Lantern Festival

On Sunday, Insadong hosted its yearly Lantern Festival in celebration of this weekend's Buddha's Birthday holiday. There were events all day long, but we were too tired from our weekend of Penis Park-ing to spend the whole day in Insadong. We did, however, get to the area around 6pm to grab some front row seats to watch an epic parade.

There were lots of guards posted along the street to make sure there was no funny business during the parade (and Korea's public drinking laws ensured that there was lots of funny business). This sad character didn't even turn his head to look at the floats. So many seriousness!

The parade lasted for two hours and was full of people carrying lanterns, playing drums, and a bunch of giant, lit-up floats. The people in the parade (and there must have been five thousand people participating) were VERY happy to be in the parade. They were smiling, waving, singing, dancing and Annyong-ing the crowd with great enthusiasm.

Here's some pictures from the parade:





There was even a few fire-breathing dragons! So sweet:

Near the end of the parade a kind ajumma gave Mel her lantern to take home, so we hung it up in our apartment. It was definitely a cool parade... I'd for sure recommend checking it out if you're in Seoul when this event is going on next year.

Try Different

Today I noticed *NEW* chocolate flavored soda for sale at the GS25. It's an obvious "gotta try" purchase. Jason, I took one sip and the rest will be packaged and mailed to you, because this is a very you-type of product. Trust me, the fact that it will be flat can't possibly make the taste any more strangey.

Haesindang: The Penis Park

Joining Mr. Toilet's House on the list of the top 5 weirdest things in Korea is Haesindang, the Penis Park, and with a name like that it's certainly worth the 4 hour bus ride east to Samcheok.

Samcheok? I'd never heard of it either, but it was yogi:

There are buses leaving from the Express Bus Toyminal (the way "terminal" is pronounced in Korean) near our apartment every half hour or so, so catching a bus wasn't too difficult. There were two classes of bus to choose from: general or excellent, and we went with "general" because it was 8,000 won cheaper, took just as long to get there, and the last time I looked a bus is a bus is a bus. There is no bathroom on the general bus, but the bus stopped after 2 hours at a very nice rest stop which featured the options of using either a "toilet bowl" stall or a "bidet" stall. Guess who chose bidet ;)

The drive was nice, and a lot of the places we passed through were very farmy and reminded me of home. No one was growing apples like good 'ol Aylesford, though. The crop of choice was rice, of course.

As we got closer to our destination our anxiety levels rose. It was dark now, well after 10pm and where were we going exactly? Would there even be any motels to stay at? Anything to eat? Of course there was. Samcheok is very tourist friendly, has lots of bilingual signs, and sufficient food, drink and lodging options. We were craving samgyupsal, and we spotted a restaurant that was still open in the downtown area and had some drinks and a great meal.

After eating, we set out to find a hotel. There are dozens and dozens of love motels in the blocks near the bus toyminal. Our choice was "Motel Very Six" and it is located on a side street opposite the bus toyminal. Just cross the road from the toyminal, walk three blocks to the right and you'll see a street with lots of neon. Walk for a minute or so, it's behind the sign that says "Bier". Anyway, for 60,000 won ($55 CAD) we slept in a VIP suite, the owner spoke English quite well and showed how to use all the high-tech functions of the room. Functions such as a vibrating bed! I've always wanted to stay in a place with a vibrating bed and here's my official opinion on them: ouch. It only vibrated in one spot, in a pounding motion that made it feel like the bed was sexing my back. The other features of the room were much better. First of all, the place was immaculate and very rich-looking. There was a PC with high speed internet, a flat screen TV and a jacuzzi tub. Can I just say that I love personal jacuzzi tubs? The owner even sprinkled some rose petals in the tub for us before he left. It's the little touches that count.

In the morning we checked out and ate some doncassuh (pork cutlet) and bibimbap (rice+vegetables) for lunch before getting on the bus to the park. Haesindang is about 50 minutes away by bus, but Samcheok's size makes it the most convenient place to stay if you've planning to visit the park. You catch the bus (#24) at the bus stop behind the bus toyminal and it costs 1,600 won.

