Div-ling

Sat down at my desk to do some work when I realised that my keyboard was out of place and there was debris on my desk. 'Wtf,' I thought, 'I bet some nosey geek has been on my computer'. So, after typing in my password and whacking on some Nirvana, I noticed that the monitor was now a 20 inch flat screen... God knows how I graduated university. My parents are very proud, you know.

In other news, I go to the Philippines on holiday next Tuesday (27th July). Time flies. It feels like only yesterday I was frantically trying to buy plane tickets online and finding myself constantly rejected (by the website..). I go onto Hong Kong on August 4th and I'll be back in good ol' Incheon on the 8th. Cannot wait :)

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Camp Casey

I've been seeing Sarah now for around 2 months so inevitably I met a couple of her friends. A married couple, it turns out, are her best friends here in Korea and so we've hung out a bit over weekends, had dinners etc and got to know each other as much as you can really over a two month period. One of em - the husband - is in the U.S. army and is based up in Camp Casey near Soyosan way north on Seoul Line 1. He and his wife are leaving to go back to the USA within the next few weeks so Sarah wanted to see him off at Camp Casey before he left. First question I asked was 'As a Brit, can I just wander onto a U.S. army base? What I mean is can I plleaasee come??'. Answer was 'Yes, but you have to have him with you at all times to "supervise", as is the same with all visitors'. Second question was 'Can I A) hold a gun, and B) see helicopters and tanks?'. Answer?: 'Yes, to the choppers and tanks. Hell no, to the gun'. So, good news and bad news then.

So, Saturday morning came and we took the 2 and bit hour journey from my place in Incheon to Camp Casey. It looked really nondescript from the outside - very much unlike the U.S. embassy in London, which looked like it belonged more in the middle of a war zone than opposite a nice park with a 'dungeon themed' pub nearby. I'm not sure whether I should really describe much about Camp Casey really in case I'm breaching some kind of 'security code' or something. But basically they have a Popeyes, which do the most amazing 'biscuits' (scones with a slightly different recipe) and chicken; a Starbucks; a place where we had an awesome 'Philly Cheese Steak', which consists of plenty of cheese, plenty of steak, plenty of onions and green peppers.. in a roll; a bowling alley; a cinema; and a Taco Bell. It was glorious, to be honest. But, for an army base, it didn't seem like much 'army-ing' was going on. Mind you, it was a weekend and people go off post etc. Also there was an awful lot of bellies around.. like if there was a war they would whip out their guns only to find that they're clogged with chicken batter. Still, I felt weaksauce.

We stayed in a nice 'American style' hotel, which basically meant that they had carpet, and then set off on the Sunday after a nice chicken tender and biscuit breakfast. Not quite continental, but I think I got my '5-a-day' in OK.

Me and Sarah bowling away on the Base. My arm still hurts :/ The price you pay for victory, I guess.

Don't think I mentioned that it was like a monsoon out, did I? Well, it was like a monsoon out, and we all got very wet. My umbrella also leaked, which didn't help. And the road to all the cool tanks was flooded so we couldn't walk close to them :'(

Just noticed that Sarah got a half-strike from a split... nice :)

This is me (plus brolly) and Sarah (plus snazzy jacket) in front of an inactive tank they had lying around. Our friend described the history of 'KEEP UP THE FIRE!' but I've forgotten it :/ Something to do with covering fire or something? Not sure.

Well, that was my awesome weekend on U.S. soil :)

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Fun times at school

Seeing as they finished their English exam yesterday I thought it might be a good chance for them to just veg out this week and either enjoy or (more likely) fall asleep during a showing of Shrek. Good plan eh? Oh, wait, this is Korea. Literally one minute before class I get a message from my co-teacher saying that the vice-principal has said 'no DVDs'. Right, so I have 30 seconds to think of a 45 minute 'fun' lesson. I thought to myself, "my so called 'well planned' lessons aren't even that fun, so wtf am I going to do now?". This thought took up about 15 seconds of my prep-time. So I shuffled into class and pretended to be messing with the computer while I thought of something. "Right", I pondered, "maybe some kind of hangman gig? Or maybe bingo? Basic, but it might soak up some minutes...". So I bust out the 'Korean bingo' game that my girlfriend, Sarah, taught me.

Instructions are each student draws a grid however big the teacher tells them, lets say 4x4, and they have to think of 16 things in a given category. I chose 'brands', which took them forever! I was like 'do you kids just not watch TV or go shopping?'.. then I realised I was looking at Korean children whose sole purpose is to either study, read manga, or improve their skills at online games. Might've had more luck if I chose manga titles, which I will in the next lesson, or Starcraft build orders... Anyway, some kid managed to wangle two candies out of me by conveniently winning on his turn and then another kid guessed 'BRAZIL' correctly on the hangman game I busted out in the last 5 minutes. By the way, Korean kids don't really guess letters... they just guess one or two letters at the beginning then start throwing out whole words. For example, for _ _ A _ _ _ one girl guessed 'America'... It wasn't an advanced class.

