Our next exciting trip

Earlier this year we started discussing where we want to go and what we want to do in life.  Somehow the idea of traveling came up and the more we talked about it the better the idea sounded and the bigger our travel plans got.  Our goal now is to take six months off from life to travel.

When else will we have the chance to leave and travel anywhere for months at a time?  This is the easiest time in our lives to up and leave because we don't own a house, kids, or pets.  This blog will be our way of recording our adventures and allow our friends and families to keep tabs on us.

Our plan is to start in New Zealand in April (before winter comes) for a few weeks, then Australia for a few weeks.  We will work our way up eastern Asia, possibly visiting Malaysia, Indonesia, Thailand, Cambodia, Vietnam, China, Japan, the Philippines, India (depending on how much time we have).  We will be back in the US in July for a month or so to visit with family and friends.  Then in August we will head out to Europe until either our funds and wits run out or November arrives.

Lost in Translation

There were so many incredible signs around South Korea. I want to share with you some of my favorites. You should be able to click on any of these pictures to enlarge them.


This is on the floor of the train station past where you buy the tickets. I thought it was nice that they trust us.


This gem was in most of the subway stations in Seoul and Busan. Kim told us that a while ago there was a huge fire in one of the subway stations and a lot of people where killed because there weren't enough exits for everyone to get out. So they put these breathing apparatuses in the stations as a solution.


On the beach at Haeundae. It felt like there were a lot more people who smoked in Korea, but that could be because in Boston there is no smoking in bars and restaurants, so I'm not used to being around it.


This sign is by Seoul tower, along a fence that is covered in locks (the picture below gives you an idea).

We never found out why the fence is covered in locks, but it is some sort of good luck thing. Or maybe it's like a wishing well but locks instead of pennies.


Seen at a temple where construction work was happening. Pretty sure they meant that we could still explore even though they were doing work.


Do you see it? It is the only thing in English on the map. It's a map of the fortress at Geumgang park we tried but failed to visit (with the cable car).

This picture you should click on to enlarge it. It's a pretty awesome translation of the dangers of the cliffs. "Be fascinated by the fantastic views of the wide sea and the beauty of the cliffs. Nature, however, does not have sympathy with accidents caused by your carelessness."


A new bar in Gwangalli beach. I don't think they understand what a womb is.


Not once in my 10 days in Korea did I see a horse and carriage. This must be why.

"Delicious love making just for you"

Saturday

Our last full day in Korea. Andy made Kim and me crepes for brunch. Recipe:

• 2 eggs
  
• 1 cup milk
• 1 cup mystery flour (all we could translate was 55% potato starch)
• A dozen or so delicious Korean strawberries sliced
• 1/2 Korean pear (kind of- looked like one but didn't taste like it really)

End result: something like a crepe but not quite. But with a little brown sugar and butter, it was excellent.

Next up is festival at Gwangalli beach. Here is a picture:
Turns out it was the wrong weekend for the festival. Oh well. Found a tiny amusement park instead, which had this incredible ride for only 1000 won. (You may want to turn down or off the volume, it's full of loud screaming kids in the background)



For late lunch we headed to Jagalchi fish market. It was incredible the amount of fish that everyone was selling. The place we ate at we just pointed to 3 fish and they cooked them on the grill then brought them to our table, where we ate the meat off the bone with chopsticks. It was interesting but 2 of the 3 fish we chose weren't very good. We did a little shopping after that but went home without buying anything.

(This is the grill our fish was cooked on, we chose from the fish set out in front of it)

We had a light dinner at Kim's house and then went out for her birthday/last night in Korea. The first bar of the night was a place called the Playground, which is on the 3rd story of a building downtown. It had a huge selection of bottled beer you chose yourself from their fridges. I got a bottle of Hite, a Korean beer, for 2500 won. We played pools and darts and danced. Then we headed to The Fuzzy Navel, which turned out to have mexican food and interesting flaming shots. By the time we looked at the clock it was 3:00 am! The bars here never close. Andy and I went back to Kim's apartment to pack and sleep and caught a train back to Seoul at 10 am.

Thus ended our trip to Korea. There will be a couple more posts though about the culture and random things we just didn't have time to post during our trip, so stay tuned.

