Return To Gwangju

Okeydokey. The blog is now a mere month and a half behind, so any week now we might actually catch up with current events. We might stop doing fun things for a little while just to allow this catch up to go a little speedier. Today has so far been spent in ways that couldn't be described as exactly enjoyable, but that is a tale for a later post.

After ditching our bags in our apartment and showing our house pests to their (our) room, we went straight back out and took the girls for shabu shabu, the perfect meal after a tiring day of Communist spotting and sitting on buses. As always, we ate far more than could be considered healthy, drank beers and bokbunja, then left barely able to walk. So we got a taxi.

The next day we managed to rouse the girls from their slumber at about 12pm, got some lunch, forced them to dress and took them to Muduengsan to do the nice easy little climb we did on our last trip. Unfortunately, the amount of snow fall in Gwangju wasn't taken into account while describing how fun and easy the walk was. This, plus the lack of any kind of sensible footwear between us (Converse do not make for great ice climbing shoes), turned what had previously been an hour and 30 minute stroll top to bottom, into a slightly stressful and considerably longer hike, involving a fair amount of sliding backwards and falling over. The change in the length of the hike meant we kind of lost all concept of how far up we'd actually gone, so shortly after every attempt to assure everyone it wasn't far to the top, we'd go round a corner and realise that actually, it was quite a long way to the top. Despite all this, we managed to reach the top at the start of a beautiful sunset and felt rather pleased with ourselves. Aside from the nagging suspicion I was harbouring that if we didn't hurry we were going to be on the mountain in the dark, which was far from appealing, coupled with the worry that the descent was going to be far icier due to the fact it had been hidden from the sun all day. Meaning if we hurried we were likely to spend a lot of time falling over. Fun!

Eventually we reached the bottom safe and sound, just ahead of total darkness. Feeling a little guilty for misleading everyone, we took them back to the warmth of the apartment and forced them to drink copious amounts of soju with a few of our colleagues. More drinking game style debauchery took place, followed by another trip to the Turkish bar and Speakeasy, the details of which shall remain mostly secret.

The following day we nursed our hangovers and went for a huge meal of pasta and pizza at a nice (and well priced) restaurant downtown which has become one of our regular eateries, Mi Piace. This was followed by a well deserved quiet night in, while Becky and I sulked about having to go back to work the next day. Over the next week we were only able to see the girls for a short time, but managed to pack them off on various exciting excursions. They also managed to make us a tasty dinner to come home to one night, which was rather nice. Sadly they had to leave us on Friday morning, so we took them to the bus station and, after a final ludicrous over-eating style lunch and emotional goodbyes, nipped off to work.

It was ace having them here, we had all manner of fun and they proved to be far more house trained than expected. It is very sad to think how long it could be until we see them all again, aside from all the other people at home. Now we can't wait for the rest of our visitors to get here!

DeeEmZee

The next day was an early start as we joined a coachload of tourists headed for the DMZ. We didn't really know exactly what to expect, as we'd heard all kinds of things about dress codes and restrictions on photo taking etc, but the chance to get a sneaky peak over at North Korea was too tempting to pass up. There was a Korean tour guide on board who kept telling us about the area and seemed to be trying to make it all sound rather lovely and nice. She was possibly a bit too jovial for the job, a fact highlighted when we crossed the Imjin River. She told us how the river is often used by North Koreans trying to escape to South Korea, but they rarely survive so it's not uncommon to see bodies floating down the river. All this delivered with a smile and a giggle... Weird. On the way back across the river later in the day, she interrupted herself to exclaim 'Oh look, there's a body now!', only to laugh hysterically when we all leapt up to look and announce she was only kidding. She also insisted on referring to the North Koreans as 'very silly', for building an expensive modern city near to the border to make the country look more advanced than it really is, or for trying to erect a flag pole higher than South Korea's. Very silly isn't quite the term I'd use to describe Kim Jong Il to be honest. Psychotic maybe, but silly suggests he likes to play pranks on people, rather than the kind of person who'd spend millions on importing an entire brewery from Scotland brick-by-brick while millions of his people die of starvation.