This was second grade. Next up: my mental first grade class who stand on chairs and chant my name when I enter, who don't seem to know any English except 'give me candy', and who get so excited at the prospect of candy that they shout 'wrong!!' and jump up with their hand up screaming 'me! me!' when their classmates answer a question... even though the answer is right. And I've just said it's right.

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Busan

Jumping straight into it.

After putting off going to Busan with my girlfriend (Sarah, 24, Alabama, USA) for the past couple of weeks due to various reasons, we decided to travel the 200-odd miles to Busan using the super-fast KTX train. At 300 km/h max speed, the KTX really is the only way to travel to Busan... unless you fancy the bus. We took the KTX, though, seeing as Sarah doesn't get off work 'til late. From Seoul station to Busan station it took close to 3 hours, which wasn't too bad.. got a bit of shut-eye on the way there. Saying that, I got woken up by some screaming kid who really wasn't being considerate... but other than that it was a nice smooth trip :) oh, actually, on the way back someone decided to bring a small container full of fish (or something that smelled strongly of fish) and chucked it on the overhead shelf.. and a woman sitting across the aisle from me brought a bag of kimchi with her, which smelled... and we were having so much fun in Busan that we actually forgot to eat so we were starving... can't fault the KTX though :P

When we got there, Busan was great! Slightly overcast but sweltering hot (I got sunburnt again..). Shorts weather, but I wish I had flip flops (tip: buy flip flops if your hitting Busan cos it's just plain uncomfortable otherwise). I'm not gonna sit here and describe all the beers we drank and the streets we wandered down, so here are some pictures :P louder than words, an all that.

This is me in the tunnel they have through the main tank in Busan aquarium. It's full of nurse sharks, which looked terrifying because they were bearing their teeth; huge groupers, which were really ugly but the same size as the nurse sharks, which instantly made me think of some kind of fight between the two mainly because I saw a video clip of an octopus killing a shark the day before and I wanted to see the grouper-nurse shark equivalent (I watched them more closely after that thought); and large schools of shiny fish.

Can't remember where this was taken, but Sarah and I are in the jaws of a huge shark (fake though :'( ).
We took a boat ride out into Busan's surrounding waters on a little tour and it got sooo cold. It was such a bumpy ride that I'm surprised we managed to keep our stomachs intact let alone take this picture :P but it was a great ride, to be honest. Busan is beautiful.

We visited a coastal temple on the Saturday, which was, again, beautiful. The view was great, the temple was nice, and authentic too because there were plenty of people about praying and that while we took pictures. I'm pretty sure I wasn't being disrespectful when I couldn't be bothered to switch my flash off but I'm sure I'll be forgiven somewhere down the line.

Another one of us at the temple.

This is me next to the - guess what!! - KTX :P It's a double ended train, which we didn't know at the time, and we were confused for a few seconds as to why the train was setting off in the opposite direction. Divs.

Other things happened like the amazing curry place Sarah took me too... argh, it was like heaven. It challenges some of the places in the UK, I tell ya. 'Ganga' it's called, if anyone reading this is planning a trip to Busan, and it's right by Haeundae beach below the TGI Friday's. 40 minute wait to get in, but I could've waited longer, to be honest..

And that was Busan :) Check my facebook for more pictures if you want.

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World DJ Festival

Starting off with an apology because I haven't written a blog in a while :( I'm sorry if you've been sitting at your computer hitting the refresh button on this blog page for days, just put a plaster on those blisters cos blood is hard to scrub off a keyboard :/

Anyway, I went to the 'World DJ Festival' on the weekend in Seoul - they say 'world' because they had the odd bloke from Europe or Japan there - and it was hectic! It kicked off at 4pm or something and didn't finish until 6am (we left at 3ish). So, I turned up with a bag of booze in blistering heat and as we wandered up to the entrance they had the Men in Black on security checkin everyone's bags for booze and things that looked like they could contain drugs or whatever. Funny thing is they took my water bottle off of me and my So-J (Soju + Orange juice (lethal..)) but didn't even bother to check my bag! So, I was like 'oh yeah! Got some Cass (Korean beer) on the go!' but then when I whipped it out victoriously later in the night I realised that I had bought 'Cass light'... what a mug. Definitely was not worth the hassle. It was like opening a Christmas present shaped like a PS3 and opening it to find a Wii staring you in the face.. let down :P

