Last day in Korea!

Well, here I am on my last day! It seems to have gone by fast, but in the first three months here I would have told you time couldn't go by fast enough! I've had a wonderful time and met some amazing people, some I hope to keep in touch with for a long time! I'm packed and ready to go, a day ahead of schedule for once! Usually I leave it until the very last minute, forgetting what a horrible chore it is to pack up one's life. Fortunately, Kirsta and Dante came over last night and inherited some things. Dante went away with more food than he could carry, and Kirsta left with a suitcase full of stuff! So yes, I am ready to go.

I'm a little afraid to go home actually! I don't know what to expect. I think things have changed a lot since I've been gone. That, or everything is the same and I'm the one who has changed! I am looking forward to the peace and quiet of the country again (I think). I'll probably have reverse culture shock, but that is actually one of the parts I'm looking forward to the most! It will be so interesting, and possibly hilarious, to see our country from the eyes of a foreigner. I just know the first time I'm entirely surrounded by white people I'm going to say "WHOA! There are tons of foreigners here!" before I fully realize what I'm saying. Don't you worry, I'll keep you posted with all my crazy thoughts and perceptions about our Canadian culture.

I'll fly out of Korea tomorrow (Thursday) at 11am, and arrive home at 5 pm...on...Thursday? Ah the magic of time zones. I'll be travelling 16 hours, but it only looks like 6. I wish!

This is what I will miss the most. What a wonderful farewell party! These people are amazing.

Thanks for a FANTASTIC last night! <3

Goodbye Korea!

Thailand day 6 and 7

On day 6 (Dec. 22nd) we woke up early and had our last breakfast on the beach. My pineapple pancake was delicious! They used sweetened condensed milk as a topping instead of syrup. YUM! Goodbye beautiful beach!We took the ferry back to the mainland and got on the bus for another long trip to Bangkok. Our bus was stopped on the highway at one point, and the Thai police boarded. They had a fancy video camera, and apparently were filming some kind of promotional thing about how they are keeping life safe. Strange. It was another looooong bus ride, and they were playing a horrible movie. Horrendous even. I tried to sleep as much as possible.
When we got back to Bangkok we had a nice meal and made sure to get some more delicious fruit shakes. I think my favourite is the lemon. We shopped a bit on Khao San road and I improved my bartering skills. Then it was off to bed to be nice and rested for our last day!

Day 7 began early. We tried to catch the bus to the weekend market but kept failing and getting different directions from everyone. We decided to have breakfast instead, and then get in a taxi to get across town. Our taxi driver was really nice, he was giving us Thai lessons and we were helping him with his English. The ride took forever because of horrible Bangkok traffic, but we finally got to our stop in just over an hour. The next step was to take the sky train the rest of the way to the market. It was so nice and modern, and definitely more interesting than taking the subway. I just had to snap a shot of this sign to the left. So different from the usual pregnant, elderly, disabled version!

Once at the market we shopped for hours. Bartering skills were honed to perfection, and many great deals were had. It was so much fun! Everything was really nice, but also really cheap. We stopped for a coffee break at one point, and that is the only picture I have from inside the market. You can kind of get an idea of what it was like if you look just past Chris's head.

We chose to take the sky train and taxi combination again on the way back, and were greeted with a funny sight in the station. A relaxed stray dog was just lying around in the station, taking a nap wherever he pleased. Everyone seemed to love him, and were taking pictures of him feeling so free and at ease. What added to it was the fact that only a few metres away there was a "no dogs" sign. You can see it if you look closely.

We got back to Khao San just in time to have a quick last meal, grab our bags, and get on the bus to the airport. We were so sad to be leaving all this wonderful food and pleasant climate behind. Here are photos of the last meal. We ate at our favourite place once again. I had pad thai and a lemon shake, while Chris had spicy coconut soup and an apple shake.





So there you have it! Finally the entire adventure has been posted! Thailand was absolutely amazing, and I would go back again in a heartbeat! :)

Thailand days 4 and 5

Day four can be summed up as follows:
bus, bus bus. Walk, yay?....ew...walk walk, YAY! Sleep.

Obviously, I can't leave it at that, lest I be accused of slacking off by my brother. So I shall expand on the tediousness.

We spent FAR too long on the bus to Koh Chang. Thankfully it was a full-sized bus and not one of the hellish mini ones. We arrived at the Ferry around 2:28. It left at 2:30. The "15-minute" ride took an hour. Masters of planning that we are, terror struck our hearts when we arrived at the island to find that there were no beaches in sight. Chris and I had assumed that we'd just show up and be within walking distance to all the beaches. Ha. We decided to follow people our own age who were hopping into pickup truck taxis, and just go wherever they were going. We had gotten advice on a place to stay earlier, and confirmed it with one of the guys on our truck. We were off to Lonely Beach, to find the Treehouse huts!

