café we went to Haeundae to play volleyball and soccer.  The Schradester and I triumphed in volleyball, and then split a couple of intense shoot-outs.  Around 4:30 I headed back to play basketball with Doug, and unfortunately ran into Chad.  Despite being almost as bad at he is hockey, Chad talked shit non-stop.  He also was really hard on himself, which is weird because he’s honestly barely any better than I am.  But it was frustrating because he ended up on the best team (thanks to Doug and huge center), so got to talk to his heart’s desire.

I closed out the weekend with a pizza and the Muppets movie, which I found disappointing.  I generally like Jason Segel, but this was pretty blah.  My guess is that it was a hit with kids and parents, but I don’t think you’ll find many young adults raving about it.

A Playing Catch-Up Smorgasbord (written a week ago)

Spring is in the air!  Flowers are blooming, including cherry trees, which are insanely beautiful.  The last two weeks have been solidly in the mid-60’s, but of course the weekends and the rare holiday (two Wednesdays ago was an election day and thus national holiday) have been getting showers.  Part of my long writing absence has been due to the cold weather – it was too cold to do anything fun, and the cold weather kept me confined to Busan as I feared all the northern destinations would be far colder.  Due to my sedentary lifestyle my days and weekends seemed to just run together, and as such I felt like I had little to write about.  But I’d be kidding myself if I blamed everything on the weather; I’ve also just been lazy.  So, in the next few pages I’ll try my best to recap activities, girls, and funnies over the last month and change.  Keep in mind I’m writing this on a Friday afternoon, so my mind is a bit fried and my editing is a bit lazy. 

Let’s start with activities.  I went to two KT Sonic Boom playoff games.  The first was a Game 5 elimination game.  Gah Yeong, Murtaugh’s girlfriend, got us tickets in like the 3^rd row center court.  They cost $12.50.  Plus you can bring in your own beer.  I went to the game with Nick, Yoon, Taughskerooski, Gah Yeong, Doug, and Adam.  The game was unbelievable.  Busan started the game shooting lights out and were ahead by 20 in the middle of the 2^nd quarter.  By halftime the lead was down to 15 or so.  After the 3^rd quarter it was in the single digits.  With maybe 15 seconds left, Busan, now down by 2, scored to tie the game, and needed a final stop to force OT.  Thankfully the D clamped down, and we headed to OT.

The OT mostly consisted of the other team (I forget their name) scoring and Busan answering.  In the final seconds, Busan was down by 2 and playing for the win/continuation.  Their point guard threw up a 3 for the game, but it bounced out.  No fear, Chal-su Ro-du to the rescue!  Charles Rhodes is Busan’s enormous black center (each team is allowed one foreigner, so all of the teams have a big black dude.  What a coincidence!), got the board and tipped it in at the buzzer to force a second OT.  Busan dominated the second OT and won comfortably by 6 or so.  Great ballgame, aided by beer, rowdy fans, and smoking hot cheerleaders.  I have an excellent picture of everyone who went in their seats, but Adam is staring at the court because he was distracted by the cheerleaders.  I don’t blame him.

The second KT Sonic Boom experience didn’t end as happily, sadly.  Busan, down 2-1, was facing elimination in the second round.  Though the game was tied after the first half, Busan crumbled in the second and lost by more than 20.  It was pretty brutal.

The following weekend Doug, Adam, and I went on a hike starting from Beomosa Temple.  We’d been to the temple a few weeks previously, and a sign for a 19km hike which looked amazing.  As the sign described it, the hike took place on a mountain ridge from which you could enjoy “panoramic views of Busan” for the duration of the hike.  It turns out that sign was a liar.  We went along the ridge for probably 10km and actually ended up in the Sasang Black Goat Village.  Apparently the hike continued through there, but we were utterly confused and just took a bus back to the subway.  But for the 10km on the ridge there were no such panoramic views.  Our view was entirely obscured by tall trees.  So that was a bummer.  Luckily, we decided to take a 2km detour up a very steep trail early in the hike, which had a phenomenal view of the city and even of other, smaller mountains surrounding the urban landscape.  So at least that part was cool.

The last couple weekends have been dedicated to seeing cherry blossoms.  Two weekends ago, cherry blossoms bloomed in Busan.  I’d never seem them before, and they are absolutely magnificent.  They come in four different varieties, as far as I can tell: pearl-white flowers, white flowers with a slightly pink hue, bright pink flowers, and white flowers with several green leaves, which gives the tree a greenish white appearance.  Nick, Yoon, and I went to a park area in Busan that had a lot of trees, which were quite a sight to take in.  Sadly, the planning on this park was abysmal.  The city was in the middle of constructing several basketball courts, so there was lots of noise and unsightly construction vehicles.  According to Yoon, the project only started recently and isn’t supposed to be completed until the end of summer.  Also according to Yoon, spring (especially) and summer are the times of the year when this park is most popular.  SO WHY NOT START THE PROJECT IN THE FALL AND FINISH IN THE WINTER??

