The good, bad and the trouble with visas

Falco sang that, "one night in Bangkok makes a hard man humble". I think I understand what he meant! It's a odd town. My orginal plan had been to not even stay in Bangkok, but instead to head striaght to Veitiane, Loas, and stay there while I waited on getting a visa for Vietnam (more on the visa in a minute). This plan was dashed when I could not find a hotel that wasn't full for the day I was planning on arriving. Granted, my search was limited to places online with email booking, and I could have likely just braved it and found a place. But the fact that the 1/2 dozen places I tried were full (it is the high season here) gave me visions of going from place to place in a place with little ability to communicate and no idea where I'm going. That's a little too much adventure even for me! So I decided to play it safe and simply stay in Bangkok where I could confirm a room at a place that speaks English. That hotel turned out to be a nice one too, with airport pickup and a free 'american' breakfast! (the breakfast was 1 fried egg, toast, tea, and deep fried hotdogs- exactly my normal breakfast!). So anyway, I found myself in Bangkok with some time to kill. So far I have been resisting the urge to hide out in my hotel room, although that is the much easier thing to do, it sort of defeats the whole point of being here. So as bit of a compromise, and to ease into the whole thing, I've been sticking to fairly touristy places. Yesterday was a good day, I headed down to the royal palace, visited a set of wats (temples - they are EVERYWHERE) rode in a tuk-tuk, and got scamed at least 3 different times! I had pretty low expectations of Bangkok, and so far it's lived up to them! There are some pretty amazing things here, but there are a good deal of not so pretty things too. There are a LOT of foriegns here. Lots of asians from japan, korea, china, as well as a lot of white folks. I've learned that I really can't pick an American out of a crowd. Everytime I think I've got one pegged, they open their mouths with very broken English. The problem with there being a lot foriegners is that they easy targets, which means there are a lot of con folks looking to seperate the tourist from their money. They call these folks touts. So far basically every person you meet is looking to convience you to take some thing you don't want! most cab drives offer to take me 'shopping' or on a tour of the city. 'Helpful' people on the street who see you reading a map and ask where you are going, are quickly trying to guide me to their uncle's hotel (which is always better then the hotel I'm staying in!), or personally guide me to my destination (for a tip of course). It gets old quickly! It also makes you more then a bit distrustful of everyone! So far I've manage to stay out of most of it, but I ended up at a resurant last night that, while good, was VERY overpriced. The other odd phenomenom is that NONE of the taxi drives know where they are going! I know that getting 'lost' is an old trip to jack up the fair, but I moved to a new hotel to day (close to town, my old one was almost an hour from the city), and it took a dozen taxi drives to find one who knew where I wanted to go. And I had the addresss AND map! It turned out the place was 3 blocks away! Yesterday a tuk-tuk driver took almost an hour to go about a mile, he kept going back and forth. Fortuniately it's a fixed price for the ride! To try and avoid some of these issues, I picked a new hotel near the subway, so I can to and from places on my own! Anyway, on to the visa. Today was a less good day. First thing in the morning I set off fo the vietnam embassy (it's monday here) in order to secure a visa. Turns out it, as well as most everything officail, is closed for the new year. In fact they are closed until Friday! I was worred about this. So with the help of a actually semi helpful local, he pointed me to the TAT, which is basically a travel agency, and will do the leg work for getting a visa for you. It's actually a pretty good deal because for 15 bucks they will wait in line and deal with all the red tape for you! That's where the good news ends! The deal is that because the embassy is closed, they can't do anything until friday, and because there will be a lot of pent up demand on Friday, they won't guarnentee they can get me the visa before Moday. That's a week away. I of course have to leave my passport with them (the visa is attached to the passport at the embasy), which means I really can't travel far while I wait, which means another week in Bangkok. I've only been here 2 days, and I can tell you, I couldn't make it another 7 days! The other big issue with the visa is that it is SUPER restrictive. You have to state ahead of time where and when you come and go, and I'm just not 100% about that yet, which is tricky. So after some reading and thinking, I've decided that vietnam isn't going to happen on this trip, it simply makes things too complicated. So my new plan is to spend more time in Cambodia and Loas, with my friends in Chiang mia and maybe even hit the beach for a while. I think in hind sight, I will see this as the better idea, Vietnam I think is best saved for another trip where I can focus on it alone. The good news is that I can leave Bangkok first thing in the morning!! I will be off to Siem Reap in Cambodia. It's near angkor wat, as well as several other interseting places. It's a 14 hour bus trip and crazy boarder crossing- so wish me luck! I've got a nice place lined up when I get there, it's run by Norwedgends!

