Part 2: Nam

After taking a 6 hour bus ride with out AC we arrived in downtown Saigon. Now Saigon has three names: Best known as Saigon from the Vietnam war, renamed after we lost the war as Ho chi Minh City (he was head of the VC), or as motor bike city because there are 7 million motorcycles in the city (wish I had a better picture to really show it). Saigon turned out to be a very nice city, and the people there were extremely welcoming and didn't really care if you were an American. We did a couple Vietnam War related excursions there. We went to the War Remnants Museum which was anti-American and really went into the Agent Orange drops. Overall it was a good museum, but didn't show any of the misdeeds the VC perpetrated, which was annoying. It wasn't like the Hiroshima Museum that explains war is bad and no one is in the right. Yet after going to North Vietnam I can see the people there setting up a museum like this. We also went to the tunnels that some of the VC lived in throughout the war and saw some of the traps they used.
The tunnels were made bigger for tourists, but were still very very very small. The tunnel you can go into ran for 100 yards and only 2 people out of our group made it all the way through. I seriously don't understand how they could live in those tunnels for 15 years.
This was one of the traps they used, and it wasn't even the worse kind. They were all meant to maim and slow down a group. One of the biggest reasons these tunnels were so important was that the American brass decided to make the main airfield outside Saigon right over them, which allowed the VC to pop out of the ground and surprise our troops.

The only other thing we did around Saigon was go on a tour of the Mekong Delta. Which was very touristy. We rode in little paddle boats, wore stupid hats, held a boa, went to a coconut candy shop, and went for a donkey ride in the jungle. This was actually pretty cool and fun trip, and the best part was the entire day trip cost 7$. Vietnam was the cheapest country I've ever been to, but you really had to barter over every little thing, and it got really bad in the North as the people just tried to rip off every non-North Vietnamese (we even ran into a SV couple who got ripped real bad on the Ha Long Bay tour just b/c their accent was different). Everyone I spoke to didn't like the NV as a people.

We flew into Hanoi and it was a very pretty city with old French architecture and a pretty lake in the middle of it. The best part of the city was the Pho, which was extremely cheap and delicious. Another cool this was they had homemade beer and they would put out little chairs on the sidewalk for people to come and drink, but other than that there wasn't much to do there.I am told this is the lake the John McCain parachuted into when he was captured. There is also a terrapin that lives in the lake and that island in the middle is a temple dedicated to them.

The best part of Hanoi was going to Ha Long Bay. It was a little scary because we went six days after one of the boats went down and 11 people drowned on it. Alex was nervous, and woke me up in the middle of the night when the engine turned on to reposition the boat. But I felt that was probably the safest time ever to go because Vietnam would lose a lot of money if another boat went down (I also think this would be a good time to fly Southwest). The highlights of the cruise was kayaking around the islands, watching how the people lived on the water and sold food to tourists, and going through the two big caves.After getting back to Hanoi we decided to take the sleeper bus to Laos. WORST BUS EVER. Instead of lying about the AC they lied about having a bathroom. 25 hours without a bathroom! Good thing they stopped a bunch.

The start of the trip: Cambodia

So, I thought it would make sense to explain what I've been doing the past few months mainly b/c I don't see everyone as much anymore, and if you wanted to hear the stories I'll eventually put them on the blog.

On February 9th, Alex and I took off from JFK and flew about 20hours to Bangkok. We basically just used the time in Thailand's Capitol to recoup from the flight, but we both did end up getting pretty sick (advice: don't eat Egg's Benedict in Tropical Countries). After recoverying we took a short flight to Phnom Phen in Cambodia to stay with Alex's High School Friend and his GF.

Cambodia:

This was our second time in Cambodia, and I had forgotten just how relaxed and reckless the country is. By that I mean the people there are very friendly and laid back, but the stuff they think is normal or safe definatly isn't and wouldvery illegal in any western country.

Just loading as much as possible is very common.

When we arrived they had lost my luggage, quite an ominous start, but we headed to Alex's friend Dave new apartment, 2 bedroom 2 bath 15 ft ceilings a view of a school playground, which waking up to playing students is a lot better than thousands of horns honking in Korea. It was a good start to the trip hanging out wtih people who know the area. It was great if we wanted to go visit places b/c they had tuk-tuk (mini taxi) drivers who just serviced there block (it was almost like gangs) that were very nice to us and didn't rip us off.

This is Alex's friend and girlfriend (Ill get a better picture of her later), and he is actually doing the tuk-tuk call. If he had his hands close together that would be the motor bike call, which is cheaper and a lot more fun! They also took us to the sunday night fights. There was 5 fights and 3 ended in KO's. I've been to Muy Thai in Thailand. I've been to a title fight in Atlantic City. I have to say this was the most entertaining fight I've ever been too. The beers were 50 cents, you could get right up to the ring. The only thing you had to worry about was thieves (a pretty big downside), butDavid knew how to spot them. If they weren't watching the fights you knew they were there for no good. We did have one sketchy person come sort of close to us, but Dave called him right out and he didn't stay around for long.