With cherry blossoms comes beautiful spring weather.  So, while Nick, Yoon, and I spent our Sunday admiring the flowers, the day before Doug, Nick, and I spent Saturday enjoying the beach weather.  We set off around lunch time, and had a couple beers at Haeudnae soaking in the sights and sounds.  We then went the Busan aquarium, which is just off the beach.  It was quite the aquarium, featuring lots of beautiful and exotic marine life, both fish and plants.  The highlight was an enormous tank with several sharks and sting ray, which had an underwater tunnel similar to the Monterey Bay aquarium.  The only bummer was that the aquarium had two porpoises, and they had a super small enclosure that they were constantly trying to escape.  That was really sad.  But I enjoyed the aquarium so much that I am now inspired to become scuba certified, which I will likely do while I’m still in Asia because it is far cheaper to do here than at home.  That night we got Indian food with Taugh and the lady to celebrate Gah Yeong’s birthday.  It was really fun, and the Dirty Murty surprised us all with a cake from Baskin Robins.  Delicioso.

On the topics of beaches, I suppose it’s worth noting that I’ve been going to Gwangalli and Haeundae every chance I can get.  Both beaches are gorgeous, and honestly the beaches are why I chose Busan.  Last visit to Haeundae I noticed that the beach has small soccer goals set up for public use, which I’ve never seen before at any beach.  It’s also awesome.  I’ll be buying a ball in the near future.

Last weekend, Nick, Max, Gah Yeong, Yoon, and I went to Gyeongju, in search of more cherry blossoms.  Gyeongju is arguably Korea’s premiere cherry blossom destinations (the competition is Jinhae, a city further south).  Yoon rented a car and drove, which was super clutch because the bus scene would have undoubtedly been a shit-show.  Gyeongju also has several spread-out sites, so having transportation in the city was essential.  In addition to cherry blossoms, Gyeongju is famous for being the ancient capital of Korea during Silla dynasty, and thus has several noteworthy cultural sites. 

We left around 7am to beat traffic, which sucked waking up but was a phenomenal decision in hindsight.  We arrived early before traffic, and walked around a beautiful lake in the middle of the city that was surrounded by cherry blossoms.  After a breakfast/lunch of Korean-style Chinese food, we went to Anapji pond, which was sort of cool.  The grounds were pretty vast, and there a few rebuilt ancient-style buildings.  There was a small wooden model of an awesome palace that used to be, and then a scale model of what the grounds used to look like.  As Nick aptly described it, “This place is all about ‘just imagine how cool this shit used to look.’”  The coolest part was the plant life, as apparently an emperor had used the area to plant several rare flowers and trees.  I believe it.

By the time we left the pond, the city had become overrun with tourists.  We tried to see a few more sites in Gyeongju, but traffic had become unbearable.  Thank goodness we chose Anapji pond first; it’s supposedly the best.  So, due to traffic, we headed to the Bulguksa Temple, which was about a 20 minute drive from Gyeongju itself.  Bulguksa is the most famous temple in Korea, and my favorite part was that it hasn’t been overly preserved.  Seeing the faded paint gave the temple character.  It’s hard to buy “This temple is 800 years old!” when the paint is brand new.  There were also lots of impressive stone buildings and shrines, and cool sculptures.

After the temple we went to the Seokguram Grotto, which was really awesome.  The grotto is an incredible detailed room, featuring an immaculate Buddha statue in the center.  What brings the Grotto to the “Awesome” level is that supposedly the entire room, including everything in it, was initially just a giant piece of granite.  The room was apparently hollowed out, aside from the cool decorations they left up (the pillars, Buddha, etc).  However, it was also said that the work was all done by one guy, which, as Yoon said, is “bullshit.”  It makes me question if it was all a giant granite slab to begin with.  But it was beautiful nonetheless.  The only thing that pissed me off about it was a “no pictures” rule.

After seeing Anapji pond, Bulguksa Temple, and the Seokguram Grotto, we headed back to Busan.  We were absolutely astounded by the traffic.  I’d say a 5 mile stretch heading into Gyeongju was bumper-to-bumper.  The scariest thing was that Gyeongju was already packed; these cars had no place to go.  Thank goodness we went early.

Let’s see, the rest of the “things” update is bits and pieces, not really day trips.  So I suppose I’ll just list them below.

Most exiting, I got a Blue Belt!  I passed the test about three weeks ago.  Now I have a few more sets of movements to learn and I have to vastly improve my side-kick (I can’t get it very high at the moment).  Doing the aforementioned would lead to a brown belt, which leads to a red belt, which leads to a black belt!  It’s cool to know I’m more than half-way there.

I’ve been going to hockey religiously.  My play is improving; I’d say I’m now one of the better players there.  My skill (skating and stickhandling) is probably only 60th percentile or so, but my hockey sense makes up for it (both my good hockey sense, probably my best asset, and the lack of the hockey sense of many of the other players).  Nick and Doug have been coming also, which is really fun.  Doug is a pretty good player and Nick is steadily improving.