Stupid rain

For Thursday and Friday Andy and I decided to do an overnight trip up to Seoraksan National Park. We caught a bus from Busan at 8:40 am and arrived in Sokcho (the town directly outside of the park) at 3 pm. We found a hotel right outside of the park and this was our view from the balcony.

I don't think these pictures do justice to the impressiveness of the mountains. A lot of the craggy peaks we could see look like they are covered in cloud and fog here (which they were). We went to the park information booth and looked around, but didn't do too much that night. Bought ramen in a cup for 850 won each (that's 85 cents) for dinner.

Friday we woke up early so we could get in a hike before breakfast at the hotel ended. It was only lightly misting out. Once in the park, it was more like Kings Dominion than a National Park, with restaurants and games set up everywhere. And the whole path was paved as well. The "hike" we were doing in the morning was a relatively easy one, about 3.3km one way and no major incline, according to the map. Let me tell you that Korean distances are a lot like Mortimer Miles, a lot longer than they say. The farther we were walking, the more it started to rain. We were only hiking for about 45 minutes when we got to a sign that said we still had another 2.5km to go, we were soaking wet and just miserable. So we turned around and decided we'll try again after breakfast, maybe the rain will have let up.

Sadly, the rain never really let up. We had breakfast, took a nap and were ready to leave by 11:30. At that time it was still raining, so we decided to head south to another town instead of hiking in the park again. It was a really hard decision because I had gotten my hopes up about the park and knew that no cave was going to be as interesting or beautiful.

We headed back to the bus station and caught a bus to Donghae. We took a taxi to the Cheonguk cave, which was pretty large. It cost 4000 won for both of us to enter. It was large and intricate and interesting for $4. But that was all we had time for. We had to catch a taxi to the train station for the train at 4:30. We were then on a train until 11:30 pm and took a taxi back to Kim's house.

Teaching

Wednesday afternoon we spent with Kim's kids. They were all SO excited to have us there. We were called Katie teacher and Andy teacher. Each class lasted between 30 and 40 minutes, depending on the age of the class. Kids ranged in age from 6 to 15. Kim teaches all day; in the morning it's more like kindergarten, in the afternoon it's more like an after school program.

This picture is of the last few kids who stayed longer than the rest. The woman on the right is the director of the school. The kid on Andy's left, Ryan (in the tan jacket), LOVED Andy. Towards the end of the night when Ryan was just doing homework, he would come up to us and wave, and came up to Andy and gave him a hug. Just loved him.

For each class, the kids did a little of their regular work (reciting phone conversations in English) and then they were given a blank piece of paper and told to draw Andy and me. They were encouraged to ask questions in english about us while they drew (Kim usually had to help them with ideas on what to ask). We were asked what is our favorite color, animal, cartoon character, how old are we, do we have a boy/girlfriend, where are we from and so forth. One class was SO surprised we were married to each other. I mean, fall out of their seats surprised.

Below are just a few of the drawings the kids made. Some used crayons to color in what they drew. In the first one, Andy had said his favorite cartoon character was Aladdin, so the kid drew a genie. Some were incredibly good, others were laughable.

Taejongdae park

Wednesday is the day we are going to meet Kim's kids. We're only going to teach in the afternoon so we went to Taejongdae park in the morning (please excuse the spelling of Korean places, I'm too lazy to find my map to make sure I'm spelling them right). It's a gorgeous park at one end of Yeong-gu (the island Kim lives on is called Yeong-du, but it is still part of Busan). We spent the entire morning walking only halfway around the roadway. There were cliffy parts that we found out later we could have walked onto, but I don't know that I would have wanted to anyways. All throughout the ocean there were tons of ships. Big and small. I don't have anymore to say about the park but I want to show you a couple more pictures

One of the overlooks during the walk.

This guy was hanging outside of the "observatory" about halfway around the park.

This was posted inside the stalls at the bathroom.

Busan day two

Andy is getting sick. Tuesday morning we went to find a drugstore in Busan. After walking around for 10 minutes we finally found a pharmacy, clearly marked. The guy inside spoke no english, so we mimed stuffy nose and cough. He handed us 2 packs of pills and a bottle of warm liquid and told us to take 2 of each pill and the entire bottle. Talk about drug overload. Andy took the pills but we waited until we could talk to a Korean to figure out what the bottle was.

