Beijing, China

Merry Christmas everyone!!! I hope you have all had a fantastic holiday! It has been sad being away from all of you that I love so much!! Christmas is especially hard for that, but I'm trying to keep it real- watching Christmas Vacation and leaving milk and cookies for Santa =) Actually, I spent Christmas on an airplane this year, returning to Seoul after a wonderful holiday in Beijing!!

We arrived in Beijing on December 16th, to crazy winds strong enough to blow me over! Thankful that we had opted to pack our big Winnipeg-style winter gear, we hurried into the airport from the plane, and caught a bus to our hostel. The hotel was a nice walk from the main area of Beijing- Tianemen Square, Mao's Mausoleum, and the Forbidden City. It's so exciting being in a city with so much history!

Enormous painting of Mao above the gates to the Forbidden City.

For the next 10 days, we walked and biked around all accessible areas the city- aside from the pollution (which makes Seoul's dirty air look breathable) the city is really beautiful, alive with colourful temples, friendly people, and bikers everywhere.

Some of my favourite places were.....

The Summer Palace, about an hour drive out of the city. In the heat of the summer, the royalty would escape to this area outside the city limits. In preparation for the Olympics, the painting has recently been restored, so the colours are so beautiful- especially against the bleakness of winter and ice.

We spent a couple of days biking around the city, visiting all the various temples and siognificant places thrgouhout the city. The views were great, and bikers are given two full lanes of roadway in some areas!! Soo luxurious- especially compared to the "bike paths" in Seoul which are genenerally littered with parked cars, crazy motorcyclists, and people who look like it is their first time on a bike. The bikes themselves were awesome- super old school, with mechanical breaks, weirdly angled pedals, and only one gear =) Woo!!

In the evenings, we watched a few performances of acrobatics and Kung fu, which were spectactular! The Kung Fu show basically explained the process of becoming a monk, and the martial arts that are involved in this school of Buddhism. The acrobatics shows seriously had me sweating the entire time- I was so nervous for all of them- not that they didn't look completely competent, just that everything they were doing was completely unbelievable! I wish I could've had a video camera to show you all!!

My personal highlight, though, was the hike along the Great Wall. Starting from Jinshanling, I hiked about 10km to Simatai, along the crumbling remains of China's main barrier from Mongolia. The views were truly mindboggling- the wall stretched as far as I could see, branching into multiple segments ontop of the ridges of all the surrounding hills. After hiking along what was essentially a stairmaster for about 5 hours, I arrived at Simatai exhausted, but thrilled by all the incredible sights I had taken in.

On our second weekend in Beijing, Tom's brother, Pete, and his girlfriend, Allison, joined us. It was fantastic to see some familiar faces after 17 months away from our friends and family. We had a wicked weekend with them, eating, drinking, and exploring Beijing! It was nice to be able to spend Christmas morning with some family, though, and we had a great breakfast with them before heading out to the airport for our flight home.

Tom, Allison, and Pete biking (too bad I can't focus)

Northern Thailand

The rest of the hot and humid summer proceeded on without anything of note, until the Korean holiday- Chuseok. This holiday is similar toNorth American Thanksgiving, and generally people return to their hometown and spend the week with their families. We headed out to northern Thailand, and spent the week around Chiang Mai. Unfortunately, with only a week it's hard to organize independent travel, so we did most of our hiking and excursions with a group or a hired driver.

Northern Thailand is extremely luscious and mountainous, and it feels like virtually all the land is blanketed in tropical forests. The area felt so secluded- even with the many voices of the group we were hiking with, it felt so peaceful. The group was incredibble- there was a group from Israel, a couple of South Koreans (we impressed them with our minimal knowledge of Korean) a couple from Ireland, and four of us form Canada. The Israelies and South Koreans had an interesting talk about their views of mandatory military service, as a few of them had just completed their time in the army. Most people we have met in Korea seem quite resentful of the years they are forced to dedicate to the military, whereas the four from Israel all spoke about their time in the army as if it held some of the best memories of their lives. Anyways- interesting to think about how countries motivate a sense of patriotism and desire to serve into their citizens.