Two pretty funny hockey stories/characters worth writing down.  The first is Stefan, who is a really, really nice dude off the ice.  When I first met the players he was by far my favorite.  But then one week I accidentally tripped him (he just faked me out, so the place where I put my stick, which I anticipated to be where the puck would be, was in fact where his legs ended up.  It was my fault, but certainly unintentional) and he freaked out.  He wouldn’t really accept my apology and loudly was bitching about it on the bench.  A few weeks later he started the game poorly, and I stole it from him several times, often leading to goals.  He started to get really frustrated, and one play we were both chasing down a puck his anger spilled over.  I tied his stick, but not particularly hard because it is just a casual game.  His response was to push back against my stick violently, I think he thought I was applying more pressure than I actually was.  Anyway, since he put a lot of force in pushing my stick and didn’t receive much force back on my end, he lost his balance and went into the boards kinda hard, and his reaction was to throw his stick, shove me, and try to fight me.  Luckily I kept my cool and didn’t fight, but that is less a testament to my character than it is due to the fact that I was just so shocked by his reaction.

The other guy I have to write about is Chad.  Chad is such a weirdo.  Nick thinks his problem is that he’s older and self-conscious about it.  He often tries to keep up with “hip” lingo, I’ve heard him say things like “Hey man if you throw me a beer I’ll hit you back on the fly bro” several times.  I think that sort of talk sounds stupid to begin with, but even more so when you get misuse it slightly, as he tends to do.  The other thing that’s hilarious about Chad is that he sucks at hockey, but takes himself very seriously.  He is an awful skater; in fact it’s pretty frightening because he swings his stick around very high (especially on the backhand side) when he tries to skate hard.  But whenever anything goes his way, even when it’s just his team and he isn’t involved in the play, he’ll let out a loud “YEAAAHHH!!!”  Funnier, is when he screws up he’ll go “Aw, come on Chad!!”  Even if it’s a tough play.  Nick and I share many-a knowing glances/smirks when Chad opens his mouth.

Speaking of sports, I’ve recently taken to playing basketball on the weekends with Doug.  I’ve actually been better than I expected, both in absolute terms and relative to competition.  In absolute terms, I’m pretty reliable at making layups, I’m a good passer, good defender, and decent at grabbing rebounds (my dribbling and shooting remain atrocious).  But the good things are far better than I expected seeing as I haven’t played in years.  In relative terms I’m better than I expected because, apparently, Koreans suck at basketball.  I’ve been slightly above-average in both games I’ve played in so far, which is mostly due to a height advantage but notable nonetheless, as I was well below-average in America, and that was when I was playing.

I’ll close with two funny stories.  The first was a great shirt I saw, which read “Everything you like I liked 5 years ago.”  My first Korean hipster sighting!!  I found it particularly comical since Korea seems to gets its popular culture from America…on a 5 year delay.

The funnier story though comes from Sun Bin, my awesome Taekwondo instructor.  I was standing in Ap Goobi, which is when one leg is a large step in front of the other, bent, and holding 80% of your body weight.  So Sun Bin gently smacks my front leg and says “Should feel like coconut.  Instead… feels like… banana.”  Ouch.

I should have a bunch more funny stories but I forgot them because I’m a lazy ahole who doesn’t update his journal/blog.

Winter Vacation

So winter vacation was a while ago.  I’m just getting to writing about it now.  I haven’t been busy, just lazy.  Since vacation I made a Harry Potter movie with my after school class, which came out phenomenally.  I might be more proud of that creative achievement than I am of my Tolan and Max music.  But that’s a debate that will rage on between the experts for centuries.  So on to the trip.

High One Ski Resort, Korea

The first leg was snowboarding.  Nick’s awesome co-worker Yoon helped us arrange a very reasonably priced package at High One ski resort, one of the best in Korea.  The package included two nights hotel, 3 full-day lift tickets, rental equipment, plus a bus ride from Busan to the resort and a bus ride from the resort to Seoul (where were flying out of) for only $300/person.  Pretty awesome.

To get to the resort, we had to take a 2am bus ride on Monday morning.  Nick and I decided to just stay up, as we saw no point in going to bed.  Once we got on the bus, which was actually quite nice, we passed out.  The only thing hindering our slumber was the oppressive heat on board.  I have no idea why the bus was kept so hot, especially when people were headed to go skiing.  I was boiling in rolled-up sweatpants and a t-shirt.

We got to the resort around 7:30am, and went through the motions of getting to our hotel, getting our boards, getting our lift tickets, and putting on our snow clothes.  When I took out my goggles, I noticed the strap had broken on one side where it connects to the goggles.  Being the talented craftsman that I am, I secured it with packaging tape.  When I put the goggles on my head, the other side broke.  I guess they were dry or old or something.  But I just slapped some tape on the other side and was good to go.

By about 10:30 we were on the slopes, and we decided to start slowly with a green.  To both of our surprises, we were boarding great.  I can only guess it’s from the core strength and balance I’ve gained from Taekwondo.  But whatever the reason, I was doing awesome.  Which was awesome.

We ended up boarding from about 10:30 to 4:30, taking an hour for lunch.  By the afternoon I’d built up my confidence to try the modest terrain park, but the dude running it said helmets were required.  So I had to put it off until the next day.