Anyway! After having our passports checked by an armed soldier, we eventually arrived at our first stop - the 3rd Infiltration Tunnel. About 30 years or so ago, a North Korean official released the information that North Koreans were digging around 12 tunnels under the DMZ in order to invade the south. So far, 4 of these tunnels have been discovered (it worries me somewhat that they haven't found the others yet). We sadly weren't allowed to take our cameras down the tunnel but if you can imagine a tunnel that Becky couldn't quite stand up straight in with her hard hat on then you're pretty much there. It was a long and uncomfortable walk down to the end, but it was an interesting experience. Much of it had been painted black to look like coal - part of a cunning plot by the North Koreans to disguise the tunnel and make it seem innocent. 'Oops, we accidentally dug a tunnel into South Korea in an area where there's never been any coal! How foolish!'. See, they really are very silly. After an exhausting hike back up the tunnel, we were taken into a small cinema to watch a film about the DMZ. From the opening Top Gun style music and idyllic shots of a young girl chasing a butterfly around a field, it quickly became clear the video wasn't entirely without bias. Bizarre statements about the DMZ being an international symbol of peace and the last place on Earth where nature and man could co-exist in peace were bandied about over shots of Kim Jong Il shaking hands with people and smiling a lot. The closing scene was of the little girl again, with all kinds of animated animals running about and generally making the whole thing seem truly ridiculous.

Next up was the look out point, where you can actually take a peak over at North Korea. On arrival we discovered there was a yellow line about 3 metres from the wall, beyond which you aren't allowed to take photos. One of the first things we saw was a tourist being made to delete photos by a soldier. The next duty for the soldier was to pose for hundreds of photos with tourists, so while he was distracted, Becky took some sneaky pictures anyway. There were also some telescopes like the ones you get at the seaside so you could have a look at some small towns and people working in fields.

After piling back onto the bus, we headed for the train station, where we could get a train to the North Korean capital, Pyeongyang. Supposedly. We had read shortly before our trip that the border was completely closed recently on the North Korean side, due to the South Korean government announcing that they were cutting down the amount of money they gave to Kim Jong Il. When someone asked about this, the tour guide denied the claim completely. Anyway, we had a wander about and got some fake immigration stamps (we were told not to put these stamps in our passports, as apparently the last person who did got stopped at customs for 18 hours or something on his way out of Korea. It was still kind of tempting though). There was a small display with photos of George Bush helping to open the railway. My favourite picture was of him attempting to sign a concrete sleeper whilst holding his marker pen upside down.

Finally, we got back onto the coach and headed back to Seoul. Our tour guide obviously decided that she could relax and started telling us all about her drinking and shopping habits. As we passed the Parliament building in Seoul she said 'This is where the politicians spend all day sitting around telling lies'! She then told us we were going to make two extra stops at an amethyst factory and a green tea store - clearly some kind of deal was set up with the tour company to try to make extra money off us. The amethyst factory was frankly extremely dull and luckily the guide seemed to pick up on our unhappiness at this unexpected stop so skipped the green tea. After grabbing some food, we made our way to the bus station and headed back to Gwangju with the girls.

All in all, the DMZ was one of the weirdest places I've ever been. Although we found it hard to take anything we were told seriously and my description may seem somewhat negative, it really was interesting, quite sad and I'd say a must do for any visitor to Korea.

New Years Jiggery Pokery!

After a couple of hours of sleeping, we headed out of our apartment to find some food and buy as much alcohol as we could carry. We decided to have a few drinks while playing card games and chatting, before heading down to the nearest bar to make sure we could be around other people at the important hour. Our drinking game got us suitably warmed up and lubricated, resulting in all manner of hilarity that probably shouldn't be mentioned here. This is a family blog!

Anyway, we went down to the bar, where luckily we found a barmaid who spoke a little english - just enough to take our orders of fruit juice and soju cocktails. Eventually the midnight hour approached, so we took great pleasure in joining the other two or three occupied tables in the countdown, then launched our own private performance of Auld Lang Syne.

The bar wasn't exactly swinging, so we soon headed off to a noraebang (we seem to have developed a liking for the karaoke here. I think it's because it's private, so you don't have to subject too many people to your drunken manglings of classic songs) where we spent the next 3 hours or so, making utter fools of ourselves. Good times were had by all!

Somehow we managed to leave (actually, we got thrown out. Closing time comes earlier in small town Korea it seems) and head back to our apartment. My memory here becomes a little hazy, but I'm reasonably certain we went quickly and quietly to bed. Despite any claims to the contrary.