Apparently it was pretty far. It took 40 minutes to get there. We got off the truck and had to trek through the jungle a bit, following randomly placed signs pointing to Treehouse. We arrived, and booked a hut for the evening. It really wasn't as nice as we expected. Even the other people staying there were sketchy. We got a very bare minimum hut, with outdoor bathrooms and a torn mosquito net and nothing but a tiny dirty fan and rock-hard bed inside. As I looked around, I imagined being torn to pieces by bloodthirsty spiders while we slept. Oh well, for $6 what can one expect?

We changed into beach clothes and set off to relax, finally! On our way to the beach, we stumbled upon....the actual Treehouse. Turns out that yes, we were staying in random sketch-town. We continued walking and noticed that almost everywhere else was nicer than the place we were staying. We ditched it so fast, and got a nicer place on the other end of the beach. It was considerably more expensive, but also proportionally nicer! Here is the lovely view from our porch at sunset.So ends day four.

Day five was lovely and relaxing. When we awoke in the morning, we were greeted once more with the loveliness of our view.
We had a delicious breakfast on the beach, and then set about the business of having fun. There was some swimming, and lazing about, and then a kayak excursion. Look at Chris, doesn't he look so happy? Ah, the day was so full of promise. We rented a kayak and some snorkels and set off for one of the nearby islands. Unfortunately, the island wasn't as nearby as we thought. Also, the waves weren't as small. Also, I wasn't as fun. I decided that I'd had quite enough of that for the day, so we headed back. The afternoon was spent snorkeling and cutting ourselves on coral. When enough blood was lost, it was time to read on the beach. We also visited the Treehouse for lunch, had a fantastic deliciousness fest, and decided that our meals would be there from now on. The rest of our time was basically spent trying to get hungry so we could go back and eat again. To the right is one of many delicious shakes, with a beautiful orchid decoration.

Oh yeah....Christmas! I kept forgetting it was winter.

Beautiful sunset on Lonely Beach.

Back to the Treehouse. It was SO windy, my camera almost got blown over!

As you can see, we went back to the Treehouse for supper, and met some of the people from the truck the day before. We ended up drinking buckets with them for a few hours. Buckets are basically an entire mickey of rum plus red bull and coke. This costs about $5. Chris and I actually finished one, though as you might have guessed he did most of the work.
On the way back to our bungalow that night, we saw a fire dancer on the beach and enjoyed the gorgeous stars. I haven't seen them look that nice in a long time. We were also surprised to see phosphorescent algae glowing blue in the water. It looked like little blue fireflies swimming.

Back to the bungalow we go, to rest up for another hideous day of travel!

Thailand day 3

Day three (Tues Dec 19th) started off right. With PUPPIES! There were so many puppies and dogs just running around our cabins. Now that is my kind of place. I had an alright sleep, but did wake up a few times to make sure there were no monstrous beasts in our room. We had a nice breakfast and then were off to the elephant camp again for a ride through the jungle. Today's ride was a much tamer affair. The elephants were freshly bathed (ie: not smelly), and we even had seats! Those who hadn't been bareback the day before were rather nervous despite having the chair, whereas Chris and I were perfectly relaxed. Almost flying off an elephant's head going down a cliff really increases your danger threshold. In fact, I craved a little more excitement from this elephant ride, but was content to relax and enjoy the sunshine.

Here's the view I had from where I sat:

And here you can see the nice calm terrain of this day's elephant adventure:

After the ride was over, we were ushered to the river bank where we got on a raft and lazily floated down the river Kwai for a good hour. Ahhhh, relaxing.
When we got to a certain point in the river, a motorboat arrived and speedily took us back to our riverside guesthouse for lunch. So convenient! But of course, all this relaxation comes at a price. We were let off on the opposite bank, where it became clear that we needed to cross a bridge to get to our lunch. No problem, looked like a pretty standard bridge from the bottom. Off we go!
The beginning is a little sketchy, as you can see, but it was no match for the bridge itself! GAH!

This is the only shot I could capture before I decided to put my camera away and concentrate on making it across properly. Yes, it did get worse! Of course, the bridge also swayed to and fro, like any good danger bridge should! Weeee! At least we earned our lunch, which we readily devoured before leaving for the much anticipated tiger temple.

Yes, tiger temple!

I always thought they'd feel fuzzier!

They were pretty much all asleep, since tigers are nocturnal animals. I still touched them pretty darn lightly, just in case! I know how fast my cats can whip into action when awoken, and I certainly don't need to experience the full-scale version of kitty wrath. When Chris and I were out of the tiger area, we heard a loud growl and saw one almost bite a volunteer! Oooh my!

