Sokcho

Halfway up to the waterfall.

This last weekend was Chuseok, which is roughly the Korean equivalent of Thanksgiving back in the States.  For me and several other fortunate souls, this meant a 4 day weekend.  Rather than spend 4 solid days in a drunken stupor in Seoul, I elected to spend the weekend in Sokcho with Trevor, Michael, and some other new friends.  Sokcho is a city on the east coast of Korea, about 3-5 hours from Seoul, depending on traffic.  There are some beautiful mountains that come right up to a sort-of-okay coastline, so you have the beach AND the mountains.

We arrived via bus late Thursday night.  We walked into the first hotel we saw, about two blocks from the ocean, and asked about accommodations.  They said it would be 40,000 won PER PERSON PER NIGHT!  This may sound reasonable, but Korea is generally cheap as hell, so we walked on down a block closer to the ocean.  An older woman told us that it would be 40,000 won a night at her hotel for all 5 of us.  This sounded too good to be true, so after asking her in my broken Korean about a dozen times, we handed her 40,000 won and went to bed.

Me standing at the top of a mountain, the ocean behind me.

Friday we hung out on the beach and ate some seafood.  The beach is really nothing special there, but I was still happy to be sitting in sand next to the ocean, even if the sand was sort of big and grainy.  Trevor and Kristen showed up midday and we all went for pizza.  I think there was drinking too, but I can’t recall, so there probably was.

Saturday we took a 15 minute bus trip up to the mountains.  You start in a valley in the center of all these mountains, and there is the biggest Buddha I have ever laid eyes on.  After some debate, we decided to hike up to a waterfall first, and then take the tram to the top of one of the peaks.Saturday we took a 15 minute bus trip up to the mountains.  You start in a valley in the center of all these mountains, and there is the biggest Buddha I have ever laid eyes on.  After some debate, we decided to hike up to a waterfall first, and then take the tram to the top of one of the peaks.

I had to do this twice for Trevor to get this picture.

From the end of the cable car, it was another 20 minutes or so to run up to the peak.  The view was spectacular though.  We then rushed back down the very steep final ascent to the less steep almost-final ascent, so that we could run and catch the last cable car, rather than having to hike the whole way back down the mountain after sunset.

The next day, we caught a pretty early bus back to Seoul.  The return trip was a little bit longer, but not much.  All in all, it was a good trip.  I’ve sort of provided a very abridged version, as it has taken me FOREVER to actually finish this draft and post it (a solid 2 months now).  I apologize for any errors or omissions.  If you have questions, COMMENT!

Of course the crocs went in. It wouldn't be safe without a flotation device.

PS.  On the way back down the waterfall hike, I made a decision to be legend… wait for it…. DARY!  The water coming down the mountain from the spring is EXACTLY AS COLD AS IT LOOKS.

The Philippines in Three Parts (sort of)

Act 3: Oh my god I can’t believe it’s taken me nearly 2 months to finish posting these.

I returned to Manila that Thursday night, and spent the rest of my time there hanging out with Peter, Jill and Vic.  I should have committed this all to paper/blog sooner, as I’m forgetting details already… of course, that could also be related to some of the local medicinal herbal treatments available in Manila…

Friday while Peter was at class, I was sent to get a full body massage at the spa on base.  I have never had a professional full body massage, and it was really good.  It was also a bit awkward, because she didn’t speak English and she unintentionally (I assume) grazed me a few times.  Decipher that as you will.

Friday night (or maybe Saturday night) we went to the Embassy, which is a super-club in Manila (and not a consulate).  It was a lot of fun, but I got really sleepy really fast from the chemical cocktail in my skull.  The DJs were amazing and the place filled up quite quickly.  It was a bit disconcerting – and strangely comforting – that they had more security than some small military installations.  Apparently people used to get attacked and/or die there.

The rest of the weekend was filled with the mostly mundane.  I didn’t see a whole lot of touristy stuff in Manila, because I made the trip primarily to see one of my best and oft-missed friends in the world.  We just hung out, took communion together, and talked about life and the future.  I’m already itching to see Peter again, as well as his brother and his girlfriend.

