Next Stop Pottersville

DMZ

2007-11-07T23:19:00.000+09:00

After more than 8 months of living almost within walking distance of North Korea, we finally made it to the Demilitarized Zone. It was kind of odd being allowed to visit one of the most heavily armed borders in the world - it seems as though a place like this would be off limits to tourists. But it’s not, so we went to check it out.

I was most surprised to see that the ROK (Republic of Korea, aka South Korea) soldiers were a lot more intense than the KPA (Korean People’s Army, aka North Korea) soldiers. The ROK soldiers stand half hidden behind a wall (to give their enemy less of a target), making fists (and looking angry like they’re ready to kill someone) and staring north, while the KPA soldiers were walking around taking pictures of each other with us as the background. Maybe it was just a coincidence and we happened to visit on 'KPA Picture Day', but it was definitely not how I had envisioned things to be.

Michelle and I with a ROK soldier, technically standing in North Korea. Notice the clenched fist and the angry demeanour. You don't wanna mess with these guys.

ROK soldier guarding the border. The pebbles in the foreground is South Korea and the dirt in the background is North Korea.

The white posts behind me mark the border.

The Bridge of No Return. This bridge crosses the actual border and was used for prisoner exchanges during the Korean War. The prisoners were given the choice to either stay in the country in which they were captured or cross to their home country. If they decided to cross, they were never allowed to return. Hence the name of the bridge.

The tallest flagpole in the world (160 metres), holding the largest flag in the world (600 lbs) in Kijong-dong, North Korea. South Koreans know this place as Propaganda Village because nobody actually lives there, just some maintenance workers turning on the lights at night.

Ulleungdo and Dokdo

2007-10-14T03:14:00.001+09:00

My last post (summer in Beijing Part 1) started off like this;

Wow am I bad at updating this blog. So much has happened since my last post and there’s nothing on here to show for it. Oh well, maybe this will be the start of more posts in the future.

Well, so much for that. It’s been over 2 months since that post and once again a lot has happened here in the ROK. The most significant event – and the main reason for this post – is our trip to Ulleungdo and Dokdo for Chuseok vacation (Sept 22nd-26th).

Ulleungdo is an island about 120 km off the coast of Korea in the East Sea (the Sea of Japan to the rest of the world). It’s not very big (about 70 sq km and about 10,000 people living there) but the scenery is spectacular. It was another Adventure Korea trip and we went with some of our fellow foreign teacher friends (Amie, Dan, and Linda) and we all had a blast. Most of our time was spent hiking around the island, checking out the sites, and meeting new and interesting people. We met one girl who Amie insisted was Hermione Granger (we never actually found out), another girl who told us an odd story about her dad and then she went around saying “I’m gonna cut you!” to everyone (very strange), a guy Michelle new from high school, and a guy who grew up in Burlington! You’ll meet all kinds on an Adventure Korea trip! Here are some pictures.

Group shot in front of the hotel

Bongnae Waterfall

Elephant Island

The view from our hotel

Bridge jumping

Bamboo forest

A drunk Korean took this pic while he was smoking (hence the smoke)

Michelle and I also took a trip to Dokdo which is another island in the East Sea. This one is actually disputed territory between Japan and Korea so it was really cool to see. It is much smaller than Ulleungdo and there are only 2 people living there. The Korean government subsidizes their living (pretty heavily I would assume) so they can justify their current occupation of the island.

Korean police stationed on the island

Summer in Beijing - Part 3

2007-08-14T18:33:00.000+09:00

Day 5 (Thursday, August 2nd). This was our busiest day by far. First we went to the Lama Temple which is Beijing’s largest temple. Most of the tourists here came to pray and offer incense to Buddha in the many halls of the temple. The coolest part was the 18 meter high(!) statue of the Maitreya Buddha carved out of a single piece of sandalwood. Unfortunately, they don’t let you take pictures inside any of the temple buildings, not that I could’ve fit it all in a single frame anyways. Here are some pictures of the temple nonetheless.

From there we headed to the Temple of Heaven Park (built in the early 1400’s) which is where emperors would come to pray for good harvests. As with most of the places we visited in Beijing, it was crawling with tourists so our pictures aren’t as cool as they could be. The park itself is huge and when you’re inside the walls, walking around, it’s hard to believe you’re in the middle of Beijing.

From there we walked over to the Pearl Market to do some shopping. Haggling skills were definitely needed and as a general rule of thumb, they say to never pay more than half the first price offered by the vendor. This place was absolutely crazy. It’s like a flea market but all the vendors are yelling at you trying to get you to look at their stuff. They’re like vultures coming at you from everywhere, “Hallo, hallo, you need shoes? I give you good price, very cheap!” and “hallo, sir, just looking over here!” If you stop, even for a second to look at their stuff, they’re all over you. They’ll tell you anything to get you to buy their stuff and some it is hilarious. One woman told me that she gives the “real” price to Americans, but for me, “much cheaper” and she had no idea where we were from (she guessed Sweden). After it was all said and done she tried to get me to buy her an ice cream because I talked her down so much. It’s going to be so hard to buy things at Korean prices now (let alone Canadian).