The tiger temple is actually a preserve for many types of animals, so Chris and I had fun exploring the grounds. We even made some new friends!

I LOVED this guy. I could watch his nonchalant chewing for hours. Tee hee hee!

After the tiger temple, we headed back to Bangkok and immediately set about eating. That is what one must do when in a country with such amazing food! Chris ate a snakefish, and I will spare you all and not post the picture. Instead, enjoy this aesthetically pleasing iced coffee.

Stay tuned for Day 4, aka "Waste-o-rama the 1st" or "Ughhh are we there yet?".

Last Night

This, was SO fun.

My new toy

Yes yes, I know, you're waiting for the rest of Thailand! I've been terrible at posting lately.


I blame THIS.


I'm working hard to learn all the features, and up my skills (which were rendered nonexistent)... (or perhaps, never existed haha). Hence, I have not -and will not- post any pictures I've taken until I am pleased. I am a harsh critic....so it might be awhile.

UPDATE: OK, I've posted a few now. Check them out if you want.

Camera aside, it is special class time at school again. "Special" meaning that the children cannot possibly hope to relax on their month long winter break. Oh heck no, time for MORE school. Longer classes, bring it on! Poor, poor kids. I rather enjoyed growing up on the lazy end of things.

Thailand day 2

We woke up nice and early on this morning to catch the mini-bus to Kanchanaburi. It took a good couple of hours before we got to our first destination, the WWII cemetery full of foreign soldiers. A very sad way to begin the day. We then headed to see the remains of the original river Kwai bridge, along with the new one. There were plenty of tourists walking on the bridge, which was a pretty sketchy thing to do if you ask me. The train that uses those tracks is still in operation, and we found out the hard way! It doesn't move very fast or anything, and they give plenty of time for us to get out of the way, but it still seems like such a bad idea!

Later on we got to take a ride on the actual train. It was filled with Thai schoolchildren on their way to go camping in the mountains. I liked their uniforms, they reminded me of girl guides. We tried to have a conversation with the girls whose bench we shared, but they were very shy about their English ability.

When we got to our stop, we loaded into a pickup truck and went to a floating restaurant for lunch. This would also be our accommodation for the evening (there were cabins on land too). The food was simple but delicious. I noticed the couple next to us squirting their food with a mysterious red substance before eating it. They were absolutely coating the food with this red paste before mixing it all up into a glob. I knew then that they MUST be Korean. Who else would hide the taste of food with strong hot pepper paste? Well folks, I was right. They were a really nice Korean couple from Seoul. We had a little conversation with them over lunch. It was actually comforting to hear a foreign language we are somewhat familiar with! Thai is a rather difficult language to wrap one's head around.

Our destination after lunch was the Saiyok Noi Waterfall. We spent a few hours here wading and taking in the beauty. Chris and I also hiked up the mountain a bit and explored a little cave. Chris was going right down into the guts of it, finding little tunnels and such. We headed back down to the waterfall and got ourselves a snack. There was a bunch of ladies sitting under a tent cutting really thin slices of banana and rolling them into a loop. These rolls were then deep fried (as shown in the photo) to make fresh crispy banana chips. We just had to buy a bag, and were glad we did because they were fantastic!

