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

Visitors (Part 1 of several)

OK, so I've been meaning to post this for a really long time now, but finally (I think), here it is:

This blog is deeply committed to the avoidance of slush, sentimentality and most things romantic. One of my pet hates is crowing about relationships on the internet, but, just this once, I'm going to do it. So yes, I do have a girlfriend. Her name is Linda and she's from the USA. Here she is, looking charming as usual:

Linda came to visit for a couple of weeks at the end of June. We spent the first weekend in Seoul and Suwon, but didn't really do all that much except watch the England vs USA "soccer" game. In the end, a draw was probably the best for all concerned.

I was working during her visit, so talking to Linda became my lesson for the week. This actually wasn't the horrific experience that I thought it might be. My students were actually pretty kind with their questions. Particular highlights included "How did he propose?" (Linda's response: "He didn't"), "Have you seen his six-pack?" (Linda's response: outright laughter) and "Have you had plastic surgery on your nose?" (Linda's response: confused look).

After this, I remembered I had a camera, so here are some photos and words about what we got up to during the rest of the trip.

Dano Festival

The Dano Festival is a festival of all Eastern Asian culture that takes place in Gangneung each year. Linda and I were invited by the teachers at Geomun Elementary School, and spent a nice afternoon watching puppet shows, traditional drumming and trying out some traditional Korean printing. We also sampled some makkoli made at the festival (I will learn to do this for myself) and ate rice cakes, as well as touring the endless market stalls selling all manner of Korean curiosities, and some good old fashioned Korean tat as well.

Us in front of the festival gate. As usual I am failing to smile at all here.

A stick throwing game traditionally (if I head a won for every time I heard "Korean traditional" over the course of the afternoon I'd be able to afford a half size tin of Coca-cola) played by ladies in the Korean royal court back in the day. Final scores, Alex 2, Linda 0. The nice lady in the Korean traditional (sigh) dress even gave me a tube of toothpaste for my efforts.

After the festival tour, we retired to the seaside for a raw-fish meal. I'd had one before and not been too impressed, but this turned out to be excellent. The sheer range of seafood we started with was amazing, and included crab, shrimp and seemingly hundreds of other things of which I do not know the names. The fish itself is slightly lacking in flavour compared to say, tuna, but once you've dunked it in chilli sauce/wasabi soy, it's all about the texture, which is just chewy enough without being a pain. The fact that the meal is finished off with a spicy fish stew makes this a really great meal, and is definitely vying, with about 7 other things, for the title of my favourite Korean food.

Our (Korean traditional) "starter"

Gyeongpo Dae, Gyeongpo Beach and the Live Club

On Saturday we headed down to Gyeongpo Dae and Gyeongpo Beach. Bad planning on my part left us very little time to do anything before having dinner with one of my co-teachers, but we just had time to have a wander around and take a few photos:

Sittin' on the Dock of the Dae.

Korean Traditional Artwork

Some flowers.

Sad me.

Unamused Linda.

After that we met Mr Ham, one of my elementary school co-teachers, for dinner. As it turned out, we were gatecrashing his elementary school class reunion (they do it every month, so it wasn't quite as bad as that makes it sound). No-one really spoke much English, which made it rather awkward (as most things Korean seem to be), especially as Mr Ham had to look after us all night, but we still had a good time getting around rather a lot of duck for the second time in less than a week (Mmmmmmmmmmmmmm).

After that it was off to the "Live Club". I was quite excited. I don't get to see much live music here, so the thought of a nice acoustic set accompanied by a few quiet beers sounded pretty good. What I didn't figure on was the live music being provided by ourselves. This of course, meant I had to sing, and with a distinct lack of "Mack the Knife" in the choices, left me in a bit of a bind. In the end I went with what I know, and attempted "Easy Like Sunday Morning". Now, sometimes I can be OK at singing (needs citation), but I need to be drunk. In the case of singing in front of a bunch of Korean strangers, I need to be reeling drunk. I was only a bit tipsy here, so what followed was the most horrific, nervous, stuttering performance of the song ever heard. I can only apologise to the towering prophet that is Lionel Richie for sh*tting so completely on his work. At one stage both the club hostess and one of the group joined me onstage to try to help out, but this just made me even more nervous. I also realised what a freaking long song it is (Karaoke tip: never pick anything with a guitar solo) giving me even more time to die on stage. Eventually, deliverance came, the song ended and I sat down to consider my future karaoke career.