After a full day of boarding coupled with a 2am bus ride, Nick and I were pretty, pretty, pretty spent.  So we got a pizza at the Dominos by our hotel (which had a menu featuring the Shrimpus Pizza – a pizza we dared not try but laughed about for days, given the inherently hilarious name).  It was actually delicious – I wish Dominos in ‘Murica tasted nearly as good.

After dinner and a few beers, Nick and I went to bed exhausted.  Sadly, the hotel didn’t have any beds, only Korean-style sleeping mats (it was meant to be a condo but undersold, so they are renting it out as a hotel).  So I didn’t sleep as well as I’d wished.

The second day I rented a helmet, so I was able to hit the terrain park.  I had a few falls, but nothing bad.  I landed a 130 or so, which I’ll take.  I was going for a 180, but we can’t all be Shaun White.  After another full day of boarding, we looked for other restaurants on in the resort but ultimately settled on Dominos again.  It was again delicious, though, so no complaints.

The third and final day I again got a helmet and went to the terrain park, but it was a bit crowded so I didn’t try any tricks (for fear of falling and having someone behind me jump and hit me).  But overall a good day.  Like the first two days, the slopes were surprisingly uncrowded.  Unlike in America, where skier/snowboarded talent is fairly evenly distributed, over 90% of the people there were beginners.  So the beginner slopes were pretty crowded and had long lines for the lifts, but the intermediate and advances slopes were very empty and had very short lines.  So that was pretty rad.

After our last day of boarding, we returned our gear to the company we were using and got ready to take our bus to Seoul.  At the last second, though, were told we’d been changed to the Incheon bus and had to go immediately.  We didn’t have time to use the restroom or change, and when we got on the bus we were clearly the last ones on.  So we were made to feel like assholes, because we were the inconsiderate Westerners who didn’t care about showing up to our bus on time.  Never mind the fact that our company told us that they changed our bus only 3 minutes prior.

Despite the uncomfortable bus ride, our evening actually was pretty solid.  We stayed at the Lazy Bird Guest House near the Incheon airport, which was a marvelous hostel.  We were treated to a really nice owner who picked us up from the subway and took us to the airport the next morning, wonderful facilities, and a really cool dude from Seoul to share the room with.  A great way to wrap of the Korea leg of our trip.

The next morning, we woke up around 7 and then got shuttled to the airport.  Our flight into Taipei was pretty smooth, and quite empty.  I was able to catch some shut-eye, which was nice.  I also read 700 Sundays by Billy Chrystal.  It’s was a pretty good read, albeit a bit cheesy.

Taipei, Taiwan

Once we landed in Taipei, we had to get a cab to our hotel.  The listed price inside the airport was NTD$1300 (about $40 USD), but we found a guy who said he’d get us a ride for NTD$1000.  So he hailed one of his cabs (I guess he was a coordinator or something) and we got in.  At the hotel, the cab driver demanded $1300.  I was adamant that the guy had said $1000, but Nick didn’t want to rip off the driver so we just paid the extra fare.

Once we got settled at the hotel, we took a cab to the Chiang Kai-shek Memorial.  What a site, especially inside.  The roof is simply magnificent.  I think my favorite photo from Taiwan came from a shot I got with the inside of the memorial relatively empty.  Beautiful.

From the Memorial we took a short subway ride to National Taiwan University, just to get a feel for college life in Taiwan.  One of the first things we noticed was the laydees.  They give Korean girls a run for their money, which is impressive/surprising given the wealth gap between the two places.  The campus was pretty too, lots of grass and palm trees.  A surprisingly small amount of students just lounging around, though.  Almost all of the students we saw en transit, typically by bike.  Guess they work a bit harder than los estudiantes en los Estados Unidos.

From the University we took the subway to City Hall, which the lady from the hotel front desk told us to check out.  I don’t know why, though, it was really dull.  Bu it was en route to Taipei 101, which is what we really wanted to see.  And wow – what an impressive structure.  It’s the 3^rd highest structure in the world, just behind the Shanghai Financial Center and the Whatsitcalled in Dubai.  Unfortunately, we didn’t go up to the observatory because the lady at the desk warned us that we wouldn’t have much of a view.  Upon reflection, I don’t think she was right.  Though it was cloudy, visibility was good and the clouds were above the top of the building.

After Taipei 101 we headed back to the hotel to relax for a bit, and then we went to the Shillin night market.  Ate a bunch of food, but nothing caught my eye in terms of purchases.  After maybe an hour and a half we were pretty spent, so we just headed back to the hotel and passed out.

Day 2

Even though we went to bed fairly early (10:30pm or so), we slept in.  Because man oh man were the beds at our hotel comfy.  We were staying at a very nice 4-star hotel that we booked online at a great price of only about $100/night. 

After a delicious breakfast at the hotel, we went to the National Palace Museum.  The grounds of the museum are breathtaking, and the collection of ancient Chinese artifacts is one of the largest in the world (or so Wikipedia tells me).  So we spent nearly 3 hours wandering around, thoroughly impressed by the collection.  The coolest pieces were undoubtedly the small, incredibly detailed sculptures of marble and jade.  Some pieces had such intricate detail that they had to be viewed through a magnifying glass.  Still don’t know how they were made hundreds of years ago.