Bangkok Baby!

Well I made it to Thailand! The trip was pretty smooth and easy. I had made arrangement ahead of time with a hotel, so they picked me up at the airport and I picked a place that spoke English! They have wireless too so I am actually typing this on my iPod! It's hard to type so this is going to be short, but I'm just impressed it works. Will post more after I figure out how to use an Internet cafe.

Misc Korea Images

As I leave Korea behind, here are a few random pictures that caught my interest. It's been a good visit, having a native speaker to guide and translate makes one world of difference. This luxury is about to come to a screeching halt! I'll report on Thailand soon!

Jeju Island

The past couple of days have been a blur of bus rides, tourist stops and Korean food. We took a short trip down to Jeju Island, which is a small island south of the Korean mainland. During the summer months it serves as the sunny, warm get away for Koreans, but has it's own culture and history which shines through when the tourist aren't around. One interesting Korean regulation I've learned is that building is not allowed on fertile agricultural land. This is why their cities are primary built on the sides of mountains. The reasoning for this is that as a small country with a high population density, they need every available square inch to feed themselves. You see this even in Busan, where any unused spot of land literally has some sort of crop growing on it. It appears that most of this agriculture is small scale (family based), and so also provides income for countless numbers of people. This agricultural drive was the most apparent part of Jeju island, where corp upon crop stretched as far as you could see. Unlike farming in the US, these fields are SMALL, we're talking no more then 200 feet in any dimension. This island was volcanic formed and was hence littered with zillions of lava rocks. These rocks are the most visible resource, as miles and miles of fences, buildings, sidewalks and curbs, and even art were made from them. See the pictures below for some examples. Anyway, I asked to see some ocean and Korean history, and Jeju was the place chosen as the best to see this. This was definitely an off the beaten path kind of place, especially for foreigners, which is exactly what I was looking for! The island is fairly large, and the sites are pretty spread out, so lacking a car, we bused it between spots. Korea is very public transport oriented, so even in the sticks, a bus is pretty easy to come by. We hit some nice museums, botanical gardens, some caves, and a couple of tourist attractions. One spot of note was Kim Nyoung maze park which was started, and is run by an American. The real surprise came in the form of getting 1/2 off admission because we had taken the bus there, which was deemed environmentally friendly. The brochure was all in English, and talked about about the park's commitment to the environment. It was an odd place to find an American, and an even odder place to find a environmentalist American. One additional cool (from my perspective!) finding, is that it rained at one point, so instead of hiking, we decided to go see a movie, and I was pleasantly surprised to find that they only subtitle the American movies here, so the are in English! It was like watching a movie in the US- but much cheaper! Note: I am Legend is a Horrible movie!!

In addition to seeing some sites, we ate a lot of food! This eating included my first venture in to what we Americans would call 'crazy asian food', in the form of a pigs blood and sheep intestine soup! It wasn't as bad as you might imagine, in fact the soup part was pretty darn good. I'd had blood before, and it's always had an odd smell and a bit of an odd back flavor, and this blood was no different. The intestine came in two forms, one which appeared to be thin slices of stomach, which were actually pretty tasty, and the other which appeared to be inch long sections of small intestine. These pieces were VERY chewy and had a rather unpleasant tasting substance inside. I chewed and chewed and got a couple of pieces of the tough stuff down before deciding it wasn't worth it. But the rest of the soup I ate up! It does help to be hungry when attempting such things!

I also visited a karaoke place, which was nothing like I expected. I knew Asians are krazy for karaoke, but I always pictured it like in the movies, a big room with someone up front singing. The reality (at least in Korea) is very different. The karaoke is done is small rooms, with small groups of people, usually friends or family. You rent the rooms by the hour and they have a big couch, tv, and some mikes. A single store will have a dozen or more of these rooms. You sit in these rooms, pick your song, and sing to/with your friends. It's all very private, and would never fly in the US. We don't mind making fools of ourselves in public, but not in private! Evidently, Koreans are the opposite!

Off to Thailand tomorrow! Stay tuned!

