Sunday, July 24, 2011

Hiking trip in Cheong-do 07-24-2011

Charles Jeong... the guide and event planner
This past weekend, I went on a hiking trip as a little prequel to the big river trekking trip mentioned here.  I knew that I needed at least a little warm up to give me an idea of what I had gotten myself into.  I realized at some point that maybe it wasn't the best idea to jump in feet first to a lengthy hike when I don't really like walking to the mailbox, but the things that I'm capable of accomplishing always seem to be a bit more extensive in my mind than they tend to be in real life.

My preferred mode of transportation
Emerson or someone like that said that the journey is often better than the destination.  I say fuck that guy.  Sometimes the journey hurts and the destination is freakin' awesome.  We met up around 8am on Sunday morning, a true feat in itself.  There were a total of five us in the expat portion of the group; one girl had been up drinking since Saturday.  She got less than an hour of sleep on the bus ride over and she still managed to embarrass me on the trail.  Truth be told: everyone managed to embarrass me on the trail.  The biggest issue for me was that it seemed to be never ending.  Every time I'd glance up, I'd see more hill to climb.  It wasn't steep enough to require us to tie off or anything, but the incline was still pretty rough in places.  I had a small tie string bag to hold a few bottles of water, a change of clothes and a towel.  The fifty-year-old Korean men that comprised the other half of our party looked like Frodo and Samwise with their 200 lb bags.  Lucky for the rest of us, their bags were full of many, many essentials.

Korean hiking is an entirely different beast from what I was expecting.  The trails tend to be a lot busier; hiking's very popular here.  There also tends to be a lot of drinking; drinking is very popular too.  We started the first leg of the trip with a quick Soju and rice wine toast.  Then we had some beer that they had frozen from the night before.  (Learned a valuable lesson regarding frozen beer... plastic bottles don't explode in the freezer.  They expand with the ice.)  Then, we had another quick shot and started up the hill.  I don't know for sure how far we traveled, but it was a 2 km minimum (2 km was the lowest distance on the marker, but we might have gone further.)  The twelve of us got spread out due to the difficulty of the slope.  I had to stop several times to catch my breath.  Another older Korean couple stopped at one point to make sure I was okay.  They offered me Makgeoli from their personal supply to help me up the hill.  So, everyone on the trail brings a little alcohol for the hike... always good to know.  At this point, I was completely split off from the group.  Most were in front of me and a few were behind me, but no one was within my eyesight.  Luckily, the trail only went up.  I came around a curve and saw another large group kind of forming a gauntlet on the trail while they caught their breath.  All of them had passed me at one point in the last hour while I was sucking air.  As I walked up, they started clapping and giving me high fives as I walked through their makeshift tunnel... very gratifying.  Of course, as soon as I went around another bend and they couldn't see me anymore, I went back to hoping there would be a defibrillator at the top.  I caught up with the group at a small open space and the drinks came out again.



After the that little breather, the terrain got much easier.  We went a little further up the trail, but then we started down the other side to where we would ultimately have lunch by a cold mountain spring.  Considering I was dripping wet with sweat, the cold spring was a welcome sight.  Once we actually got to the stream, I also felt a lot more comfortable.  Something about using my hands to help climb over the rocks makes me feel a lot more balanced... gravity can be a bitch when you're a guy my size.  Four points of support are just safer for me.  The water felt great and there was also a light breeze coming along the stream.  Nice little change from the stagnant, claustrophobic air on the first part of the journey.  (I'm sure that the air was not that stagnant at all, I'm just out of shape.)  Regardless, the stream was a welcome change, in my opinion.  We set up a small camp and that's when we discovered what else the Korean's had hidden in their backpacks.  They pulled out a bunch of cooking utensils, food, alcohol, propane tanks, burners, more alcohol, snacks, and finally, a little alcohol.  They had spicy chicken gizzards that I hadn't ate in a very, very long time.  They're not for everyone, but I've loved them since I was little.  The other expats and I asked to help, but we were quickly shooed away and the Korean's went to work.  The main food ended up being cold noodles that they made fresh with some pork cutlets, hard boiled eggs.  They had carried all of this stuff up the mountain while I was silently crying about my clean underwear being too heavy in my bag.  Here's a few more pics of the spot were we camped.
Grilling pork cutlets
Ever- present beer


Our lunch

The food was delicious.  I'm still impressed with the little things that they thought to bring to add to the meal: fresh cucumbers, onions, garlic cloves, spices.  They've obviously done this many times before. 




