the ashtray bible

Gangneung-si, Gangwon-do, South Korea

ahhh...home after such a long exhausting trip. Jeju island was good, I saw everything I was planning on seeing and met a few locals over beers at The Playhouse.

New Years in Seoul was crazy. Met up with Soutthida in Itaewon in the early afternoon and then made my way to the motel for a much-needed nap. Later in the evening we all met up at Gecko's in Itaewon for drinks and planning of the nights festivities. I was still suffering from SARS (as were a few other people at the table, because it was mentioned quite a few times). Kate; Sive, a girl from Ireland; Nadine; Soutthida and Glynn, a guy from Ottawa and myself all drank away late into the evening. Then it was off to Outbacks for Soutthida's birthday dinner (Happy Birthday Soutthida!), but it was too long a wait and we ended up at a Korean restaurant around the corner from Gecko's for grilled pork instead...

At about 10, we headed to Jonggak station, near Insa-dong, for some partying and to see some big bell gonged 24 times by a bunch of monks. I was weary that it might be boring, but we headed out of the subway and up the stairs on to the streets to meet hundred's of thousands (maybe millions?) of people on the streets shooting roman candles in the air. This went on for hours...there was a huge TV screen broadcasting some concert live, and vendors selling food and fireworks everywhere. It was like standing at the base of an erupting volcano, constantly speweing out ash in the form of burnt sulphur. The stuff was everywhere, little black specks of spent gunpowder singing my eyes and lungs, and landing in my hair and all over my clothes...not to mention the people losing control of their roman candles and accidentally shooting them at us...several times. We tried to get to a Minimart for some beverages but it was too packed outside and they were'nt letting anyone in. There was a man constructing a steel baricade of bars in front of the shop window, I guess so the crowd wouldn't be pushed through them. Needless to say, we were all almost seperated and trampled in the thronging masses outside this little Minimart. It was a hellish ten minutes.

Thanks to Kate for forcing a way for us through the crowd and we broke free onto the street just in time for midnight when everyone and every vendor lit off every single firework they could find at once. Glynn managed to find a crowd of drunken Korea's sharing rice wine in the middle of it all....ahhh booze!

We grabbed a cab, stuffed our way in and headed back to Itaewon for a quick stop at Polly's Kettle, to drink some kettle's of Soju and party with the soldiers and ex-pats before heading to Hong-dae and Stompers nightclub, where we forked over 15000won and were led into the incredibly crowded and hot bar downstairs where we drank the night away...4am, exhausted, I grabbed a cab and went home.

New pics for you all from Jeju island, Seoul, Donghae, Gangneung and Christmas at Futurephoto.ca...there are still lots more and I'm working on getting them up in a better format on a different server...for now, here you go:
http://pix.futureshop.ca/en/jg.php?id=27504_46722d73

You'll have to wait for my photos from New Years, as I left the pictures in a Nadine's bag, and won't be back to Seoul to get it from her until two weeks from now. My dad will be stopping in Seoul then on his way to India...

Seoul-si, Gyeonngi-do, South Korea

Happy New Years everyone....9h13m left! The clock will strike twelve 17 hours before it does back in Vancouver, when you will all be still sleeping. I'm sick as a dog right now, I think it might be SARS!!
I should not drink alcohol tonight, I should not smoke cigarettes tonight!

Jeju-si, Jeju-do, South Korea

So here I am in a "PC bang" in jeju city. Thursday and friday were damn cold, the wind was blowing so hard, I had to lean forward to stop from being blown over. There was hail and snow intermittently throughout the day too.

I stayed my first night at the Hani-Il minbak near downtown, the ajummah was very nice, but she kept on talking to me in korean, so I just smiled and nodded. I found a McDonald's that night, thank god, so my christmas dinner consisted of a big mac meal with coke. I couldn't do much else because of the freezing wind, except wander the streets downtown and drink by myself at the Tombstone Pub.

