Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos

We finished working at JungChul on February 28th, and flew to Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam, on March 2nd.  We arrived late that night, and took a taxi to our hotel.  We couldn't see anything of the city that night, so when we woke up the next morning and headed out, it was a shock, in a good way.  It was hot and bright, with flowers and people and colors and smells everywhere.  Very different from Korea.  We were flying out of the city, so we walked back to the airport and caught our plane to Phu Quoc, an island off the south.  Phu Quoc is tropical and beautiful, with turquoise water and palm trees.  The first day we just stayed on the beach.  There are women who walk up and down the beach selling fruit, so we got some fresh mango cut up for us.  Then we watched the sun set on the beach, as the fishing boats were pulling out for the night.

The next day we rented motorbikes to go to a different beach on the island.  Where we picked up the motorbikes was a really narrow pathway, and we had to make an immediate 90 degree turn.  I should have just walked the bike, but I got cocky and tried to ride it, and crashed directly into the motorbike sign.  After that we got on a wide road, and rode for hours and I had no trouble at all.  However, I had broken one of the mirrors, so we stopped at a little shop on the side of the road and paid the guy $5 to fix it.  The beach we ended up at was really nice, and had even fewer people than the one from the day before.

We stopped at a roadside restaurant for lunch on the way back.  There were all locals there.  No menu, no pictures of food, and they didn't speak any English.  The woman made a drinking motion, and we said no, and made an eating motion, so she brought us two plates of pho.  It is very helpful to be a flexible eater when traveling, because we would be confined to places where the staff speaks English, and it feels more authentic to be able to eat where the locals do.  Vietnamese food is really good.  We got a lot of pho while we were there, which is broth with noodles, some meat, and some sort of vegetables and sprouts.  I think they use a lot of lemongrass and cilantro, and chilies.  Also, the coffee at the place we stayed on Phu Quoc was so good.  They brew small, concentrated amounts in these little tin cups, sort of like espresso.  But it's not as bitter as espresso; it's more nutty and smooth.  Then you can mix it with hot water or milk or ice, or whatever.  It's really good.

After Phu Quoc we flew to Can Tho.  (sidenote: we normally don't fly so much when we travel, but some of the flights were really cheap, and we are trying to make the most of our limited time.)  From the airport we had to get to our hotel.  Most everyone in Vietnam drives motorbikes, not cars, so for taxis you climb on the back of a guy's bike and hang on.  The streets are so crowded, and there is so much going on.  I wish I could have filmed it.

We had heard that in Vietnam when you want to cross a road there's never a break in traffic, so you just go.  We thought that couldn't possibly be right.  There are at least six motorbikes across at all times, and one of them will definitely hit us.  But we tried it, and it works.  If you just walk steadily across, no stopping, running, or panicking, they'll all go around you, like water.  It's a rush.

Can Tho is right on the Mekong River, and there are floating markets there.  Most people live in stilt houses along the river, and they go out every morning in their boats, selling their produce.  There are two markets that are accessible from the town, and one is less touristy than the other, so we went to that one.  It was interesting to see, and also beautiful to be on the river for sunrise.  Can Tho was a busy, chaotic city.  Our hotel was on the riverfront, and there was a park and walkway along the river.  In the evening we sat on a balcony outside and watched a lot of people and families playing in the park.  It was all locals, and I like being in places where most of the people you see are just living their own lives, and not doing anything for the benefit of tourists.

Before we left on this trip we had heard that they've been doing tourism in Vietnam longer than in Laos or Cambodia, and people selling things can be very aggressive.  We didn't find that was the case, at least for the first part of our time there.  The people were very friendly and welcoming and helpful.

From Can Tho we took a bus to Chau Doc and spent a night there.  The next morning we got on the boat to Cambodia.  For the portion of our trip on the Vietnamese side of the border we were on a slowboat that had a deck on top with lounge chairs, and comfortable tables and chairs down below.  It was the most pleasant way to travel I've ever experienced.  When we got to the border there were some Estonians in the group, and the guys working at the border had never heard of Estonia.  They had to pull up a map on their smartphones to show them it was a real country.