From the National Palace Museum we went to the Shung Ye Museum of Formosan Aborigines.  I didn’t know there was a significant aboriginal population in Taiwan, but apparently there is.  And recently there has been a large movement to allow them to continue their tribal way of life without infringement or discrimination.  The museum itself was really cool – it was beautifully maintained and well laid out, plus very informative (and had ample English).  We spent another hour or so there.

Sufficiently museumed out, we took a cab to the Grand Hotel.  The Grand Hotel is Taiwan’s most famous hotel, and for good reason.  The structure itself has a very cool design, and the interior is just beautiful.  I don’t even want to guess how much a room costs there.

After the Grand Hotel, we went back to our Good Hotel to relax.  After a few beers in bed, we grabbed dinner and headed to Luxy Club.  Luxy is the trendiest club in Taiwan, and man it was crazy.  Two stories, two dance floors, big screens, scantily clad girls walking around and pouring shots into your mouth, the whole deal.  The girls were smoking, too.  Sadly, the music was too bad to even pretend to dance to, so Nick and I just took in the scene.  Once we felt like we’d abused our ear drums enough, we went back to our hotel and wandered around looking for a nearby bar.

The only bar we could find was the Baking Bar, but boy did we hit the jackpot.  The owners, Ooweh and Jojo, were unbelievably friendly.  And Jojo had spent some time living in LA, so she spoke English very well.  The regulars there were also really nice, particularly a guy named Edward.  Nick and I both agreed that we want to return to Taiwan, mainly because of the really nice friends that we made.

Day 3

We ended up staying at Baking Bar until like 4am, so we slept in late.  Though the forecast was for rain, the weather held up and we were able to go to Yangmingshan National Park.  When we first arrived, we met this absurdly friendly kid named Jesse.  He spoke perfect English and was really, really talkative and cool.  He kept saying “I’m coming back tomorrow!  Be here tomorrow, OK?”  I suspect he and his family may have been from Hong Kong, because it really seemed like he was raised on English.

Yangmingshan was a really cool national park, with some cool botanical areas and pretty trails.  Sadly, it was overcast and we couldn’t get the views of Taipei that we were hoping for.  There was a super sketchy moment, though, when we followed the trail to an observatory.  As we approached, it seemed a little odd because the observatory did not look maintained.  Suddenly, a dog got up and started barking at us.  We decided to just back away, and then the dog started to chase us.  So we ran.  Luckily, the dog didn’t venture down the trail.  But it was pretty terrifying.  Our hypothesis is that some hobo is living in the observatory with a guard dog.

After we bused back to Taipei, we decided to try Taipei 101 again.  But while we were en route, the fog descended quickly and actually engulfed the top of the building, presumably including the lookout area.  That was a disappointment.

When we got back to the hotel, I learned a much greater disappointment.  As I checked my facebook on the hotel computer, I learned that my friend Mike Vogel from Semester at Sea committed suicide.  Though I wasn’t particularly close with Mike, three of my better from SAS, Martin, Nicholas, and Gabe, were all very close to him.  It was a real shock, and the news hit me hard.

From the hotel, we went to Baking Bar.  The great company allowed me to forget about my troubles for a while, but the bar was closing early for the Chinese New Year.  When we tried and failed to find more bars near the National Taiwan University area, I got down again.  So Taiwan Day 3 ended on a low note.

Day 4

For our last full day we decided to check out the Beitou Hot Springs.  Beitou, a sizable area of Taipei, is basically a giant hot spring.  There are several rivers which are constantly steaming, and then an enormous mother-load hot spring.  The signage said the mother-load reached a boiling 100ºC, and based on the amount of the steam I’d believe ot.  Nestled between steep hills dense with bright green trees and plants, it was quite the sight to take in.

There are some public hot springs you can bathe in free of charge, but Nick and I, being the geniuses that we are, didn’t bring towels.  So we went to a private hot spring in a hotel.  We watched the last 2/3 of How to Train your Dragon, which was pretty decent.  On the way back to the hotel we grabbed a half hour massage, which cost about $20 and was just what the doctor ordered.  Unfortunately, my masseur was a masseur, not the smoking hot Taiwanese masseuse I’d imagined while standing outside.

For dinner, we went to this pizza place that we’d walked by several times to get reach the subway.  The restaurant was located in what can only be described as a hippy part of town – there was a yoga studio, an art gallery, a cultural park featuring modern art type sculptures, and then this pizza place.  The pizza place was called Alley Cats and had a bunch of cats walking around.  It was pretty delicious.  Unfortunately, it started raining after dinner so we never got to explore the park.

Come beddy-bye time we were pretty spent, so we decided to hit the hay early.  Plus, football was on the next day!  49ers vs. Giants in the NFC Championship.  Long live Harbaugh and Alex Smith.

