Back on Blogger

Yes, it's been a while. I don't have any good excuses, I just didn't feel the need to write since nothing that exciting has been going on. Since my last post I have gone on a mini-vacation to a small island off the southern coast of Korea - Jeju, and had a great beach weekend in Busan.

As my time here in Korea winds down, it's happening for others as well. Two weekends ago we all said goodbye to a couple friends who were leaving Korea after a 3 year stint here. With this departure came the last show for our friend's band - Las Pistolas. The band had their last gig at the foreigner bar in Daegu, Communes. There were 3 opening bands and then the main show. All I can say is that everyone rocked out!!!! and it was a great last show for the guys.

I'm down to my last month here in Korea and within this month I am spending 9 of the days in China!!! After returning from China I'll have a week and a half left of work. I can't believe that I have been in Korea for almost a year. Right now I have really mixed feelings about leaving. On one hand I'm really excited to travel for a bit and of course go back home and see all of my family and friends. But, on the other, I'm going to miss a lot of the people and all that Korea has to offer. Who knows, maybe I'll be back someday.

New Korean Cuisine

My time is winding down here in Korea and there are still many Korean foods that I havn't yet tried. This past week I got to cross two of those foods off my list.... can you guess which ones?

1. Live Octopus (산낙지)

That's right. A Korean friend took me and my friend Jill out for a sushi buffet lunch in Gyeongju on Sunday. The buffet was amazing and had some of the best salmon sashimi I had ever tried. One of the other buffet items was live baby octopus!!! I thought, "when in Rome" and gave it a try. On my plate the pieces of octopus were still moving and if I poked them with my chopstick they would move even more, complete with suction action. It was quite difficult to get the piece off the plate - it was if it knew where it was heading and was hanging on for dear life. I had heard that once in your mouth they would latch on to your teeth and cheeks and make it difficult to eat. The octopus that I had was not much of a fighter and i found it fairly easy to chew it up well and swallow it down. Will I have it again? No. There is really no taste to octopus so I don't really see a point in eating it, other than for the novelty.

2. Dog Soup (보신탕)

Upon arriving in Korea I had heard that it was possible to eat dog. My first thought was - gross, I would never eat dog. Well, the longer I have been here and the more people I have talked to about it made me change my mind. This was another situation where I thought that I would probably not have another chance to eat this food, so why not. I went out with my friends Jill and Laura with the help of our Korean friend Sarah. When we arrived at the restaurant we called our friend Sarah who talked to the server and ordered for us. When the food came we of course had to take photos, much to the amusement of the men at the tables around us. We each got a bowl of the soup and we also ordered just a plate of the meat. We all agreed that the meat by itself tasted similar to dark turkey meat. The soup came with shaved ginger, garlic and onions to add. I added all three of these items. The soup was good and I would have it again if the chance arose.

Getting Muddy in Boryeong!

I had been looking forward to Mudfest weekend for as long as I had been in Korea. Well, it finally came and it was amazing!!! It was a 4 hour bus ride from Daegu to the 11th annual Boryeong Mud Festival at Daechon Beach on the north-west coast of Korea. I didn't quite know what to expect before coming to this festival, but whatever my expectations were they were exceeded. I knew there would be lots of mud, lots of beach and lots of sun, but wasn't quite sure about all of the other things that were going on. They ended up having a Mud Prison, multiple mud wrestling jumping gyms, a mud pool, an obstacle course and a huge mud slide. Most of these events had too long of lines for my patience, so me, Laura, Ryan, Allison and a new friend Colin ended up hanging around watching, drinking, listening to the bands and hitting the beach. Ryan and Colin ended up joining into the mud wrestling pits and it was hilarious to watch.

That night we all went back to our motel to change - no mud for the rest of the night - and headed down to the water for the fireworks show. It was great to just hang out on the beach and take in the show with good friends.