Fish markets and naked men

So I probably got your attention with the naked part, and I'll get to it in a minute, I promise it's worth the wait! ha! To day we headed out to the big market in Busan called the Jagalchi market. It is the very quintessential asian market that we all thing of: a million venders all packed into tiny little areas selling basically everything under the sun. Each vender specializes, and I do mean specializes. One guys will be selling nothing but light fixtures, and the next guy nothing but light bulbs! And the competition was ferece, there would be a least a half dozen people specializing in the same item. There was a group of women who were selling nothing but dried beans, and they all had exactly the same types of beans. I found it really hard to believe that all of them could sell enough beans to make a living. My big score at the market was parts to fix Yanghee's sister's toilet. Oh, and I got the hole in my boot fixed for $10! The market was very night and day from the stores we had visited the day before. Yanghee says that the market is not only the poorer side of Korea, but it is also Korea past, while the fancy stores are the new Korea. You could see this in the shoppers as well. At the market it was almost all 40 year old and up, while at the department stories it was all people younger then 40. After the market we then went to a light house down by the ocean. From here you could see the docks and all the boats coming in and out of the port.

Ok, now for the naked story! I had heard about public bath houses and asked if we could go to one. Yanghee's sister, Sunhee, was excited about this idea because she loves them, but only goes once a year as a treat. So the 5 of us headed to her favorite bathhouse, Jungang haesu lendie. Now the thing about bathhouses is that you are naked in the bathing part, and because you are naked, men and women are separated. This meant that being the only man, I was going to be own my own to figure it out beyond the front door! To add to this, Sunhee's oldest son, Minwoo, who had recently turned 7, was now too old to go into the women side. Minwoo's entire English knowledge consists of 'hello' and 'have a nice day', which is about as much Korean as I know. Also the last time he had been to the bath house was when he was 6, and so he had about as much idea what do to as I did! I also soon found out that he also had about as much interest in soaking in a hot tub as he did going to the dentist. Long story short, with the aid of a friendly fellow who guided me through the basics of using the lockers and getting towels (lots of pointing), I found myself in a room full of naked Korean men, charged with taking care of a naked 7 year old who's number one priority was to find some sort of mistchif to get into! He stated with splashing other people, the dumping water on the floor, then splashing me! He would listen when I told him to stop any one thing, but would quickly find a new thing to do! Remember, EVERYONE is naked, I can't read or communicate with anyone other then gesturing, and I am probably the only non-Korean that has ever been in this place. It was a good adventure!

Day 1

First day in Korea was a busy one! My host lives with her sister and nefews way up the side of the mountain. It's the opposite of the states- the higher you go the cheaper the housing! No one wants to live up high because it's too much of a pain to walk up the hill! Most people don't drive, and the bus doesn't come this far up, so living this high means you have to climb some STEEP hills, and carry everything with you. But it makes for some GREAT views! After a breakfast of rice soup, we headed off for yanghee's family's temple, which is in her parent's home town, which is about an hour away by subway and then bus. On the way to the train station, we did a little sight seeing around busan. The trip out there was great because we sat at the front of the bus so it was some great views of the landscapes. The temple itself was amazing, SO much detail! the time and effort to create something like this is mind blowing.

Busan or bust!

I made it to Korea! It was an uneventful trip (the best kind when you're flying!), and somewhere over the Pacific it finally set in that I was actually going on this trip! My route was from Albuquerque, to San Fransico, to Nagoya, Japan and then a short hop over to Busan. I sat next to a very nice Brit on the US to Japan leg. His job was working on a boat laying communication cables at the bottom of the ocean, he'd been all over the world doing it. The jobs you never think of, yet we couldn't live without.
I was very glad to have some one to meet me at the airport in Busan, because after being in route for 22 hours I was in no shape to figure out anything as complicated as hailing a cab in a foreign country! I probably would have ended up sleeping in the airport if it was left up to me! I haven't seen much other then the bus ride back from the airport, and it was dark even then. I promptly feel asleep for 10 hours and awakened at 5 in the am. Much better then awaking at 5 in their pm, which is about 7 am for me, so I hope that I am well on my way to beating the jet lag. Below are some picture of the first leg of my journey.

The Boeing 777 that safely carried me across the ocean. Good plane!!

Damn, I really wanted to play on the travelator!

A vending machine in Nagoya. Hard to see it, but the bottles on the top row are selling sweat! Talk a product for the lazy man, you don't have to bother with making your own sweat, just buy some of this and dump it on. You'll look like you just worked out for an hour!