Day 5

Well football dashed my hopes and dreams.  It was a pretty good game, but the forecast actually cut out with 5 minutes remaining to go to local news.  No joke.  The game had been advertised as being broadcast on that channel for days, and then they just cut to news with 5 minutes left in the NFC Championship game.  It was probably all for the best, though, as the Niners blew it.  Eff you, Kyle Williams.  Eff you.

After football broke my heart, Nick and I took a cab to the airport to fly to Hong Kong.  We were cautious and left about 3 hours before our flight, which proved to be far too conservative as we arrived in about half an hour and found the airport virtually empty.  Luckily, the airline had space on a flight which left an hour and a half before our original, which would give us a bit of extra time in Hong Kong.

Hong Kong

We landed in Hong Kong around 4pm, and by 5pm we were on the airport bus to get to our hostel.  But before we reached our stop at Nathan Road, we were told the bus couldn’t go there because the road was closed.  So we got off a few stops early and were pointed in the direction of our hostel.  Once we found Nathan Rd, we were disappointed to see we had to walk 8 long blocks with all of our stuff, and shocked/dismayed to see how crowded the street was.  Apparently there was going to be some sort of parade to celebrate the Chinese New Year, and people were lining up early.  We were also unpleasantly surprised by the number of hawkers setting up shop outside of our building, all of whom were approaching us saying things like “Hey, buddy, need a place to stay?  No?  Well I got copy watches.  Copy Rolex.  Great price.  Hashish?  Cocaine?  You want it I’ve got it.”

Getting through the crowds and the hawkers took a lot out of us, but we finally reached our building.  It was right on the main road, and I commented to Nick that I hoped our room would be on corner and have a view of the parade.  Nick laughed and said “fat chance.”

But once we got to our guest house, lo and behold we had a window!  The view of the parade, which started while we were getting settled in our room, wasn’t perfect but it was pretty darn cool to have an aerial view (we were 7 stories up).  And what a luxury it was to be out of the crowds!

After about a half hour, though, we started to feel hungry and decided to return to the fray.  We quickly left the main parade street to find eats, and ended up at a kebab place called Ebaneezers.  It was pretty delicious.  After dinner, we grabbed some beers and headed back to our room.  The walk back to the hostel was absolutely insane – the road, which had previously been very crowded, now had about three times the number of people that it did before.  It took about 20 minutes to walk a block that should have taken maybe two minutes.  We were so happy that we got on that early flight, because I don’t know how we could have managed that walk with our suitcases.

Once we got back to our room, we drank some Tsing Tao and watched the parade from our window.  Highlights included an enormous Chinese dragon (celebrating the year of the dragon), Vegas showgirls, the St. Louis Rams cheerleaders, a Brazilian troupe with incredible costumes, Star Wars characters, Toy Story characters, a break dancing crew, some insanely athletic monks, and a guy who was doing flips on a long, elastic rubber strap no wider than a balance beam (basically shaped like an oversized fettuccini noodle, no more than 4 inches wide).  It was a pretty fun show.

By the time it ended (about 10:30pm), though, Nick and I were pretty exhausted.  So we hit the hit the hay early.

Day 2

After a nice, long sleep, Nick and I headed out to take on the day.  After a breakfast/lunch of shrimp wonton soup and some fried fish balls, we headed out in search of hockey gloves.  We’d recently found a weekly game in Busan, but the spare gloves we’d been given were pretty worn.  We’d heard that Hong Kong, given its sizable foreign population, has some places to buy equipment.  So we found a coffee shop with a computer and researched where we could find gloves.  Turns out many YMCA facilities have inline hockey leagues and small pro shops, so we set out to the nearest one mention online.  Unfortunately, we were given some bad info by the man at the information desk in the subway station: he told us that the YMCA we found online was closed.  We later learned it was not, when we visited the YMCA near our hostel (which unfortunately didn’t have a pro shop).

Temporarily defeated, we wandered back toward our hostel area to get to the famous Hong Kong Waterfront.  On our way, we visited Kowloon Park, which was teeming with plant life and beautifully maintained.  Beautiful parks became a bit of a theme for our Hong Kong visit, which Nick hypothesized was due to British influence.

After about an hour at Kowloon Park, we ventured to the waterfront promenade and soaked in the scene.  This was particularly cool because we’d been there about two years ago when we visited on Semester at Sea.  We also walked down the avenue of the stars, where I got another photo with the Bruce Lee statue.  I later posted that photo side-by-side with the photo I took in 2010 to facebook.  It was the most “Liked” thing I’ve ever posted, getting over 50 “Likes” (I think).  I’m ashamed to admit how cool I felt getting internet points.

After taking in the sights on the water, we headed back to the YMCA we tried to get to in morning.  This time equipped with directions from the YMCA near our hostel, we reached our destination without trouble.  Because it was the first day of the Chinese New Year, the place was pretty much deserted.  But a nice and strikingly beautiful girl who was stuck working there took us to the pro shop and sold us each a pair of gloves (unrelated side-note, this girl was pretty much the only very attractive girl we saw the entire weekend.  Not-so-fun-fact: Girls in Hong Kong aren’t attractive.)