As a prairie girl, I guess any change in elevation seems to awe me, but the streams weaving through the mountains, and the steep slopes topped by little villages in the distance would have impressed even the toughest critics. The humidity was extreme (which I used as an excuse for my insane sweating hehe), but a powerful little waterfall in the middle of the hike was a perfect escape from the heat.

We spent the night in a indigenous mountain tribe village. Their traditional housing is raised huts, in which one generally lives (in tight quarters) with most of their extended family. The family we stayed with made a delicious dinner of curry, veggies, and lychee fruit. Mmmmm....


We hiked out of the village the next morning to an elephant camp, where I rode on my first elephant! Their trunks were adorable- always snuffling around for snacks. We followed up an already incredible day with some whitewater rafting and bamboo rafting on a nearby river.

Later on that week, we spent a couple of days driving west past Mae Hong Son, where we took a boat close to the border of Myanmar to visit some of the Karen Long Neck hilltribe villages. The Karen have long been living in Thailand as refugees of Myanmar, but recently the Thai government as recognized them as residents/citizens of Thailand. The women in these villages begin wearing these coils around their necks, forearms, and calves from as young as 5 years old, although we were told in the village we visited that the rings are not mandatory. Their purpose was originally for protection, and communities were losing many women to foreign "businessmen" who would essentially kidnap the women to take them home as brides. The distinctive rings make the women much more identifiable, and therefore offer some protection against these kidnappers.

Karen Long Neck hill tribe village

Long Neck woman living in the village

Bali, Indonesia

In August 2006, Tom and I took our first holiday out of Korea to Bali, Indonesia. Bali had everything- fantastic snorkelling, adorable wild monkeys, volcanoes, mountains, beaches, temples, and great food! It was truly an incredible holiday.

On the first day of the vacation, we spent a day snorkelling, and exploring a wildlife sanctuary tucked away on a little island south of the main island of Bali. Although the snorkelling wasn't the greatest, the wildlife sanctuary more than made up for it. They had a turtle breeding ground providing shelter for hundreds of turtles from a day old, to 150 years!! The turtle in the photo below was one of the oldest at the sanctuary.



We checked out some of the many incredible Hindu and Buddhist temples scattered throughout the island. Indonesia is exclusively Muslim, other than Bali, which integrates its traditional customs (which are still strong in modern Bali) with a combination of Buddhism and Hinduism. The stone carvings in the temples, often on which monkeys were perches, frequently feature the face of Barong, who is supposedly king of the good spirits in Balinese culture.

Dreamland Beach made for some nice swimming, although it was a bit rough in the strong surf! I did a much better job at collecting sand in my bathing suit than stayign aflot- that's for sure. We also gave boogie boarding a try. Unfortunately, I wasn't as successful as I had hoped- it looks deceivingly easy! But between my attempt at holding my bikini bottoms up, my bikini top down, and clutching onto the board, steering clear of the people playing along the shore was not really an option. I had a knack for faceplanting into the sand, anyways.

My personal highlight during the trip was a fantastic dance and chant, performed by about 30 men in traditional Balinese clothing, at the top of a cliff overlooking theocean as the sun set- truly incredible. Funny Story: Before the performance began, Tom and I were walking along a path along the edge of the cliff, monkey watching. As we were taking some photos, a curious little monkey (Curious George perhaps?) jumped on Tom's head and stole his glasses!! The little bugger then ran away, and started chewing on them, while sitting on a branch hanging off the cliff just out of reach. A team of a couple of Balinese men chased after the monkey- seriously hanging off the edge of the cliff, and retrieved the glasses for us! It was so great. But Tom had to wear nasty glasses all sticky with saliva, and missing ear pads for the rest of the day.

Close to the end of the trip, we decided to do a midnight hike up to the second highest volcano on the island. armed with flashligts and water, we started the hike at about 3am. After the swealtering heat and constant sweat dripping down me for the rest of the trip, the cold temperatures were a welcome respite from the heat. We reached the top of the volcano while it was still dark. Since this volcano is a common tourist destination, they have built a little shack on the top, where you can cook using steam heat produced by the volcano. Our guide cooked us some eggs, which we dined on while watching the sun rise illumunate the mountains surrounding us.

