Ansan Street Arts Festival / Cross-posting

Hi everyone,

As usual I've been really busy, and also pretty uninspired in terms of stuff to write about on here. I have the sum total of zero news, unless you like hearing about how I haven't been outside the building for 3 or 4 days at a stretch. I am fine though, and continuing to drag myself reasonably successfully through my new job and my MA. I've also been hard at work on my other blog, and while I tend to keep the two separate normally, my latest post reveals a bit about ex-pat life and Korea in general which might be interesting to you, particularly if you have a passing interest in sociolinguistics or discourse analysis, particularly where race is concerned. If you have 5 minutes, take a look here:

http://breathyvowel.wordpress.com/2012/05/08/microagressions-and-difference/

In one of my rare forays into the sunshine, I did pop over to the Ansan Festival of Street Arts on Saturday, seemingly to watch people hooking themselves up to cranes and do stuff they could just as easily have done on the ground. Never doubt the importance of a crane in making shit look cool though:

Credit for this photo goes to my amazing, creative, multi-talented and generally all round wonderful language exchange partner and friend Bo Yeon Kim. (Is that credit enough? ^^)

Not content with swinging from cranes, the final act was something called Project Nalda (프로젝트 날다, meaning Project Flight), a rather novel combination of breakdancing, abseiling, light suits and fireworks. My camera wouldn't cope in the dark, but this Youtube video gives you an idea of what it was all about. I thought it was pretty awesome.

That's more or less it, but there is a promise of slightly more exciting stuff on the way. I'm off to Jeju with work this weekend, and then in two weeks I have the biggest presentation of my life at the KOTESOL National Conference. It's fair to say I'm bricking it a bit, but I'm pretty sure all will be fine. I'll try to post some photos or videos after the event.

Until then,

A

Two go to the penis park

So here's another set of my summer holiday photos. I realise I've been shamefully slow in getting these up, but I've been busy, OK? I'm always planning to do some serious writing on here and get right up to date, but I don't know whether I'll ever get time. Anyway, for now here are some of the continuing adventures of Nick and me during his visit to Korea.

Having finished hiking in Seoraksan and popped back to Jinbu for "Hope and Soju", we then set off down part of the east coast of Korea. We popped in on Jeongdongjin, where we looked around the North Korean sub there and had quite a few beers in the revolving bar on top of the Sun Cruise Hotel. We then hopped on the Sea Train down to Samcheok. The Sea Train is an interesting concept: it's a train in which all of the seats are turned sideways, with large windows through which you can enjoy the coastal views. A nice idea in practice, but when the mountainous scenery in the opposite direction is arguably more spectacular, this seems a strange choice.

Samcheok is a small city centered slightly inland. It's quiet, or at least it was when we were there, and relaxed. It has a reputation for excellent raw fish restaurants, which is what we set out to find for dinner. We wandered into a seafood restaurant, but it only did cooked fish. The owner suggested we head to his brother's restaurant instead, and even called us a taxi to get us there. When we arrived we were treated to a wonderful meal, mostly served by the restaurateur's two children, who strived valiantly to tell us what everything was in English and make sure that we were OK. All through the trip I was struck by how kind and helpful people were to us, and it made me very glad I stayed in Korea this summer.

After dinner and some post dinner bottles of soju, we road-tested another brand of hangover drink and went to bed. We awoke to an absolute stunner of a day. Our tourism options seemed to be visiting a cave to mooch about in the damp and cold, or go and look at enormous wooden penises and suffer sunburn and epic back sweats. If you know me or Nick, you can probably guess what we chose. Here are a selection of the photos I'm not too ashamed to put here...

Nick hugging a giant wooden cock. These captions are going to be easy to do. I don't even have to try to be funny, I just say what I see.

A giant, very manly looking woman with a glans for a head. She's pregnant and giving birth at the same time. You can't see in this photo, but the baby also has a large wooden penis. See what I mean about the captions?

This is the reason that the penis park was built, to placate an angry woman's ghost. I'll give you one guess as to what she's holding.

I'm not sure how comfortable I'd feel sitting on one of these. I mean, they're stone so probably not very forgiving.

휴지!

As if anyone could have resisted taking the two photos above.

A giant penis. Designed to look like a cannon. That moves up and down. And has a water feature coming out from underneath it. Only in Korea.

I think what I liked the most about the place was that it was actually an incredibly beautiful park. An incredibly beautiful park filled with big wooden phalluses.

Just hangin' out.

Speechless.

That would surely just be more of an inconvenience than anything else.

The beach. And some penises.

Men and their dogs. And penises.

Yes, I think those really are chaise longues.

I've run out of captions. You can finish yourselves off...

Visitors Part Deux

The continuing adventures of Alex and Linda in Korea (see here for the first instalment).

Hassla Art Park & Hotel

Down the coast from Gangneung lies Jeongdongjin, home of Tongil Park and the Sun Cruise Hotel. It's a pretty mad place all in all, so your hotel has to be at least a little distinctive to compete with the Sun Cruise. One that tries (but really gets nowhere near the concept of plonking a bloody massive cruise ship on a cliff) is the Hassla Art Park and Hotel. It's an impressive building constructed of steel and coloured glass, and looks rather like where Paul Klee might stay were he to come here.

The Art Park in the grounds is actually a little disappointing, with the artwork being somewhat sparse, but it does afford some great views of the east coast of Korea, and there are at least some fun pieces of art there. Here's what we managed to see:

The hotel itself.

"Ooooooh puppy puppy puppy!"

"Art"

Actually not the gayest photo ever taken of me, but close.

Tree seemingly constructed of decommissioned tinsel.

I was really struggling to hold this up...

...but this guy did it with the power of his mind.

"This artwork is sh*t."

Tunnels

Tree

This was pretty cool, though I think it would have been better with matching bikes.

I honestly tried so hard not to.

A weird, handlebar-less, painted bicycle, just leaning up on a bench (and Linda).

Giant headless chicken.

Smaller chicken (with head).

After the park we went for lunch at the hotel restaurant. This was a slightly disappointing affair, for me at least, when my steak appeared to be pieces of reconstituted beef tied together with a piece of bacon. The fact that it was all covered in a fairly nasty brown sauce didn't help either. So, poor marks for the food, but top marks for the service, as having failed to find us a taxi, the guy at the hotel desk took it upon himself to drive us down to Jeongdongjin in his own car. Top stuff. The hotel also scores bonus points for having the coolest toilet I have ever used. The outside looked like a giant silver rocket ship, and the inside looked somewhat like I imagine the VIP area of the viper rooms might look like. Here are a couple of photos:

I could have spent a lot of time in here.

Jeondongjin Beach and Hourglass Park

After the hotel we popped down for a bit of beach time. It was a beautiful day but the sea was still foot-numbingly cold. We settled for just paddling (or wading if you're weird). There's not much to write about here, so I'll just leave you with some cutesy photos.

Hi there.

Ew.

Eugh.

Oh goodness.

Then we wandered down the beach to what is supposedly one of the most romantic locations in Korea. The (somewhat inevitably named) Samsung Hourglass Park is exactly what it says - a giant hourglass through which the sand takes exactly a year to pour. It's always popular due to being used in one of the Korean dramas popular both here and in Japan. New Year's Eve here is supposed to be amazing. I might even go this year.

We probably should have got someone to take one of us together. Ho hum.

In the interests of keeping everything manageable I'm going to have another break here. I hope you're enjoying it so far. Part 3 will feature sheep-feeding and the most amazing dress I have ever seen.

A