So I'm back teaching in South Korea after a fantastic month living the good life back in Vancouver.
The humidity's already started to kick in, but I decided I wanted to go out for a hike today before it really gets bad. My new job is only 4 days a week, Monday to Thursday, so I thought today (Friday) would be a good day to go and avoid the crowds.
From what I'd heard, the Mureung Valley is considered one of the nicest in South Korea, but I've been misled before so I didn't have high expectations.
Turns out, they weren't lying. I'd have to say it's probably the nicest place I've been in Korea so far. This second waterfall is one of the biggest draws in the area, as there's a nice little pool you can swim in in the summer. I stuck my feet in to check it out as I really wanted to go for a swim, but after 30 seconds my feet had had enough, so no swim today.
There's very little wildlife left in Korea, as most of it has been hunted to extinction. So all I saw today were a bunch of these little chipmunks darting around all over the place. This one paused just long enough for me to get a picture.
On a completely unrelated note, there's a mountain spring about a 3 minute walk from my apartment where I fill a huge jug for my drinking water. So I was there on Monday and while I was filling it, an old Korean man came up to fill his bottle. He started talking to me and realized quickly how bad my Korean was. So he tried Japanese. Apparently he had been a Japanese professor at the university 10 years ago. He kept talking to me in Japanese for at least 10 minutes, and then finally decided it was time to go.
Well a couple of days ago I was walking home from the grocery store with a bunch of stuff, and I guess he'd seen me, because he pulled up beside me on his bike, and again in Japanese, asked me where I was going. I explained that I was going home so he offered to double me on his bike. He had told me that he was 86 years old, and I'd be surprised if he weighed much more than 100 pounds. Well I weigh around 200, plus I had all my groceries, so something about accepting a ride from him just felt wrong, so I had to decline.
The military presence is HUGE in South Korea, especially up toward the North Korean border. I'm far enough south however that I don't see them that often. There's a very small base about a 20 minute walk from my place, but they usually stay there and train in the mountains.
There's a tiny park across the street from our school, and the kids usually play there before and after class (sometimes even during, so I have to go over there and corral the little buggers).
Yesterday, for some reason I can't fathom, the army was holding some kind of military exercise in this tiny park, at the same time as the kids were playing there. I assume that they don't carry live ammunition, but it was still pretty strange to have these little kids running around all these automatic weapons.
In the second picture you can see part of a little bunker they've made out of green sand bags.
I wanted to get closer to take some better pictures, but as South Koreans can be quite xenophobic and paranoid about foreigners, I didn't want them mistaking me for a spy.
While I was taking pictures, some of my students got jealous and insisted I take pictures of them. This first one is Gilbert, one of my more "energetic" boys.
In this picture you can see Gilbert with his sister Amy in the white, and some of the other girls.
I was up in Seoul for the weekend, and I'd heard that White Spot had recently opened their first Korean location. I haven't had a good burger for a long time, so I made it my mission to find it.
It was buried in behind another building, and it wasn't cheap (about $10 for a burger platter, on the high side for Korea) but man was it nice sinking my teeth into a nice BC Burger (bacon and cheddar).
While I was in Singapore I decided to make a day trip to Pulau Ubin (Ubin Island), which lies off the northeast coast of Singapore's main island. After a half hour subway ride, and then another half hour on a bus, you end up at the little "ferry terminal", which is basically just a couple of docks with some small boats called bumboats (I don't know why they call them that).
After waiting about half an hour for enough customers to fill the boat, we made the trip across in a torrential downpour. Although this wasn't a good sign, when we got across I went and found a place where I could rent a bike for the day for about $5.
Because it was raining so hard, the guy who owned the bike shop let me borrow this pretty pink poncho. Fortunately the rain stopped within an hour, so I was able to regain some of my dignity.
Before going to the island, I'd read that there were some hornbills on the island called Oriental Pied Hornbills, though I never expected to see any. However, after biking for about an hour, I came across a whole group of them just hanging out feeding. There must have been about 15 to 20 of them in the flock. Unfortunately, the weather wasn't cooperating, so the shots didn't turn out very well.
Here's a little butterfly I came across. I also saw (and heard) some wild pigs which I've never come across before, but I only managed to get off one shot, and it didn't turn out.
This mosque is located (not surprisingly) in the Muslim area of Singapore, which was only a 10 minute walk from my hostel. Apparently it was designed by an Irishman (seriously).
About 75% of Singaporeans are of Chinese descent, which explains why the unofficial national food was also created by Chinese immigrants. I'd heard that you haven't really been to Singapore unless you've tried Hainanese Chicken Rice, so I decided to track it down. One of the well-recommended places is Tian Tian, which is in a little food court type place near Chinatown. I know that Tian means "heaven", so I'm assuming that Tian Tian means really good stuff.
All the little stalls in the food court specialize in one dish, and the place is popular all day long. I was there on a Wednesday at about 3 in the afternoon, and I still had to wait about 20 minutes.
I got a large portion, and it worked out to just under 3 bucks Canadian. It actually looks pretty bland - just some chicken on top of some white rice - but it was surprisingly good. They marinate the rice in chicken broth, and only use really fresh chicken, although I didn't see any getting slaughtered.
I got some aloe vera drink to go along with it, and that was also really tasty.
So I went up to Gangneung yesterday. It's the only thing close to a real city in this area, but it's still only about 200,000 people. Every year they have Danoje, which is one of the larger festivals in Korea.
From what I could see, it seemed to consist, like most Korean festivals, of traditional drumming and people wearing traditional masks performing some kind of play. I've never been able to sit through a whole play, because they seem to be written for 2 year-olds and so I lose interest very quickly. I'm sure they're much more profound than that, and I'm obviously missing something.
One of the performances included these 2 boys - you can see how excited they are to be participating.