North Korea!!

Much to our shock, we saw an advertisement for a South Korean tour company doing regular hiking trips into the Geumgung (Diamond) Mountains of North Korea. Up until this point, I hadn't realized that the country was open to any tourism, but actually they have seen more than 3,000,000 visitors since opening the border in the east province to hiking!! Anyways, I was very excited to sign up for this trip- to see a country that few people will ever get to enter.

Anyways, North Korea itself is extremely close to Seoul. The DMZ is approximately 80 km from the city itself, and several tunnels have been found under the DMZ that reduce this distance even further. The area open to tourism, however, is right on the east coast of the country, and although it was only 150km away, the drive there took all night! how I miss the prairies!!!

After passing through the many layers of barbed wire fencing and the hundreds of soldiers stationed on either side of the border, we got off the bus- not quite as rested as we had hoped- at the immigration building. After an hour or so of getting all the necessary paperwork done, we boaded a new, "North Korean friendly" bus, and headed into the little tourist town they have build for this commercial endeavour.

The area was seriously incredibly beautiful- some of the most spectacular scenery I have seen. Unfortunately, it was pretty foggy the whole time we were there, so the views were a little limited, but whenever the winds blew the clouds away, it was breathtaking! The guides told us that the area sees only about 10 clear days a year!! Insane!! But since Kim Jung Il controls the weather, we know who to blame for that one!!! Another quest for Team America??? Could be, could be...

So, the majority of the weekend was spent hiking with a guide infront of us and behind us, and tons of North Korean soldiers in the bush ready to attack!! No joke. It was pretty creepy.

In the evening, we stayed at a really nice hotel, with an enormous painting of Kim Jung Il and Kim Il Sung in front of it (see below). Photos taken of the two men- staues, paintings, etc, muct be taken in a specific way, so there are people there who take the photos for you to make sure that you get their entire bodies in the photos. Very weird. Like the rest of the country.


Unfortunately, we didn't get to see any North Korean villages, or talk to any North Koreans. Generally, there are South Koreans working in the tourist area, who pretty much serve all of the needs of the tourists. We did speak to a couple of North Koreans who were our guides for the hike, but it was really limited. I was surprised ot find out that they do learn English at school- seems like it would have very limited use in a country that forbids the travel of its citizens, and severely limits tourism. But what do I know.

Anyways, the weekend was fantastic- great hiking and great people! And we can rest easy knowing that we have done our part to fund Kim Jung Il's crazy plans for world takeover. Hahaha.

But no, in all seriousness it is such an insane regime up there, and being here,it has been sad to see what occurs to a country divided- Korea is the only divided country at the moment, and it's so sad how drastically different the lives are of the people in the South compared with the people in the North. I read a book a little while ago called "The Aquariums of PyongYang", which is an autobiography about a young boy's experience living in a North Korean gulag for 10 years, and his subsequent escape from the country. A heartbreaking, but eye-opening read. Anyways, I'd definitely recommend it.

Fire Festival at Jeju-do

This weekend we took off to an island south of the mainland called Jeju-do. This trip was offered through another English tour company, and given the massive language barrier, we figured that it was easier to stick with the guided option. (As of yet, all I can do is ask for things in a restaurant, and say please and ‘mandarin orange’- the latter of which I’ve found most useful). The group met at Seoul’s smaller airport (still 3x larger than Winnipeg) Saturday morning. Everyone seemed nice from the preliminary chatting, and shortly after we boarded the plane.

We landed in Jeju-do 50 minutes later, boarded the bus and headed off the Fire Festival. The festival was in celebration of the first full moon of the lunar New Year. The festival grounds were pretty cool- lots of tents set up with shops and weird Korean food, a ring for pony fighting, a stage, and a really steep hill with huge pyres decorating its face. We hiked up the hill, and walked around the surrounding area, being careful not to trip on the cords attached to the fireworks.

Only after we felt like we had spent a sufficient portion of the 7 hours allotted to the festival, did we venture back to the festival grounds, hoping to meet up with some of the others from our trip. We bumped into a British guy we met on the plane and shared a bottle of Soju (Korean alcohol), before heading over to the stage.

