Good Morning, Vietnam!

I haven't been too successful in keeping up with the blog as I had promised myself I would be. Vietnam, Cambodia and more of Thailand came and went, but I'm going to attempt to backtrack and document those weeks.

From Laos, Amy and I took a prop-plane by Lao Airlines to Hanoi.

We were conveniently greeted at Luang Prabang airport by a lady promoting a new hostel in the backpacker district - old quarter - of Hanoi. Although we were skeptical of her offer, as we are of most everybody's, we agreed to accept the $3 cab for a 45-minute ride into town. The cab took us to May De Ville Hotel with no obligation to stay, with a special offer of $18 per night, including a nice breakfast. The rate was discounted from the original $30 per night, but since we were picked up in Laos, we got this great deal. The "hostel" was really a fabulous hotel. We were more than pleased. The rooms were gorgeous, new, clean, white linens and towels, toiletries, flat-screen TV with every channel, hot showers, laptop with internet in the room, etc. It was everything you could hope for. We knew this luxury wouldn't come around often, and we cherished every moment of it. Breakfast was just as satisfying - eggs made to order, any way you want, including omelets with vegetables or cheese of your choice, fruit, toast, pastries, the works. The staff was also excellent.

We arranged our boat trip to Halong Bay through the hotel as well. It was $75 for two days and one night on the boat, including meals. The food consisted almost entirely of various fried seafood. It obviously wasn't ideal for me, so I stuck to fried rice for dinner, and some toast and fruit for breakfast.

Halong Bay was beautiful, the emerald waters were nice, and the limestone formations everywhere reminded me of Thailand's west coast islands. We went into some caves and kayaked around a floating village. 

Our company was less than thrilling. There were 13 of us - myself and Amy, a cool Indian-American couple that was picked up in Luang Prabang airport with us and a Chinese family of nine that spoke no English. It definitely wasn't the party boat, and we longed to be on one as our boat sat peacefully near Cat Ba island opposite the party boats. 

We didn't have great weather for our two days, but we managed alright and returned to Hanoi to finish sightseeing.

We walked around the lake, all across town and went to the Museum of Literature and to Hoa Loa Prison. In the evening, we walked through the night market and then caught a water puppet show, which was interesting and worth the $5. We didn't go to the Mausoleum as Ho Chi Minh's body had been sent to Europe for preservation a week prior. So I still have only one preserved communist leader on my list - Chairman Mao.

The madness of a big city was a nice change of pace after nearly two weeks in chilled-out Laos, but we were ready to move on after the four days there.

Next stop - Hue!

Spring Forward...

I've been living in Korea for just over seven months now, and I know I've said it before, but every month gets busier than the last! To be honest, January didn't have too much excitement going on. Most everybody had "intensives," which is essentially a second job - winter camp classes every morning before going to our regular jobs. It is easy extra money though, and that's hard for most people to turn down.

I'm pleased to say I eased through the frigid winter, which in retrospect doesn't seem that bad, but who am I kidding? It was beyond frigid, not to mention it also came with bronchitis, tonsillitis, 21 pills a day for 7 days at a time, 2 shots in my ass, a sick day and at least 10 rough days at work. But, spring, I can feel you creeping up already.

February brought a lot excitement but took a lot of sleeping hours. The beginning of February was Lunar New Year, and an abnormally large group of us went to Hong Kong together. I really, really loved Hong Kong. I thought it was an amazing city with a ton of diversity. It was so refreshing to get out of Korea and see so many different faces and different foods from all over the world. It was also nice to get some familiar snacks and a lot of British snacks that my friends had been raving about. Korea can really start to feel like a little bubble world sometimes. I can hardly go anywhere without hearing someone uttering "wae-gukan" (Korean word for "foreigner") while pointing in my general direction. I definitely started to consider the potential of living in Hong Kong for a bit.

Lunar New Year there was also pretty cool. I did have a lot of friends that made it to China, which clearly can't be beaten, but I'd say Hong Kong must have been a good second - not close. There were thousands of people crowding around Nathan Road to watch the big parade. It was impossible to get a view without camping out there for hours, which we weren't going to waste. Luckily, one of our friends had a hostel room overlooking a great part of Nathan Road. We watched the whole parade from the comfort of their beds. The next night, there was a big fireworks show over the harbour. During the days, we made it to Stanley Market and Victoria's Peak. We didn't have enough days there, really.

One of the days, we also took a one-hour ferry ride over to Macau - basically Vegas hotels without the club scene. We did some gambling, partying, gambling, eating and I made $2000 HKD playing roulette. Then, unfortunately, we couldn't get a ferry back to Hong Kong until 7am the next morning, day of our flight. We had to take a nap at the ferry terminal, rush back to our hostels, take a quick power nap and head to the airport to come back to Korea. The trip had its drawbacks being there with so many friends and wanting to be a tourist while being with everyone and waiting for moves to be made... but it was nice, nonetheless. See some of the pictures from the trip. 