The next day we all took it easy and enjoyed our time at the beach before we had to take off back to Daegu. Sandcastles were made (by Ryan), we were all painted in mud (by eachother or by the festival volunteers), and we all took advantage of the beautiful weather and water. I can't wait for the next beach weekend!

Rolling Down The River

"Rolling, rolling, rolling..." is what you would have heard if you were anywhere near the Hantan River the last weekend in June. A bunch of friends and I took another trip with the Adventure Korea tour company, this time to go white water rafting. When we arrived we were quickly put into boats and sent off down the river. There were no instructions given on what to do if you fell out of the boat in the rapids and we soon found out why.... there were no rapids. Well, maybe I'm exaggerating a bit. There were a few very small rapids and a lot of large rocks to get stuck on. Whenever we would get stuck we would have to "roll", or shift our body weight back and forth in the boat until we got free. Our guide had to get out of the boat a few times to push us, but most of the time we were very successful at "rolling". The best part of the trip was when we got out of the boats at a few spots to do some swimming and rock jumping and also enjoying the leisurely paddle down the river.

After the trip down the river we were taken to a restaurant for a traditional lunch and then headed to a bridge to watch some crazy people go bungee jumping. This was an optional part of the trip, and even though I am usually pretty adventurous, I decided to opt. out of this activity. It was a beautiful day so it was nice to sit out side and watch everyone taking the jump. All in all, it was another great trip with Adventure Korea!

Mountains and Mountains

Whenever we have a long weekend here in Korea, I try to get out of Daegu. For the June long weekend me and some friends decided to travel the distance to check out Seoraksan National Park, one of the most famous and beautiful places in Korea. We got out of Daegu early on Friday morning, cause we had heard various estimates on how long it would take us to get there - we expected anywhere between 4 and 9 hours. Well, the route we took was approximately 7 hours to get to the city of Sokcho, the closest city to the park. There were 4 places along the way where we would pick up other passengers. This was not the problem. The problem was the frequent rest stops that we took when we were only a short distance away from where we would have to stop anyways - that's backwards Korea for you. The length of the trip sucked, but the views were amazing. We drove along the eastern coast of the country for the entire time and saw some pretty great scenery. Day 1 was pretty much over once we found a motel, so we decided to do our hiking trips over the next 2 days.



Saturday was our long hike day. We got to the park and were welcomed by a gorgeous Buddah statue at the entrance. Then we joined the crowds of people hiking up to Heundeulbawi and Ulsanbawi. Heundeulbawi is a spherical rock they say that everyone in Korea has tried to push over the edge of the cliff that it stands on. My friend Mike and I tried, but only felt a slight movement when we used all of our muscle power.

A ways after this rock we found ourselves at the base of the dreaded 800 stairs up to the peak of Ulsanbawi. According to the legend, this rock came from the city of Ulsan in the south east of Korea. This rock traveled to be a representative of the city at the making of a mountain range further to the north. When Ulsanbawi arrived there was no more room, so he started the trek back down to the south. He stopped in the Seorak mountain area to have a sleep but decided to stay after seeing how beautiful the area was. This mountain is basically a 90 degree cliff face and without the man-made metal stairway you would have to strap on a harness and rock climb your way up (which we did see people doing). My nerves kicked during the first stretch up the stairs (we were very high up), especially when I thought about having to make our way back down. The staircase was very narrow, the mountain was very crowded, and I was surprised not to see anyone tumbling down the stairs after being taken out by a backpack or walking stick. It was a tough hike up the stairs, but the view at the top was definitely worth it!

On the way back down we stumbled upon a temple in the woods. Although now all temples look the same to me and the novelty of them has worn off, this temple had the most beautiful backdrop of mountains.
Sunday was our shorter and easier day. We started our day with a nice hike through the forest to see two different waterfalls. This hike was not very busy and at some points we felt like we were the only people there - very hard to ever have this feeling in Korea. Walking through the forest reminded me so much of Canada, and made me miss how beautiful and forested of a country we have. After the walk the cable car was calling our names. It was really nice to take the easy way up, even though we still had a bit of a hike to get to the peak of Gwongeumseong. The top of this mountain again was very busy. I found it really funny because Koreans are so concerned about the threat of mad cow disease from American beef, or the Avian Flu from chicken, but they were letting their very young children run around the top of a mountain like it was their backyard. And, as always slaves to fashion, there were many Korean women wearing, yes, you guessed it... high heels!