On the Cambodian side of the border we got in a fastboat that was much less enjoyable (but the entire trip would have taken about 19 hours if we had stayed on the slowboat, so I understand.)  We got into Phnom Penh that evening.  Phnom Penh had a lot of really beautiful parts to it.  I was surprised.  There were wide, tree-lined streets, and some beautiful buildings.  There were also some people and areas that looked very poor.  We were amazed at how many  Lexus cars we saw there.  We knew that Cambodia is very poor (the GDP per capital is $830 US dollars per year) and before we went we read that the UN tracks how transparent governments are, as a way to measure corruption, and Cambodia is something like 156 or 158 out of 180.  So we think that, while the majority of the citizens are quite poor, corruption is rampant and people are displaying their wealth with Lexuses.

The next day we took a bus from Phnom Penh to Siem Reap.  Siem Reap is the town closest to Angkor Wat.  We rented bikes to get to Angkor Wat, and spent the better part of a day there.  It's...it's hard to explain here what Angkor Wat is.  It's the largest religious monument in the world.  It's like a city of old temples and monuments.  It's impossible to explain.  Just look at pictures.

One funny story: while we were walking around at Angkor Wat a guy asked Brady to take a picture.  He was Asian, but not Cambodian; I don't know what he was.  Brady thought he meant take a picture of him and his friends, but no, he got his friend to take a picture of him with Brady.  I don't know if it's the beard, or what, but we were at one of the seven wonders of the world and this guy wanted a picture of Brady.

After Siem Reap we went to Kratie.  Kratie wasn't high on my list of places I wanted to visit, but it broke up the trip from Siem Reap to Laos, so we decided to spend a couple nights there.  I ended up really liking it.  Kratie is right on the Mekong River (as are most towns in this area of the world) and its claim to fame is freshwater dolphins.  We rented a motorbike and drove to the place where you can see the dolphins.  We went out in a boat for an hour to watch them.  We were wondering, before we went, if they would prolong the trip if we didn't see any dolphins, but we didn't need to worry about that.  We saw a few within two minutes of turning the boat motor off, then they were bobbing up consistently, every couple minutes, for the whole time.  It turns out, it's really hard to capture a photo of a dolphin.  We set the camera to take eight frames in one second, but even like that, we'd heard the gasp of air, aim the camera, focus, and by the time we pushed the button they were gone.  We probably took 300 pictures of water and six of dolphins.  It was good to just watch them being dolphins, though.

After the dolphins we drove another kilometer down the road, to a swimming place.  This wasn't in any of our guidebooks, but a French guy we met at a restaurant told us about it.  It's at a place where the river gets narrow, and there are some very small rapids.  They built decks with thatched roofs over them, and hammocks.  We rented an area of the platform for about $1.25, and had it to ourselves all afternoon.  There was another deck that was jam-packed with locals. We walked around there to see, but we got a lot of stares and didn't want to spend all our time there.  We only saw three or four tourists there all day.  We were playing in the water around our platform with some of the local kids, splashing them and sharing our lunch with them (they kept asking, "for me some?")

Later on that day we went back to town, then we took a ferry across the river to a small island and rented bikes to cruise around.  We didn't make it around the whole island; we were low on time and energy at that point.  The people there were so friendly.  Every single child would come running to the bike path to wave and say hello.  I know that they're trying to boost tourism there, so maybe they encourage the kids to do it, but some of the kids were these little naked two-year-olds, and I think that coming from them it's sincere.  I really like that place.

We left the next day for Laos.  We've been in Laos now for about a week, and are heading back to Vietnam tomorrow.  I'll write more later because I'm tired of writing now, and I heard that this town has good chocolate croissants that I need to find.  

Jeju-do: Part Two (long overdue)

I did Jeju-do Part One three months ago, and now I'm supposed to do Part Two.

Our second day in Jeju-do we took a ferry to a smaller island, called Udo.  It's supposed to be named for the Korean word for cow, because the island is shaped like a cow.  We rented bikes and rode around the island. We stopped for lunch on the beach, and saw the Biggest Jellyfish Ever.  I didn't even know jellyfish got so big.  It was dead, on the beach.

We rode our bikes around these small streets and houses.  The vast majority of people in Korea live in apartments in cities, and they're very homogeneous looking.  They look like what I would imagine Soviet Russia housing to look like.  So I like seeing more traditional housing.  One of the distinctive things about Jeju-do is rock walls they build with volcano rocks to protect houses from the weather.  