Wasn't too fussed though because they had a 'Vinyl' stand at the festival, which is probably the best idea for an alcohol vendor anyone has ever had. I'm not sure if I've said this before but 'Vinyl' is a street cocktail bar in Hongdae that sells 'baggy' drinks which are basically like one of those IV sacks that you see in hospitals full of blood or whatever but the ones from Vinyl, if your me anyway, are usually full of Vodka lime ;) You can wander the streets, or festival, with an IV bag full of a cocktail sipping it with a straw... it's gonna be even tastier in the summer :P (I bet that would work with pimms too... maybe chuck some fruit in... sounds like a plan :O)

So, the festival itself was badass. Had some sick DJs playing stuff from Trance to DnB to Dubstep, but the highlight of the day was definitely 'The Moonshiners' (see em here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tlGHTvj7bxg), a Korean rockabilly band that were soooo awesome. I can't wait to hunt em down and see em in a gig ASAP :D

Other than that there's not much more really to say about the festival really. There was music, booze, people, Dr. Martin transfer tattoos.. generally an awesome time :)

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Muuido

Muuido, in a word, was amazing. It had everything: sun, sea, sand, mud..

Day one - Journey to Muuido:

We set out straight after work on Friday evening and after an epic series of bus rides, taxis and train journeys me, Denis, and Andrew made it to the ferry port where we met Lindsey, John and Beth for the 8:00 ferry to Muuido! So, after a short walk, we turn up at the port and... what was that? We missed the last ferry? dammit... or so we thought. After acting like complete foreigners we somehow managed to convince the guys at the terminal to do one more run on what was essentially a car ferry for just the 6 of us! Nice blokes :) Unfortunately, we were also waiting on another group of friends who failed to get to us in time and could not convince them to do yet another run so I think they stayed in a hotel or something. This is the huge boat that ferried just the 6 of us to Muuido:

When we got to Muuido we asked some bloke in a shop how to get to Hanagae beach and he summoned what could have been either his mate with a van or an actual minivan/taxi for us. Either way, we got there in good time :)

Day one - Hanagae:

We turned up at Hanagae and tried to rent out a cabin. After a typical Korean vs Foreigner exchange we managed to get what we wanted: a cabin! The guy behind the desk seemed to find it hilarious that 6 of us wanted just one cabin but we just ignored him and headed onwards! Granted, the 'cabin' was tiny - it felt more like one of those changing huts you see on beaches in England - but we didn't plan on spending much time in there outside of sleeping and we could just about squeeze us all in there which was fine. These are the huts I'm babbling about:

We had a wander, got drunk, and then fell asleep in the cabin ready for the next day :)

Day two - contender for best day ever:

Beth and I woke up earlier than the rest of the group so we went for a little walk. Hour and a half later and we trundled back to camp after a little mini hike where we took a look around the forest and admired the morning :) sounds lame, but it was fun having a little bit of an explore. When we returned we mustered up some breakfast and then headed out to the mountains for a hike in the same direction Beth and I went. It was more hardcore this time because we climbed this bloody great mountain and I was the mug that did it in Converse..:

Needless to say, I was knackered.

Day two - the mud:

The mountain we climbed down was very woody and so the trees blocked most of the view. So, when we came down the mountain and we were confronted with this view we were stunned:

The tide had gone out like half a mile or more during the time we were hiking (about 2-3 hours). It was immense. And to make things more surreal, when we returned to camp there were people on horses galloping around the mud flats that had been created by the tide going out and people just wandering around on it. So, after lunch, we barefooted it out to try and meet the shore and this was the result:

Muuido is the best :)

Day two - the campfire:

After playing 6-a-side beach football against some Koreans (the score was like 15-3 to the foreigners (us)) we set about getting a campfire sorted because the temperature drops like a stone at night during the spring. It was a pretty awesome campfire: sang songs, drank booze, made 'smores' and cooked marshmallows.. top drawer stuff :)

Day three - sunburn:

Absolutely gorgeous day. We got up slightly later because we were hungover and then cooked some bacon to eat for breakie/brunch, which was amazing (thanks Beth :P). We then set off back into the mud but we decided to head out in a different direction to where the rocks were. The mud wasn't as solid as the mud the previous day, which I put down to it not having as much time to 'bake' under the sun than Saturday - we must've got there earlier in the day :S But it was still awesome. I almost fell down countless times because I was sinking in the mud hehe:

And that concludes the best weekend ever :)

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Dream Concert tix

Don't think I mentioned this, but I managed to get Dream Concert tickets for next month! It's an uber K-pop concert 'for charity' that costs only 5,000 won a ticket (about 3 quid). Apparently, the K-pop fans are so dedicated that one year a fight broke out between two different sets of fans - bear in mind that these fans are mostly 15 year-old girls - and someone died :O Needless to say, it's gonna be badass :P I just hope I don't accidentally cheer for the 'wrong' K-pop group and get headbutted by a middle school girl :/

This is the website for the concert: http://event.gmarket.co.kr/html/201004/100415_dreamconcert/100415_dreamconcert.asp

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