K-Pop... First Edition

Korean Pop music is just that, very popular. It seems that every month or so a new song comes out and it is impossible to get away from it. You hear it downtown coming out of every store, you hear it as a cell phone ring, and you even hear it sitting in the teacher's room at school coming from the car tire garage across the street. My favourite K-Pop song is still the one that was popular when I first got here. It is called "Lies" by a group called Big Bang. Most of the songs are in Korean, but then have an English chorus. I think it's time to start sharing some of this music so have a listen and watch the video:

Angkor Wat

Finally... the last post for my vacation that happened two months ago. Sorry it took so long to write about it all. I'm looking forward to starting writing about Korea again.

The main reason we traveled to Cambodia was to see the temples of Angkor. The Angkor site is about 6km away from the city of Seim Reip, and is a UNESCO World Heritage Site (read all about the history of Angkor here).

We had been told that the thing to do at Angkor is to get up to see the sunrise. We made arrangements with our tuk-tuk drivers to pick us up at 5:30 in the morning so that we could make it to the main temple, Angkor Wat, to see the sunrise. When we started the 20 min ride to the site we quickly realized that we were in a race against time. The sky had already started to lighten and we were kinda wishing we would have been picked up earlier. We got to Angkor Wat and walked as quickly as we could through the temple to find a good spot to sit to watch the sun come up. The sunrise was beautiful, but I was kinda expecting it to be a lot more amazing than it actually was. When we got moving again we realized that we were all pretty hungry, so we made it back to our drivers and asked them to take us to a restaurant. After a hearty breakfast and a strange iced coffee (Keiran actually asked the waitress if there was rum in the coffee) we were ready for the day ahead of us.

We saw many temples throughout the day and made a stop approximately every 2 hours to refuel and rehydrate. I don't think I have sweat so much in my life - ever. We were actually allowed to climb most of the temples -very surprising since I've been to many ruins where it is not allowed. It was really fun climbing them, but sometimes a little bit scary as the stairs were always pretty small and dangerous. My favorite temples of the day were Bayon, which was covered with stone faces, and Ta Prohm, the temple that has been left for nature to destroy and where Tomb Raider was filmed. We chatted with random tourists and locals throughout the day and were approached by hundreds of children selling anything from guide books and maps to t-shirts and digeridonts (our own made up word for a little wooden instrument we all bought). One of the strangest moments of the day was when a young teenaged girl called Mike a "very bad Canadian man" and went on to call him "loco"-I didn't know Cambodians knew Spanish! This was all brought on when the girl did not have the t-shirt that Mike wanted, so he purchased one from another child. I guess it's not proper business to "buy the second girl".

That night was our last before leaving to go back to Korea. By 10pm it all looked like we were ready to pass out and call it a night. We ordered a pitcher of beer and all sort of forced it down. We went to another bar and I thought it might perk me up if I ordered a red bull and vodka. We stayed for one drink and went back to Angkor What?, a bar that we had visited the night before. When we got there we noticed that they had $5 buckets of vodka red bull. We got a couple and before we knew it we had run into a guy we met a few days ago and we had 6 buckets in front of us and only 5 people. Each bucket had about half a bottle of vodka in it. Let's just say that most of the night ended up being a blur in my memory, that could only be retold by the pictures and pictures on Keiran's camera. I think the Red Bull made us all a little bit crazy and I don't know how we all felt ok the next morning. We spent our last day checking out the markets and making our way to the airport. We all got the travelers blues once we boarded the plane that we knew was heading back to Korea and back to work. Can't wait for my next good trip!!!