On Udo we also saw an empanada stand, which was unexpected.  We stopped there to get an empanada and talk to the woman who owned the place.  She was from Chile, and the other woman working there were Korean, so we had a jumbled conversation of English, Korean, and Spanish.  

When we came back from Udo we saw some women divers.  Jeju-do is famous for these women who dive for shellfish.  It's an old tradition, that has, somewhat predictably, been dying out.  

That night we camped on the beach.  We were planning to climb up Sunrise Peak at sunrise the next morning, so we didn't bother with the tent, and just rolled out our sleeping bags and slept in the glow of the lights from Asia's largest aquarium, with a view of Sunrise Peak in the distance.  

We woke up early the next morning to hike Sunrise Peak.  I thought that maybe the view would be foggy and not that great, but the mist burned off and it was a really lovely sunrise that we shared with about 300 Koreans.  

After sunrise we went for a walk in a chestnut forest, then we went to Manjanggul Cave, which is a UNESCO world heritage site.  The cave was formed from a lava flow, and it's so big inside it looks like a subway tunnel.  This picture shows one of the giant stalagmites in it.  

That night we headed back to the city, returned the rental car, and stayed in the same hotel that we did the first night.  We flew out the next morning.  It was a really nice, relaxing trip, and we got to see a lot of things.  

Jeju-do: part one

The last weekend in September/first weekend in October was Chuseok.  Chuseok is the harvest holiday, and one of the two biggest holidays in Korea, along with Lunar New Year.  We had Monday-Wednesday off, so we went to Jeju-do.  Jeju-do is an island off the south coast of Korea.  Jeju-do was formed when a volcano erupted about two million years ago.  We had to book our tickets six months ago, because Korea is a small country with a large population, and Chuseok is a big holiday.

We flew out Saturday night, and stayed at a hotel in Jeju city the first night.  The hotel was surprisingly nice, for only $45.  Very clean, a computer with internet in our room, big screen TV, bathrobes, a water cooler.  Then the next morning we needed to get to the rental car place, which is at the airport.  We asked the guy to call us a taxi, and he offered to drive us himself.  He gave us some seongpyeon to eat while we waited for some other guests who were coming in the car as well.  Seongpyeon is a traditional Korean dessert.  Here's the Wikipedia link: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Songpyeon  That explains well what it is.  The texture is really chewy, like...half-cooked bread dough.  And they fill it with this sweet bean paste, which Koreans love to hide in things that look delicious from the outside.  Kids love seongpyeon, it's the one thing they talk about when I ask about Chuseok, and we made it in kindergarten a couple weeks ago.  I understand that different cultures have different tastes and food preferences, but I don't buy that those kids wouldn't drop seongpyeon for a fresh-baked chocolate chip cookie, if given the chance.  Anyway, where was I....

So we got a ride to the car rental place, and picked up our car.  The plan was to drive around the island, camp Sunday and Monday night, then head back to Jeju city, and fly out Wednesday morning.  The whole trip went incredibly smoothly.  We were expecting traveling during Chuseok to be chaotic, but it wasn't a problem.  And there were a lot of tourists on Jeju, but it wasn't overwhelming.  The coast of Jeju is really beautiful.  Big rocky cliffs and crashing waves.

Temple on a mountain overlooking the ocean

View from the temple

Yongmeori coast walk.  These women gather seafood and sell it, raw, right there. 

The first day we did a walk along Yongmeori coast.  It was really beautiful, and the rock formations were interesting.  Because the whole island was created by a volcano, the rocks there are really cool.  Koreans tend to be pretty safety-obsessed.  When we go hiking, if there is a tiny stream, with water no deeper than your knees, swimming is forbidden and they have a life ring there in case someone falls in.  Most hikes enforce cut-off times for when you can start, and some will screen your footwear to make sure it's appropriate.  We get frustrated sometimes because we think we should be able to make our own safety choices.  But the Yongmeori coast walk, where they actually probably should have had some precautions in place, had nothing.  There were waves crashing on the rocks, and no life rings, no chains to hold onto.  It was very odd.  

Then we saw a beautiful waterfall. 

Then we saw these crazy hexagonal rocks.  This kind of lava just forms like that when it cools and hardens.  Like rock candy.  There's a more scientific explanation, but I don't really care enough to learn it.   