When were in Cambodia last summer we were on serious vacation mode and the only touristy thing we did was go to Angkor Wat, which is where a lot of Tomb Raider was shot and where trees have grown over doorways (one of the coolest places I've ever been, and if you want to go should hurry up because you can still walk all over it). So this time we made a desicsion to do all that we missed. The biggest ones were going to the Killing Fields and Toul Sleng prison. For those who don't know basically a third or a quarter of the population was murdered by Pol Pot's regime, and nearly everyone with a college or high school education was killed. Their dogma was to return to an agriculture economy. Yet they were so corrupt that they took all the rice and sold them to the Thai or Chinese for money to buy weapons that a lot of people died of starvation (the movie "The Killing Fields" with John Malcovich is a good and entertaining acount). This is a picture of the monument at the Killing fields.

I didn't take many pictures there because it was kind of erie, but that building is full of skeletons and there lots of open graves dug up. They estimated that 1.2 million people were killed at this site. I touched on the corruption from the 70's there and our friends told us that it is still prevelent. It's so bad that you pretty much just pay for your job. I think they said that if you want to be a cop it cost 2000$, an engineer 5000$, or a doctor like 8000$ (they use the US Dollar there). And the cops just pull people over at random and give them tickets (I think I saw this in every country we visited, so its not just the Cambodians, but most of Asia is very corrupt).

This is another picture I have gotten a lot of questions about:

YES, take the sign literally. You can purchase an old Rocket Launcher and shoot a cow, or you can get an AK-47 and shoot up a chicken. I've even heard rumors that if you paid enough you could shoot a person. I don't know what kind of person would want to do that, but I hope its not true.

Those are some of the more interesting antedotes and adventures we had there. It's a beautiful country and nice city with some amazing shopping in the Russian Market. After getting our tourist visas for Vietnam we took an 6 hour bus sans AC, which would be reoccuring nightmare throughout our trip.

Life in a box

We had another visitor right after Alex’s mom left, out mutual friend Katie came for a visit. For any of you who don’t know she is the one who introduced us together in London. Real cool girl. She had a great time here checking out Seoul’s ancient palaces and temples, staying out late at Bars or Norebangs (karaoke rooms), so just basically doing what all tourist do here.
Climbing up a Mountain, about to stop by a Monastery on the way up.


Silly poses at the palace in Seoul.




Another hilarious thing happening while they were here was children’s day, which is basically a free holiday for everyone else. The day before though, my school did a Halloweenesque fashion show. Here were some of my favorite costumes:

Billy as a Chinese warrior getting his anime dragonball Z poise on.


Shine and Newton both 4 as a Tiger and Dog respectably.


Tom as an English Guard with an AK-47. Nice.


Ryan as a english guy twirling a hat.


Crab people. Walk like crab talk like people.


Kent as a Panda. Probably my favorite costume.


Brian taking a bow. The English were really represented in this show.

So, the title of the post was life in a box and this was in part titled because I live in a small one room apartment, but also because we took a trip to the beach and we literally lived in a box. Went to the islands out west of Seoul, which I think are in the East China Sea, and while beautiful it was not exactly what you would think a beach trip would be like.

So, my girlfriends joke is “Call me a snob, but when I go to the beach I think of water.” We get there and there is a mud flat for about a half mile out into the sea. It’s also pretty remote and there are no true hotels there, so we have to rent a box on stilts to sleep in (hence the title). After the initial shock it ended up being a great weekend. There were a couple big groups of foreigners there, and we just laid down a towel and acted like we were part of the group. It was funny the last day we were there someone asked us who we knew and after an awkward pause we just said we knew each other and laughed about it.

The rows of boxes. There were about 50 total. All they had on the inside was two pillows 4 blankets and a kind of squishy floor. Thankfully, we had enough to drink we didn't notice.

Good ol' number 25.

Walking around on the mud flats.

The locals playing with some starfish.

Wow, feels like forever since I last put a post up, but after a very stressful April and then a string of visitors I didn’t have the time. I also think that I’m going to try and do shorter posts, so I won’t be intimidated to start them.