"I wanna be hiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiigh..."

The crowd goes wild. And tries not to look. And especially not to listen.

I did get drunk enough afterwards though.

OK, I'm calling time on this blog post for the evening. More tomorrow I think as I'm determined to get all the photos online. I'm off to read Franny and Zooey by J.D.Salinger, drink a little pomegranate tea and fall asleep. That really makes me sound like an arse, doesn't it?

A

Caution: May contain extensive moaning about footballers defending properly.

Hi there,

Just back from a nice day and a bit in Gangneung, the closest city to me and handily placed on the coast. I am, perhaps inevitably, a little pink around the shoulders now, but as a wise man once told me, "Get one good burn in and you're good for the whole summer."

Anyway, my room mate from orientation, Jeff, came down to Jinbu for the weekend. We had no real plans for entertainment, so decided to see what opportunities the weekend produced. Having hiked over the hill behind Jinbu, we sat down to a fine dinner of Kam-ja-tang, a spicy pig spine and potato stew, or at least normally it has potatoes. The version we ate seemed to be lacking them, which is strange as the "kam-ja" is what gives the dish it's name. After that we popped to a couple of bars, winding up at my new favourite Jinbu haunt, "Chael-ro". Reason's to like this bar are: 1. A barman who speaks a little bit of English, and doesn't mind me practising my terrible Korean on him, and 2. The sign outside declaring the sale of "Hope & Soju"*. You really can't beat a bar selling hope, especially not alongside cheap liquor. It's all most people really need.

The night got a little out of hand later on, when having consumed a fair amount of beer, makkoli, and soju, Jeff and I declared Korean alcohol to be easier to drink than most countries. Perhaps feeling slighted, the barman then produced a bottle of Chinese liquor and proceeded to treat us to a couple of glasses. At 56% by volume and tasting like drain cleaner, it may not have been the wisest choice at 2.30 am, but we drank it anyway, and I duly woke up with comfortably the worst hangover that I've had here. This wiped out most of Saturday, with Jeff and I spending all our time sitting around groaning, sleeping and eating chicken in an attempt to recover.

In the evening we decided that going to watch my beloved (well, I've now been to two games and I own a baseball cap with their badge on it) Gangwon FC was a good idea. Turned out that it was, as we were treated to a very exciting game, but one that was marked by defending so schoolboyish, it seems unfair to the youth of the world to use that adjective. I've said before, Korean football is usually exciting to watch, unsurprisingly owing most of it's counter attacking and rapid changes of possession to a style of play modelled on the English Premier League. Sadly, changes in possession are so frequent (at least at the Gangneung stadium) because no-one is good enough to keep the ball for more than a couple of minutes. La Liga this certainly ain't. I lose count of the amount of times a pass is left by one player for another, while an opponent nips in, takes the ball and quickly gives it straight back. However, in attack some impressively slick passing is evidenced by both Gangwon FC and their opponents Cheonbuk, though with little class in front of goal.

Match action!

A Korean crowd.