Our first real activity of the day was to find the cable car in Geumgang park. It was about a 30 minute subway ride and another 20 minutes of aimlessly walking towards the mountain, where we could see the cable car but there were no signs to get to it. Geumgang park was a surreal experience. I didn't take any pictures because I was just too surprised at what was there. If you have seen Spirited Away, this park was a lot like the park in the movie, except more trees. But equally as creepy. There was a small amusement park and food stands mixed in with the forest. But there was hardly anyone in the park at all.

(This is just a small portion of Busan, it spreads all the way on either side of this picture)

We took the cable car to the top of the mountain where we were expecting to find an old fortress. For about 10 minutes we were doing really well, following the signs for Nam moon (south gate) until we reached this sign:

The first two characters say Nam Moon, but I don't recognize the other characters. So we followed the upper path since there was another, more official looking sign, that said Nam Moon this way. The sign says only 0.3m to the gate. Well, after walking for 20 minutes and reaching a food stand we realize that somehow we have gotten lost. We made it back to this sign but we didn't want to go on another wild goose chase for this stupid gate. We started heading back for the cable car.

That's when we met Nick, another fellow American also lost in the woods. Maybe it's a Korean thing, but these signs just weren't made for us Westerners. We had a nice chat with Nick about Korea and the culture and a little about home (He's originally from NY but living in Milwaukee). While up on top of the mountain we found another temple. At this point we're kind of unimpressed by temples. It's like looking at churches, there is only so many that you want to see, especially the unimpressive ones.

Next stop, Busan tower. It's just a tourist attraction, but has a neat view of the harbor and surrounding city. Andy and I hung out in the cafe at the top eating our snacks and just relaxing. We had a couple hours to kill before Kim was done with work and we were pretty tired of walking around. Plus, you can't ask for a better view.

For dinner we met Kim, Krissy (one of the girls from the Temple Stay) and their friend Jin, who is native Korean. Jin took us to a korean restaurant and ordered chicken and seafood barbecue. Not bbq like in the US with sauce and grilling and stuff. A giant round bowl was placed on a burner in the middle of the table and the food was brought out raw and cooked on our table. It was decently good, but Jin kept telling us that it was terrible, so I guess not really authentic.

(View of Busan harbor from Busan Tower)

Busan, for the most part

I just wanted to note here that before we left Gyeongju, we found a korean buffet for 5000 won (that's less that $5 people). It was good food, all you could eat, and 2 types of dessert. One dessert was rice soaked in sugar water and the other dessert was rice soaked in cinnamon water. Both were decent, but not as good as rice pudding.

Okay, so we took the train back to Busan on Sunday night. Monday we took the morning off and slept in. Kim left for work at 9 and came back on her lunch break at 12. By then we were showered and ready to go out exploring. Kim brought back some kimbap for lunch. It is rice wrapped with seaweed (just like sushi rolls). Two of the rolls had cooked tuna, small vegetables, and one slice of ham running through it, and one of the rolls had american sliced cheese with vegetables and ham. I picked out the ham from my slices and Andy ate them, in case you were wondering.

Once Kim headed back to work Andy and I took the metro to Hyundae, a very popular beach. Lucky for us it was kind of cold and rainy outside so hardly anyone was at the beach. We spent some time walking around this area, admiring the ocean until the rain was too much and we found a coffee shop to sit in and relax.

For dinner Kim took us to a little restaurant beside her apartment where we had fried chicken. they fry the chicken whole then cut it to pieces with scissors. Came with some amazing dipping sauce and chopped garlic.

No fun pictures for this day.

Second Day of Temple Stay

For the second day of the temple stay we had to be up and to the shrine by 4:30 for morning chanting. It would have been difficult if we hadn't been so scared of having to do 3000 bows if we missed it. It was cold and dark and we had to walk halfway up the mountain to get to the shrine. The chanting was really neat in the morning through, the way it reverberated off of everything. Then we sat in meditation for 30 minutes. It's really difficult to sit on the floor for 30 minutes without your knees and legs hurting.