So Alex’s mom came and we managed to travel all over Korea for better or worse. The trip down south reminded Renee of Tijuana. It was basically a few concrete towers in the middle of nowhere, we also got left at our hotel for being ten minutes late, had to sleep on the floor, and had a random weirdo in our room . Sadly, all the really nice architecture and quaint buildings were destroyed in the war. Hopefully that doesn’t repeat itself when I’m here. To touch on that I am not very worried about it because South Korea wouldn’t be able to contain the damage to just the North, and they don’t want to give up this life style. After saying that, it is still quite scary to think that there are 1.2 million NK soldiers across that line.

Some of the highlights of Renee’s trip that I go experience with her were a tea festival, where she sat on a monk, was coerced into buying some green tea, and was driven around by little Korean in a bear suit; a visit to Dr. Fish; and a trip to one of the palaces in Seoul.

Like masters on a chariot they made that poor midget truck them around.

Alex and I as the Palace complex in Seoul

A palace in Seoul

Kind of gross when your heel is lunch.

Fish on the prowl for some toes!

Renee Sitting on a monk when there clearly is a seat right next to her!

Korean Spring

Well, the weather got warm for a week and then quickly plunged back to below freezing, which is rather annoying when I see that it’s 60-70 and beautiful in Philly. So, the weather has kept us from doing anything outdoorsy, but we’ve had some truly Korean experiences these past few weeks. We went to a Korean booking club, which you need to have a Korean friend to get into. This club is a lot different than a club in America. Here you pay a 15$ dollar cover and your group gets a huge plate of fruit, a bottle of crown royal, 6 beers, and a couple sodas. Another difference is that if you are at a table without any girls the host will see there are 5 guys at this table and find a table of 5 girls and bring them over to you when the DJ stops. Then you’ll talk until the DJ comes back on and then if things work out you will go dance. It’s really weird because when the DJ stops all the Koreans leave the dance floor. Of course, whenever we got on the dance floor everyone was in awe because they kind of lack rhythm, and are infatuated with white people.

The next day we went to a Hanok village, which is a recreation of a traditional Korean town. The cool thing about this one is it is in downtown Seoul, and you can see the Seoul tower over the fake houses. So we’re walking around and the place is filled with tons of tourists, and Alex gets up on a ledge to take a picture and we see these Koreans with these huge camera’s taking photos of her, which is whatever, but then I ask them to take a picture of us on my camera. Then they all just decide to take picture of us. It’s weird; kind of like being a celebrity. This also happened to use with one of Alex’s coworkers boyfriends. He said I looked like Paul McCartney and wanted to show his friends. It’s very rare to hang out with a Korean and not have them tell you that you look like someone famous, which never actually looks like you. My buddy Beau gets Brad Pitt, and my co-worker Joe gets Hugh Jackman all the time. Of course, this makes absolutely no sense. So the reason why I get Paul McCartney is because I haven’t shaved or cut my hair in quite some time. I just found out the Koreans in the town I live in call me the “One with the Hair.” That cracked me up when I found out. We also had an experience that really reminded me of home.

We took a booze cruise on the Han River, which cuts through downtown Seoul. It was pretty much a foreigner’s only party, which is really weird for a couple reasons. To go from being a head taller than everyone to being normal height was a shock. To actually be able to talk to everyone and have them understand me was a little weird because I’ve become used to saying anything in public because no one can understand me. Lastly, I still believe that most of the foreigners are really weird. But the cruise was only so-so because it was still really cold and then being on the water was even worse. We ended up staying inside for most of it and taking advantage of the open bar.

The only other thing that happened these past two weeks was I had to go to a seminar for this new program on a Saturday without getting paid, which was BS. We had gotten out of it a month ago, but decided it wasn’t worth fighting this time. Now because we didn’t go last time the entire staff had to come out and go to it again. Sucks for them, but work relationships have gone down the toilet lately, so I don’t really care. We get there after only getting 4 hours of sleep the night before and thank god Joe and I were put in another room for English speakers. So I don’t really remember this, but Joe tells me I took off my shoes and went to sleep for about an hour. Then we went up for the joint presentation, which was stupid because we have been running this program for about 3 weeks and knew how to use the program. Well, anyways this story is a boring, but once our boss and the Koreans left after lunch we waited about 5 minutes then left after them, and went to the casino.

This casino trip was definitely one of the more memorable trips. We sat down at the roulette wheel next to a South African, who had been sitting there for a couple hours and said he knew which dealers threw what numbers. Of course, we were thinking no way is that possible, but he said there was the 0 and 00 spinner. Sure enough out of 15 throws 5 were 0 or 00, and a couple numbers right around there. This was awesome because the drinks are free and you can get free meals there. After being there for four hours at this one wheel we had the pit boss talking about us asking the dealers to watch what numbers we were betting. It was pretty fun, and after not getting paid for working a Saturday; I ended up 300,000 Won. So it turned out to be a fun Saturday.