We knew we were close to the park because we could see a penis-shaped lighthouse in the distance.

Okay, so here is the story of the Penis Park. You don't just build a park like this for no reason, y'know! Legend has it that when a young virgin was swept away and died at sea, the fish became sad and went away. Not good for a fishing village! Her fiance exposed himself to the water by taking a leak in the sea, which pleased the fish and they returned. Hence, a million penis statues were erected by the shore to keep the fish happy and ensure many years of good fishing. Above you can see a shrine to the virgin where you can leave her some soju or something if you like.

The path was smooth but if there was always something to grip if you felt a little unsteady.

Aaaaaaand the statues begin!


A penis cannon.

The park was surprisingly filled with 90% ajummas (old ladies) laughing and pointing at the art. The other 10% were foreigners. We know what we like.

The detail was captivating.

There was one peen statue for each sign of the Zodiac. Here's Mel with the year of the cock, for no particular reason.

BFFs.

OK, so there's obviously a million more pictures where those came from, but I'm not looking to have my blog shut down for indecency. We spent about an hour at the park, purchased some penis shot glasses on our way out, and then caught the bus back to Samcheok. The buses only run about once an hour, so get a schedule from tourist information in Samcheok before you leave.

Back in Samcheok, with at least 2 hours on a bathroom-less bus ahead of us, we decided the best idea would be to buy some alcohol. A pitcher of cherry soju, no less. And it came with some servic-uh iced coffee and water. Thankfully, there were no bathroom related emergencies like that one time after the booze cruise...

Love Land= check!
Penis Park= check!
Anyone know of any vagina parks? This is just too much fun.

Teacher's Day

Teacher's Day, a holiday that should definitely exist in Canada, was a non-teaching day for us this year. The urge for parents to give the teachers lavish presents is just too tempting and the schools don't like it. My kids' parents still gifted me with a million fancy cakes and cookies and even the new Usher CD (random!) the day before, but on Friday we had a teacher's conference instead of class. It was so boring. Like, really, really boring.

UNTIL, during a larvae-eating contest one of the teachers coughed up a few dozen foul-smelling silkworms all over the stage. One of the grossest things I've ever seen, but it definitely woke me up from my conference coma :)

New Sandals

We both got new Birks. Guess which pair was bought in a store and which pair was bought on the street?

I'll Take Two

(direct link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Uo4vTbvvMg)
Korean cell phones are awesome, and there's always a hot new model coming out. Check out the commercial for the new "bubi bubi" phone. Sounds like a good product to me ;)

Service-uh

"Service-uh" is my very favorite Konglish word. It's what is proclaimed when a business gives you something for free. Usually at a restaurant it's a free beer, soup or maybe a bowl full of watery egg. At the norebang it might be a free half hour of singing time (not at the Candy norebang last night, which refused our money for a second hour and actually used the words "leave", but this is not the norm). But without fail, if you want to get some free service-uh items, just head into any of the Body Shop knockoff stores like Tony Moly, Missha or the Face Shop. Our limited number of drawers is rapidly being filled with free samples of every type of wrinkle cream and hair serum on the market. Check out all the free stuff we got after buying a $12 bottle of sunscreen:

The cashier was literally tearing through the store's drawers and dumping fistfulls of samples into our shopping bag. We're thinking of setting up a side-business selling all of these amazing samples. How much do you think we could get for 15ml of "eye remover"?

Mr. Toilet: Out Of Order

Mr. Toilet House. What more do I have to say? It sounds like the most amazing attraction there is to see, and I'm a big toilet fan. I've eaten out of them.

A while ago I found a link online that wrote about the "5 Weirdest Things In Korea", and one of them was Mr. Toilet House in Suwon. At first I wondered how I managed to live in Suwon for a full year without noticing the world's largest toilet-shaped house, but it had actually opened a few months after we moved back to Canada. I couldn't find any directions online, so we decided to drop into Suwon's tourist information building and ask for directions to the big toilet with a straight face.

