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Published: October 29th 2012
So it's October, and the weather is cooling down at the same rate as it heated up on the way to summer. When I first arrived in Korea, I never heard the end of 'You know we have four seasons here?', to which I would feign interest but was privately thinking 'Yeh whatever, we do too, big deal'. But I take it all back, the changes of the seasons here are actually pretty dramatic. The winters are bitterly cold, and the summers excrutiatingly hot. So the transitions between the two happen quickly, you can feel the temperature change almost on a weekly basis. I love the weather right now, blue skies every day and the perfect temperature. It's how I always imagine the summer in Britain is going to be, before it rains non-stop and shatters that illusion. The leaves are beginning to change, turning the greenery fed by the summer rains into the assortment of autumnal colours that everyone likes to see.
As usual life has been pretty busy the last couple of months. My girlfriend Courtney left in September, so the weeks leading up to her departure were mostly spent helping her get everything ready to leave, and
hanging out with our friends. Actually, a lot of my friends have left in the past few weeks. For the first 8 or 9 months of my time here, hardly any of my good friends left which was great, but it has meant that it has all hit at once. So there's a different feel about the place now, I no longer recognise many of the faces out and about at the weekends. There are so many good things about living a lifestyle like this, moving around and working in different places and countries, but it has its downsides. Making good friends and just as quickly losing them is definitely a big downside. But I still have a good group of friends here so it's not all bad.
It's not long until I leave now, so I have been trying to pack in as much stuff as possible before I go. I'm slowly ticking things off my 'Things to see in Korea before I leave' list on my bedroom wall. And the autumn is a great time to do a lot of it. The never ending festivals continue (I think I read somewhere that there were over 2000 festivals
in Korea this year...), and there's plenty of good ones at the moment. This month, I went to the Busan International Film Festival to see a Russian/Belarussian film called 'In the Fog'. It was pretty much like going to the cinema any other time, with the exception that the director did a little speech to introduce the film. His accent was so thick though I have no idea what he said. How the Korean girl translated I'll never know, she must be better at English than me! The Ulsan World Music Festival was another fun event, where we danced all night to a Hungarian gypsy dance band much to the bewilderment of the Korean teenagers there who couldn't quite work out how to adapt the shuffle dance to fit the music. I can't even begin to explain how popular the shuffle dance is here. Whereas in England street corners are normally occupied by kids with their hoods up trying to look intimidating, in Korea you just see teenage boys shuffling. Oktoberfest was also a very exciting event for me, as it was the first decent beer I've had in almost a year. And not just one, but a selection of
4 or 5. It was so good I went 2 nights running. The German band playing were great, and certainly knew their crowd. The Koreans loved it, especially when they played some Korean classics (including 'Gangnam Style'...as a side note please don't message me asking whether I've heard this new song by a Korean guy, I have heard it...over and over and over and over again. And believe it or not, it is no longer cute when the little kids at school do the horse dance while singing 'Heyyyy sexy lady...'😉. So not the traditional Oktoberfest that you might expect but still a great time!
A few weeks back we went to the Korean 'Burning Man' Festival. Now I don't know if you've heard of the Burning Man Festival in America, but essentially it's a festival where the people going create all of the events - music, art and so on, and it attracts all manner of interesting characters. To be honest I barely knew what it was before I went, I was just intrigued. Turned out that it was set up the previous year by a bunch of foreigners living in Korea, and it was a fairly small
thing. There were a fair few marquees set up on the beach, about three-quarters of which were face painting, a couple of music tents, and the rest I have no idea. It was a fun weekend but I felt that a lot of people there were just trying to be as weird as possible. I'm all for art, music and self-expression, but just let it come naturally, don't try and force it! So it wasn't really the cool laid back hippies I thought might be there, everyone was a bit intense for my taste. For example, at the end of the night, everyone gathered around these two big wooden 'burning man' symbols, which they then set fire to, at which point everyone started chanting 'Burn motherf***r burn'. It felt like a cult, like any minute they might pick someone from the crowd to sacrifice. I guess I'm just not a 'true burner' as they say there...
