An Explanation

It occurred to me that maybe I haven't given much background for this Asian Adventure. Probably should have been my first post of this series, but you'll just have to read it now.

My fiancee is still in Korea teaching, where I visited her back in October/November. She's coming back soon, but I wanted to come see her again before she left, and I brought some of our friends. We decided on a weeks stay in Seoul, followed by a couple of days on the beach in Busan, and then a flight to Tokyo.

The suspects include:

• Daniel - Best man at our wedding
• Branko - One of the groomsmen
• Adam - One of the bridesmen, he's been living in California a few years so we haven't seen him in a while
• Amber - Who will be joining us for the Busan and Tokyo part of the trip. She's a former co-worker of Daniel's who is also teaching in Seoul.
• Kevin - One of our friends who will be in Japan for a few weeks, so we're meeting up with him and he'll be staying in the same hostel a couple of nights.

I now return you to the trip.

Sunday: Mudfest

5am wake up call (and this after going out drinking in our jet-lagged state). This was because we had a 6:30 train to Boryeong for the mud festival! It was a 2.5 hour trip from Seoul, and we wanted to go early before it got super busy as it was the last day of the festival.

We're on our way...and tired.

The city was pretty nice, what we saw of it anyway. We stuck mostly to the beach. There was mud everywhere. Everywhere! Waterslides, relay races, and wrestling, all in the mud. There was coloured mud for body painting and mud cages where you stood there and they splashed mud at you. The cage was not particularly enjoyable according to Branko and my fiancee, particularly when they whip mud in your face. We went through the rides and stuff before the crowds got huge and then went down and hung out on the beach.

We got a little muddy

Slides and Games

There are no restrictions in Korea about public alcohol consumption, so we picked up some beer and soju from the convenience store and had it on the beach. This resulted in a long run game of "Have I never ever", which got more and more revealing for all as the drink went down.

We met up with a friend for a little bit, and also spoke to a group of five foreigner English teachers, one from Toronto (Scarborough to boot) and the others from South Africa, when they asked us to snap a photo of them. They each had a word painted on themselves with mud and were writing a "Wish You Were Here" message for a friend.

We swam a bit, hung out a lot. Branko had made drunken candid comment about a friend of ours which has gone down with us as an epic quote, but I really shouldn't put it down here. Adam lost his iron ring in one of the mud events, and the ocean claimed his ziplock bag of money and his drivers licence at some point, so that was not so much fun for him. He also, thinking he was in deeper water than he was, struck out his arm and essentially stubbed his forearm on the ocean floor. This twisted elbow has plagued him for days not.

The place really started clearing out by 6:30, and we went back up to the street for a supper of tasty pizza. The train back had all seats full, so we bought standing tickets and sat on the floor of the snack car, where we each took a nap, and on getting back to Seoul, our fun muddy Sunday was concluded.

Coloured mud and the muddy street aftermath

Arrival In Korea

The flight was long, but I got some sleep, which was good because we landed Saturday afternoon (Seoul time) and had evening plans.

Reunited

We got to my fiancee's place, showered, and went off to the awesome bbq place next to her apartment. After eating, we took off for Itaewon, the foreigner district to a wine bar that had a comedy night going on. When we got there we discovered that it was standing room only, despite our deposit paid reservations. We didn't want to stand there so we got a refund (as they clearly hadn't reserved a table for us), and took off for another bar.

mmmnn, Korean bbq

We hit the "Rock and Roll" bar, which was fairly empty and had a drink or two and played some pool. After that we left for Hongdae, the university/clubbing area, and went to a bar called Bar Gab. We hung out there for a while, drinking their insanely cheap drinks (2000 won for a rum and coke = ~$2). A few people ventured out of the tested drink area for some dirty martinis, one of which I drank when abandoned by its owner.

We then migrated to Go Go's for some dancing. Good times. With our 5:30 am wake up call, and our 17 hour trip from Toronto, we called it a night at 1am-ish and headed home. A good first night.

Heading To Korea

My Korean Adventure Part 2 started today. Korea and Japan! I'm so excited to see my fiancee, who is beyond awesome in everything.

The airport. First off, I was unable to connect to Pearson's free Wifi. Not really sure what was wrong. I hit up the Wifi of the restaurant we were sitting at, but it required pay. Well mostly anyway. Strangely I could go to the UofT webmail interface without being redirected to their payment splash page. Also, it looked like I was able to post to twitter so I posted some funny comments from Branko and Daniel. Branko said something about being the next Scully. With Daniel's blank stare, he continued: "You know, the pilot who landed the plane in the Hudson." Daniel: "Oh, I was thinking the X-files. I thought, well I guess you could dye your bush red." I think you can all now get a taste of what this trip will be like.

At security, I got stopped after the metal detectors (which found nothing) and patted down rather extremely by the guard. Very thorough. He said to me, "I just to give you a special massage." Thank god I was in an open public place or I would really have pretty freaked out. Not too sure why I was stopped. I'm assuming random checks. Either that or I look like a total drug runner. I'll be sure never to get a job as a mule. And here I thought I looked to unassuming and geeky.

After that, the baggage check guy stopped me and opened my backpack to examine both the tin of Gatorade powder (I imagine it would show up odd on the X-ray), and check my skin cream, which was of an allowable size. Between that and the slow moving family in front of me, Branko and Daniel, who went to another line, finished way ahead of me and had to wait, laughing, at my pat down that included examining my waistline to make sure nothing concealed in my pants.

Anyhow, on the plane now listening to Pearl Jam. Will hopefully post this when I hit Vancouver.

Korean Adventure 2!

I'd first like to apologize for my lack of posting. I've moved apartments in the last month, and between that and work and my upcoming trip to Korea and Japan, I just haven't been writing much to post.

Anyway, as I said, I'm heading to Korea again. I get to see my fiancee, and a few of our friends will be tagging along. We're also all going to take a short trip over to Japan while we're in the area. I believe it shall prove to be awesome!

In honour of this trip, I'm going to kick the coverage off with picture of this bizarre hat my fiancee's parents brought back from Korea two years ago. I've been meaning to post it for a while, and this seems like a good time.

They bought an ice cream cake from Baskin Robins, which are all over the place in Seoul (them and Dunkin Donuts). Anyhow, apparently with the purchase of an ice cream cake (yum), they got this free hat.

It's a coonskin hat...sort of. It's blue, and has some sort of animal perched on the front, but does have a ringed tail. So odd. I love it though and think it could be a great talking piece at parties. All bask in it's odd glory, and stay tuned for my Seoul/Busan/Tokyo coverage!

Another Korean English Response

Another golden english response for my fiancee. Here are the last ones.

I think women can't do any job because woman can do job. There are many of man, but woman take every job. So man don't to do anything and I think woman want to go to army.

I think women can't do any job because I has only man can do. Like runing and got a question and making a good academy, can many.

I don't understand quite what he's saying.