Also, go to the Philippines if you ever have the chance.  Seriously, most everything I ate there was delicious and amazing, the people were nice, and it reminded me of Latin America more than Asia, which was a refreshing experience.

Also, I ate a baby duck:

It is a fertilized and cooked duck egg. Apparently it's good bar food and a mild aphrodisiac?

The Philippines in Three Parts (sort of)

Act 2.5: I Couldn’t Fit Bora in One Post

As previously noted, I scheduled a ridiculously early flight.  By the time I had accomplished all 24 steps of the travel process to Boracay, it was only 7:45am.  They let me check in early at the Marzon, and I took a nap.  I woke up around 11am and went for a stroll down the beach.  I like to walk the full length of a beach when I first get there, I’m not sure why.  Restless feet I guess.

On my way back, it started raining.  I saw the clouds coming in off the end of the island, but I was too far away to get back to my hotel in time.  I also didn’t care, as I already had on my bathing suit.  I strolled back to the my little resort sopping wet and got a bowl of pig and rice at the Marzon Cafe.

As a sidenote, I stayed at the Marzon on the advice of a friend of a Trevor’s that I only met twice.  As a result, I only knew Shadiyah and Dave vaguely, and I had never met anyone else from their group of 10 people until that afternoon.  Fortunately, they were a solid bunch and I was quickly assimilated.  This proved to be not just pleasant, but necessary, since my coworkers were at a different resort and basically did not hang out with me at all.  WTF?

Anyway, we lounged around while it rained and quickly jogged through the usual introductory conversation topics.  This is definitely one of the cool things about teaching in Korea.  Everyone is fairly accepting of teachers they’ve never met.  I’m not sure where the solidarity springs from, possibly from the fact that the average school employs a small number of English speaking teachers, and you probably get sick of them and want to meet new people eventually.  Or maybe it’s the unity that comes from everyone being a minority in a homogeneous culture all of a sudden.  Either way, it worked to my benefit, and I now had a group of friends to go drinking with on this most lovely Monday night.  We set off to find the notorious Boracay nightlife, after sampling a local sugar cane liquor called Ginebra.  It should be noted that Ginebra is extremely cheap, and while the taste is manageable, it smells like rubbing alcohol.  And no, not in the way you say a liquor smells like rubbing alcohol when it is gross.  It literally smelled exactly like rubbing alcohol.  It did mix quite well with Coke though.

Anyway, Monday night I partied like a rockstar.  I was drinking.  I was dancing.  I was not quitting.  By the time we all went home, “we” had been reduced from 10 people to 2 people by a combination of heavy drinking and exhaustion.  I saw the sunrise like an expat pro.

The forest/jungle came right up to the water.

Tuesday I went with a few other people staying at the resort and we took a tricycle ride over to Puka Shell Beach.  The water was warmer, the wind was quick and the waves were strong.  It was a beautiful little spot, and it was mostly vacant since it was off-season and all.

That night I was expecting a repeat performance of the previous evening.  Drinking and dancing all night long was the plan, however, I ended up going to bed at 10:30pm.  My recollections are hazy, but my wonderful new non-judgmental friends helped me piece together the following timeline:

I went to Happy Hour at Ngi Ngi Nu Noos.  I arrived at 5pm and drank 2 for 1 cocktails heavily with Norma, Stephanie and Tosin until 7pm.  There was bar top dancing, Tosin got behind the bar, and we made friends with some other expats on vacation from Seoul.  Things then get much much fuzzier.  Apparently at this point, I was left alone at the bar?  I then went back to the Marzon alone.  I don’t remember this at all, but I’m told that I passed all my new friends walking down the beach.  They tried to invite me along to go to the club, but I just ran through the crowd drunk as hell with my head down, saying that I had to get back to my room.  The next thing that I can remember is waking up at 5am on my bed, very sandy, and with no pants on.

