South Korea, Back to Japan, Hong Kong and Bangkok

Wow, so it turns out I kind of suck at updating this blog on a regular basis, huh? I apparently also suck at getting a good night’s sleep before taking an important flight. Not a wink of sleep before the flight from Boston, about two hours before the flight from LA, none before the flight from Seoul to Hong Kong, and now about 45 minutes before my 8:55a.m. flight from Hong Kong to Bangkok. Oh well, maybe it’ll make for some interesting writing.

So yeah, it’s been over a month since my last entry and a lot has happened. As with my last post, I’ll let my photo albums do most of the talking (if you click on the pictures and go to my flickr page, there are captions too), and use this to relate my basic travels and the occasional good story. So, I’ll pick up where I left off: the Korean wedding.

The wedding was great, and that whole Saturday was probably the most enjoyable day I had in Suwon. Jack and I woke up at the crack of noon, put on the cleanest dirty shirts we had, and strolled down to the 7-11 where we met up with several of his American coworkers. After a few breakfast beers, we were shuttled to the wedding by some of the Korean employees from Jack’s school. The wedding itself, as well as the reception afterward, were not the no-holds-barred spend-a-thon and raging all-night party that are currently in style back home; but the ceremony was quite beautiful (if completely unintelligible to yours truly) and the buffet was delicious. An absolute highlight of the ceremony was when one of the kindergarten-age classes that the bride taught got on stage and sang a song for the happy couple. They were all dressed in white tutus and little white suits, and not a single one of them could carry a tune. Adorable. After the all-you-can-eat brunch that followed, we Americans took advantage of the gorgeous weather to wander back into town on foot, stopping at the park to toss a frisbee and a football around for a couple of hours. A rousing game of poker at Jack’s apartment followed, and I subsequently won the coolest claw machine prize I could possibly imagine: a golden Chinese dragon boat…that was also a lighter! We capped off the evening (and early morning) with some delicious fried chicken (Korea gives Alabama a run for its money, believe it or not) and a solid night out at the bars.

The following Wednesday, I headed up to Seoul for a long, long weekend. This was my first trip to the capital where another Bowdoin alum, Jason Cha, put me up in his apartment and showed me a good time. Cha was born and raised in Brooklyn, but his parents are Korean and he speaks the language fluently. He also likes to party…a lot. Fortunately for me, he shares with most people on this continent a certain genetic…how should I say…disadvantage when it comes to drinking, so his insane nights out usually just left me tipsy at the worst (with one sake-soaked exception). In addition to partying, Cha also helped me navigate menus at the Korean restaurants and was the guy behind the best meal I had in Korea. More on that later.

I went out that Friday night at the foreigners-only casino in Seoul with Cheddar and his coworker Jacob (the shorter guy in the pictures), as well as Jake Murray (another Bowdoin alum) and Cha. Jake was the big winner in the casino that night, turning 40,000 won (roughly $30) into 700,000 won (about $550!) in one of the most ridiculous good luck streaks I’ve ever seen. A few bars later, and Cheddar, Jacob and I wound up staying “the night” (5a.m.-7a.m.) at a Jimjilbong. Jimjilbongs are the Korean version of an overnight spa. They cost roughly $10 per night, and are a great place to sleep off (and sweat out) a long night of drinking. After perhaps 10 minutes of sleep at the spa, we took off on our one-day tour of the DMZ.

The Demilitarized Zone (DMZ), as well as the Joint Security area (JSA), at the border between North and South Korea are probably second only to Cuba on the list of most interesting places I’ve visited. I don’t want to go into a full-blown description of the place here, but I’ll just say that being able to physically cross the border between North and South was really a privilege. These are two countries that share a common history reaching back thousands of years, but have spent the last 50 years almost completely cut off from one-another. Families that have been split apart from their relatives in the North for a generation make frequent pilgrimages to the border, but can only leave flowers and scraps of cloth with notes on a barbed-wire fence. There is a seemingly contradictory feeling around the whole place that combines the fear of (and readiness for) an all-out North Korean invasion with the intense desire for peaceful unification. Despite the all-nighter I pulled on Friday night, I was wide-awake for the whole nine-hour tour. Beyond that, I’ll let my pictures do the talking, and encourage anyone with some time to at least check out the Wikipedia Entry on the area.

The next big adventure was a four-day trip to Japan with Jake and Cheddar. Tuesday, May 5th was a national holiday in South Korea, which is apparently a rare occurrence. Being one of Cheddar’s very few opportunities for a real vacation, he was determined to make the most of it. A few cheap airline tickets later, and we were headed to Osaka, Kyoto and Tokyo for a weekend blitz (poor word choice?) of the land of the rising sun. Of the cities we visited on this tour, Kyoto impressed me the most. Beautiful and authentic temples and Shinto shrines are found at practically every corner, and a real sense of calm and an appreciation for nature, culture and tradition permeate the town despite its considerable size. The nightlife seems to center around small, pleasant bars and eateries packed into back alleys; and some of the streets are downright scenic, with brick sidewalks, rows of cherry blossom trees and pleasant streams running alongside them. I was apprehensive at first about backtracking to Japan, but Kyoto made the trip thoroughly worth it.