Day 6 (Friday, August 3rd). This was our last full day in Beijing and we decided to go to Beihai Park which was the center of Beijing until the Forbidden City was built. It’s a huge park taken up mostly by Beihai Lake but there’s an island in the middle with some cool temples and such.

Next we went to the Silk Market to buy more cheap stuff. It was pretty much the same as the Pearl Market only this one specialized in silk rather than pearls. This place was also a little classier than the Pearl Market and so the vendors would try to gouge you even more than usual. Michelle and I were interested in 2 t-shirts from this one lady, so we asked how much. She said “for anyone else, I charge more, but for you, 480 Yuan”. We felt really special being offered 2 t-shirts for almost CAD$70. I countered with an offer of 25 and we finally settled at 40 Yuan (CAD$5.50).

Day 7 (Saturday, August 4th). We didn’t do much today as we had to be at the airport relatively early to catch our flight. We decided to check out the Museum of Chinese History as it was only a short walk from our hostel. Unfortunately it was closed which they say is not a rare occurrence. Apparently they like to revise history a lot based on current events.

A few other notes about our trip…

China is definitely the place to visit if you want your money to go far. Everything is way cheaper than I could have expected. 5 Yuan ($0.70) would bye you a big bottle of Tsingtao Beer (almost twice the size of a regular beer bottle) at our hostel; 1 Yuan ($0.14) was enough to get you on a bus or bye you a bottle of water from a street vendor. Even a taxi going half way across the city cost us less than $3.00. It was amazing.

We never did run into any pickpocket problems. I was probably a little over cautious because of all the things we had read about Beijing (and warnings in our hostel!), but oh well. For the first couple days I felt like Homer when the Simpsons go to New York, like everyone was trying to screw me (which was probably true) or like everyone was trying to sell me something I didn’t want (which actually was true). You couldn’t walk down the street for 2 minutes without somebody offering you something. Rickshaw rides, postcards, bottles of water, Mao watches (which had a smiling Mao on the face waving to you – they were actually pretty awesome, I wish I bought one), you name it. Never in my life have so many people tried so hard to get me to buy stuff that I didn’t want or need.

That was part of what made it such an awesome place to be. Everything about the city was so different from anything I was used to. I was especially glad to see Beijing before the Olympics as a lot of places were under construction in preparation for the games. There were also a lot of areas that were going to be levelled so that newer and “nicer” areas could be put up and shown to the world. It will be interesting to compare what I saw on the trip with the things I will see during the Olympics in 2008.

All in all it was an amazing experience and I would recommend it to anyone.

Summer in Beijing - Part 2

2007-08-10T18:47:00.000+09:00

Day 2 (Monday, July 30th). We got up relatively early and walked to the Forbidden City which is directly north of Tiananmen. Once again, we were sweating well before getting to our destination. The Forbidden City was the Chinese imperial palace for the Ming and Qing Dynasties. It’s called Forbidden because it was off limits to commoners for 500 years (it was built in the early 1400’s). To say this place is big is a vast understatement. It’s over 700,000 square metres, has 800 buildings and more than 9000 rooms! We could have easily spent the whole day there, but it was just packed with tourists so after a couple hours we decided to explore some less busy areas.

Day 3 (Tuesday, July 31st). Today we hit up the Summer Palace which is where the emperors and their entourages would come to escape the heat from the Forbidden City. This place was huge and really impressive. It’s basically a bunch of palaces built atop Longevity Hill all leading down to Kunming Lake. This was our favourite place in Beijing so far.

Day 4 (Wednesday, August 1st). Today was our Great Wall day. We got up early and headed out on a trip run by our hostel to the Mutianyu section of the wall. It was pretty much everything I had expected and a lot more. The Great Wall is one of the only places in the world that I’ve always wanted to see, and it didn’t disappoint. Whatever I say will not do it justice.

Inside a watchtower;

Summer in Beijing - Part 1

2007-08-09T17:49:00.000+09:00

Wow am I bad at updating this blog. So much has happened since my last post and there’s nothing on here to show for it. Oh well, maybe this will be the start of more posts in the future.

So, four posts since I’ve been in Korea and two of them have been about trips out of the country. Does that tell you anything?? Well, it shouldn’t. I love Korea and living here has been awesome. It just seems as though all we do here is work. Until now, we hadn’t had more than two days off in a row since we started in March. I’m not complaining or anything (I am kind of I guess) we’re just really busy while we’re at home.