From the YMCA, we headed to the Temple Night Market.  We got some delicious dim sum for dinner, and then cruised around looking for trinkets.  I got a portable, bendable tripod for a mere $6, and super cool painting of the Hong Kong skyline at night for like $22.  Nick got himself a leather satchel, and we each chipped in for a copy Dolce and Gabbana bag for our friend Ryan.  All solid purchases.

After going back to the hostel to drop of our purchases, we took the Star Ferry to Hong Kong island and made our way to Lan Kwai Fong, the bar street we’d visited on Semester at Sea.  As the bars were obscenely overpriced, Nick and I stuck mostly to brewskies purchased at the 7-11 and consumed in the middle of the street (which, by the way, is perfectly legal in Hong Kong).  Luckily, to spice up the evening, we met a super cool dude named Demetry who we talked with for a couple hours.  He was from Russia but spoke perfect English, and told us how he’d been teaching in China but quit because he hated it.  Since he’d been traveling solo, and was currently bumming around in Hong Kong.  He was a super cool dude with a dry wit and sharp intellect – reminded me a lot of my buddy Martin from SAS.  Sadly, I was unable to find him on facebook.

Day 3

Our third day in Hong Kong (if you count our first half day where we saw the parade, WHICH I AM) was gamblin’ day.  Nick and I were heading to Macau to spend some cashola.  I’m talking dollar bills, folks.  Benji’s.  And of course, what I really mean is that we gambled approximately $18 each.

But before we could make it rain pennies, we had to get there.  Macau has a pretty awesome turbo boat, which takes you straight from Hong Kong to Macau in less than an hour (sadly, you still must go through customs).  So after arriving, we pretended to be going to a casino to get a free ride from the ferry terminal to the central part of the island.  We took ride to the Grand Lisboa, which unfortunately didn’t have a good bus (all the others were charters).  Nick dubbed it the Peanut Bus, which I still find hilarious for some reason.

Anyhow, after the bus ride we wandered the streets.  Macau is a pretty interesting place because it was a Portuguese colony until 1999.  So there are lots of cool sites to see, and many delicious egg tart treats (http://bestvacationdealstoday.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/04/Portuguese-egg-tarts.jpg) to eat.  Thus, for our first few hours in Macau we simply wandered around checking out the sites, the highlight of which was undoubtedly the Ruínas de São Paulo.  Just one wall remains from the 16^th century church, and it was damn cool to see at dusk.  But the coolest part of the wandering was that at times we were completely immersed in Portuguese architecture; it was hard to believe that we were in Asia.  See, sometimes colonial oppression can be fun!

After a delicious dinner of seafood street kebabs (which, as time would tell, DIDN’T induce traveler’s diarrhea!) we headed to the casinos to get our gambling on.  Before we did, though, I just ogled the casinos lit up at night and took probably 200 pictures.  All the casinos except the Casino Lisboa (built in 1970) were put up post-colonization, and are absolutely magnificent structures.  Unfortunately, these buildings are so darn pretty that the casino owners correctly think that they can charge you an arm and leg to wage some bills there.  The cheapest blackjack table we could find had about a $33 (USD) minimum bet.  So we stuck to roulette as a joint venture, and minimized our losses about $8 each.  We also were treated to an awesome dance show featuring girls in g-strings dancing to a super hokey song which had a tiger’s roar every 8 beats or so.  So that was pretty cool.  

But even though Nick and I are the Original Party Boys USA ™, we actually headed back around midnight because we had a rigorous itinerary planned for a final day in Hong Kong.

Day 4

We started our last day in Hong Kong by going to Lantau Island to see the Po Lin Monastery and the Tian Tan Buddha, the largest seated outdoor Buddha statue in the world.  The Buddha quite a site to take in – 112 feet tall and made of pure bronze.  However, the experience was a bit marred because it was a very foggy day.  The statue is located at the top of a sizable hill, and on a clear day the view of the island is supposedly splendid.  We wouldn’t know, though, because all we could see was mist.

After visiting the statue, we checked out the Po Lin Monastery.  I actually really enjoyed this part, because it was comical how much the Monastery had whored itself out for some bills.  Nick and I kept joking about all of the sacred restaurants, food stands and souvenir shops.  Probably how Buddha would have wanted it.

From Lantau Island we went to Hong Kong Island hopping to go to Victoria’s Peak, which is famous for its views of the city.  Unfortunately, it was so foggy that it was immediately clear the peak wouldn’t be worth our time.  Astoundingly, there seemed to be a 2+ hour line for the trolley up to the peak.  I don’t know why people didn’t realize that the peak was going to be completely enveloped by fog, or why they’d choose to wait over two hours to save a couple bucks on a cab fare.

With the Peak out of the question, we decided to visit the Hong Kong Botanical Gardens.  It was a beautiful park, which had several cool plants, a gorgeous fountain surrounded by a flower garden, a bunch of exotic birds, some animals (the highlight was undoubtedly the leapin’ lemurs), and a reptile house with an ENORMUS python.  Perhaps the coolest thing at the gardens, though, was a small picture of the Hong Kong Waterfront from 1991.  Aside from the famed Bank of China building and a couple other skyscrapers, the skyline didn’t have much.  Since 1991, there must have been at least 50 new skyscrapers built, an incredible feat of engineering and efficiency.  Also explains why the buildings all look so modern and cool – because, well, they are.