Yeah, and I discovered that the Minbak had no hot water, even though there was a huge yellow sign outside advertising "Hot Water" and I deceided on friday night to move up to a yeogwan with private bathroom and hot water, the Tower Inn, closer to downtown, and only had to fork over 25000won a night compared to the 15000won at the minbak. I will miss that ajummah though :)

Saturday, I signed up for a two day bus tour of the island, west and east coast, lunches included for only 50000won. Saturday we visited, Yongduam rock, shaped like a dragon leaping out of the ocean. Apparently, a dragon was turned to stone for stealing the "elixir of youth" from some ancient korean god, I couldn't help but think that it just looked like some big ugly rock?? no wait, it did look kind of cool with the ocean splashing up against it...
Then on to the Bunjae (bonsai) Artpia. Some Korean farmer spent 30 years growing hundreds of bonsai trees and they are all kept here, it's supposed to teach you about the hardships of life...it was really nice and must've taken an incredible amount of work...
Then we visited a Miniature Theme Park and had lunch. There were miniatures of all of the major tourist landmarks across the world, from Mt. Rushmore and the Whitehouse, the Sydney Opera House and the Taj Mahal...to the Great Pyramids at Giza.
Then Jusangjeollidae, kind of like the Giant's Causeway in Ireland, where magma has been supercooled by the ocean water and forms these towering crystals of rock along the shore.
After that we went to Seogwipo-si (a smaller city on the south coast of Jeju-do island), it was warm and beautiful with palm tress everywhere. I took a boat tour around three small islands off the coast: Beomseom, Munseom and Seopseom. The boat even had scubadivers who took cameras underwater and filmed the coral reefs. From there we went to Chunjiyeon falls, a beautiful waterfall with this very cool pathway with cliffs along either side. There a special eel that's natural habitat is in the river at the bottom of the falls and it can grow up to 20kg and 2m long here!

Sunday was bus tour day 2. A korean family had taken great interest in my well being giving me oranges, taking photos with me and buying me cups of coffee at everystop. In fact I had received so many oranges (Jeju island is famous for its oranges) that my bag was overflowing and I had to start turning people away, how am I ever going to eat all these oranges? So the day started off at a the "Mystery Road" much like Magnetic Hill in New Brunswick, but it was free. Not very cool, probably because I've seen it before. The coolest thing was the Dolhareubangs they had made up like silver aliens! (If you don't know, a Dolhareubang is an ancient statue, found only on Jeju island. They are these little men with hats and smiling faces and are found all over the island, carved from the volcanic basalt rock that the island is made from. Nobody REALLY knows why they are here....it's still debated.)

Then we went to the Songeup-si Folk Village. A traditional Korean village, where the government pays the residents 1000000won a year to live traditionally....it was crappy, the whole tour was in Korean, but I did see a traditional toilet. Get this, they used to crap into pig pens and then the pigs would eat it, no kidding!
Then they tried to get us to buy this 30000won 5 flavour tea, which was good, but not worth it, at least for me! Then it was Illchul land, where I saw Micheon cave, a lava tube caved formed when the island was volcanic. The lava flowed underground hardening only on the outside but staying hot in the middle forming these huge cave tunnels all over the island.

Here's some excerpts from Illchul Land's english brochure:
-(advertising a clay making "spinning wheel experience")
"imitate like the movie 'ghost'"
-(visiting their subtropical garden)
"under the three dimensional landscape, you may be assimilated with the nature and relaxed satisfactorily"
-(on the back page of the brochure)
-"whisper with trees friendly, time in company with family intimately on the lawn field, the space of walking with lover, these will let you prepare the new future of yourself."

I can undestand what they were trying to say...but it's funny, c'mon...
So from there we went to Sinyang-dae (a black coral beach) to view the Seongsan Ilchulbong (Sunrise Peak) which is a huge volcanic crater off the coast .
From there we went to see where the Haenyeo dive, these are females who dive in the ocean with no gear to depths of 20m to collect shellfish from the ocean floor. The Korean family that had adopted me, invited me to eat, along with another man from the tour who spoke english fairly well. They fed me Soju and then I ate steamed octopus and steamed....SEA SLUG!!!! ugh! It looks soft and when it's alive but it's really like hard beef jerky covered in mucous that tastes like fish!!! Nasty! Yeah, and they have all these tanks everywhere with the animals swimming around so you can see them grab your dinner and chop it up.

Okay...I'm back in Jeju city now, I might find this place called the Playhouse, apparently where all the expats go. I've seen only five foreigners so far, four of them were from Germany and spoke mosty..well German, and this Australian man who met me at the airport and wanted me to come have coffee with him...I escaped!