10 Weeks Left

Denise and Dale leave in 5 weeks for India. They will travel there before I meet them in Nepal. And I only have 10 weeks left until I am finished.

I decided that I have a love-hate relationship with Korea. I love it during the weekends, when I am free to explore. Its on the bike ride to work and at work that I am most unhappy. I started walking to work instead of riding lately because I get less frustrated with the motorcycles on the sidewalk and the people getting in my way. My school is a slave driver. I actually do not have enough time during the week to get everything done. I could stay beyond my 8 hour work day to finish it all, but Koreans encouraged workaholism and I will not put myself in a position where I can get walked all over. I love my students. I love Korean food. I love my apartment. I love it when people want to talk to me because they want to practice their English.

All of this and almost being finished here makes me think a lot about the future and what I am going to do after. Also, people keep asking me what I am going to do. I have no idea. I really cannot account 100% for anything after Christmas when I come home. In a way, its nice to be free. Also, I need to figure out what I want. More travel? More work overseas? Not sure.

I miss my family and friends terribly. I saw the Sex and the City Movie last weekend and it made me miss my best friends so much. But also it made me really grateful that I have them in my life. I really miss having the companionship of a dog. I even gawk at those small purse dogs. There just something about having a dog. So I am making a list of life's to-dos. Everything is going on the list, from doing a sailing race across the pacific to working on a ranch to living in Yaletown. Extreme contrasts, but I can still do it all.

North Korea Chapter 5

The second day of the trip started with a 6.40am wake up call. I took the call and promptly rolled over and went back to sleep. The second call came at 7.40, which was when the bus was planning on leaving. Our guide was wondering where we were. We jumped up, got dressed, dealt with the mini-bar checkers at the door at the same time, and made it downstairs 10 minutes later. The bus left the hotel parking lots and parked in another lot 20 meters away, where we sat for 10 minutes. Hurry up and wait!

Half of the tour group got off the bus to go on an easier walk around a lake in the area. The rest of the group was heading to a waterfall. We got off the bus where the trail began and started on the cobblestone trail. It was like a marathon had just begun however. All the South Korean tourists pushed and shoved us to the side in order to race to the top. The trail was packed with people and behind us was a stream of tourists in their hardcore and matching hiking gear. The Korean way is all about image. So even though this hike was about the same as something on the North Shore mountains, which most of us would wear runners, all the South Koreans had poles, hiking boots, day packs, gloves, and other useless items.

Beth, Mike, Romi and I kept a nice pace because we talked the whole way. The mountains were beautiful and were covered at the top by low lying cloud. The water was as clear as the ocean in the Caribbean and flowed over the white granite of the valley floor. At the top of the valley was a waterfall that trickled over the edge. Come monsoon season in July and August, that waterfall would be violent.

Another part of the trail took us higher where we could see the top of the waterfall from above.

We made it down the trail. Near the parking lot was a restaurant and some food vendors. We stopped for some "meat on a stick", a new favourite, and my friend Bri took a picture of a North Korean woman. Bri of course meant no disrespect, but the woman lost it on her and made her delete the photos. Bri showed her her camera to make sure that the photos were gone.

We had a few hours to kill until it was time to go. Mike bought some "snakebite" booze. We walked along a path to a propaganda mural with Lil' Kim and Senior Kim on it. Romi and I got our picture in front of it. None of us were allowed to take a picture of it ourselves, so we had to ask the doorman of the hotel across the street to take it for us. Mike brought his rugby jersey on this trip. His teammates at home wanted him to wear it when he had his picture taken. The doorman misunderstood Mike's request and actually got in the picture with him and they held hands and he got his picture taken with the doorman. I think Mike was pretty touched and impressed with that whole thing.

It was finally time to leave the village. Our guide told us that the border guards will go through all our pictures to make sure we didn't have anything they didn't like. I couldn't understand how they could go through the cameras of 65 people, where most of us probably had an average of 100 pictures. I had 600. But its a warning, and they would do the search randomly. The exit from NK was smooth and no one had any problems. Instead of stamping our passports, they stamped the ID card that the tour company issued us. They also kept it as we left the country. They also do not stamp personal passports.

As we drove along the highway between the two countries, I looked out the window and a military truck was about to pass us. There were 5 soldiers in it. They all looked about 19 years-old. I stared at them and smiled. Then they all smiled back and they were the biggest smiles ever.

Surrounded by peaks


The famous waterfall

Romi, Stephanie, Lil' Kim, Senior Kim

At least I have the memories...