The number one highlight of the rest of my time in South Korea was a visit that Jake, Cheddar, Cha and myself took to Seoul’s wholesale fish market. Korea’s version of Tsukiji is maybe half the size of its Japanese counterpart, but is (in my opinion) even cooler. Nearly all of the fish for sale in the airplane hangar-sized building that houses the market are still swimming in tanks, and each vendor is associated with a different in-house restaurant. This means that you can point to a fish (or in our case, three fish and an octopus, thanks to Cha’s ability to haggle in Korean), and inside 20 minutes said fish has been killed, gutted and skillfully turned into the freshest sashimi you’ve ever had right before your eyes. The rest of the fish is tuned into a fiery stew that you enjoy after eating way more sashimi than you ever thought possible. All of this was washed down with a few cold bottles of Soju, a rice whiskey that, in the words of Tony Bourdain, “Koreans drink an unholy amount of.” What do you have for an appetizer before starting this amazing meal? How about some diced octopus tentacles, so fresh that they are literally still wriggling around and clinging to the plate with their suction cups. Yeah, it was weird, but it actually tasted delicious.

The squirming octopus tentacles and fresh sashimi were my last meal in Korea, and a damn good one at that. However, following said meal with an all-nighter at a dance club and a rushed trip to the airport to catch my flight to Hong Kong was probably not the best decision I made. As my flight took off from Incheon airport I felt the tentacles in my stomach, now soaked in a healthy mixture of gin, whiskey and tequila, striving to escape. Still, I survived the flight without major incident, and the meal stands as one of the most memorable and enjoyable meals of my trip so far.

Hong Kong, like Tokyo, was supposed to be only a two-hour stopover for me on my way from Seoul to Bangkok. I decided, however, to spend a week there to see what the financial capital of Southern Asia was all about; and as with Tokyo, I’m pleased as punch that I did. My best description of Hong Kong is as follows: take all of the buildings in Manhattan and put them on the island from Jurassic Park…then add about 3 million Chinese people…and subtract a few dinosaurs. I had a sense that the climate in Hong Kong would border on tropical, but I had no idea that the city (as well as the surrounding forest-covered mountains and islands) would be so damned beautiful. The endless, bright and bustling maze of shops and restaurants in central Hong Kong and on the densely populated Kowloon Peninsula (where my hostel was conveniently located) was amazingly easy to escape from. A 40-minute bus or ferry ride could take you to a serene beach town on the other side of Hong Kong Island or a beautiful hike through the jungle atop Victoria Peak. The views from these areas were always impressive, and when I did delve into the labyrinth of crowded alleys that surrounded my hostel, I was rewarded with amazing food and cheap bootleg DVDs. Overall, it was a great place in which to get lost, and the added bonus of a few nights out with Danny Joseph (a family friend who was finishing his semester abroad at Hong Kong University), made the trip decidedly enjoyable.

As I finish this entry, I’m sitting in the common room of my hostel in the middle of a Bangkok thunderstorm. I have been in Thailand for five days now, and I can already tell it is going to be one of my favorite countries in the world. The weather is mercilessly hot and humid, and because I’m American, street vendors and tuk-tuk drivers are constantly pestering me to buy their goods and services. However, the vast majority of people here are hard-working, honest and friendly in a way that reminds me of the smaller towns in Latin America, and the combination of frantic streets and serenely gorgeous, ornate Buddhist temples is starting to hypnotize me. And the food, oh God the food! Thai restaurants in the US don’t even hold a candle to the fresh, tangy, spicy concoctions that are sold on every street corner for $1.50 or less. There are a lot more westerners in Bangkok than any other Asian city I have been so far and frankly, I see why. In addition to visiting a good chunk of the tourist spots in the last few days and wandering from food stall to food stall, I have also been lucky enough to share a few great meals and even a trip out of the city to a beautiful riverside town with a certain Jang Boonyarat. Jang lived in my dorm both freshman and sophomore years at Bowdoin, and has been living in Bangkok (where she was born and raised) since graduation. As much exploring as one can do on one’s own, there is no replacement for the company of a native speaker, thinker and eater to multiply one’s enjoyment of a country. Jang has been a great tour guide so far, and I’m looking forward to a meal with her family tomorrow night.

Yikes, that was a long one. My apologies for being so shoddy with the updates. Hopefully I’ll be more consistent in the future, although as Annie Cronin wisely pointed out, it wouldn’t really be me if I were. On Sunday I venture across the border into Cambodia to explore Angkor Wat and the temples around Siem Reap. Apparently the border crossing at Aranya Prathet can be an “interesting” experience. I think the real adventure is about to begin.