Jason's Trip Around The World, and now life in Singapore - South Korea

Farewell Korea

jason@willock.org (Jason Willock) — Tue, 29 Jul 2008 21:37:59 -0400

I quite enjoyed my time here in South Korea, it is one of my favorite countries I have been too. The people are friendly, food and night life is great. It's fairly clean, and modern and the people are attractive. I really should have made some day trips into the country side, but I got too caught up in the life here in Seoul, it is quite a vibrant and fun city, life here seems to revolve around food and drink, more so than any where else I have visited. I can see why there are so many Canadians here teaching English.

Some of the t-shirts here crack me up, it's like they just want to wear a shirt that has English writing on them, even if it doesn't make much sense, sayings like "Does your new stereo sound ok?" "Did you get new glasses" "I like the blue button on" are some common examples you see around town. Baseball is also quite popular here, everyone is decked out in there baseball clothes, but no one seems to sure what team they cheer for, could be wearing a NY Yankees Hat, and a Boston RedSox T-Shirt, which well wouldn't fly in the states I don't think.

I wish I could speak Korean, I think this is one country where no known the language keeps you an outsider from a lot of the goings on here, and I am sure Japan will be similar if not even more so. It's truly a different culture here, and I will always have found memories of this place.

After I type this I will be heading to the airport, and flying to Vancouver, a nice short 10 hour flight, I leave at 4PM on Wednesday, and arrive in Vancouver at 10AM on Wednesday, that should mess up my internal clock pretty good! Tan will be joining me there on Thursday, and we will have a couple nights in Vancouver, before making our way to the Okanagan, I didn't realize that it will be August Long Weekend while we are there, so hopefully will be find some place to sleep, searching on the internet has come up with nothing. Then we will come to Calgary, I am looking forward to seeing family and friends again!

Busan

jason@willock.org (Jason Willock) — Fri, 25 Jul 2008 02:54:21 -0400

After a couple more fun days of eating and having a few beverages with some people here in Seoul I headed to Busan, a city in the South. The train ride there was quite nice, and fast, 300 km/h it's a TGV train from France, very clean and comfortable, and had wifi, but you need to be able to read Korean to pay, and I think you would need a Korean Credit Card. That reminds me on an annoying thing here in Korea, it is very difficult to find an ATM that will accept cards from outside of Korea, doesn't matter if it's Visa, Mastercard or your bank card, if it's from a bank outside of Korea, your out of luck, so when you do find a machine that is a Global ATM, you should take out a large sum of money. The largest bank note here is a 10,000 Won note which is about $10. So if you take out $300 you suddenly have a very thick wallet!

Busan is a port city, and like most port cities, it has a different vibe, but it's not too bad compared to other port cities in the world. Most people just use it as in between city for coming or going to Japan by ferry, but there are some nice beaches and parks in the city, and while it is not as cosmopolitan as Seoul, it is still a fairly modern and fun city. It was very hot and humid though, I would be sweating all the time here. One night a few of us from the hostel went out for a bite to eat and some drinks, we started at pub, pubs here are called Hof's after the German term for Hops, you can't just sit down and order drinks, you have to order food as well, alcohol in the pubs is not overly expensive compared to the stores, so they make there money on the food. But it makes it difficult to jump from pub to pub, as you have to order food each time. After the pub we went to a Korean Night Club, after some difficulty with the language barrier we were able to figure out that we had to pay 80,000Won for the 6 of us to get in, this gets a table with 6 beer and a plate of fruit, you have to buy a table you can't just roam around the bar, as there is no where for you to order drinks from, you have to have the drinks brought to your table, so it would be quite difficult for just a single person to go to the bar by themselves. If your a group of guys the secret is you have to 'dress up' your table with some expensive fruit plates, and a maybe a couple bottles of alcohol to show that your successful, then you may have a better chance of meeting a girl. There is a big dance floor, and it fills up quickly when a popular song comes on, and that is where you try to make your move and entice a group of girls to come to your table. It seemed they would play about 3 popular songs in a row, then they would play a slow relaxing song in between, where everyone would go back to there tables for a drink.

The next day I spent the day with a local girl who was an English teacher here, we went to the beach, it was quite crowded, it was a very sunny and hot day, so everyone was in the water, which is chilly, but not to cold, but I have been spoiled by the warm water in Thailand. I didn't have a bathing suit with me, so didn't go in, but it would have been possible to rent one. Had a couple beers and learnt more about Korea. Students here get 5 weeks of summer vacation, which is well deserved, as during the rest of the year it is quite common that starting at the age of 8 kids will go to school for 8 hours a day, and then after class go to do there homework, and then go to another school for extra homework, usually going to bed around midnight! Very long days, and not much time for fun! Then we went out for dinner, it was at a typical restaurant, it was quite good, there were like 12 little bowls of various side dishes along with the main dish and some rice, I quite enjoyed it, as each food had a unique taste, so each bite was like eating something different, and then at the end of dinner we had a cup of cold cinnamon tea, which was very refreshing. I quite like Korean food.

The hostel I was staying at in Busan was full for Friday, so I couldn't stay an extra day, so I decided to head back to Seoul, and am writing this now on the speedy train back to Seoul, it takes about 3 hours between the two cities.

Apparently the last friday of the month is quite the big party night in Korea, so it will be interesting to see what it is like in Seoul, I can't imagine how it could be any much busier than it was last weekend! I am excited to be coming back to Canada even if it is only for a few weeks, and excited to see Tan again, I miss her!

Seoul

jason@willock.org (Jason Willock) — Fri, 18 Jul 2008 21:58:39 -0400

Well I made a quick decision and hopped on a plane to Seoul as I got a good price on a flight. It was just so hot in Taiwan, and since a Typhoon just hit there, it seems I made the right decision.

So far I have been enjoying Seoul, the weather has been a little cooler, which is nice, although today it is raining, as a result of the Typhoon. I was a little worried about food here, as I always hear about the strange tastes of Korea, but so far I have enjoyed everything I have tried, the food is quite tasty. A group of us from the hostel went out for some drinks and food, and we saw a sidewalk vendor selling mussels and seafood, and some people were ordering live octopus which they chop up and the tentacles still squirm about for quite some time afterwards, so of course we tried that, you have to chew quickly as the tentacles suckers will stick to your mouth pretty quick, a weird sensation, but I can't help but to feel a little sad for the poor little octopus.

People here are very friendly, it can be difficult having conversations with some people here, but they will bend over backwards to try to help you, and lots are interested in learning about you, and to practice there English. I went and visited the national palace a couple afternoons ago, and there were lots of young school kids there, they saw I had my camera out, so they rushed over and wanted me to take there picture, and they asked a few questions, and were quite amazed by my hairy arms and blue eyes.

Thursday night we went out to a nightclub here, it was so packed it was nearly impossible to move around, I left around 5am and it was still very full and going on strong, it was interesting to see but it was too crowded and smokey for my liking. Last night a big group of us went to a little pub type place, for some beer and soju, which is a 20% clear alcohol that doesn't taste like much, but leaves a nice warm feeling, and goes down pretty good. We started talking with some locals at the tables near us, and it turned out to be a pretty fun night, Korean's love to drink, maybe a little too much, as it's not uncommon to see both men and women just passed out being carried by friends. A girl at the table we were drinking with, it was her birthday, she started to get very emotional and started crying about how much she loves Korea, and how much she hates Japan. There is a big dispute right now over an island, that Japan is trying to say is there's. It's so bad that some Japanese companies have had to pull ad's here in Korea. I am looking forward to a few more days here in Seoul before I head south to Busan, for a few days and then probably will come back here to Seoul, before my flight to Vancouver.