Of the 500 or so photos I took, I only have 176. Here are some of them...

The river bed at the end of the valley



Propaganda Billboards

A restaurant next to our hotel

North Korea Chapter 4

After the hike, and beers in hand, we got back on the bus and went to the hotel to check in. The hotel was gorgeous! Five star, fairly new. Romi and I shared a room and it was definitely much nicer than we expected. However the trip was $400 and I guess that's what it went towards.

Romi was going to an acrobat show in the village, so she went off to do that. I saw one in Shanghai, so I opted out. Not that an acrobat show is an acrobat show, but I wanted to spend some time checking out the area. After a hot shower and a snack, I was too exhausted so I ended up watching South Korean television in the room. It was still raining out and I'd had enough of the rain for one day.

After the acrobat show, I met Mike, Beth and Romi and we went for a crappy Korean buffet dinner. But then we went to the pub next door and had a great time. The whole place was full of people from our trip. The staff were South Korean, because they didn't have the little pins on. They were also very outgoing. We drank North Korean beer, which was really good. Mike and some other guys drank their version of Guinness, which was more like Guinness mixed with espresso. For this village, the brewery owners went to England, bought a brewery, dismantled it and shipped all the pieces to Geugmansan, rebuilt it and started making beer.

Romi and I were so tired. We left the pub at 9.30 and were asleep by 10.30. It was one of the best sleeps though in such a comfortable bed.

North Korea Chapter 3

As we crossed over the border into NK, our guide told us that all America, South Korean and Japanese flags or labels had to be removed from backpacks. They strongly dislike America, Japan has left a bad taste in all Koreans' mouths. And well South Korea is just the opposite of everything that North Korea stands for. Canada was ok. Yeah Canada.

We weren't allowed to take any pictures from the bus as we drove into the village we were going to visit. We drove through the farmland of the area. Well, everything seemed to be farmland. If there was land with dirt, they were growing food on it. I could see workers in the fields everywhere. No one drove cars, but there were lots of bicycles. There was green fencing along all the roads and then any side road into another village had soldiers on watch where the roads met. The houses that the people lived in looked really small. Some areas had large walls built around them so all I could see were the roofs. I didn't see any power lines going to any of the houses either.

The people looked small and lots were wearing the same style outfits of navy blue pans and jacket, Lil' Kim style. The bikes looked like they were from the 50s. The soldiers were everywhere; I saw more soldiers than civilians. I was glued to the window of the bus. The scenery was amazing. It had rained all night and the mist was flowing around the mountain tops above the valley. Everything was so green and the mountains just shot up from the ground.

We got to the village that all the tourists hang out in. Its run by Hyundai and it was just like anywhere is South Korea. There were some nice hotels and lots of restaurants. We had no time to eat though because that was the theme of the trip so far. We loaded a different bus and it drove us up to on part of the park for a hike. As we drove higher and higher, the fog got thicker. It wasn't raining but misting. Although it would have been nice to a view, it was beautiful to see the outline of a peak through the fog.

The hike was 2 hours up and 30 minutes down. We were soaked by the end of it. When we got to the top, there was a traffic jam of people getting up the ladders. It was too steep for a path, so the ladders went all the way to the top. I had some great pictures of everyone on the ladders and soaking wet, but I deleted the whole first day of pictures by accident the other night as I was loading them onto my computer. SUPER pissed about that one.

North Korea Chapter 2

After the drive to the border, there was a lot of "hurry up and wait". I suppose because of limitations on tourism, being that one can only visit while being part of an organized tour, all the tours must enter and be processed at the same time. There were about 25 tour buses along with my group's 2 that were entering the area at the same time. Although we got to the region early, we had to wait around for a few hours so that all could go through at one time. This was probably the most disorganized part of the trip. At one rest stop, we all fled to the store and the restaurant for food, but were ushered out because of time restrictions, but then sat on the bus waiting for another half an hour on a road or in a parking lot. This was not the fault of the tour company really. Well maybe a little. I just don't think that they are working with a lot of flexibility on the other end.

We finally made it to the South Korean departure centre. We left one bus, went through immigration/customs, and then onto another bus on the other side of the building. We weren't allowed to take any pictures from the bus as we went through the DMZ and over the border. This road followed the east coast of the peninsula and it was stunning scenery. A large barbed wire fence ran along both sides of the highway. There weren't really any buildings except for guard stations and one building used by the UN.