Things were finally getting rolling, and there was enough dancing and singing and Korean pop music to go around. In the crush of people on the field we also found another guy from our trip, so the four of us watched as huge torches were handed out to the audience. The torch bearers marched happily over to the large pyres built at the bottom at the hill, and on cue with the fireworks, everything was lit at once. It was pretty amazing- huge amounts of fireworks were being shot off from the top of the hill, while the bonfires raged all over its face. It looked like the whole hill was burning and exploding with fireworks; we were all very impressed! A couple of girls from our group were among the torch carries, and they said it felt like they were in the middle of WWIII up there. Things finally cooled down an hour later, and we made our way back to the bus, along with the 10,000 Koreans at the festival.

We drove to the cabins where we would be spending the night, tossed our stuff in our rooms, and headed out to the courtyard for a barbeque and drinks. I was ravenous at that point, since lunch at the festival had consisted of fried pork. Unfortunately, dinner was a repeat performance, so myself and the other vegetarians/choose-itarians were relegated to the drink and canned fruit-cocktail table. Needless to say, the effects of the alcohol were not exactly dampened by the fruity syrup mix. We were all rowdy, playing games and chatting late into the night. I engaged in some kind of chase with a dog and another group member which resulted in large bruises, and a tear in my jeans, but unfortunately, no one really knows that details of that. All I can say is the next day we all paid for our night of hitting the sauce.

Sunday morning was ushered in by the glorious sounds of our group leader, yelling at us in an all-too-cheerful voice to get up and embrace the day. Unfortunately there were no tasty treats for breakfast; the only options to nurse our hangovers were the sour oranges from the trees in the back. This was cool though, since I’ve never eaten an orange off an orange tree.
We all boarded the bus, hungry, hung-over, and a little tired, but excited about our first adventure of the day; horseback riding. The ranch was a close drive from our “Bed and breakfast” (which actually offered neither bed nor breakfast), and had a beautiful view. Since all of have grown accustomed to the lack of grass, trees, and animal life within Seoul ( I actually had a student tell me that if she could see any animal it would be a squirrel), we were all quite shocked to see green pastures and trees, and a view of Mount Halla in the background. Mount Halla is Korea’s tallest mountain/dormant volcano, and can be seen from all parts of Jeju-do.
We were herded into the changing area, where we were all forcibly dressed in matching outfits; cowboy boots, red jackets, and cowboy hats. Korea seriously has a need to make everything uniform- conformity’s the thing here. So, fully clad in our Texas Star ensemble, we climbed onto our horses.

The horseback riding wasn’t as fun as I had envisioned. Actually, what I had envisioned was me riding bareback on a galloping stallion, and my hair streaming behind me, over the moors of England, with Colin Firth on a horse beside me, so needless to say, trotting around a little ring was a little bit disappointing. But being the optimist I am, I reminded myself that Tom almost looks like Colin, and that a cowboy hat and boots was way better than galloping off into the country anyways. Plus, I’m not even really sure what a moor is, so really, this might have been way better. Once we did start trotting, that actually was quite scary, and by the end I was clinging onto the saddle, begging to be let off. Unfortunately, the horse-back riding did nothing to improve the state of our hangovers, so many of us felt a little sickly in the bus afterwards.

After the horseback riding we visited a traditional Korean village, but we were apparently short on time, and only stayed for 12 minutes. So I really have nothing to say about it. Surprisingly.

We headed over to the eastern coast of the island for a ferry ride. The coast line here was fantastic- a huge rocky outcropping dominated the area, which we visited next. We only had 15 minutes again, which some people used to run to the top (it was really high) but we wandered down to the water. Jeju-do is actually renowned for 3 things: wind, rock, and women. We had only seen the first two so far, which had disappointed some of the men. Apparently there are a lot of women there who were widowed during the Korean war (I think this is the story) and now they are skin-divers living on Jeju-do. These women dive deep into the ocean apparently all year to collect shellfish.