There are palm trees on Jeju-do!  It really is a beautiful tropical island. 

And one more waterfall before we head to camp:

That night at camp we made friends with a family of a dad and four sons who were camped next to us.  People always try to make friends with us.  Koreans are very friendly (once you get out of the city) and I think are curious about foreigners, because there aren't very many foreigners in Korea.  Also, I think that they are much more likely to approach a couple than a group of people, or a single-sex pair.  I think they feel more comfortable talking to us.  This time, it was funny because first the dad came over with his youngest son, and the two of them barely spoke English at all.  The dad managed to be very charming, though.  Then after a few minutes he called the other sons over, and they came bearing snacks and the ability to speak English.  We had a fire going, so we gave the boys sticks to poke the fire with, and talked to them for a while.  

This post is longer than I was expecting and I only got through one day.  I'll do the rest of the trip in another post. 

My birthday

Sunday, September 23rd was my birthday.  We decided to celebrate on Saturday.  Brady and I went to a Korean Folk Village near us.  We had been meaning to go for a while, but the summer was so hot we didn't want to stand around outside all day.  It was a beautiful fall day when we went.  The village is created to mimic what life was like for Koreans hundreds of years ago.  

They have performances throughout the day, so we saw a traditional farmer's dance, and a very old man on a tightrope.  Both performances were very impressive, and exceeded our expectations. 

After the folk village we went to Songtan.  Songtan is the town the U.S. military base is located in.  There are a lot of restaurants with international food there, and more interesting bars than we're used to.  We went to a bar that had a porch outside and drank martinis.  I like martinis, but haven't had one since we've been in Korea.  We started talking to the people at the table next to us.  They are from South Africa, and working here as English teachers as well.  The two guys told us that their first language is a click language.  I think that's what they spoke at home, but they must have learned English very early on as well.  That was the first time I've met someone who speaks a click language, as far as I know.  

After martinis we tried to go to a Thai restaurant we had heard about, but it was out of business, so we got burritos.  The next day our co-worker, Pamela, was having a birthday brunch, because her birthday is a week before mine.  So we went to that, and there were a lot of people there.  It was nice.  And that's the story of my birthday.  

Rafting and Deokjeok-do

August 15th was Korean independence day, and we had no school, so Brady and I, along with our friends Enda, Una, and Tara went rafting.  We went back to the place Brady and I had gone at the end of July.  We drove up Tuesday night and camped near the rafting place.  It was raining pretty steadily, but Brady and I have a tarp so we set up a shelter where people could hang out without getting wet.  On Wednesday we headed to the rafting place around noon.  It only takes two hours to get down the river, so we started in the early afternoon.  It was the same route that we did last time, but much, much rainier.  It was pretty warm out, but I still got a little cold after a while.  I couldn't believe how heavily it was raining.  When we were done they let us take hot showers, then we got some lunch and headed home.

Last weekend we went to an island called Deokjeok-do.  "Do" means island in Korean, so if it's at the end of the name of a place you know it's an island.  Deokjeokdo is about 50km off the west coast.  We had to leave early Saturday morning to catch the 8:30am ferry.  We went with Brady's college friend Stefan, who lives in Seoul, and his co-worker Tyler.  The island is fairly big, but not many people live there and it's not very built-up.  We were able to camp right near the beach, in some trees, and there didn't seem to be anyone else camping around.  When we arrived it was starting to get windy and rainy, and the sky looked ominous.  Again, we had the tarp so we set up a shelter and had lunch under it.

  Then the weather got a bit clearer and we went for a hike.

The hike took a couple hours, and was nice.  There was a big group of Koreans at the top having a picnic.  They have elaborate picnics.  They'll bring stoves, even just on a day trip, and cook a bunch of food, drink some makgeolli, really go all out.  And they always want to share.  That's one of my favorite parts about Korea, is how people always want to share their food and drink and snacks with you.  These people gave us each a shot of this stuff they called wine, but it tasted more like brandy, and ddeok.  Ddeok is...it's hard to explain.  It's a dessert, and it's sort of chewy pasta stuff made of rice, filled with something sweet or nuts.  I think it's gross, but I nibbled on it to be polite.



After the hike the weather was really nice, so we hung out on the beach for a few hours....

And watched this guy ride his bike into the ocean...