From the Botanical Gardens we went to Hong Kong Park, which was equally impressive.  The park was filled with paths through trees and plants, grassy areas for sitting/picnics, an enormous bird conservatory, some basketball and tennis courts, and an observation tower at least 70 feet tall.  As we were losing light, we didn’t spend too much time wandering through the park, instead opting to go up the observatory tower.  The views up there were splendid, and we just soaked in the sights for a half hour or so before heading back to Kowloon via the Star Ferry.

Back in Kowloon we first researched airport busses, as taking a taxi or even a subway was quite pricey.  We saw that the last bus left to the airport at midnight, so we decided to get to our stop around 11:30 just to play it safe.

From the coffee shop with the computers we did some last-minute trinket shopping.  Nick got himself a bottle opener, and I got gifts for my co-teachers and my vice principal (Editor’s Note: The gift for the vice principal really paid off – I am currently enjoying an extra week of vacation during the school’s spring break).  The guy we bought the gifts from was pretty awesome, too: in addition to being really nice he was the only clearly/openly effeminate gay man we saw in Hong Kong.  He also wrapped up all of my trinkets very carefully, which I greatly appreciated and, in the spirit of the New Year that I don’t celebrate, I told him to keep the change on my purchase (about $2, so don’t Saint me).

Final purchases in hand, Nick and I headed out for an epic last meal.  We started with a Mediterranean wrap of Ebaneezers, the place we went our first night.  Then we went out for dim sum and ate shu mai and pork dumplings galore (Editor’s Note: Despite being absolutely stuffed that the moment, my mouth watered writing those last two sentences).  We then purchased some beers from the nearest 7-11 and got set for our ride to the airport.  I had about $100 spare Hong Kong Dollars (about $14 USD), so I decided to try to get a copy watch.  To my surprise, I couldn’t get a copy watch even if I tried to throw in an extra $20 USD.  Apparently the copy watches in Hong Kong aren’t as shitty as I thought.

At the airport we killed time with the beers we’d brought (our flight wasn’t until 2:00am and we arrived just past midnight – it’s called planning).  Some weirdo came up to us and insisted on talking to us about random things, so we conveniently mentioned our impending flight and got the hell out of there.

The plane was pretty packed, but I somehow ended up with an entire row to myself!  Huzzah!  While the space did enhance my aerial sleeping abilities (I’d say I slept for 75% of the flight), I was still thoroughly exhausted by the time I got back to my apartment around 7:30am.  So I crashed, content having completed a very fun winter break trip.

Taiwan Reactions

Taiwan is an absolutely amazing country.  The people are just so nice.  It’s unbelievable – by far the friendliest country I’ve ever been to.  Pretty much everyone who could speak English seemed to smile at us, ask us where we were from, and welcome us to Taiwan.  And unlike many places were friendly people approach tourists, they didn’t want anything from us.  They just wanted to say hi.

Taipei as a city was a little bit behind of what I’d expected.  The subway system is pretty excellent, but there aren’t as many skyscrapers as I would have expected.  The biggest construction project we saw was building a light rail to the airport.

But despite being a tad “behind” my expectations, the people seemed very happy.  The food and national beer are both good.  The people are very friendly.  The women are attractive.  The city of Taipei has a bunch of cool sites to check out (though I’m not sure how much there is by way of entertainment – recreational sports, pro sports teams, concert venues, etc.  I’d guess there’s an ample amount, but I didn’t run across any).  Plus, I made some great friends and never did get to see the top of Taipei 101 (or two seemingly wonderful national parks that are located 4 and 6 hours from Taipei, respectively) which makes me want to return to Taiwan when I finish my contract.

Hong Kong Reactions

People were noticeably less friendly in Hong Kong than in Taiwan.  One time on the subway, Nick and I saw a woman and her young daughter sprint in to grab seats another woman and daughter were clearly about to sit in (the latter pair was much closer to the seats in question).  I’d have to give the edge in cuisine to Hong Kong, though, as I’m a complete sucker for dim sum and Hong Kong also boasts many international cuisines, such as Mediterranean, Indian, and Italian.  The coolest part about Hong Kong, though, has got be the architecture, which is very modern and impressive.  If you like gambling, it’s pretty cool to have Macau a short ride away.

The most interesting question one can’t help but face in Hong Kong is how to view colonialism.  We are taught in school to view colonialism as a travesty, as colonial powers imposed their way of life on indigenous populations, exploited natural and human resources for their own gain, and crushed countless languages and cultures.  But with that said, one cannot deny how much higher the quality of life is in Hong Kong than it is in mainland China.  It really doesn’t even compare, and it is undoubtedly the result of British colonization.  Not that I’m arguing that colonialism was morally justified or at all pretty, but when you look at the result (at least in Hong Kong, the same cannot be said for many colonized places, especially in Africa) it makes you wonder: do the ends justify the means?  I haven’t really formed an opinion one way or the other, but it’s interesting food for thought.