The plus side is that I got up at 8am bright and early the next day.  Wednesday I just bummed around the market for a while.  I stayed at the main strip that day and I didn’t do anything to interesting.  That night, I drank heavily, of course, and enjoyed some Mongolian buffet right next to the ocean.  I don’t know exactly what happened next, but I remember going back to get money from my hotel room and falling asleep watching TV instead.

Island hopping around Boracay

Thursday I went on an island hopping trip in the morning before checking out.  We went snorkeling out in the cove where the boats come in.  It wasn’t the best coral reef in the world, and it definitely wasn’t the best reef in the Philippines, but I was on a boat in paradise so I’m not complaining.  Besides, the guy driving our boat totally dove in and came back up with an agitated and fully inflated puffer fish.  (Apparently we kept our engorged aquatic friend out of the water for a tad too long and he swam away sideways and in circles.)

This little snorkeling site, of course, involved an environmental fee.  We then went to Crystal Cove, which is a small isle off of the main island.  Crystal Cove is amazing, because there are these caves in the cliff on the one side of the island, and you can go down into these caves and snorkel out into the water from them.  It was especially exciting when we saw some sort of aquatic snake in the second cave.  The guide said it was an eel… but it looked a lot like this but smaller.

I found a friend for a few minutes

This little isle was gorgeous, and we definitely had to pay another “environmental fee” to keep it that way.  After Crystal Cove, we returned to the main island for a free buffet that was included in the island hopping trip.  At this point, I had to leave so I could check out and get my ass to the airport, but I heard that the rest of the island hopping excursion was a success.

One of the guys that worked at the Marzon gave me a lift back to the resort on his bangin’ scooter. After I finished packing, he drove me back over to the shore where all the boats are beached waiting for a full load to run back to Caticlan.  (I heard that the day after I left, one of the boats shuttling people back and forth sort of… uh… sank?)  I got back to the other island, and an extremely pushy porter “acquisitioned” my bag.  I was annoyed at first, until we got to my final tricycle ride of the trip.  The porter got us both on the tricycle for 80 pesos… nearly half of what I’d been paying all week!  His English was pretty bad, but I was able to understand the most wonderful phrase of all: “I get you Filipino price.”  I tipped that porter heavily, and then I got on a plane for Manila.

The Philippines in Three Parts

Act II: Boracay

Flying in to Caticlan

Monday morning Peter and I woke up at 4am, because I had scheduled my flight a bit early for that morning.  The flight I refer to, of course, is to Boracay.  Seeing as Peter had class all week, and I didn’t want to spend the week bumming around his house and chilling out with his mother, I decided to spend four days in a tropical paradise.  A wise decision, I think you’ll all agree.

Anyway, back to the narrative.  Manila has like, a dozen domestic airports or something ridiculous.  Fortunately, we went to the right one on the first try.  I got on a tiny tiny little airplane and flew for 35 minutes to Boracay.

At this point, I would like to out-frame a moment and lay down some back story.  Boracay is a beautiful little island, and there is no airport there.  You have to fly into Caticlan or Kalibo, and then travel to the island by bus and/or boat.  Caticlan is the fastest way to get there, but there’s a catch: every few months another plane misses the tiny runway at the Caticlan airport and blows out their tires on landing.  Now, only a couple of domestic airlines can fly into Caticlan, and they have to use the tiniest planes they have.  I’m bearing all this in mind as our pilots dive bomb through the cloud cover like fighter pilots, preparing for our final approach.

We cleared the clouds, and fortunately there was more air instead of the ground.  They leveled out a bit for a more reasonable landing, and I took the picture above, as well as a few others.  I then tucked away my camera and my sudoku book, and waited.  I gripped the armrests in fearful anticipation.  We touched down, we came to a complete stop, and we did not overshoot the runway.  I loosened my grip on the seat and heaved a heavy sigh.  Not a sigh of relief, mind you, but a sigh of disappointment.  Some mutilated landing gear wouldn’t have killed anyone, and it would have made for an AMAZING story.  Oh well, better (or worse, depending on perspective) luck next time.