Fortunately we didn't have to be up too early the next day, so we made it to our bus in plenty of time and got back to Seoul. We arrived back at the same hostel, only to discover that we'd been double booked, and all that was available was a room sharing with a weird American we'd met earlier on in the trip, plus a small room in the owner's apartment. Becky and I took the small room, which turned out to be her son's old room. It was a little awkward, as our room was effectively in her kitchen and we had to share the family bathroom! All adds to the excitement though. We then rejoined the girls and headed out for food, shopping and a DVD bang - a room that can be hired to watch a DVD in! They have a huge selection of DVDs available, although it seems most of the time the rooms are hired by young Korean couples in search of... privacy. Ahem. This probably caused no end of confusion when I turned up with 4 girls! Anyway, we watched a somewhat confusing Korean horror film (A Tale of Two Sisters - worth a watch if you don't mind subtitles and deliberately hard to follow plots) and made for our beds, eager to get a good night's sleep prior to our DMZ trip the next morning.

Skiing!

Right, it is time to do some serious catching up. The last month has flown by and we've been ridiculously busy mostly with extra work (winter programme at school designed to give the kids a lot more work to do during their school "holidays"). But that is all over now so it's time to start cooking, gyming and blogging again.

So... after a few fabulous days with the girls in Seoul we headed for the slopes of Yongpyong. It started in a rather disorganised manner, with our contact from the travel agency being one ticket short for the coach. He ran off to find another one and we spent a tense ten minutes trying to delay a slightly irate coach driver with melodramatic facial expressions and wild arm gesturing. Anyway we were soon on our way. It took a little longer than expected because of traffic and I think we got off in the wrong place meaning that by the time we got to the resort we should've already been skiing away for half an hour. Luckily we managed to rearrange our passes for the evening ski session instead. We found the Olive hotel and were a little hesitant as it looked a little out of our league, however they didn't laugh us out and it turned out to be the right place, and very nice it was. We then slipped around the icy little ski village in search of food and ended up in a galbi (BBQ) place. We had a delicious lamb meal, and considering the lack of sheep in this country probably shouldn't have been too surprised when the bill came to over 100, 000 Won.
At 5:30 we were picked up from the hotel and taken to the ski shop to get fitted for our fetching ski gear. I think mine definitely won first prize for style; red jacket and camouflage trousers (not all that effective against white snow so it's lucky that no one was trying to shoot me). By the time we'd managed to find enough coins to get all our things into lockers it was already dark and the slopes were all lit up by floodlights. The temperature on the big sign was -12. Brrrrr.

With me, Amy and Liz having a whole week of skiing experience each and Alan and Ellie having none we felt it wise to start small. We walked up a tiny little slope, put on our skis and just tried moving across it horizontally. No one fell over but Alan did seem to be having trouble moving at all. So we got on the lift for the easiest slope and went for it. I was pleased to find out that skiing really is just like riding a bike, although I also found out that doing it and teaching it are two very different things. Alan and Ellie both ended up on the ground a number of times, which is only right on a first attempt. This resulted in Ellie removing her skis, walking the rest of the way down and deciding that skiing wasn't for her. Fair enough, anyone may have made the same decision if they had been able to forget about the money that had been spent. So, we went up and down a few more times and Alan started to see the fun in between the terror. The third time down I lost sight of Alan. I kept looking back over my shoulder but couldn't see him anywhere. I was getting a bit concerned that he may have had a bad fall but when I reached the bottom he was standing there waiting. He'd beaten the rest of us down. He admits that this had less to do with skill and more to do with a complete loss of control, resulting in him plummeting straight down and somehow managing to stay on his feet.

The next day we were all feeling pretty cocky about our new and renewed skiing skills and headed to the slopes with talk of blue runs and trips to the top of the mountain. Our confidence was quickly dashed as we found ourselves for some reason a lot shakier in the cold light of day, but we kept going and by lunchtime had done a few of the smaller blue runs with only a few falls between us (including both me and Amy falling over when nearly stationary on flat ground). The only real casualty of the day was Liz's ski pole, which she dropped from a ski lift (punishment for laughing at all the other unfortunate poles we'd seen).

However she did a great job going down with only one and we managed to soon retrieve the other. In the afternoon we headed up the main gondola to the top of the mountain.

At the top we were hit by incredibly strong winds. It was really beautiful but on closer inspection we found that the top of the ski run had become pure ice, making it a very real possibility that you could accidentally slide onto the black run... eek.

We decided to give it a go but the wind and ice made it nearly impossible to to control the skis. Alan decided that he was perhaps getting in a little too deep for his second day of skiing and took the gondola back down. After the first bit the slope got quite a bit better but there were still some hairy bits. We made it down happy and unscathed in about half an hour.