When we got back to our accommodation, our guide told us that there was the option of going to bathe elephants. Chris and I weren't sure if we wanted to pay the extra money to go, as we already had an elephant ride booked for the next day. We decided that it isn't every day one gets the option to bathe an elephant, so off we went! Boy, am I ever glad we did! We got to ride this big smelly (they needed that bath) elephant bareback! It was a bit tough to get used to at first, since the only way I could hold on was by squeezing my legs and resting my hands on its head. You'd be surprised at how bristly elephants feel! The scariest part by far was going down the mountain to the lake. It was REALLY steep and I was at the very front of the elephant. I felt bad for it, since I kept jabbing my knees behind its ears so I wouldn't fly off! Our elephant kept going off track to grab leaves off branches, and we did not appreciate it when she did this on the way down! The steepness meant that we couldn't see the ground past the elephant's head, so we just had to assume that the elephant didn't want to fall off the cliff any more than we did. Once we got down to the water, we were given scrub brushes and told to scrub all the mud off. The elephant would dunk itself underwater every once in a while, soaking us in the process. She would also spray water out of her trunk on command, and being in the front I was the one who got sprayed. It didn't taste great, let me tell you!
In the photo on the left, you can see that I'm about to get doused yet again.
Once the bathing was over, we headed back up the mountain. Going up was a lot less stressful, as we could see where we were going, and I had more elephant buffer zone toward the rear than I did at the front! Funny thing was, the second our elephant got out of the water, she started rubbing herself all over the sandy rocks at the bottom of the mountain and got completely filthy again! Argh!
When we got back to our accommodations, Chris and I immediately headed for the shower. We stank like elephant! As I opened the door to our room, I saw something scuttle under the bed. Oh, great. I thought it was probably a cockroach, and I got on my hands and knees to investigate but I couldn't see anything. Chris couldn't see anything, period. His glasses were still in the pocket of our elephant guide, who was now deep in the jungle with our elephant. Whatever it was, it could wait until after the shower! As I was in the bathroom getting prepared, wringing elephant water out of my clothes and washing off mud, I casually looked around. Up in the corner, there was a HUGE spider. HUGE people. It was easily the size of the palm of your hand, and I was NOT prepared to deal with such things. I am already ridiculously afraid of spiders as it is, be they 1 inch or less. I cannot sanely be in a room with a cousin 5 times the size! I evacuated rather quickly, leaving blind Chris in the bathroom trying to convince me it wasn't a spider at all. He was counting the legs, and swore there were only 6. He made me go back in and count the damn legs! There were 7 dammit, and I know a spider when I see one so just KILL IT ALREADY!!! He bravely shut the bathroom door and went about attacking the beast. His only weapon was water, and a bucket used for flushing the toilet. The sounds I heard from the bathroom were horrifying.
*SPLASH*
"AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa!"
*WHACK* *WHACK*
"Damn, this thing is FAST! AAAaa! Aaa!"
*WHACK* *WHACK*
.........
*WHACK*

Being the helpful person I am, I screamed in sympathy outside the bathroom, whilst standing on the bed (remember, there's something on the floor). With the final whack, Chris declared a temporary victory. Having no glasses, he couldn't actually tell if he had really killed the spider. He thought he saw two pieces fall, but wasn't sure. Guess who had to investigate? Ugggghhhh. We found the disgusting pieces alright, it was dead. We also found the mysterious missing leg in the toilet. Ew.

I had the fastest cold shower in the history of time, preferring to smell like elephant than be in a place where a 5-inch spider could just waltz in through the holes in the wall.

Once the spider was gone, we were ready to face what was under the bed. It turned out to be a super cute little gecko! Awwww! We tried to get it outside, but weren't able to and went to eat supper instead. We could get it out later. No harm having a cute gecko in the room. A HUGE spider though? He can't hang out. No, he'd probably rifle through our stuff while we were gone.

At dinner, we sat next to two Italian guys. We tried to have a pleasant conversation with them, but their English was very basic. After a few attempts, we gave up and ate in silence until I thought to try French. It is more similar to Italian than English, after all. It turned out one of the guys spoke perfect French! We ended up talking to them for many hours, having a blast and translating between four languages all the while. Later on, they even helped us catch the gecko in our room and put it outside.

It was certainly a fun-filled and memorable day! I think it was the best of the entire trip.

New Year's 2007

New Year's was actually a blast! I consider it the most overrated holiday ever, and am always surprised when it turns out to be genuinely fun. Chris and I were supposed to go skiing, but I still had enough death-virus in me to impede my waking up at 4:30am. Instead, we went to COEX mall in Seoul and shopped for a bit. Afterwards we went to Dan's house for a pre-party. The crowd was mainly Korean guys, but I got along with them just fine and we had a great time. The fellows to the left are Dong Wan (I renamed him Don Juan), LJ and Nam, who is one of Chris' bboy friends. We spent most of the night with these guys. They're hilarious!

After a good bit of time at Dan's, the party (to the right) moved to Hongdae. We cut it so close, and made it to the bar at 11:56. Right on time to have the countdown. We were also right on time to get super grossed-out by army guys, so we left the bar soon after. We just used it for the countdown. Yeah, we're jerks like that. Also, I was embarrassed for us all, as a culture. Ew. The difference between Western-filled bars and Korean-filled bars is rather startling indeed. Yes, you can look forward to my attitude when I get home! ;)

Rather than head to another bar, we went out for Korean BBQ. Nam's friend Joann joined us there. She's Chinese, so she's going to tell me how the heck I prepare the food I bought from China.

Me in China: "Duhhhh I'm going to buy ALL this yummy food! Weeeee!"

Me in Korea: "Oooo I shall now prepare the Maladofou....uh....instructions in Chinese....idiot."

My enthusiasm gets the best of me at times.

Random cute photo!

After the delicious food, we went to a noraebang. I was pretty excited, since I've never been to one with Korean people before. It was a riot! Everyone sang excellently (except me and Chris). The time just flew by, and before we knew it, it was 4:30am. Chris and I hopped in a cab and headed home, and actually managed to have a conversation with the cabbie for a while. He told us our "Korean speak is #1"!

Wicked.