All this changes 5 minutes before half time, when GFC get a free kick a full 35 yards out, and our midfielder steps up and smashes a swerving ball past the goalkeeper and in off the bar. It was rather reminiscent of Gazza vs Arsenal in the 1991(?) FA Cup Semi. Shortly after half time our winger, not for the first time, finds himself in about 20 yards of space on the far side, and has an age to advance into the box and pick his spot in the top corner. 2-0 up and seemingly coasting, but this is Korean football and you're never entirely safe, no matter how big the lead. Honestly, the defensive play in this game was probably the worst I've ever seen in a professional or semi-professional football match. The forwards and the midfielders on both sides were lazy, offering no protection to their backlines, and frequently putting them in danger. Clearances were shanked straight up in the air in the area, the fullbacks played so tight that the wingers were left with almost half the field to work in, yet still balls were getting down the channels. The ball flew over the centre-backs' heads so often I thought I was back watching England's world cup side. It was almost beyond belief, and I found myself studying the benches to see if I could spot Kevin Keegan's slivering barnet, such was the all-out nature of the attacking play.

Cheonbuk fans, with "Mad Green Boys" banner and Che Guevara flag. Possibly auditioning for extra roles in the forthcoming "Hulk: The College Years" movie.

Even at 2-0 up, Gangwon looked as if they were hanging on, seemingly unable to accomplish the simplest of defensive tasks. So it proved, as two simple goals were rolled in in 5 minutes, leaving the score at 2-2. Then Gangwon wasted two golden opportunities (both created merely from being in the opposition half) to win it, before in the dying seconds a long punt goes over our center back's head again, leaving two Cheongbuk players through on goal. Our center back gets back into a position to provide a match-saving toe-away, and promptly falls on his back. The Cheonbuk striker slides it under the goalkeeper, and Gangwon have lost. Once again, I'm left with the feeling that I might well have been able to do a better job. I wonder if I can get a trial. One thing's for sure, the Korean FA needs to look at the defending part of their coaching manual again, if there even is one.

Perhaps Gangwon's longest spell of possession of the entire game.

The previous night's excursions left Jeff and I unwilling and mostly unable to conduct an assault on any Gangneung nightlife, so we grabbed a Mr Pizza and headed off to Motel "Bally" (you do wonder what the thinking behind naming a Korean love motel after the Korean word for quick was). We spent the following morning at the beach, got sunburnt, then retired to a "makkoli jib". Makkoli is my favourite kind of korean liquor. It's a creamy rice wine which seems to be the equivalent of microbrew here. Each city has it's own varieties and fairly distinctive tastes. It's also most usually found being peddled by kindly "ajummas" (old ladies) in the old town markets of cities. Served with an array of delicious, high-carb side dishes (potato omlette, buckwheat dumpling, kimchi pancake, fried noodles) and a big smile, Makkoli makes an excellent lunch. A Makkoli house is probably not somewhere most foreigners go, owing to their often run down nature, but I can assure you that they're well worth popping into.

A Makkoli Jib

A Makkoli Hound.

I'll finish with the usual promise to write more soon. It's probably falling on deaf ears by now, but the photos from lots of recent adventures are sitting on my desktop waiting to be sorted, and I am on vacation this week, so you never know.

Laters,

A

* "Hope & Soju" is a miswriting of "Hof & Soju", "Hof" being one way bars advertise the availability of beer. This is a strange decision given that the Korean language has no F sound, and so replaces it with a P, hence the mistake above.

Football: Me, The World Cup and Korean Men

I'm writing this at 8pm my time to try to stay awake, having been so since 3.30am this morning. This for once, was not due to a bout of insomnia but a deliberate decision to wake up and watch the World Cup final. For the second World Cup in a row, I found myself up in the middle of the night watching the final in an Asian country (last time I was in Japan).