After all the excitement we went home to sleep in preparation for New Year's eve!

Momentary Side Track Blog

I feel I have to take a step out of trying to catch up on everything we've been up to over the last month (I can't believe it's almost a month since Christmas already!). The last couple of days it's started to warm up a little, which was a bit of a relief. Unfortunately, today we stepped out of our apartment block into a vicious, biting cold and discovered it'd started snowing again (see above picture of Becky and I on our way to work. Honest. That's us. We've bought matching trilbys). Now, I couldn't possibly count the number of times I've been in an English winter, praying for rain to stop and snow to start, thinking 'I could handle the cold if there was snow'. I mean, snow is ace, right? It's all white and fluffy and you can build snowmen and have snowball fights and schools close and the world is happy! No! This is not true! I am thoroughly sick of snow. Not that I'd prefer rain, don't get me wrong. But I have now decided I just wasn't built for cold weather at all. Winter is just plain depressing.

Seoul City Walking

After our Christmas day fun, we headed up to Seoul to meet Becky's friends, Amy, Liz and Ellie. Due to their early arrival time this meant leaving Gwangju at silly o'clock in the morning so we arrived at the airport at about 9am. While waiting for them to arrive we saw a man dressed in a Winnie the Pooh outfit, holding a large bunch of flowers, who appeared to be waiting for someone. Possibly Christopher Robin. Sadly he was still waiting when we left so we didn't get to find out. Anyway, it was really good to see the girls get here. As nice as our friends and colleagues are here, it's nice to hear English accents and have English humour around.

We jumped on a bus to Seoul straight away and, 40 minutes later, arrived in Hapjeong and made straight for the hostel. After ditching our bags we hopped on the subway and made our way to Itaewon. Itaewon is an area we had heard much about from our colleagues so we had high hopes. Possibly too high, as we were thoroughly unimpressed and a little concerned that Seoul was going to be a bit of a letdown. It was dirtier than anywhere else we've been since arriving in Korea, quite a depressing looking place and full of foreigners (I should point out, when we say foreigners, we mean people who aren't from Korea). It was disconcerting to be around so many English speaking people! We stayed there for lunch anyway, so I got to have my first fry-up in a very long time. We decided to waste no more time there and jumped back on the subway in an effort to get to Insadong, which we'd read had nice traditional shops and loads of nice restaurants.

First stop was Deoksugong, an impressive palace and park across the square from City Hall. There was an art museum there too - it was quite nice but only really warranted a short visit. From there we tried to get to the shopping area, only to find we'd got off the subway a stop early and it was quite a walk to get there. So back on the subway it was! We then took a bit of stroll up the street but were again a little disappointed, as it seemed to be just a standard high street. As the girls were flagging somewhat due to the jet lag we went into a nice little coffee shop then headed back to the hostel. Reading the Lonely Planet on the subway we realised that actually we'd gone the wrong way from the subway and Insadong was somewhere else entirely! Oops. So our first day in Seoul was a little disorganised and disappointing.

The next day was much better. We went to actual Insadong in the morning, which was really pretty and had nice gift shops etc. We also got to see some traditional Korean dancing - I'm not sure exactly what it's called but it involves a lot of (mostly) men dancing around with various percussion instruments, a couple of horns, and very long ribbons or pom poms attached to their heads. It looks a lot more impressive than it sounds! We then found a little curry restaurant for lunch, which pleased Becky and I immensely.

After lunch we headed over to Seodaemun Prison, where the Japanese had held hundreds of Korean activists in extremely harsh and cruel conditions. On arrival, a young Korean guy who was working there asked me where we were from. He was very excited when I said 'England', and began pointing to the Machester United badge on his jacket and saying the name of some footballer or other. Using possibly the only bit of football knowledge I have, I managed to remember the name of a Korean footballer who plays in the UK - Park Ji Sung. This seemed to make him very happy, so he proceeded to follow us around the main museum, unlocking cell doors so we could pose inside and giving us some nice little pin badges as souveniers. In case we haven't made it clear enough in our previous blogs, Korean people are ace. All in all, it was a pretty depressing place, but well worth a visit, if only to learn more about the way the Koreans were treated by Japan. Next we headed to Dongdaemum Market. Dongdaemum is a total shopper's heaven. We only went into one of the many, many department stores and we spent at least 2, if not 3, hours lightly browsing the 8 floors. Sadly, I was still unable to find a jumper that fits me. Booo! We had our dinner on the top floor before heading back to the hostel again to prepare for a night out by drinking a large amount of soju.

