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Published: April 24th 2012
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Talk about a change of season. Literally over one weekend the weather has changed into beautiful 20+ degrees weather and all the trees and flowers are blossoming like crazy. It's great to finally have a bit of heat and colour here, the cold and dull brown colour of everything was getting pretty tiresome! Anyway, as I mentioned last time, now it's getting so much nicer it is making it easier to go out and do things. And there are so many different festivals to choose from every weekend, so there is plenty to do and see!
We kicked things off a couple of weekends ago by heading on a trip over to Jindo island, in the southwest corner of Korea. On the way we stopped off in Boseong, to visit a green tea plantation. The tea plants are planted all over a hillside, creating this maze-like hill which is pretty cool. It was a nice walk round there, but nothing that spectacular to report. I had some green tea ice cream which annoyed me because I enjoyed it, which means I'm losing my tastebuds as the first time I ever had this I thought it was disgusting. But anyway...
We headed on to Jindo for the real reason of the trip - to see the once a year phenomenon of the parting of the seas. I'm sure you all, like me, have a picture in your heads of me walking in between two roaring walls of water leading a crowd of people behind. I was really hoping that this was what it would be like, but I knew in my heart it was just going to be a patch of sand with the sea lapping either side. Luckily it turned out to be a bit better than that. We turned up to see nothing but water between the island we were on, and another island about 3km away. Crowds of people were gathered at the waters edge, drums were banging, people were dancing and the whole atmosphere was pretty exciting. Quickly the water began to drain away, leaving a path connecting the two islands. It wasn't anything biblical, but it was enough to make a few octopuses jump out of the water in surprise! The sea stays parted for about an hour or so, which gave us just enough time to get across to the other island and back
again. All the old women use the opportunity to dig in the sand for little sea creatures to sell, so you have to wind your way through a pensioner obstacle course while they frantically scrabble away at the sand around you. Definitely worth the long trip from Busan though!
The next day we jumped on a ferry over to Cheongsando island for the 'slow walking festival'. I had no idea what this was, am I'm still not entirely sure either. The island was really beautiful though, and we enjoyed a slow walk around the 'slow road' circling the island. The island is part of the 'Cittaslow' movement, which is where a small place tries to meet a load of objectives to slow down the pace of life. Apparently, Ludlow in England and Mold in Wales are also part of this movement, but I've never heard of it before. I think it's just an excuse for lazy people. Most of the farmers crops seemed to be dead, probably because he takes a 3 hour slow lunch every day. This was actually my favourite part of the weekend though, the weather was perfect and it was nice just relaxing in the
sun.
The cherry blossoms finally decided to make an appearance too. These trees are planted everywhere round Busan, but round my area there's loads of them. The cycle path to rugby has cherry trees planted on either side the whole way, so cycling along underneath the blossoms was pretty nice. I feel that it's a bit overhyped though - it is really beautiful but it only lasts about a week. The other 51 weeks of the year they look pretty ugly, not sure whether that's a good return for covering a city pretty much exclusively in one type of tree?!
The great thing about Korea is that there is always something fun to do. And it probably won't cost much, and you can probably take your own beer. Me and some of the boys decided to try one of the many screen golf places (which are open all night) last week. It's great fun, you can take your own beers in, order McDonalds delivery, and it's cheap. You can play on any golf course in the world, not that it made a blind bit of difference to me! We were all useless, we were there till 3.30am and
we only got to hole 6...only one of us managed to get a ball in! And unsurprisingly it wasn't me...! We also went to the baseball batting cages one night - baseball is so popular here. I know nothing about it and I'm trying to see what it's all about - the cages are fun though, for about 25p a machine fires about 15 baseballs at you, one at a time obviously. Really satisfying smashing one of those, at least I was marginally better at this one!
So now it's getting warmer, it's interesting to see the Korean reaction towards the warmer weather. In England, as soon as it's reached 18 degrees the vests start coming out and people are strutting round in as little clothes as possible. The boys up in the Welsh valleys are injecting themselves with melonin or whatever. Everyone is desperate for the best tan. Complete opposite here. You would think it's a country of vampires - the girls are trying to preserve their white skin using whatever means possible. Huge sunglasses, wide brimmed hats and umbrellas being the most popular methods. In fact, a lot of people here use skin whitening products. Whether it's
just colouring creams or actual bleaching creams I'm not sure, but it's big business. At one of the school birthday parties I noticed that one of the other Korean teachers had written on one of the kids birthday cards 'I really like your white skin', which shocked me at first until I realised that in the West it's exactly the same, just the other way round. People use sunbeds, fake tan, inject stuff into their skin, and always comment on how good someone's tan is. I guess everyone just wants to look different from the norm. But it's actually making buying suncream a problem - I went to buy some the other day and could only find factor 50. I barely tan with factor 15, so no way was I getting that, but when I asked it turned out I was looking in the wrong place - the low factor suncreams are all in the baby section, obviously...if anyone can see the logic in that let me know!
It's been a great few weeks, plenty of spontaneous trips here and there. Had an unexpected day off for the elections a couple of weeks ago and so headed over to
Daegu (Korea's 3rd largest city) to check out the bars and restaurants round there. I can't remember the last time I was bored!
So hopefully the fun will continue - I'll try and keep writing these blogs, hopefully at least a few people are still interested in them...
As always keep me updated on what you're all up to, I love hearing from you!
Ross x
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Ben
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Nice one Ross. I'm liking your photos. Some good shots there dude. I've been living in Korea for ages I always forget just how weird Korea (and Koreans) can seem. I'm gonna have to check those places out now. How did you hear about them? Let me know how you got out to Cheongsando.