Crocs in Cambodia

Before we left Phnom Penh we had asked our hotel staff about their other hotel in Siem Reap. They said that they would have a tuk-tuk driver from the hotel pick us up at bus stop when we arrived later that night and take us to their hotel. That sounded pretty easy, so we gave the hotel Keiran's name and went out to catch our ride to the bus station. At the bus station, our tuk-tuk driver took Laura's name and said a friend of his would pick us up in Siem Riep at the bus station and take us anywhere we wanted to go. Ok, two tuk-tuks had our names, but how many would really show up?

The ride to Siem Reap was beautiful. Lots of great views of the country side, the homes, and the farms. I believe the distance between Phnom Penh and Siem Reap was about 200km, but it took 5 hours to cover that distance. I guess the windy roads and random stops for cows on the road didn't help. The bus arrived an hour earlier than we were expecting, so we thought there would be no way the tuk-tuk drivers would be waiting. Wrong. Pulling into the station we saw one sign for Mr. Keiran and one for Miss Laura. We decided to go with Laura's name and made sure not to say Keiran's until we were driving away. The driver asked us where we wanted to go and we said - "a place with a pool?" He repiled - "how about a crocodile farm?" Why not? So off we went to our hotel.

We dropped off our stuff and had our drivers take us to a restaurant we had heard a lot about called "Dead Fish". Dead Fish Restaurant was pretty amazing. From the outside it just looked like any other restaurant, but inside it was like a treehouse. They used the bare necessities to create many platforms on 4 different levels in the place. To get to the levels you would climb by stairs or ladders. Since getting to the levels was a little dangerous they used a pulley system to transport food and drinks from the main floor kitchen... sooooo cool!

The place had a great live band playing, so we stayed until they were finished. Quite a few pitchers of Ankor beer later we decided it was time to check out the crocodile pit. Yes, that's right, there was a crocodile pit right in the restaurant. We payed a couple bucks and got some fish to feed to the crocs. Check out the video ....

After dinner we went with the band members to another bar called Angkor What? We didn't stay too long since we had a very early morning the next day. Back at our hotel we set the alarm for 5am to give us time to get ready before meeting our drivers at 5:30 for a full day at the temples of Angkor.

S-21 and The Killing Fields

The Khmer Rouge were the ruling political party between 1975 and 1979. Under it's regime, an estimated 1.5 million people, or 1/5th of the Cambodian population, were killed. The Khmer Rouge, under the leadership of Pol Pot, was trying to turn Cambodia into a classless society by forcing everyone into agricultural work, slaving away on farms in labour camps. They targeted, tortured and then eventually executed people in the following categories: intellectuals and professionals (really anyone with an education or who wore glasses), anyone with connections to the former government, Christians, Muslims, Buddhist monks and homosexuals. All of these people were eventually brought to the S-21 prison and then to The Killing Fields to be killed and buried in mass graves.

On our second day in Phnom Penh we decided to take a morning trip to Choeung Ek, the most well known Killing Field site. The site is a memorial now, marked by a Buddhist stupa filled with more than 5,000 human skulls. Many of the mass graves have been excavated, but some still remain untouched. We spent about an hour at the site and then decided that we had enough time to visit Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum to learn some more before we had to catch our bus out of the city.


The Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum is a former High School that was turned into Security Prison-21 (S-21) by the Khmer Rouge. To transform the High School, electrified barbed wire was put up to enclose all of the buldings, classrooms were converted into tiny prison and torture chambers and all the windows were covered with iron bars and barbed wire.

The buildings at Tuol Sleng are preserved as they were left in 1979 when the Khmer Rouge were driven out. Some of the most eerie rooms were the ones with black and white photographs of prisoners from floor to ceiling. As soon as a prisoner arrived they were photographed and questioned. When looking at the photographs you can see the range of emotions that were going through these peoples' minds and bodies. Some had eyes wide, frightened for what lay ahead, while others looked tough and mean, maybe trying to intimidate the interrogators.