Then we made dinner on the beach. 

Today, August 28th, school was canceled because there's a typhoon coming through.  I asked several people if school in Korea ever gets canceled, and they said never.  It was supposed to be the worst in Suwon around 3-4, but it's 4:40 right now and it's been really mild.  I'm disappointed because I like big storms, but I'm really happy we got a surprise day off from school. 

Seoraksan

The last weekend in July was our summer vacation, which meant two days off work, for a four-day weekend.  We went to Inje to go rafting on Saturday, in the Naerincheon River.  Rafting in Korea is pretty mild compared to what we've done in the past (mostly what Brady's done, really.)  It's illegal to go rafting if the difficulty level gets too high, so we were in about 2+ rapids.  It was still really fun, it's just nice to be out on the river.  They gave us an English-speaking guide, and it turns out he's worked as a rafting guide in Idaho, and is going to college in Colorado.  He just finished up his first year there.  He's big into white water kayaking, so he and Brady were able to talk about all the rivers and rapids they both know in Colorado.

That night, after rafting, we stayed in Inje, then left the next morning to go hiking in Seoraksan National Park.  It had been very hot, so I was a little bit worried about that, but we were in the shade almost the whole time.  There's a shuttle bus from the entrance of the park to a Buddhist temple about 7.5km in, but we decided to walk it instead of taking the bus. There's always a temple in these parks.  Temples in Korea are always in the most beautiful locations.  I know that there are temple stays available, where tourists can go and live like a monk for a couple days.  I've heard that it's not very fun.  You wake up super-early and meditate for hours and hours.  I think you have to go through a lot of boredom and impatience before you can find that peaceful and rewarding.  So we walked to the temple, filled our water bottles, built a rock pile, then continued up the mountain.  

The trail was really beautiful, and most of the way was along a little stream.  There were emerald pools of water every so often.  It was hot, and after seeing some Koreans go swimming we stopped to swim too.  Koreans swim fully clothed, so we did too.

Towards the end of the day we were mildly regretting not taking the shuttle bus at the beginning of the day, because in all we did around 20km, and the end was quite steep.  We had made a reservation for a hut right by the summit.  The day we made the reservation, two weeks in advance, we were on the website the minute it became available, and it's good, because the spaces sold out in under two minutes.  In a country of 50 million people, 120 beds in a shelter on a Sunday night sell out fast.  The hut was about a 20 minute walk to the summit, so our plan was to wake up early, go to the summit, and make coffee and watch the sun rise.  It would have been so nice and peaceful.

There were a lot of people on the trail, but no other foreigners.  Foreigners are rare, but I think this was the first time we didn't see any at all, besides us.  There was a father and daughter hiking together, and we kept seeing them, and passing them.  The daughter was probably 19 or 20.  She was so excited to see us, she'd smile and wave every time.  Finally, the next day, we stopped for a break at the same place as them, and she asked us where we were from.  We told her, then she said "let's take a picture!"  So her father took a picture of us with this girl.  Maybe she wanted proof that she'd met real Americans.

The night we stayed at the shelter, the wind was incredible.  It was howling so loud it woke me up a few times, and shaking the building.  There were a bunch of people who had hiked up there without reservations, hoping for a bed to open up, but when it didn't they had to sleep outside on these platforms.  They were rolled up in plastic wrap to shield from the rain, but they couldn't have gotten much sleep, if any.

The next morning we wanted to go to the summit to watch the sun rise, but the wind was still blowing harder than any wind I've ever experienced, and we were completely fogged in.  We snapped a few pictures at the summit, then headed down.  It was much steeper on the way down, and only 5 kilometers.  That night we stayed in Osaek, which is a town with a lot of hot springs.  Our hotel advertised itself as a hot springs hotel, which we thought meant there would be a sauna there.  It just meant that the water from the faucets was supposedly heated by hot springs, but it came out weak and tepid.  But we went to a hotel nearby that had a sauna and spent a couple hours there.  It was a nice town, and I think it really picks up in the peak tourist season.  There were a lot of restaurants and shops along a little stream that runs through the town, so we had dinner at one of them, then headed home the next day.