Beautiful Boats

I got out of the plane, and was immediately accosted by the porters that work for tips at the airport.  Some local grabbed my baggage claim ticket before I had time to figure out he wasn’t working for the airport, and jogged off onto the tarmac (security is a bit loose in the Philippines).  I ended up giving him 20 pesos to carry my bag a total of 50 meters.  This is something I could have handled…

As I briefly mentioned prior, you have to take a boat from one island to the other.  The boats are these long makeshift creations, centering around a very slim, very long, very capsizable boat.  To avoid balance issues inherent in this design, they’ve all attached these gangling makeshift outriggers, constructed from bamboo and palm tree trunks.  They are beautiful, and the only way to the island.

The Ever-present Tricycle

After my boat ride, I paid some more “environmental fees”, and then I rode a tricycle to my resort. The tricycle, much like the boats, is the product of some serious ingenuity (as well as the need to make every peso count).  It is this combination of variables that led to a motorcycle that can transport 4-6 people at a time.  A seemingly homemade sidecar, which “comfortably” seats 4 people, is welded onto the right side of the bike.  If there are no big hills on the way to your destination, you can squeeze five in the sidecar, and a 6th person sits side-saddle on the actual motorcycle, behind the driver.  Oh yeah, there’s the driver also… plus one to all the above numbers.

I know I’m wasting words on the various modes of local transport, but this sojourn will stick in my mind for years.  It was more of a cultural immersion experience than haphazard, ad hoc public transit.  I really felt so much closer to the locals than if I’d been bottled up in a bus or a cab.

Alas, this post has gone long, and I may have to rename this series “The Philippines in Four Parts”.

The Philippines in Three Parts

Act I:  Arriving in Manila

God I missed him.

I walked out of the airport Saturday, got lost a bit, then finally found Peter Felix.  Nothing that happened before this matters. (Incidentally, I went drinking a bit Friday and only slept 3 hours before catching a 5am bus to the airport.)

After reuniting with Peter, we went back to his house, dropped off my luggage, and immediately ate the best meal I’ve had since I arrived in Asia.  The food in the Philippines is amazing.  I’ll hit the highlights as I go.

I also met Peter’s brother Vic.  It will come as no surprise at all that Vic is just as awesome as Peter.  The three of us then embarked on our journey to pick up Jill.  On the way, we indulged in an unnamed past time that Peter was notorious for stateside, and which I myself had not been able to enjoy for many months.  Having requisitioned Jill, we proceeded to drink beer and eat pizza.  Much of the day is hazy, as I was very… tired.  Peter can fill in some blanks down in the comments section.

Sunday was also quite awesometastic.  Peter’s family graciously invited me to a large family gathering at a resort south of Manila.  I had the opportunity to sample many Filipino foods, including several delicacies.  The two highlights would be (1) lechon baboy, which is an entire roast pig with the head sitting on the table and everything, and (2) dinuguan aka Pork Blood Stew.

I’m pretty sure that, upon returning to Manila that evening, there were some more environmentally friendly activities that I’m naturally having trouble remembering.  I will defer to Peter once more, in hopes that he can shine some light on things via the comment section.

Also, Peter’s car is sexy.

Two Months

I have been here approximately 2 months now.  There has been lots of drinking.  Lots.  I hang out mostly with a few of my coworkers or the illustrious Trevor Diaz and company.  Through the fog of beer and liquor though, there have been a few highlights that really stick out.

I went with Trevor and Kristen to Caribbean Bay.  Caribbean Bay is a huge water park, and it is AWESOME.  The awesomeness was compounded by the fact that Trevor and I smuggled an entire bottle of rum past the security people, and then we drank that entire bottle of rum together, like a couple of fucking waterpark pirates.  This was awesome.  You might be able to see some pictures here.  Or maybe not.  Sorry I’m too lazy to bring the pictures from facebook to wordpress.  It seemed hard.