After being photographed the prisoners were taken to their cells and shackled to the walls and floors. The rules were very strict and anyone who disobeyed were beaten. Prisoners wer tortured by various techniques until they confessed their crimes. Most confessions included imaginary stories to satisfy the interrogator and end the torture. For a while, prisoners were killed at S-21, but once the burial spaces were taken up the prisoners were then taken to The Killing Fields.

We spent a couple hours making our way through all of the rooms of the museum. We just barely missed the S-21 documentary, which would have been interesting to see. All-in-all it was a pretty intense day.

The Royal Palace in Phnom Penh

After getting our beach time and spending one more day in Saigon, we caught another early morning bus out of Vietnam and into Cambodia. To get to Cambodia we had to pass through Vietnam customs and then go through Cambodian immigration to drop off our paperwork for our travel visas. After about an hour wait our visas were ready and off we went to Phnom Penh.

When we arrived in Phnom Penh we realized that upon changing countries we also changed modes of transportation. Instead of motorbike taxis we were now in the land of the tuk-tuk. A tuk-tuk is still powered by a motorbike, but they have a carriage attached to the back for a more comfortable ride. We found some friendly drivers and asked them to take us to a hotel. We checked into a cheap hotel and had a room with one double bed, 3 singles and even a perfect table for playing cards. What a score!

Since we did quite a bit of relaxing in Vietnam, we decided Cambodia would be the place to be tourists and do a lot of sight seeing. The first day we went for a walk around the city and also checked out the Royal Palace. The Royal Palace is a complex of buildings that were built in 1866. Some modifications have been made to the buildings and others have been destroyed completely. Two of the three compounds of the Palace are open for visitors to tour, but the Khemarian compound is off limits as this is where the present King of Cambodia currently resides.

The Chan Chhaya Pavilion:

At the Throne Hall with the Silver Pagoda in the background:

A monk looking at the wall of continuous murals:

When we were finished at the Palace we took a walk down to the river bank where you could see both the Sap and the Mekong rivers. We found a really great restaurant to have a couple of beers and then found our way to a Thai restaurant for dinner. The area that we were in was very touristy with tons of nice and classy restaurants. Definitely not what we expected of Cambodia. That night we got a tuk-tuk to take us the the bar "Heart of Darkness" as we had to visit the bar named after Conrad's book. It was an ok place, but we really got a good look at the prevelence of prostitution in this country. There were many many underage girls at this bar who could only have been prostitutes. The government here is really trying to crack down on this illegal activity by putting up signs and handing out information about this growing problem.

Mui in Three

When planning this trip we all agreed that we wanted to spend some quality relaxing time at the beach. After finding out that the most popular beach, Na Trang, was pretty far from Saigon, we decided to check out the less traveled Mui Ne. After a very comfortable six hour ride on a sleeper bus we arrived at the beach town. Upon stepping out of the bus we were greeted by many motorbike taxi drivers wanting to take us anywhere we wanted to go. We started chatting to one, told him the kind of motel we wanted, and off we went... 4 motor bikes with the four of us riding on the back of each... what a great way to get taxi'd around!

Our accomodations were awesome!! Our own little cabin with air con and beach access for only $16 US a night (split between 4 people!) After dropping off our stuff we took a walk down to the beach and had our first swims in the ocean since being in Korea, and Laura's first ocean exprience ever. The water was sooooo warm and the waves were great. After the swim we took a walk down the beach, saw many nice resorts and ran into a few cows hanging out. That night we decided to go for a walk to find a nice restaurant and a place to have a few drinks. When we got back to our hotel we were greeted by the night guard who let us in through the front gates. The next morning we woke up to read the hotel rules saying that we had a 12pm curfew! Ooops!