I'm going to have my two cents here and say that I enjoyed the game. While it may not have been a footballing classic, there was plenty of incident, a decent amount of chances for either side (including some inexplicable misses) and if nothing else, the chance to feel sorry for Howard Webb, who increasingly looked like King Canute trying to stem a tide of Dutch bad tackles and Spanish whingers (seriously Sergio Busquets, grow up). I'm glad the Spanish won. Whilst they weren't at their best all tournament (even against Germany) I admire the football that they try to play, and I would take Xavi and Iniesta over any other central midfielders in the world, as long as there's a decent holding midfielder in there with them. I was a bit disappointed that Iniesta was deployed wide so often. On the occasions that he drifted inside in the final his interplay was great. The little flicks he can produce so naturally are the sort that Steven Gerrard can't produce without sending a press release to the national press announcing it several days in advance. The Dutch, for their part, were a bit of a surprise. I at least expected a little subtlety from them in trying to boot the Spanish up in the air, but none was forthcoming. Maybe it was too much to expect from Mark Van Bommel, but he must know his stuff about South African grocery stores on last night's evidence. Still, football is about winning any way that you can, and anyone who doesn't think so is Arsene Wenger, so don't beat up on the Dutch for trying, OK?

As for England, I'm afraid I stopped caring a long time before the tournament started. For me the golden generation is looking a lot like the statue at the end of The Happy Prince, except they kept all the gold leaf for themselves. I thought when they were leaking the final goal against Germany that that might be it, so I was distressed to hear "Lamps" and "Stevie G" pledge their futures to England. Anyway, what was interesting was that Joachim Loew took similar gambles on Klose and Podolski as Capello did on Heskey and Lennon. They had, by all accounts, had dreadful seasons in Germany, but fit in to the system than Loew wanted to play. Could the same have worked for Capeloo with a bit more luck? Probably not, it's Emile Heskey after all. Anyway, I don't know what goes wrong with England at major tournaments, but I'd say it was definitely time that we let somebody else have a shot. At least they might run around a bit, and maybe even control a pass.

As for my own football, I've just been forced by illness to miss out on my own major tournament: the Jinbu Invitational. I completely wore myself out last weekend and the early part of the week, racking up 80km in mountainous bike rides interspersed with some pretty hard football training. What really got me was a trip to the Bangadari spring near Jinbu, to drink some of the mineral water. "It's good for health" they told me. Well, I would have invited "them" to come and inspect what was coming out of me for the rest of the week, and reconsider their opinion. Anyway, I was feeling better on Friday, so headed to Chuncheon for Shannon's birthday meal. We went to Santorini's, which turned out to be pretty good. The food was good, though not outstanding, but the setting and the service was top notch and we had a great time. I should have left it at that, but ended up drinking makoli until the small hours, which pretty much put me back to square one. By Saturday afternoon I was back on the toilet, and suffering jagging pains in the back of my head whenever I stood up. These, you'll be relieved to hear, have now receded, but they didn't in time to play on Sunday. Shame, as I'd just bought some new football boots.

These boots, for the third time in a row, were white. I really don't wear coloured boots. I like black boots. They look normal, sensible, unflashy. A bit like the sort of player I try to be. I try not to draw attention to my feet, as I'm usually using them to fall over the ball. Anyway, through problems with size availability and language barrier, my last three pairs of football boots have all been white. I'm starting to feel like a tart. Still, I could put my white boots and a tutu on, and run out on to the pitch trilling "Climb Every Mountain" and still not be as much of a tart as most Korean footballers. Exhibit A: On Saturday, while shopping for football boots, a shop assistant directed my attention to a pair of boots in lilac and orange. Being a nice person, I politely declined, and didn't try to put on in his nostril, like I probably should have done. Lilac and orange? You deserve to have every single one of your metatarsals smashed into tiny little fragments if you're wearing those. Exhibit B: Ringtones. Sitting on the side at training I was subjected to a perpetual playlist of K-pop tunes from the phones of my team mates, all of whom are men and most of whom are older than I am. Allow me to put this in context: it's the equivalent of hearing Miley Cyrus, B*Withched, Ace of Base and the Jonas Brothers from your team mates' phones. Apart from the Ace of Base guy, you're going to want to have a serious word, right? Exhibit C: The weather. I've already blogged about this, but Koreans: skin is waterproof. It's OK if it rains. Exhibit D: Tactical discipline. Could you just, for a minute, hold your position, or at least put in a little shift to get back? No? OK. We'll just continue to play 3-1-6 then. Cool. Exhibit E: Get up. Someone clipped you. You're not Ronaldo. You're just being a girl. Seriously Korean footballers. Sort. It. Out.