There was also a weekend at Mudfest.  Basically, you get covered in mud and drink a lot.  I started drinking on the bus with Mike at about 9:30am.  I did not cease my imbibing until sometimes after 2 or 3am, which is to say, the day was good.  There are also pictures of that somewhere on the facebook.  More apologies, but I’m lazy.

It felt so good on my skin.

Finally, I went to the World Cup Stadium.  It was a field trip for my kindergarten students, but I was definitely the one that ran around like a giddy child.  We saw the actual locker rooms that the soccer players used, and I gave myself a second baptism in a World Cup locker room sink.  We even got to “touch” the grass!  Through I combination of language barrier and disregard for my own common sense, I was able to spend a few precious moments wallowing in soft clean Kentucky Bluegrass before the tour guide noticed and got upset with me.  My apologies to the international community for sort of shamelessly playing the “foreign card”, but it was totally worth it in this one instance.

Anyway, I’m trying to make my updates more frequent, which should be easy enough.  It’s not like I’m short on material to publish at the moment, and I’ll be collecting a whole slew of amazing stories next week in THE PHILIPPINES.  Oh yes, I will be reuniting with Peter Felix, in the flesh, and it will be THE BEST WEEK OF MY LIFE.  I will try to find the time to update while I’m in Manila/Boracay, as I’m sure there will be many stories and several posts worth of awe-inspiring, envy-eliciting, sexually-gratifying Filipino adventures.

Korea

It has been a while, and I probably should have been updating this over the last 2 weeks to give a better idea of what’s going on.  Instead, I will be giving the semi-chronological bullet-point recap of Korea and how I got here.

First, the travelling:

• I flew out of Philadelphia Sunday morning at 6am.  I sat next to Renzo all the way to San Francisco.  Renzo is a German Shepherd that sniffs for explosives.  SWEET!
• In San Fransisco I met Mae.  Mae is from Malayasia, and missed a connecting flight on her way home from working at Vale for 4 months.  She asked to borrow my computer to email her family and tell them she was okay.
• I flew to Tokyo.  The flight was long.  I watched so many movies.
• In the Tokyo airport I met Paul.  Paul is teaching here somewhere, but I’m not really sure.  He’s out in the country somewhere.  Paul and I ate sushi in the Tokyo airport while we waited to connect to Seoul.  Paul is a solid dude.
• I landed in Seoul.  I rode a bus.  I met the director of the school.  He told me my apartment isn’t ready yet.  I’m still in a motel 1 week later.

Then, the school:

• Training time is horribly disorganized here.  Oh god, my naturalistic intelligence will suffer here.  I’m sorry Howard Gardner.
• My English-speaking coworkers are solid.  Three Americans and a New Zealander.
• Teaching is mostly uneventful so far.  Oh yes, I’m already teaching.  Training is also short here.

Finally, the city:

• Friday night, I finally met up with Trevor Diaz: American Legend.  We drank Soju in the street with my co-workers until some random Korean dude struck up a conversation with Trevor.
• Apparently, Trevor knows enough Korean to trick random Korean dudes into paying for us to go to singing rooms.  A singing room is like ultra-karaoke.  I drank more Soju.
• Things get blurry after that.  We went to some bar in Itaewon, the foreign ghetto.  I ate a hamburger from a street vendor.  I know this only because Trevor took pictures.
• I woke up in bed back at my motel next to Trevor.  Do not worry, we were clothed upon waking.
• I had an awful hangover.  We cured it by sitting in a PC bang for 4 hours playing computer games.
• Then, I went out again that night with my coworkers.  We had a huge crew, 12-15 people at least.  We started with Korean bbq.  Then we went to clubs.
• A completely spontaneous dance-off occurred in the middle of the street.  One of the dancers was with our crew.  There were many inverted aerial maneuvers.
• I drank beer.  It was good.
• At 2am, we moved to “Bar Boom”.  Bar Boom was all you could drink for roughly $10US.  I drank gin.  So much gin.  The dj was AMAZING.  I want to go back to Bar Boom AND LIVE THERE FOREVER.
• At some point, we left and went back to Itaewon to the bar from the previous night.
• Around 5:30am, we got on the subway just as they started running again for the morning.  We literally got on the first subway of the day and rode it home.

