Blogs from South Korea, Asia - page 370

Sometimes the best nights are the ones that sneak up on you. The truth is, those are always the best nights. Small town Korea is a strange experience. Coming from a legitimate Canadian small town, I wouldn't say it is exactly the same thing. This small korean town is 500,000 people. However, if you find the right little hole in the wall, the right crowd, then you can still find that intimate good small town feel. But the intention wasn't really to party it up. If anything, I was just trying to go with it...stay awake. I have to retrain myself to party all night. Travelling isn't necessarily about partying, but it is about going with a good feeling in a good place, staying up if it means meeting more people, having good times. Last night ... read more

So much has happened since our last little blog... day 2 (wednesday), we found a nifty mountain to hike on the internet... "GwanakSan". So we hopped on a subway, and followed the people with the hiking gear, and found the trail entrance pretty easily. They actually have gondolas bringing up military officials (they have a base somewhere up there), but of course, since we're soooo hardcore, we hiked it. well, it wasn't as cool as the peak (kidddinnng)! It was so rad! nifty pine trees and mountains made of giant balls of granite were all around us... and we had a great view of the monstrosity that is Seoul below us. Apparently, Koreans love their hiking, so we said Hellooooo to them as we passed. Well, when we arrived at the top, a Korean named Mr. ... read more

I can't believe it's February! Actually I can. Part of me feels like time is going so freaking slow but the other part seems like it's going really fast. I suppose that's what time does a lot of the time. I give up trying to figure out which it's doing. I keep telling people that this break is really what I needed to heal from everything in China - my relationship with Camillo, my very backward relationship with Stone, working all the time without a two day break anywhere to be seen, kids that either don't want to be in class or have nothing to talk about but their studies, having my first full time job ever, foreigners who are going through some crazy stuff and making it a whole huge drama, and who knows what ... read more

And so we departed... midnight our time on January 29... and arrived at the Incheon Airpost a very long 14 hours later... on the 31st, 4am Korean time. The flight was strange.. I'm pretty sure we were 2 of the only four non-koreans on the flight. Cool thing, though - sometime during the 14 dark hours spent flying over Canada/Alaska/Russia/China, we saw the Northern Lights. Rad. And, we were fed some interesting meals... hotsauce in a toothpaste tube, green tea rice porridge, and even bean cakes. Yess!!! . We landed in a very surpirsingly empty Incheon airport, though it was 4 am at the time. We then checked our bags, exchanged soem currency, and began tha agonizing quest for food. After much deliberation we decided on Mc Donalds. Cheap and open. A nice Korean helped us ... read more

Well, let's see. I met up with Anna and Mike today at around noon and we took the bus (that we waited for for about 30 minutes I swear!) to Seoul. They hadn't really seen too much yet so we were going to go to a palace, but ended up going straight to Insadong to meet up with Corey and Rebecca. Insadong is a really old street full of shops with Korean souvenirs and teashops and stuff. So anyways, we are waiting outside Starbucks and this reallllly old man comes over and starts talking to us. He wants us to sign his book and write where we are from in it. He proceeds to tell us that he likes to talk to foreigners, etc, etc....he was really funny, so we signed it. And he did have ... read more