The ferry ride was our next stop. We tried two times to get on the ferry- but the first time they just denied us for no apparent reason. All I knew was that we were moving forward, and then someone yelled “Retreat, retreat” and we all had to shuffle backwards off the ferry. The next time, we did manage to fight our way on. It wasn’t much of a victory, however, since the top of the ship was freezing and way too windy, and the bottom was sickly warm and smelled like fish, but we managed. The ride was pretty cool though- we went out to a nearby island that was all carved out by the wind and water, and then turned into this inlet, that was really high and echo-y. Then we turned around and headed back to the mainland where (we think) we saw some of the skin-diving women diving off a really high ledge of the cliff.

Back on land, we got back on the bus to head to the airport. By this time we were shaky with hunger, but fortunately we had a pit stop at a restaurant before heading home. And, lucky for us, once again they served fried pork. Mmmmmm! We did manage to find a small convenience store after the meal, which we almost completely bought out of all its chips and ice cream bars- it was seriously my life saver.

Hwacheon Ice-Fishing Festival

Well, after many consecutive weekends spent glued to the computer screen, playing Warcraft (yes, I know- I whined about Tom playing, but he got me addicted!!), Tom and I finally tore ourselves away and signed up for a trip with a travel group to a winter festival in Hwacheon, Korea. Our wake up call was at 6:00, and we were very tempted to ignore it and continue sleeping, since we had been up late the night before with some friends. After a couple of rounds with the snooze button, we dragged ourselves out of bed to catch the subway to the meeting place. The bus ride out was a fairly uneventful 3 hours- most people slept. I played FreeCell on our sweet Korean cell-phone, which Tom has somehow made to sound like a sword being pulled out of it's scabbard when it opens (it's his new favourite toy).

Hwacheon is close to the Eastern side of Korea, and it's about 30km south of the DMZ. The town has a population of 30,000- 12,000 of which are people in the army!! It was kind of like a cold Folk Fest, with a few modifications; ice replaced the gross mud, clean Koreans replaced the dirty hippies, and speakers blaring weird Korean pop songs and the odd Kenny G. tune replaced the folkie alternative music. So really, you can see the many similarities.

So, we started off our eventful day ice fishing. No one in our group was particularly successful, although I did see a few fish swimming. Eventually a Korean man came with a cooler full of fish and told everyone in the group to take a fish and put it on their hook and get their photo taken. I guess that they had little faith in our fishing skills. Not that we exactly proved them wrong, but whatever.

We spent the next few hours riding on these crazy ice bikes with skis instead of wheels in the back, and walking around the festival grounds, before we met back up with the group for our main event. On the Adventure Korea website, the activity had been advertised as bare hands fishing, and I had pictured us standing beside a tank with our sleeves rolled up, trying to grab a fish. It turned out to be nothing of the sort. When they gave us shorts, T-shirts and sandals and pointed us in the direction of the change room, I was worried. Our group of 20 foreigners left the change room together, shyly staying close to the other group members. There were many Koreans gathered around us and the tank which we were apparently supposed to be jumping into in a few minutes, who looked as though they never missed this event for the world. We were definitely the hit show at the circus. So, we all edged around this freezing cold, icy pool, and jumped in when the gong was hit.

After posing for some pictures, trying to keep as much of our body our of the water as possible, we began the bare hands fishing even. It was somewhat of a mad scramble. They told us we couldn’t get out until we had caught two fish, which we were supposed to store in our pocket. I’m not sure if they were being serious. Once I started I got really into it, and I ended up catching 6 fish!!!! With my hands!!!! Keep in mind that Tom (who grew up living by a lake) caught 2, and no one else caught more than 4! I guess I’ll never go hungry (Although I was somewhat disgusted at the thought of eating it). I threw them out to the eager spectators, but my hands were so cold that I could barely throw- I ended up hitting one woman in the face with a fish, knocking her camera out of her hands. Woops. With the remaining movement we had in our hands and feet, we all scampered out of the water and into the sauna/change room, when we huddled for the next 25 minutes to get warm.

After our body temperature had warmed to sufficiently above hypothermic, Tom and I decided to hike up the nearby mountain. The path was ridiculously icy and slippery, but we got out of the crush of people that is Korea, which was definitely worth sacrificing our safety. The view was worth the effort, anyways. We began the treacherous walk down, and emerged safely to meet up with our group for the drive home.