Either I’ve had a very lucky first weekend, or this is how it will be for the next year.  Feel free to visit.

Stagnation

As my silence has already indicated, I have not been traveling of late.  I did ride down to North Carolina a few weeks back, but the travel itself was not noteworthy, so I never really got around to writing about it.  Besides, any of you that might care were there anyway.

Returning to this moment however, I’m not quite sure how to describe this feeling I’ve got.  Stagnant isn’t quite it, but that seemed an appropriate title given the nature of this blog.  In the last five days I have reread Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, The Catcher in the Rye, and — for the first time — The Sun Also Rises.  I also drank more last weekend than I have in quite a while.  The combination of depressing literature and budding cirrhosis has left me with a bizarre and lasting palette of emotions that I do not often feel, especially for this long.  I don’t really think I’m up to describing it all, but I’ve been having the strangest dreams and a weird kind of nostalgia seems to be tying it all together.  I must say, I think this MENSA business may be the only truely positive and exciting thing that has happened to me since I left Seth’s house.  Everything else has been a savage, stifling sort of haze of depression.  I mean a true haze too; the way a fog surrounds you but isn’t quite tangible.  You can’t actually lay a finger on it no matter how bad you’d like to.

Normally I would just assume that it was the usual sort of antsy itch that I get for wandering about, and I think that is a part of it, but there is most certainly something else going on.

I really understand it when Holden says that he meant everything he said to Sally Hayes.

Anyway, if I was a true genius, I’d be able to do this Gonzo.  Hunter S Thompson amazes me.  You’ve got to be a helluva wordsmith when your stream of conciousness writing comes out as an actual 200 some-odd page story.  Brilliant man.

I’ve digressed.  I think the point is that I’m in a godawful funk, and I don’t know how to get out of it.  Nothing in Central fucking Pennsylvania is likely to help, but I also realize that there are no guarantees anywhere else either.  No diagnosis = no cure.

Fuck me, this just turned into xanga-grade chickenshit.  Fuck me.

Employment

I’ve got a job in PA.  I work at a piercing parlor slash vintage clothing store(Checkered Past).  I sell jewelry all day.  The super cool part is that I get Neato Burritos for $3/free.  For those of you that don’t know Neato, it’s like Andy Warhol fucked a Chipotle Grill and 9 months later a retro-pop super-hip burrito place was born.

In other news, my blog is snowing.  And, as much as I appreciate the insightful header there that Aram Kevorkian so kindly birthed from his brain lobes, I think it’s time to take suggestions for changing the name of my blog to something a little less bum-rushy.

Flatline

I’ve been stationary a few weeks here.  I haven’t updated, since this is about being on the move, rather than on my ass.  Anyway, a few weeks in internet times is like a hundred years.  My little line graph that tells me how many visitors I get?  Well, see Title.

Anyway, I’m getting ready to go back to Harrisburg for a while.  Like, several months.  I know this is crazy sounding.  I still want to go to Korea, but that’s been pushed back a bit so that I can pursue another goal.  Sadly, one of my biggest concerns is my public image as a result of this decision.  I’m pretty sure that after delaying this long, no one can believe a damn thing I say about Korea.  In paranoid crazy Matt’s Brain-land, everyone thinks I’m all talk and that I’m never leaving.  This is a frequent concern that I shove to the back of my mind, where it continues to nag…

/sigh

So, I’ll be taking a little road trip down to PA pretty soon… it’ll most likely be a one day straight shot, unless someone REALLY needs to see me (or give me tons of free stuff).  This time, I’m bringing Wilbur along with me, as well as a BIG ASS FISHTANK into which he will be moving.

Also, I decided on a whim last weekend that I will be learning Linux.  I have yet to decide how much Linux I will be learning… okay, I’m done for now.

*insert clever sign-off remark that will eventually become my trademark*

ps, GUESTBOOK. GUESTBOOK. sign it.