Just a little foreign

Wednesday, August 25, 2010

So this was one of the things I was most looking forward to about going to Jeju. Manjangul is the worlds longest lava tube, totaling over 13km of underground tubes that go as deep as 1km. Although it was pretty cool, it was so commercialized they may has well have put a restaurant in the damn thing. I was just expecting something entirely different, and I guess that is one of the only major downsides of seeing new things. We could have skipped it and I would forever have this beautiful picture in my mind of what these lava tubes look like. However....

It is still pretty neat looking. Alan was also disappointed, and thanks to the Lonely Planet guide book we got what we were looking for. Now what we did next may be considered reckless, crazy or even downright idiotic by some, but for us it seemed like a great idea. The book told us about this closed down lava tube about a 20 minute walk from the ones that we had just been to. It was a very loose description, and since it was already about 9p.m. and well past dark we weren't expecting to find anything. Oh yeah, did I mention that we also didn't have any flashlights?!? (we had planned to buy some earlier in the day but couldn't seem to find any)

Anyways, after doing the hedge maze (which we completed somehow in about 5 minutes) we continued on down this rural road until we found what looked like it matched the description in the guide book, which we were reading by moon/cell phone light. Well we found it, but it was boarded up and there was a huge padlocked fence covering the whole thing. I dug around in my backpack and found some trusty fire logs, we hopped the fence and went exploring. Now I am glad we had the fire sticks, but even in pitch black they don't exactly put out a whole lot of useable light. We ventured as far as we dared, about 3/4 of a fire stick in until we found a huge hole in the floor that lead to something unknown and I tried to throw the fire stick down the hole to see where it lead. Well obviously it went out almost immediately and turned out to be a bit of a waste of our light. We lit up another, and were on our way. I don't have any pictures, because it was the last night we were there, and all of my CF cards were packed full of pictures, and it was pitch black in there.

Somehow we finished this maze in record time, without making any wrong turns. We watched for a while as people got horrible lost and it can take hours to find you way out of this thing. The lady also gave us a "tourist on foot" half price discount, because we walked all the way to this place. Mind you, it wasn't by choice, there were just no busses or cabs around, and we had no other choice.

Tuesday, July 20, 2010

The Lone Waygookin

So Susan went home to South Africa for the first time since coming to Korea, and I had have to hold down the fort as the only remaining foreigner at Anseong Elementary...which meant that I had to go on the end of semester school trip as the only white guy. We went to some island that required a 30 minute ferry ride to get there, so the sight of a white guy on this island was apparently something of a miracle.

Another interesting thing that says something about Korean culture and their group mentality and how hardcore they are about everything can be seen in the following. As we were waiting for the ferry to leave, every single teacher, except for me was drinking these small 30ml bottles of something. Come to find out, they are motion sickness remedies, just in case the 30 minute ferry ride across calm waters on a HUGE ferry caused sea sickness. They couldn't believe that I wouldn't drink one and said that I would regret it later. Needless to say, on they way back nobody drank them.

The trip itself was not bad, per say. There are just a few things that really got on my nerves after spending the whole weekend with a group of almost 100 korean school teachers from my school. The first, and most annoying thing, was the lack of free will that I was given. It seemed as if though I was their little puppet, and although they had good intentions and wanted nothing more than to include me in all their activities, it got really annoying at times. For example, after everyone had been drinking for quite some time, they all went to the basement of the hotel that we rented out to sing karaoke. Although I don't mind nowadays occasionally getting down on some singing in the Noraebang, we were on an island at the beach and it was a beautiful evening. Naturally, I wanted to sit on the beach, drink a few brews and watch the ocean.

After they dragged me downstairs and I told them that I wasn't signing and I was instead going to the beach, they sent Neo and Hyong Jun with me to make sure....something. After being there for about 5 mintues they said, ok, lets go Codey. They we like, oh ok you have seen the beach and we did what you wanted, now its time to go back. I was like no, I'm staying here and this is what I am doing, you don't have to stay, but I am and I am perfectly fine with sitting here by myself. They couldn't wrap their brains around that concept and ended up sitting on the beach while I walked around and caught some crabs. Many other things like this happened throughout the weekend, but you get the gist.

At the end of the day, I got a free trip to a place I have never been and that was unlike anything I have seen, so I can't complain too much.

Neo, James and Hyong Jun on the ferry to the island.

They are really crazy about feeding the sea gulls or "gullmaggie" as they call them here.

Jun tried for a while to get a sea gull to eat one of these shrimp chips out of his hand.

This kid had the sea gull feeding thing down pat.

This guy was one of my roommates, and after returning from the beach late a night, I found him butt ass naked standing in the room starring at the wall. No tv on, just standing naked and starring. Then he passed out after getting some clothes on.