DMZ

Brady and I went to the DMZ on Saturday. The DMZ is the De-Militarized Zone, an area between North Korea and South Korea.  "De-militarized" is an ironic name for it, because it's the most heavily fortified border in the world.  I'm going to give a little Korean history now, because it makes the DMZ easier to understand:

Even the DMZ is a little cartoony. 

Military checkpoint on the bus.

• Up until 1910, Korea (the entire Korean peninsula) was run by the series of dynasties, the most recent of which was the Joseon Dynasty. 
• In 1910 Japan invaded and occupied Korea for the next 35 years.  During this time, no one was allowed to speak Korean, all Koreans were issued Japanese birth certificates with Japanese names, and the history books were re-written to get rid of any trace of Korean history. 
• When Japan lost WWII in 1945, they left Korea.  The Soviet Union and the United States agreed to split Korea, with the Soviets having control of the north and the U.S. controlling the south. 
• In 1950, the North invaded the South, in an effort to unify the countries.  It was a proxy war, with the Soviet Union propping up the North and the U.S. propping up the South.
• In 1953 a ceasefire was signed, although the war has never officially ended.  The ceasefire established the 38th parallel as the line between the two countries, and the DMZ was created.  
• After the end of the Korean War the Soviet Union continued to support North Korea, and things were okay for them until the Soviet Union fell in the 80s.  Since then things have become much worse for North Koreans.  Starvation is a huge problem, and they have no contact with the outside world at all.

So, for the tour that we went on we went to a few different locations along the border. We saw two tunnels that the South Koreans have discovered, out of four that they found in the 70s.  The North Koreans dug all these tunnels headed towards Seoul, with the goal of sneaking into South Korea and invading from here.  The North Koreans seem to have a desire to reunify the countries, but they would want the entire peninsula to be communist, and under the rule of Kim Jong-un.  But it's hard to tell what they really want. South Koreans, too, want to reunify, but that would put an enormous financial strain on their economy.  

This is the Bridge to Freedom, where POWs were released.  The ribbons are messages to family that is stuck on the other side of the border.  

Between the 1980s and 2000 there were some movements toward negotiation, reunification, and peace.  There were family meetings, where families that were divided between North and South Korea after the war could meet each other.  We saw some pictures of brothers who were seeing each other for the first time in fifty years.  It was pretty powerful.  Madeline Albright went to North Korea to have discussions, and there was a train built from South Korea to very close to North Korea.  They wanted to build a train line that would go through North Korea and hook up with the Trans Siberian railroad, so it would be possible to get from South Korea to Europe by train.  However, after George Bush came into office in 2000 and gave his Axis of Evil speech, we stopped speaking with North Korea, and there was no more progress made.  One of the stops on the tour was this abandoned train station.  You can get to there from other points in South Korea, but it doesn't go any further north, so now it serves as a tourist destination and a really nice bathroom. 

One of the more interesting parts of the day was meeting a North Korean defector.  He spent about 30 minutes answering our questions.  He was a military doctor in North Korea, and they sent him to Germany in 2010 (I'm not sure why.)  He was supposed to come back, but on his way home his train stopped in Moscow and he got out, found the United Nations office, and asked for amnesty.  He had planned it in advance, but didn't tell his family, so he left his wife and kids there.  We asked him what the hardest part about leaving was, and he said that now, in South Korea, he doesn't know anyone, doesn't have any family or feel like part of a community.  Plus he can't practice medicine, because they don't recognize the training and experience he got in North Korea.  In North Korea they are extremely isolated from the rest of the world.  There's no internet, so media from other countries at all.  They are told that their country is the best, most technologically-advanced country in the world.  He said that in school they learn normal things, but also spend a long time learning about Kim Jong Il, Kim Il Sun, and the other leaders of the country.  

We asked what the average North Koreans thinks/feels about the regime, and he said that about two-thirds used to support the regime, but now things are changing, and about two-thirds is against the regime.  Since things were relatively good for them up until the Soviet Union fell, and that was less than 25 years ago, people know that things have changed.  Even if they don't know exactly what's going on, they can be unsatisfied with the government that their standard of living has gone down so dramatically.

We asked how his reception in South Korea, by normal South Koreans, has been.  He said that they tend to think that he's lazy, because he lived in a communist country and so he didn't have to work as hard.  I've heard a lot of examples of South Koreans having negative attitudes about all foreigners.  I wish he had been more accepted in South Korea.