We had another big typhoon come through Busan a few weeks back - Typhoon Sanba. This was predicted to be much worse than the other one, potentially the worst to hit in a decade. We got the day off school, and it was
pretty nuts outside. I've never seen wind and rain like it. It was like someone was emptying a bath. When the rain stopped my curiosity got the better of me and I decided to head out and see what it would be like walking round in wind like that. I got down to the main road (carefully avoiding the big tower block where the windows fell out in the last typhoon), and quickly realised this was not the kind of weather to be out in. Some portaloo's from the nearby allotment were blowing down the street and smashing into cars. Small rocks were hitting my legs. Some big trees had collapsed and were blocking the road. I kept on for a bit longer, determined to get down to the sea to have a peek down there, but to get there would mean going through a patch of trees which were blowing almost sideways. I decided against it, and when I almost got blown off my feet by a particularly big gust I decided it would probably be best to get back inside! Luckily there wasn't too much damage to the city in general.
Last weekend me and my friend
Tom headed up to Seoraksan national park in the north east, to try and hike up the third biggest peak in Korea, and to see the famous changing of the leaves. We took the night bus for the 6 hour journey and arrived there nice and early. The leaves had changed, and although they were nice, it was no different to autumn at home to be honest. Maybe the colours were a bit more vivid, but it wasn't quite the spectacular show I had been expecting! But anyway, we started the trek up through the valley (without a map - I mean there was only 2 paths, who could possibly get lost doing that?). After a bit we came to a junction, if we carried on the way we were going we would get to the peak. But there was a sign for a cave the other way, only 0.6km, so we decided to make a quick detour and have a gander at it. Well 0.6km in a vertical direction takes a lot longer than when it's flat. So eventually we got to the cave (which was really cool, it was this little grotto halfway up a massive cliff face).
I didn't want to retrace our steps, as I thought I had seen on a previous map that the two paths would meeet up and we could cut across to the main peak. Well, although that was true, it turned out that it would add at least 6 hours onto the trip, much to the amusement of the Koreans we told our plan to along the way. We thought we might still be able to do it, so we picked up the pace and carried on. We made loads of friends along the way, and in typical Korean style we were offered food every time we stopped to rest. Which was a good job as I had come very unprepared, I only had a sandwich, a Snickers, and a small bottle of water. Anyway, we eventually teamed up with a Korean guy who was going the same way as us. We ended up hiking along a ridge, going up and over some of the most insane peaks ever. In fact, it was so steep in some places we had to use ropes to get up and down a lot of them. You wouldn't believe the number of old women doing
these hikes as well, I don't know how they do it. The ridge was called
Gongnyongneungseon (or 'Dinosaur Ridge'😉 for a reason, and it takes as long to get across it as it does to try and pronounce the name in Korean correctly. I've never done anything quite like it (the hike, not the pronunciation). Eventually we made it to the valley at the base of the main peak,
Daecheong-bong, but with still at least 5 hours to get back from here and only 3 hours of light left there was really no point in going up to the peak. There are little huts up there where you can stay, but you have to reserve in advance and we would have to blag our way in. And we were shattered anyway. The long hike back took forever, and the last 2 hours were in the pitch black, and as usual I only had my ipod to light the way. We made it back eventually, and got on the night bus to start the 6 hour journey back to Busan. Exhausting day, but definitely a good adventure!
Weird stuff has still been happening. Last time I went for a beer
in my local bar, we got chatting to a really drunk Korean businessman who told me to shut up every time I tried to answer his questions. Several times he got me in a headlock, gave me a nuggie, and told me I was his brother, and he would help me make lots of money. He refused to tell me how, but he seemed keen to make a business partnership. I gave him my number in the vague hope there might be some truth to what he said, but obviously I'm yet to hear from him!
Rugby has been going surprisingly well recently, at our last tournament we were playing 3 of the best teams in Korea, and we only had one substitute available for the 3 games, so we weren't too hopeful. But we managed to win two and draw the third, so we're all pretty happy with that result. Our last tournament of the season is next weekend, so we're hoping to go out on a high!
Anyway, hope all is well at home. Sorry for the lack of blogging recently, it takes ages and I'm getting lazy. I'll add a couple more this week if
I can. Keep me updated on what you're all up to!
Love Ross x
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