After lunch and a quick downpour, we started back on the the trail.  It basically wrapped around the valley and ended up at Unmunsa Temple.  It is the largest female monastery in Korea, housing over 300 female monks (nuns?).  The large evergreen tree in the following pictures is believed to be over five hundred years old.  The stilts that you see have been put there to help the branches from slagging too much and breaking off.  I'm running out of steam for this blog, so I'll let the other pictures below speak for themselves.








All in all, it was one helluva trip.  I was pretty beat up when it was all said and done, but I wouldn't pass it up if the trip was offered again.  It had been a long day, so we made our way back to the bus and started our drive back to Pusan, but not before stopping off at the local market to replenish our beer supply for the road....

Monday, July 18, 2011

The day of medicinal mud

I survived the Boryeong Mud Festival.  As I was looking for some pics to publish for this blog I saw that KMOV in St. Louis published some pics... kinda strange to see it referenced on a St. Louis station when I'm so far from home.  Kinda strange, but kinda nice at the same time.

This event had been on my radar since the first week or so of me getting to South Korea.  The little bit of research I had done billed it as one of the biggest events for foreigners in Korea and I decided early on that I didn't want to miss out on it.  I'd mentioned it to several friends, but only two decided to join up in the end.  One was really the first person I'd met when arriving in Korea.  We met at the ferry from Japan to Korea after I finished my visa run and had stayed in touch through FB since then.  The other that joined up was his roommate, an Irishman with a pension for drunken debauchery... we were immediate friends, obviously.  (We actually lost him for 7 or 8 hours on Saturday, but more on that later.)  The bus itself left at midnight from Pusan and took about 4 hours or so to get to Daecheon Beach in Boryeong.  We went to the hotel and got some much needed sleep in preparation for the next day.  No sleep would really be enough to offset the sheer hedonism that would follow on Saturday. 

When we had arrived the night before, we really didn't know how close we were to the beach.  It was 4am and the festival didn't officially start until Saturday, anyway.  Now, I've been going to the beaches in Pusan since I first arrived in Korea.  For the most part they are pretty, but they are very, very small.  They are surrounded by development and the beaches feel a bit claustrophobic because of the tall buildings and cove-style of the more popular ones.  As you can see in the picture, that's not the case in Boryeong.  Daecheon Beach is much more massive than anything that I've seen in Pusan.  It feels like more of a beach community, too.  The sand was incredible, the water was warm, most of the people on the beach were actually wearing swim suits, as opposed to the regular clothing that Pusan residents mostly wear when they swim.  (You have to see this to believe it, thousands of people swimming in jeans and long sleeve shirts in Pusan.... ridiculous.)  In short, it was what I was expecting an actual beach to be.  We bought some beer and soju and walked along the beach until we finally came to the main area for the festival.  Supposedly, there were almost 400,000 people on the beach for this first day... a quarter of them were foreigners.  This was by far the biggest number of non-Asian faces that I'd seen since landing in Korea.  There was a pretty large military contingent on the beach, but the overwhelming majority of foreigners seemed to be ESL teachers and expats.  It was great to have a 'we're all in this together' sort of vibe going on... at least from my perspective. 

For those of you who don't know, I am the only native speaker in my small hagwon (i.e. academy).  Most of the people that I've met over here work with at least one other native speaker.  It'd be nice to have at least one other person that's going through my situation, one other person to talk to about life at this school.  Instead, I've been typing away in our teacher's office and haven't heard a word of English in the last 2 hours.  I get told to come to meetings that are entirely in Korean with no explanation before or after as to what was being said.  It can be a bit unnerving at times.  I've started to grown used to being the invisible token in the back of the room, but it still weighs heavy at times.  Being on a bus with 25 other native English speakers was refreshing... being on a beach with almost 100k native English speakers was a fucking godsend. 

This is where I found myself around 10am on Saturday morning; surrounded by (mostly) friendly faces and heading to the epicenter of the Boryeong Mud Festival 2011.  When we finally arrived, we of course immediately headed to Club FM (Family Mart) and reloaded our recently depleted supply.  It was about this time that we first noticed an overwhelming lack of mud at the Boryeong Mud Festival.  We had been promised large pools and pits of the skin-rejuvenating mud, massive areas of mud wrestling and body painting.  We instead got a few bins loaded with 4 inch brushes and a limited supply of said mud.  Luckily.... we didn't give a shit.  We meticulously covered ourselves from head to toe with the brush:  "When in Rome" and all that.  It was about that time that the skies opened up and buckets of rain erased any evidence of this attempt.  It was an obvious sign that this party didn't have anything to do with the Mud... the mud was just the vessel.  (Anyone that has been to the "Sweet Corn and Watermelon Festival" or the "Murphysboro Apple Festival" or "Cajun Fest" should know exactly what I mean.) 