At 5:50 was the ceremonial breakfast. We had to be instructed on how to act before had because there was no talking during it. Food was the same, kimchi, soup, onions in sesame, bean sprouts and rice. Afterwards we had an hour and a half of free time before "Tea and conversation."

Tea and conversation turned out to be really fun and probably my favorite part of the temple stay. All of the participants of the temple stay sat in a half circle and received "peur" tea (I think, it was fermented green tea). Then one of the monks sat with us and told us about being a monk and we were allowed to ask any questions. The monk was just a normal guy wearing robes it turns out. He told us today was his last day in the temple because he has to go serve in the Korean Army for 2 years (all men must do so between the ages of 18 and 25). Someone asked what the hardest part about being a monk was and he said Women. Oh and he also said that Andy looked like Hugh Jackman. Doesn't he look friendly?

That was it for the temple part of the stay. The monks hired a bus driver and there was an optional trip that we could take for 10,000 won (less than $10). We opted for it and it was an excellent choice. The trip took us to three places; 3 stone pagoda, King Munmu's ocean shrine, and Girimsa temple. 3 stone pagoda was fun to see and to just run around and be noisy.

King Munmu's shrine was just a pile of rocks in the ocean, but it was good to be by the water. Last was Girimsa temple which was a nice hike through the woods and lots of temple buildings around.

We all live in a yellow submarine

A couple of people reading this blog have commented that they aren't really familiar with hostels (they aren't very popular in the states) so I figured I'd give a brief explanation.

A hostel is very similar to a college dorm. We stayed at The Yellow Submarine in Seoul in a four person room. The Yellow Submarine also had eight person rooms (cheaper) as well as private two person rooms (more expensive). The four person room we stayed in had two bunk beds, a desk, a stool and four smallish lockers with keys. The first night we shared the room with a guy named David that was visiting Seoul during a trip to visit his family in South Korea. The second night we had the room to ourselves. There are also shared bathrooms (again like a dorm). From what I've heard The Yellow Submarine is one of the nicer hostelsl in Seoul (our friend Kim stayed at another one that wasn't as nice. A guy named Henry seemed to "run" the hostel in that he was almost always there and was very helpful when it came to figuring out where we were going.

The hostel also provided bread, peanut butter, jam, eggs, juice, coffee and a few other breakfast basics. Staying there felt a lot like staying in a college house - plenty of interesting people to talk to and someone is almost always awake. Oh! The Yellow Submarine also had wifi and a few computers for anyone to use (I think this is a bit of a luxury as far as hostels go). The total cost for two nights was just over $70USD (about $17/person/night - wicked cheap). We didn't think to take any pictures inside the hostel but here's one from outside:

Train to Dongdaegu

Things may end up being a little bit out of order and delayed because of when we have access to internet and when Katie or I actually post. So here's a bit I wrote on the train from Seoul to Dongdaegu.

------------
Saturday morning, we're on a train to Dongdaegu where we'll catch another train to Gyeongju. It was quite the fiasco yesterday when we went to get our train tickets. We went up to the counter and said we wanted to go to Gyeongju (pronounced as best we could) on Saturday morning. We didn't really think about the fact that the trains would be pretty crowded on a weekend so it was a bit of an ordeal to find seats on a train in the morning. Anyway, we managed to find a train that was early enough but then realized that we had been given tickets to Jeonju. This was one of those times that I /really/ wished I spoke Korean. Most of our interactions with people that don't speak English have been doing simple things like buying food or items at a store - you can simply point at what you want, look at the number on the register and hand over the money. Scheduling a train trip is a different story. All in all it worked out fine and we ended up getting the tickets to where we needed to go (no thanks to our skills in Korean and all thanks to the KTX employee's skills in English).

Also, there are mountains everywhere in Korea. Everywhere. They make a beautiful backdrop to the various temples and traditional architecture. Very similar to what I envisioned Asia to be like and what you see in movies based in Asia. Here's a decent example of what I'm talking about:

Temple Stay

Train rides are amazing here. They are cheap, smooth, quick and there is lots of room for your legs. We met Kim in Gyeongju with two of her friends, Krissy and Emily. Since we didn't need to be to the temple until 5pm, we decided to explore the city. There was a Rice cake and Liquor festival happening that weekend so we checked it out. It was a 5000 won taxi ride (about 10 minutes), which means for 5 of us it was about $1 each.