The second day in Mui Ne we had our mid-day swim and then headed back to the hotel to get picked up for our Jeep tour to the white and red sand dunes. The weather called for rain but we were hoping for the best. After about 20 min into our ride the rain started coming down. We arrived at the white sand dune area and jumped out of the Jeep to join a handful of others under a tin roof concession stand. We all grabbed a beer and waited it out. Thirty minutes later we decided give it a go and head out on the trail. We didn't make it too far before the cold rain started to pour again and we found ourselves back under the roof pretty quickly. We called it quits on the white dunes, jumped back in the Jeep and headed for the red ones. The weather cooperated and we got a chance to take a walk around the dunes. It felt like being in the desert, the dunes were huge. Kids were even using crazy carpets to toboggan down them. What a great place!

That night we decided to observe the curfew, buy some booze and drink at the motel. We met up with a bunch of other travelers at our hotel, had dinner and played drinking games. We did have to do a late night run for more booze, waking the owners of some local convenience stores. Three people seperated, heading in different directions on the search - all came back with bottles. Mission - success. Good times had by all.

Our last day was another relaxing day before our trip back to Saigon and the continuation of our trip into Cambodia. We hopped on a late night sleeper bus to make it the 6 hours back to the city. This sleeper bus looked more luxurious than the first, but we were stuck with the four back bottom seats.... death trap!!! Luckily we were all tired, didn't think about it too much and fell asleep for the trip.

Ho Chi Minh City in two days

It's been two weeks since I've come back to Korea after a short trip in Vietnam and Cambodia. There's so much to say about this awesome trip, #1 being that 9 days is not enough time to visit even one of these countries, let alone both. I'm definitely going to be back there in the near future. It's going to take me a few posts to write about this trip, so I'll start at the very beginning (a very good place to start).

We started our trip on a bus. Little did we know that we would accumulate more that 1 full day of bus time over the course of our 9 day trip. The flight from Incheon to Ho Chi Minh City was pretty uneventful. Before leaving I had been checking the weather forecast on a regular basis and it was calling for rain our entire trip. The weather went as scheduled and we walked out of the airport into a downpour. Wanting to get out of the airport and into the city as fast as possible, we took the first available taxi without much hesitation. We later realized how much we got ripped off, but I guess it's bound to happen at one time or another. Our taxi took us to the Gold Hotel where we dropped our bags and went out to explore the city. Our first two stops were to get a taste of the local beer 'Saigon' and to get our first bowl of real 'pho' (vietnamese rice noodle soup) at Pho 24. The soup was amazing!!! and cheap! The rain had mostly stopped, but just in case of another downpour we picked up some rain ponchos. We spent that night at a few bars and headed back to the hotel at a decent hour to get up for our early morning bus ride to the beach (Next post - The Beach).

After three days at the beach we came back to Ho Chi Minh City to do some shopping at the Ben Thanh market and to get some more pho. This time we checked out Pho 2000 where Bill Clinton had gone to eat when he was visiting the city. This was definitely the best pho that I had in Vietnam. That night we checked out a bar called 'Go To' where we ended up running into some people we had met at the beach. It turned into a great night with lots of drinking, dancing and congo lining around the pool table. That night wasn't such an early one and we had to get up for another early bus ride out of Vietnam and into Cambodia.

Here are some of the good pictures from the city (I lost/had my camera stolen at the beach so I'm lacking photos from this part of the trip).

There are hardly any cars in Vietnam. Most people ride motor bikes or bicycles. Crossing the street street was intimidating at first, with no crosswalks and no stop lights. The trick was to begin walking when there was a small opening in bikes and then to move at a steady speed so the motorists could predict where you were going and could weave around you. I think the the best way we figured was to pretend that we were in a video game of 'Frogger'.

Us in our rediculous 50 cent emergency rain ponchos. I think I used mine for a total of 20 minutes. They were ok for the rain but if it stopped raining it was like being in a wearable sauna.

The best 'pho' in Ho Chi Minh city from Pho 2000.

There were always people around selling random things - sunglasses, hammocks, books - and this little baby was selling gum. Our friend Mike asked the woman 'how much for the baby?' and she replied without blinking an eyelash, 'one dollar'!