The short downpour did nothing to shake our resolve.  In fact, that's about the time the gloves came off.  (That's also about the time that whiskey became the preferred catalyst for the day, but I'm not pointing any fingers.)  The hours that followed embodied a level of depravity that should probably never be put to paper.  (Of course, taking my own advice has never been one of my strong suits.)  Large amounts of life were consumed; dignity was trampled on and then ignored entirely; the living was good, but for future reference, when you remove the waves that were previously helping to keep you aloft, gravity becomes the unfaithful ex that you had always known her to be.  That's when your face becomes a makeshift airbag and your arms cease to help in the endeavor. 

At some point about this time, we lost our drunken Irishman in a wave of saltwater and whiskey.  We found him 8 hours later walking aimlessly in front of that same Family Mart, hoping that we would venture back to the scene of the crime.  Coincidentally, our third amigo and my constant compatriot for the day had been convinced that we'd find him in that exact spot.  Sure enough, there he was stumbling around in a shade of pink that should never exist on a human body.  We had his wallet, his phone, and all of his money, but he'd still managed to get the most out of the party.... except sunscreen of course.  Sunscreen was not very high on the list of goals, obviously.  Shortly after finding the wayward son, an impressive display of fireworks started over the beach.  I took a few pics, but my camera did not do the display any justice.  Then it was back to the beach to lounge around under the full moon and people watch.  When the sun went down, inhibitions seemed  to come down, too.  The drink Sex on the Beach started to become the beverage of choice.  That and a strange cocktail called Forty Naked Korean Men Screaming and Running into the Crashing Waves.  Don't know what inspired the second concoction, but it was met with many cheers and shouts of encouragement.  This country had previously been in great need of random public acts of nudity.... it's good to go for awhile. 

I won't go into too many of the other sordid details... mostly out of embarrassment, somewhat out of confusion and general haziness.  I will say this, though:  this was one of the funnest times I've had since stepping on this shore.  I didn't even really mention the friends I made on the bus, or the people I met in the sea.  The whole weekend was exactly what I was looking to find.  If I decide to turn this one year into two, Boryeong won't necessarily be a factor, but it will be on the shortlist of can't-miss-weekends.  Fresh faces, good times, and a few new friends made up for any lack of mud.  I hope to see many of those faces again.  And to the random girl in the middle of the ocean... my name is Chris.  I'm not sure if I mentioned that. 

Saturday, July 9, 2011

The night before Payday, and all through the house...

I don't know if there is a consistently more shitty day than the one that comes up right before payday.  I know, I know, the day the rent is due sucks, too, so does car payment day and student loan day and electric bill day.  I get it.  The "Day before Payday" day is just a little closer to home for me, right now. 

As of tomorrow, I will have been in Pusan, South Korea for two solid months.  My first week or so was considered training, though, and you don't get paid for training here.  I only get paid once a month, so this will actually be my first full paycheck.  In a word, I'm broke.  People are always talking about all of these things you can do without cash, but I've found that in most cases in life, people are stupid.  I'm sure there's some huge treasure trove of "free" activities to do, but I've never seen it.  The truth is:  I love to spend money.  I like to buy shit that I'll only use once; I like to blow money on a night out on the town... or a week out on the town if it's a particularly good week.  I'm a deacon in the Church of the Holy Consumer.  Sex, drugs and rock n roll.  I love it all.  Money defines me and my life.  Ya, I know, "That's sad", right?.... not to me.  Sad to me is pinching every penny and saving for that "rainy day".  I save for a "make it rain" day.... and I blow the fund every week.  I'm just not good at doing things that do not cost money.  It's the server/ bartender mentality that I've had since I was sixteen.  Unfortunately, the lack of money is currently "defining me and my life".  The good news is that Korea is relatively cheap, my rent is paid for by my employer and my paychecks will be more than enough to get me through a month, leaving me with a little extra for trips and mini-vaca's.  I just have to get through the next day or so and everything will be fine. 

The one thing that makes up for this weekend of no cash is the fact that I have several of those mini-vaca's planned for this month.  The first big trip is next weekend.  It's the first weekend in the Boryeong Mud Festival.  Basically, the Mud Festival is a huge gathering south of Seoul.  ESL teachers from all over the country have turned it into a kind of foreigner's spring break.  The mud itself is used for a bunch of beauty products here in Korea and it's trucked in from the surrounding Boryeong mudflats for the party.  It's one of those "can't miss" events for many expats here and I've been told that I have to go at least once.  I have no idea if I'll decide to stay here for another year, so better to go now.  (See quote at the bottom of the blog).  I'm meeting up with a few others from a small city north of Pusan and we're taking a party bus there after work Friday night... heading back on Sunday.  Gonna be a long weekend.