Our latest international adventure took Michelle and I to China!!

We spent our summer vacation (nine days off in a row!) in steamy Beijing. Things started off ominously to say the least. First, a stewardess spilled kimchi (spicy fermented cabbage dish with lots of red sauce) all over me on the plane. Second, a driver was not at the airport ready to pick us up upon our arrival (even though we booked, and confirmed an airport pickup through the hostel). Third, a cabbie was nice enough to call the hostel for us (even though we didn’t ask him to) and let me try to sort things out. After arguing with them for 10-15 minutes and them finally agreeing to come pick us up, the cabbie tries to tell me I owe him 50 Yuan for using his phone! Long story short, he didn’t get any of my money. Forth, when we finally got to the hostel, the guy at the desk tells us we don’t have a room. Here’s how I remember our conversation going:

Me: “but we have a reservation…”
Hostel Clerk (in broken English): “I know, but we don’t have a room for you”
Me: “do you know what a reservation is?”
Clerk: “yes”
Me: “I don’t think you do. You know how to take the reservation, you just don’t know how to hold the reservation.”

Ok, so maybe it didn’t go exactly like that, but that’s how I’m going to remember it. After arguing a little more, they said they’d set us up at the place across the street for one night. Here’s a pic of the bathroom.

Needless to say we didn’t shower here.

Thankfully, that is where our string of bad luck came to an end. The rest our trip was awesome!! We managed to see all the major sites while we were there; The Great Wall, The Forbidden City, Tiananmen Square, The Summer Palace, The Lama Temple, etc.

Day 1 (Sunday, July 29th). Even though we got to Beijing on Saturday, I’m calling this day 1. By the time everything was sorted out at the hostel (checking in and such), more than half the day was shot. We spent the majority of our remaining time wandering around our hutong (Mandarin for ‘alleyway’) and checking out Tiananmen Square, the world’s largest public square. It was only about a 15 minute walk from our hostel but damn was it a hot walk. We were dripping with sweat after about 5 minutes being outside in the disgusting smogginess that is Beijing air. It has to be at least 10 times worse than any smog alert day in Toronto. The square was huge, obviously, and pretty cool considering its history, but overall, we were a little disappointed. Chairman Mao’s Mausoleum was closed for construction which was a shame because that would have been interesting to see. Here’s some pictures of the square and of our hostel.

More to come...

Osaka, Japan

2007-05-27T22:31:00.000+09:00

So we went to Japan back in March to get our visas sorted out and it was awesome! We were in Osaka for about two days and we spent most of our time wandering around downtown. The map we were given for the Korean consulate was not helpful at all so we had some trouble finding the place. Eventually we found it and when we were done there we had the rest of the day to find our hostel - The Osaka House. It took us a while because of the whole bad map situation, but we managed to find our way there too.

The Osaka House was cool, but all it consisted of was a floor, a TV (with only Japanese channels), and some mats to sleep on. See the pics for more details. Japanese people (in Osaka anyways) are crazy stylish. Everyone looked like they spent at least 3 hours on their hair before going out. I wish I got some pictures to prove my point… you’ll just have to take my word for it. There were also an insane amount of bicyclists riding around and they all acted like we were in their way, while we were walking on the sidewalk. We came very close to being in some head on collisions, and causing some too, lol.

The majority of our time the 2nd day was spent in an outdoor (but covered) mall type place because it was raining. It had a tonne of Pachinko parlours (like Plinko on The Price is Right - the Japanese go crazy for it), lots of McDonald's and Starbucks, and other typical mall stores. For lunch, we went to a traditional sushi restaurant. It was cool. We sat at the ‘bar’ and watched the chefs do their thing and serve us some of the best sushi I've every had. All in all we had an awesome time. Hopefully we can get back to Japan again someday.

Korean update #1

2007-05-22T22:20:00.000+09:00

Well, we've been here almost three months and a whole heck of a lot has happened. I'm not going to write about everything in this post, just a little update with some pics of my flat and my new city. I'm living in place called Gyoha. It's about 1-1.5 hours north of Seoul (not 40 mins like our recruiter told us...) and there's not a whole lot going on here. There's a ton of restaurants, a gym, badminton/basketball courts, some noraebangs (literally translated into "song room", personal karaoke like in Lost in Translation - more on those in a later post!) and not much else. Here's some pics.

a restaurant across the street

inside our flat

from the outside (we're on the 2nd floor)

the main drag in Gyoha

My First Post

2007-05-22T00:33:00.000+09:00

Well, here it is. The long awaited, eagerly anticipated and ever elusive blog to chronicle the goings on in my life. I never thought I'd have enough to say to the world to have one (lets be honest, I probably don't) but hey, I'm living on the other side of the world at the moment and if that's not reason enough to justify my own blog, I don't know what is.

So, without further ado, let's start the insanity...