OK, I think that's most of my spleen vented for now. I'm feeling much better today. Nick arrives from England for 9 days tomorrow, and I get my summer vacation. I can't wait, and while there may be a short-term blog post shortage, it will be followed by lots of juicy titbits as soon as I'm back.

Toodle-oo,

A

PS Ooooh, Exhibit F: everyone still picks a footballer to be. You go on the pitch and they say "I'm Villa", "I'm Torres". Course you are son. I'm Alex. Please don't be a berk.

Busan: Shark Diving and Other Pursuits

So, the second part of our long weekend away saw us head back to the coastal city of Busan. We had the chance in the evening to visit the famous Jagalchi fish market. While it's fascinating to see so many different kinds of fish, the fact that they're swimming around in plastic crates for the rest of their short lives left me feeling rather melancholy (see pictures below). Not so melancholy, however, that I couldn't go for some fresh sashimi for dinner. We asked a lady about getting a small sashimi meal as a taster. She immediately reached into a tank and pulled out a smallish flatfish, which looked at us and gulped air mournfully. I was all for chopping it up and dipping the pieces in some chilli sauce, but Shannon decided that she couldn't look her dinner in the eye and then eat it with a clear conscience, and so went to McDonald's instead.

The following day the hereto excellent weather turned, and we woke up to steady drizzle. This didn't bother us too much, as we were going to be spending most of the day inside and underwater. The main event of our trip was a dive in the shark tank at the Busan aquarium. As the dive is open to non-qualified divers, we spent the morning being trained by Michael, our annoyingly world-weary dive instructor. He was funny though, to give him his due, though you suspected he had had quite a few chances to hone his diving spiel. He did seem to know what he was doing though, which was reassuring.

The prospect of diving with sharks didn't really fill me with dread. Particularly not the shark aspect of it at least, but breathing underwater is actually quite nerve-racking, especially when I was trying to remember what all of the hand signals I had been taught meant and worrying about my regulator falling out as my jaw was sore from where a student kicked a ball in my face during a game of futsal (accidentally, I think). There was also the usual pressure of trying not to look an utter fool when trying something new, all of which led to a decent sized knot in my stomach.

Once we had got down to the bottom of the tank I relaxed a little. It really was quite peaceful, and the sharks seemed to barely even notice our presence. The same couldn't be said for the people in the perspex tunnel running through the tank, to whom we were a star attraction. We spent a long time at the bottom waving to small Korean children looking at us. I also spent a long time taking the photos you see below. The quality isn't so good, as my camera was in a waterproof bag which stopped me using the flash, but hopefully they give you the idea at least.

After the dive we took some time out from the aquarium to eat a late lunch at an Indian restaurant just across the road from the aquarium. While it was definitely not the best Indian I've ever had, it was very satisfying to get some curry in, particularly after sharing a tank with (incredibly docile) man-eating predators for an afternoon. After that we headed back in to the aquarium for a look around at some of the other exhibits, pictured below.

That pretty much concluded our trip to Busan. We hung out a little in the evening and ended up in a record store, where I spotted the little gem below. Seems that there are no lengths that Koreans won't go to to educate their kids. The following day we hopped on the KTX "bullet train" back to Seoul. This turned out to be a little disappointing. While it does reach the reasonably impressive speed of 310km/h, it does it with a great deal of rattling and fuss, and the carriages are nowhere near as nice as those in Japan. All in all, not a great train ride, and (sorry Korean readers) not a patch on the Japanese trains.

That's it for another blog post. There should be a few more on the way soon. I'm nearing the end of the semester here so things are winding down a little and I have some more time, though most of it will be spent planning next semester. Still, I have some more interesting photos to post up, so expect them in the next week or so.

See you soon.

A