The next big plan for July is a river trekking and windsurfing trip on July 30th.  It's an overnight trip that's split into two major sections:  river trekking and cliff diving on day 1, windsurfing and party at the beach on day two.  The guide keeps the info on this trip close to his breast, but the first day description sounds very similar to Johnson's Shut-Ins State Park in Missouri, one of my all time favorite vacations as a kid.  I hope it's everything I'm expecting it to be.  I don't know anyone else that's going, but there are about 30 people signed up for the trip... max of 33.  It should be a pretty good time and I'll write about it a little more in depth when I get back. 

Maybe I'll go blow some money on a waterproof camera.... and it so it begins again.

Tuesday, July 5, 2011

In the last few weeks or so, I've alluded to a few of the cultural differences here in Korea.  I've mostly mentioned them in passing on my FB account, but I think it might be a good time to group some of them up and try to make a little sense out of it; or at least it will allow me to kind of sum up a set of pros and cons on the subject.

There is an overly developed sense of honor in Korea.  It stems from the Confucianism traditions of the country that basically state you should never insult someone, especially if they are an elder.  The age thing gets to taken to ridiculous levels, in my opinion.  If someone is older than me, I am supposed to turn away from them when I drink alcohol.  Now, I'm not talking about a 60 year old being my elder.  I'm 32 and I completely agree that a level of respect is owed to my elders, but a 33 year old is not my elder, they are my equal.  Not in Korea.  Any minor difference in age here changes how I'm supposed to act around them, even down to how I'm supposed to address them in a conversation.  It's a small part of why speaking Korean can be difficult. 


That same sense of honor can cause some interesting confrontations when one person feels slighted.  On FB last weekend, I mentioned that there was a yelling match in front of my apartment around midnight Saturday night, a yelling match that would've come to some sort of blows in the US.  It ended with my landlord and boss being led away by the police.  I found out later that there had been some sort of dispute between him and our neighbor.  Apparently, my neighbor's AC is also too loud and my boss wrote him a letter saying that it needed to be fixed.  (Never mind that I don't even have an AC yet).  The neighbor also runs a small restaurant downstairs that was mentioned due to the smell coming from the kitchen.  (This entire country is full of questionable aromas; you can smell the sewage running just below your feet, but the shabu-shabu is an issue for him.)  The response to this letter was for the owner and his wife to scream at my boss from across a small four foot wall.  This happened around midnight.  My boss, his wife, and another neighbor of course screamed back.  When I say "screamed", I mean there was venom dripping from their words.  I'm honestly surprised that the police did not show up quicker.  Of course, when they actually did arrive, the only thing they did was scream back at both parties... it was weird.  The yelling was okay with everyone involved, I think; the owner next door took offense to my boss insinuating his restaurant was in disrepair.  His honor had been challenged in some way, by my boss writing a letter.  I don't get it.  No handcuffs ever came out from the cops, everyone just yelled at each other and then my boss was lead away by the police, not in cuffs, but as if they were having a casual stroll to the pokie.  Korea....


In cops defense, though, crime does not exist in Korea, not in the way that we are used to hearing about in the United States.  On top of that, most of the police are 18 year old boys.  They're given the choice of police or military for two years when they hit eighteen.  You can probably guess what type of kids the police side ends up with receiving... not exactly Dirty Harry's.  There isn't any real danger for these kindercops, though, because gun ownership is illegal in here.  American's can say what they want about our right to bear arms, but the truth is, many of us kill people with those "arms".  Before writing this blog, I asked one of my coworkers to make sure that I understood the law, and their reaction was surprising to me.  She got an almost surprised look on her face and asked if I had ever actually fired a gun.  It caught me off guard.  It was almost a nervous question, like she was embarrassed to say it out loud.  I guess when you live through a civil war that killed an estimated two million people, you might change your opinion a bit on guns.  By comparison, the American Civil War killed 650,000 and no one's alive anymore to remember it... we lost 58k in Vietnam.  The other side to that argument is that Korea's been the whipping boy for most of history in this part of the world.  A few firearms in the hands of citizens might have helped discourage those occupations in the past, but who knows?  Gun violence isn't the only thing missing her, though.  Stealing, at least in my part of the country, is also non existent. 

The city I live in is larger than Chicago.  How long would a bike with no lock last anywhere in Cook County?  Not long.  I had someone chase me down the street because they saw 1000 won fall out of my pocket  (about one dollar).  It's mind boggling to me.  At this stage, you have to lock your door to run inside and pay for your gas in the US.  And forget about not locking up when you go to sleep or leave the house.  It's just a lot different here.  Not all places are safe, I'm sure, but most are.  There are still issues in some areas, but those aren't the norm.  And I think I'm pretty safe from the targets in this article