A few more things: Today I walked by a construction crew spray painting in a semi-enclosed area without masks on. This is the same culture that will wear a mask if they’re in public or move away from foreigners. Also here is a some picture of the “Yellow Dust” I have mentioned before.

Roots

The past few weeks I have managed to go to a few museums, learn about Korea’s history, and find an interesting story about how I got offered a job here. Three weekends ago we made it to the Japanese War Prison that was used to house political prisoners from the early 20^th century till the end of World War 2. I was pretty excited to visit the prison because I had heard it was great piece of Korean history, but my attitude quickly changed from excitement to disgust when I learned how horrible the Japanese were to the Koreans. They had wax sculptures set up to demonstrate all of the tortures the Japanese used. Some of the worst were boxes that had the walls covered with spikes and they would put prisoners in and roll down hills, pulled out fingernails; I could go on, but I won’t. The most gruesome image was they still had the old noose they used for hangings in the gallows. It was pretty chilling reminder of war and the Japanese’s cruelty, and it was also a good thing to see before going to the War Museum the next day.

The War Museum was amazing. I have to say I really did not know anything about the Korean War, or also known as the “Forgotten War,” until I went to this museum. America pretty much saved Korea from becoming a communist country and thus still in poverty (for a really interesting documentary check out this site. These guys actually snuck into and filmed a documentary and didn’t need Clinton to come rescue them). I think America sent about 80% of the 2 million troops stationed in Korea during the war, which really explains why they are so kind to us. They also went into Korea’s older history and had a replica turtle ship that they used against the Japanese in the 16^th century. Korea’s history really reminds me of France during the last 300-400 years, and by that I mean they were constantly under attack by a foreign country. Korea was invaded by the Chinese, Mongols, Russians, Japanese (multiple times), and then North Koreans. In fact, they are still at war with the North Koreans, but if you bring up the subject to a Korean they will quickly change the subject. But I’m not at all worried because that the 38^th parallel is one of the most heavily fortified borders in the world. I’m pretty glad that we helped South Korea because if we hadn’t wouldn’t be here now, which actually wasn’t so random that I got the job.

My co-worker, Joe told me that he had interviewed about ten people before he talked to me on the phone, and the only reason I got the job was I just wanted to travel and have an adventure. People might think that everyone over here is doing just that, but it isn’t really the case. I’ve touched on this a lot: foreigners here are just weird, they are either escaping something, couldn’t fit in, or chasing Korean women. Joe basically said that I was the first person who wasn’t all about the Korean culture or anime cartoons, and he then told the director that I spoke English without a weird accent.

So, before I get into my new beef with work I would like to share a few other pretty cool things we’ve been doing over here. For Christmas Alex bought me a guitar and I’ve been learning a few songs, but the problem is I can’t sing. So, two Sundays ago we happened to go into a bar that had an open mic night. At first, I did not want to play, but after a couple tequila shots Alex got me on stage and we did “Stand by Me.” It was pretty cool being on stage and I’m glad I was talked into it. We also went to the Andy Warhol event at Seoul’s National Art Museum, and I’m not a fan. The art was ok, but I don’t like the fact that he was doing just to be popular. Reminded me of all the reality TV in America, but the translations were hilarious. I tried to take a picture of one of them and this security guard comes running at me from cross the room yelling for me to stop.

At school, we switched over into a new academic year, and instead of keeping the same program that brought all these kids in last year; the director spends probably all of the profit from the winter term and buys a new program. The new program isn’t bad, but of course the idiots decided to start each class at the same point in an effort to save money. We have these kids who can almost have a conversation with you singing nursery rhymes and doing animal flashcards. Thankfully, I got moved down to the 5 and 6 years old because it’s age appropriate. Joe’s students hate it and don’t pay any attention to him. There are two other problems with this program, 1: the students are used to playing games, and 2: it’s all singing and I can’t sing. After a week and a half the teachers told me that the students were bored and I needed to work harder on the songs. Knowing that it wasn’t going matter if I practiced the songs, I just started playing little games with the students. Of course, they love my class now. So, it’ll be interesting to see how many of the older kids will drop out at the end of the month. I’m going to guess close to 20 kids, which is going to infuriate the Director. I normally enjoy seeing her pissed off, but it’s annoying because I know she’s going to say it’s our fault. When in all reality it’s her fault for fixing something that wasn’t broken.

Ok, I touched on the how ridiculous moving into an apartment was here and I finally got some pictures of it and here you go

Absolutetly insane!!! 18th Floor

At the War Memorial: The turtle ship and inside a relic from the Korean War

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Around Seoul: The sub after the Horse RAces, Warhol Translation, Famous Belltower in Downtown Seoul

Me with a couple of my new classes. Funny names: Elf, Laser, Rabbit, Elvis, Tinkerbell