The festival was a bunch of tents set up in a parking lot (like most US festivals). For 2000 won we bought 6 or 8 pieces of some green rice cake. It is not actually a cake but more like a soft gummy slice covered in powder. The texture was strange and taste wasn't very good. For 1000 won we bought an awesome sampling cup which hung around your neck and tasted three varieties of rice wine, all of which were delicious. We didn't find the tent to test the rice liquor (called Soju), but there was a parade and people dressed in costumes. All in all very fun.

We had to catch a bus to the temple. Almost caught it in the wrong direction. For a couple of stops we kept asking the bus driver if this was our stop. Finally we get to an intersection after being on the bus for 30 minutes and the bus driver throws up his hands and yells "Golgulsa." This was our stop. We walked about 15 minutes to get to the temple where we were given monk clothes and a room. Andy had to sleep in the boys building.

The monk clothing was :

amazing to say the least. Huge baggy pants that were constantly falling down if you didn't tie them tight enough and a fantastically orange vest so no one accidentally shoots you?

But the temple area was gorgeous. It was set in the mountains and there were many buildings along a very steep mountainous path. The cherry blossums and I think peach blossums are blooming.



Dinner was at 5:30 in the dining hall, traditional low tables and you sit on the floor to eat. We had rice, spicy kimchi, green onions in some sesame sauce, something I didn't recognize and a soup with what tasted like spinach. You could take as much as you wanted but you had to eat everything you took. Needless to say most of us didn't eat enough because we were too worried about not being able to eat it all. Then at 6:30 was a video about Sunmudo an then actually doing Sunmudo. Turns out I am not very flexible or strong. It was pretty intense for beginners. For evening chanting at 8:00 there was lots of bowing. Not that half bow crap, but full on stand up lay down forehead to ground then stand up again. But listening to the monks chant was amazing (we each got a book that had the chants written out for us in roman letters but it was hard to follow). Then to bed for lights out at 10pm. Which may seem early but morning chanting started at 4:30 am and if you missed it you would have to do 3000 bows, which we found out later takes between 6 and 8 hours to complete.

I am going to break up the posts because this is pretty long and the next day was even longer.

What time is it?

For those of you curious, it is 5:30 am on Saturday April 17th. For those of you on the east coast, right now it is 4:30 pm on Friday April 16th. We are 13 hours ahead (but only during daylight savings time, otherwise Korea would only be 12 hours ahead).

Other fun facts:
Most toilets have signs saying do not flush anything down the toilet, including toilet paper. You should throw your toilet paper in the trash.
Except for main roads, there are no sidewalks. Everyone walks down the sides or center of the street and cars just don't hit you.
Our hostel has heated floors. Best thing ever.
$1 equals 1100 won.
When a crosswalk is present, no one walks when the little man is red. Even if absolutely no cars are coming, they will wait until the little man is green.

Alright time to catch our train to Gyeongju.

Day Two

Hello it's Katie.

Today was our scheduled DMZ tour. Our tour guide Hans picked us up from the hostel and was really fabulous and upbeat. He told us the history of the DMZ and how it came to be while we drove an hour to get there. Once we arrived the first stop was Dorasan station. This train station was only used for a very brief time in 2007 and had only one stop, Pyeongyang, North Korea. But now it is an eerily clean empty station that is only filled with tourists. Next stop Dora observatory to look at the DMZ and on good days North Korea. Lucky for us it was a beautiful day, no rain or clouds or even a haze in the air. For 500 won you can use the binoculars to peer into North Korea. There was not too much to see. A small industrial town with only a couple of people in the streets, a village built just to say there was a village but no one has ever lived in it, and a giant flag pole.