We crossed the military demarcation line, the line that was official drawn after the Korean war. We entered into the North Korean customs area. It was two large white tents connected by corridors between them. We all lined up according to a number that the tour company had assigned us. We had all received an ID package that had all our information in them, such as nationality, occupation, age, yada yada. Once we got through these line ups, we showed our papers to the North Korean officer that processed everything. We were warned before hand that we might be asked questions if there were any discrepancies in our information. These discrepancies would be no big deal to us. For example, I was born in Toronto, but my home address was in Vancouver. My friend Beth's home address was in Toronto but her passport was processed in Halifax. When I was questioned, he just verified where I lived and where I was born. He spoke in perfect English also, I might add.

When we were being given our ID packages, there was a line on our cards that said NATIONALITY / ETHNICITY. For me, it was Canadian / Canadian. For some reason, most of the people from the UK had United Kingdom / Nigeria. Not one of those people was Nigerian by any means. There wasn't even an explanation for a mix up, such as the name of a processing office or a region. When our guide was asked about it, he said "Don't worry, they don't know about Nigeria anyway." HUH?? We were all extra attentive to what was being told to us and what was going on, so I think that those people were a little nervous after hearing that one. Also during this time, when we were being given our IDs, our guide told us that if we didn't submit a employer's address or the name of a school that we worked at at the time of registration for the trip, he said that they had randomly chosen ones for us and that we should go with that story.

There were no problems going through customs for anyone however. The checked everyone's cameras to make sure that no one was exceeding the zoom lens limitation. Our bags went through scanners. The customs people were all soldiers and were as nice as can be (ha!). The went through the other side of the tent and back onto the bus. Guards lined the roads. They just stared at all the tourists coming in. Each one also carried a red flag and had a pin of Kim Jung-Il (from here on to be mentioned at Lil' Kim) or Kim Il-Sung (from hereon to be mentioned as Senior Kim).

North Korea Chapter 1

I got home last night from North Korea. I was in Kumgangsan Province, in the southeast corner of NK. It is only 10 kms beyond the border and 5 hours from Seoul. This region of NK was opened to South Koreans for tourism in 1990 and has some of the most beautiful scenery and best hiking on all of the Korean peninsula. The tourist village is surrounded by mountains and is run by Hyundai, one of the largest companies in South Korea.

Before the trip, the tour company provided a list of banned items, such as cel phones, PDAs, any print material from South Korea, books that may contain subject about either Koreas, binoculars, zoom lenses beyond 160mm, computers, any type of communication device. We were prohibited from talking with North Koreans in general, and in particular we were not allowed to talk about politics or the economy. If anything was overheard that was negative about NK, Kim Jung-il or Kim Il-sung, our guides were the ones that could be fined or thrown in jail.

We left Seoul at 11.30 on Friday night. We travelled by bus to the border. We stopped at a small beach to watch the sunrise on Saturday morning. This beach was on the SK side. We watched fishing boats coming and going from the harbour. Most of the fishing boats had guns on the front of them. The only other types of transportation we saw were tour buses. The rest stop near the beach was filled with South Korean tourists in their hiking gear, also going to the same park as we were going to. The hiking in this region is truly amazing and it has become a desirable destination for many South Koreans.

Stay tuned for Chapter 2.

Photos

More photos are posted on Flickr. Sorry it has taken so long. Taking the actual pictures is more important to me. But everything is there. Mike and Doewon's wedding, the latest excursions, my couch.

This weekend was a long weekend. On Friday, my posse went to Muuido, an island near the airport. We rented a beach shack. We ate lots and drank, laughed, took photos, made inappropriate jokes at other people's expense. Friday night, there was a huge campfire and about 25 foreigners sat around and talked. One guy, Graham from Ontario, was a wicked guitar player so he played all night. He used a broken shell as a pick.

We only went for one night and the weather was garbage. It rained, and then when the sun came out the next morning, it was quickly covered by a large fog bank. We returned back to the mainland and found a dead baby whale on the beach. It was really small, about 3 feet long. Leanne, the resident biologist on the trip, thought it might be a porpoise or something. It had the head of a beluga, but it was black. It's fins weren't fully developed either. Just a total mystery.

Today, Romi and I went to the Kimchi Museum. Fascinating. No really. There is a lot of history and info on the national food of Korea. Did you know there is an Institute for Kimchi? Yup, there is.

I'm going to North Korea on Friday. Some friends from around, Beth, Mike and Romi are going. I am SOOOOOO excited.