Summer in Beijing - Part 1

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

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

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

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...