Next came Red Day, also known as Valentine's Day, where in Korean tradition, girls give boys chocolates. Somehow, I still got a good amount of chocolates from my students, which definitely made up for Pepero Day (11/11)! That weekend, we went on a snowboarding trip to High 1 Ski Resort - a mere 3 or 4 hours on a coach bus. We lucked out with gorgeous weather as the weekend before brought fresh powder. However, one of my friends had to show off his snowboarding skills, or lack thereof, and ended up in the hospital with a broken collar bone, or something worse. After being taken down the mountain zipped up in a body-bag, He then spent 3 nights in the hospital in Daegu after having surgery with an expected 6-month recovery.

That weekend was also my birthday weekend... nothing too crazy, but some friends did help make it a memorable one. After a couple frisbee games the morning after a night out, we had a chance to make it to the last few hours of a Trick Art Gallery that had been in Daegu for a few months. I thought it had also been gone for months! Check out some of those pictures as well.  It was pretty awesome!

There's too much  to catch up on now, but I'll do my best to keep up with it. I've also got a trip to Israel to post about!

I have way too many photos to choose from as is.... and this layout will never seem to do what it's supposed to do.

Machu Picchu - The Strokes (new album Angles)

New apartment in Sang-In Dong - Daegu.

About the pics:
My feet in a pool of mini fish eating away at my dead skin.

Losing at a drinking game - sinking the shot glass in a cup of beer.

Fully clothed Koreans on the beach in Busan.

Korean BBQ and Kimchi - I can't remember what it's called in Korean.


So I've been here just over a week now, and it's been really great so far. The school I am working for is a private school, and famously known for being among the best private school chains you could work at here - for both the Korean teachers and the foreign teachers. Pretty much every foreigner (the English teachers are from all over - USA, England, Scotland, Ireland, New Zealand, Australia, etc.) that works there was in Korea for at least one year before working for our school, and they never fail to remind me how lucky I am to be at this school my first year.

We have a group of Korean guys that are our "reinforcement team." Generally, they help us with anything we need, get us set up with cell phones, and internet, fix problems at the apartments, and generally anything that we may need. My first weekend here, the school took us on a day trip to the beach in Pohang - it's about 2 hours away by charter bus. It was pretty nice, but the beach was all rocks and the water was freezing! Much like Eilat, minus the crystal clear water and awesome coral reef. Then, we were spoiled at the Hyandai Hotel with a very nice buffet with unlimited drinks included. After that, we came back to our city, Daegu, and the school continued picking up the tab at a bar. It was a lot of fun and a great way to meet many of the teachers at our other branches. The next day, I went with some friends to another beach in Busan - the 2nd largest city in Korea. The beach there was nice, full of people, and the water was great! Also, the Koreans are terrified of the sun and even though it's easily 95 to 105 degrees here, they are fully covered from head to toe, even while they are in the water!

I started teaching my first classes on Monday, and it went pretty smoothly. Our school is very structured and there is really no prep work required. We just have to take up a 50 minute class period with minimal information, so it's sometimes a bit tricky to take up all the time. They want us to repeat everything and have the students repeat everything several times - repetition is the thing here, but I start sounding ridiculous in my head while repeating things so many times. My students are all pretty good - I have one class that is painfully quiet, and I have one class that is pretty non-compliant, but besides that, they are all really good.

I just moved into my permanent apartment on Monday and it's not bad at all. Nothing fancy, but could definitely be worse! I'm not complaining! I have a small kitchen with a stove top, fridge, microwave and very mini toaster oven. They also gave me a table and 2 chairs, so that's good! There's a sliding door that separates the kitchen from my room/living room, so I don't have to waste the AC cooling down the kitchen. My bathroom is fine also, not too small - the shower head is attached to the sink, so i turn the sink on and loosen the knob and it switches to the shower. The apartment is a studio, but it's a fairly good size - they also provided a TV, and washing machine but gotta hang to dry.

The weather here is pretty awful - it's insanely hot these days, always upper 80s to 90s, but feels like 90s to 100s with this humidity! It's also the rainy season and the last day it's been very rainy, and doesn't look like it's going to stop for a few more days. Add 90 degrees to humidity and rain - it's not fun! It will be nice in September, and then freezing cold by November - so weather is definitely not one of the positives.

Besides that, everything is great! The city is amazing, there is so much to do here. The public transportation system is awesome, I've made many new friends, been staying very busy and having a lot of fun. The food is not bad at all either. My friends have mostly been here for at least a year, so they are pretty good at ordering food and making sure I'm getting beef and not pork. Everything is very spicy, but I can handle it well most of the time. I've been having a lot of Korean BBQ - the beef, of course. Many restaurants only have pork bbq, so sometimes that's a challenge. They also have "American" restaurants that are pretty much Italian food, pastas, pizzas and the occasional burger. I had some Italian style food at a place in downtown Daegu called "about" - it was pretty delicious! I hear they have good burgers around here too, but the one I had in Busan was quite awful. You know how much I love burgers! I also went to an Indian restaurant nearby and it was great, but again VERY spicy!!! I haven't seen any dogs or anything around, but I have been told from many people that they have them around here and there. One person I met tried it - blachhhhhh!!!

Oh, and tomorrow I am going to the Handsome Furs show in downtown Daegu at a place called Club GUESS. I'm super excited to have some good music coming through Daegu! Dan Boeckner of Wolf Parade is the lead singer - it's going to be a great show. From what I've seen of past shows, it looks like we'll be getting a good show about once a month, I'd say. 8)