Our last stop on the tour was the 3rd infiltration tunnel. In the 70s, South Korea found 3 different tunnels that the North Koreans were digging under the DMZ, hoping to dig a tunnel all the way to Seoul and sneak attack the city. The third tunnel is 75 meters under the ground, we were able to walk down to the tunnel and then along the tunnel for 165 meters. After 165 meters the tunnel crossed back into the North Korean side of the DMZ and the South Koreans have put up blockades to stop anyone from crossing over unknowingly. No bags or cameras were allowed into the tunnel. The tunnel is no more than 2 meters tall at its tallest point, so most of the walking was done crouching down. More so for Andy than me. It was really incredible.

Once the DMZ tour was finished our tour guide took Andy and me to a little Korean lunch place where you take off your shoes to enter and eat off of low tables while sitting on the floor. Really authentic. Hans ordered for us. I had bibimbap, which is a rice dish with leafy greens, bead sprouts, an egg and some sort of red sauce. I then mixed in boiled rice and ate. It was incredibly delicious. Andy had something I am pretty sure is called geupsam. He took a leaf of lettuce, added a piece of boiled pork, some bean paste, half garlic cloves, or some fish sauce, rice, then ate. He said it was delicious. We also had a side of kimchi, prepared "like your grandma would" said Hans. Oh, and we had soup which was yummy too. After lunch Hans left us.

In the afternoon we took a guided tour of Changdeokgung, a palace built in 1405 for the king. It was really incredible. I can't wait to show you pictures. The architecture was incredible. Really, you have to wait for the pictures. As if this wasn't enough walking and touring for the day, we headed over to Namsan park to go up to Seoul tower and look over the city. In this park is a huge hill that you must first climb up. Actually, we had a steep climb from the subway to the cable car. Then took the cable car to the top. You can walk but we were exhausted. It was a neat view of the city. We didn't go up the tower cause it was more money and we just wanted to go back to our hostel.

So back we went, but not before picking up our train tickets for our trip to Gyeoungju and the temple stay. We will check in tomorrow to let you know how it goes.

First post or Off to South Korea

I'm writing this at about 1:15pm Korean time. We will land in Seoul in less than two hours. I'm technogeekily obligated to tell you the iPad is at 54% battery, which is pretty much insane. We didn't use it at all on the flight from Boston to San Francisco, but it's been on the majority of the past 10 hours from San Francisco to Korea. Katie and I watched: an episode of House, Stargate Universe, The Big Bang Theory, How I Met Your Mother and BBC's Life. That's about three and a half hours of video playback, volume at maximum (split to our headphones), in addition to playing the game HarborMaster HD obsessively until I beat my high score (an hour or more), as well as reading a bunch of blog posts in the excellent RSS reader NewsRack. I'd say that's more than six hours use, aka insane battery life.

So enough about the iPad, here's our tentative plan for the next couple of days.

When we get to Seoul we'll catch a bus of some sort to the hostel we're staying at and check in. At that point it will probably be five or six o'clock so I don't know what we'll be up to - probably explore Seoul a bit and grab some food.

Tomorrow (Friday) we're doing a tour of the DMZ which should be neat. Apparently there are a bunch of tunnels that used to be used to sneak people across the border (I'm not sure which way). I don't think that will take the whole day so we'll probably end up exploring Seoul some more tomorrow night.

Saturday we're meeting Kim (Katie's old roommate that lives in Busan) in Gyeongju to do a temple stay. The name of the temple is Golgulsa. So we'll do that Saturday afternoon to Sunday afternoon.

Sunday we'll head back to Busan with Kim... and from then on we don't have many plans. Check back to see what we've been up to! (assuming we keep up the motivation to keep writing this)

And.... We're back in the hostel after exploring Seoul for a few hours. We're exhausted and don't have a lot to report, aside from the fact that we are big westernized wusses when it comes to trying new food. For dinner tonight we went into a random Korean place we found on the streets of Seoul and it was... interesting. The food wasn't bad we just mostly had no idea what we were doing. The people working at the restaurant didn't speak any English so we had to sort of point and sound out what we wanted. Then when the food came it was heating/cooking? on our table, but we immediately put it into our plates and the man working there told us to dump it back into the serving dish. Anyway, it was fish with a few vegetables in a somewhat spicy sauce served with boiled rice. The fish was served with skin and bones which was a bit odd to us. All in all it could have been worse, but could have also been better.

Time for some much needed rest.