Our night out was pretty ace. We went to the Hongik University area, a ludicrously short taxi ride away from our hostel and started trying to find a few bars mentioned in our guides. First up was Vinyl, a tiny little bar that served remarkably cheap cocktails in what appeared to be IV bags, whilst playing a lot of cool music. It's an ace little place which is an absolute must for any booze hungry tourist. After a couple of rounds of alarmingly coloured drinks we joined a group of Canadians on their bar crawl. I was determined to locate Skunk Hell, a dingy punk club listed in the Lonely Planet, and was overjoyed to discover it was right across the street from Vinyl. Unfortunately, it was also closed. Instead we went to an underground (as in downstairs, not secret or incredibly cool) hip hop bar and danced around poles, whilst trying to fend off the advances of a very drunk Korean man. Although initially he seemed to be offering us money for Becky, he soon switched his attention to whichever one of us was standing within arms reach. Including me. Fun! On the plus side, he did buy us quite an expensive round of drinks. Next up was the amusingly named Ho Bar, where we stayed for the remainder of the night. Good times were had by all. Probably. The photos suggest we had fun anyway!

After sleeping off our hangovers, we went back to the university area. It was really cool, full of cool boutique clothing shops, coffee shops, noraebangs and bars, as well as having all the Western style shops that Itaewon seemed to offer. Not really sure why everyone doesn't go there instead really! As the shopping didn't really have much to offer me, I spent most of my time taking pictures of weird and wonderful graffiti. Having said that, I was able to find some fabric paint at last - I've not found it in any art shops anywhere else, so may be able to turn out some new t-shirts soon. Also, we were all greatly entertained by the subtly named Condomania. That night was an early one, as we had to be early to go find our bus connection for our ski trip!

This post is probably long enough now, so the next section will follow soon. Maybe. Maybe not.

Christmas Time, Kimchi and Mulled Wine

Hello! Once again, it's been quite a while since we last posted anything here and a whole pile of things have happened. I suppose it'd be easier if we just posted shorter blogs more often, instead of mammoth posts every few weeks, but that might mean missing out on some potential fun times by being sat with the laptop. Better to have more in the way of fun times I think.

Anyhoo. Can't think where to start... I suppose the Christmas party at school, which took place on Christmas Eve. It was very similar to the Halloween Party we had, except this time the only person in costume was me as Santa. My job consisted of hide in one of the downstairs classrooms for 30 minutes, then come out, hand out some presents to all the kids in a raffle style, then hand out more presents to each kid as they left the party. Then repeat 3 more times. It was suprisingly hard work, although I'm not sure Becky and the other teachers would agree, as they had to man the thrilling Christmas themed games for the rest of the time. Being Santa was kind of fun, but I can't see me going to Santa college and doing it professionally. Having two beards is just too itchy.

After the party our friends, Mike and Cecilia, invited everyone over for drinks, cake and chatting. Cecilia is an excellent cake-maker and seemed to be constantly whipping new cakes out throughout the night, which was highly pleasing! Much fun was had, and slightly more alcohol than I had planned, but eventually we headed back down to our own apartment for bed.

Christmas day itself was great. Firstly, it snowed, so I had my first ever white Christmas (sort of. Snow was definitely falling for about 2 hours or so, but nothing settled). Secondly, we had so many exciting presents from our families, including 3 stockings each! We got a lot of great presents, so a big thanks to everyone for sending us things and making us feel a bit closer to home. In traditional Christmas style, we decided to go and do some food shopping at the local supermarket after we'd opened all our presents, before going to our favourite local Korean restaurant and having bulgogi and bibimbap for lunch. Despite the fact that Korea is largely a Christian country, they don't seem to make much of a big deal out of Christmas. Most of the shops on our street were open, buses were running and taxis were available all day. This meant we could go out with everyone for dinner to a restaurant, rather than attempting some kind of home cooked meal for all the remaining teachers (the rest had managed to get away to far warmer locations for their Christmas breaks). So, as Korea doesn't seem to go for roast dinners at all, we settled on Italian and had pizza and pasta for Christmas dinner. It was very tasty, but I am feeling a definite craving for some roast potatoes. Thankfully, in one of our Christmas packages, we received some gravy granules so (if we get round to properly using our mini toaster oven) we may be able to fulfill this dream.