We went to Suwon on Wednesday- we actually have public holidays off for the first time in three teaching contracts! Wednesday was Children's Day in Korea. We celebrated by taking the world's flimsiest stairs to a rooftop bar on Tuesday night and watching tranny prostitutes from a safe distance. We were beat so we didn't stay out too late, so we got to Suwon at a decent time on Wednesday. When we got off the bus in Suwon we were at a castle we'd never seen before a little north of Paldalmun and there was a ceremony going on with some traditionally dressed fellows.

Behind the ceremony and to the left a little we noticed this giant golden statue on the hill, so we hiked up to take some pictures. It was at a Buddhist temple where lots of lanterns were hung for Buddha's Birthday on May 21.

A view of Suwon from the temple.

We went down the hill and walked to the One Point store at Paldalmun market, my *favorite* place to shop in Korea and maybe the world, and then went to Suwon Station to meet Shanda and get directions from Tourist Information. It's not a good sign when you tell someone at Tourist Info where you want to go and they respond with "Uhhh... no going there". What!

The lady looked over some websites for us and found that Mr. Toilet House is undergoing renovations and was closed. Despite this I decided (and to a much lesser extent, Mel and Shanda decided) that we'd already come all the way to Suwon and seeing a toilet house was almost as exciting as going in a toilet house, so we got in a taxi anyway. Tourist Info wrote "Hae Woo Jae" on a piece of paper for us, and although the driver and his dispatch had no idea where we were going (and my description: "big BIG hwa jong shil" -big bathroom- didn't help), his GPS eventually found it and we arrived after about 10 minutes for only 6,500 won. We were in the middle of nowhere and this is what we saw:

There was a fence all around the toilet house, so it really just looked like a round white house with a lot of windows. It was a little hard to get perspective. It was fenced off during renovations... of course... it makes so much sense now. "No going there".

So here's what it looked like from above, according to Google Image Search, but I really don't think this picture is 100% real. There is a small farm directly behind the house and a freeway behind that. And a huge ditch in front of the house. Korea is awesome at Photoshop.

Our taxi driver was awesome. He tried to speak English to us and this is very rare for a taxi driver in Korea. He tried really hard to get us to the house, waited for us while we giggled and ran around the fence looking for a way to get closer, and translated a sign that hung at the entrance. The sign said that the house was built by a former Mayor of Suwon and if you'd like to visit you should call the tourist information line before you travel there to make sure it's open. Yep.

Back at Suwon Station now, and unanimously very happy that we'd made the trek to the toilet house, it was time to drink. It was our special day off. Shanda's bamboo bar was closed so we decided to be our classy selves and we drank wine-ades on a scenic bench in front of Tourist Information.

We barbecued some meat and took a bus home. And the best part was knowing that we only had two more days until the weekend. Happy Children's Day!

Summer Comes To The Seoul Zoo

On Sunday we went to the Seoul Zoo. We'd been to the zoo once before and thought it was really one of the best zoos we'd been to, so we were really looking forward to visiting it again. After close to two months of crap weather, the sun was shining, we were dressed in our nicest couple fashion, and it was the perfect day to be outside.

Breakfast was a diabetes-inducing serving of "thick toast" and lattes. In hindsight, we really should have gone with the Americanos the barista recommended because the toast was covered in cinnamon, whip cream and honey. It was good, though we walked directly to a GS25 for a bag of jerky for a salt fix before getting on the subway.

When you get out of the subway station there's a 5 minute walk through a path full of snack and toy vendors before you reach the fork in the road for Seoul Land and Seoul Zoo. We got some fresh-tasting pineapple on a stick and rushed past the stinky larvae vendors on our way to the zoo. I don't even know how to describe the smell of that larvae... hot, boiled, bug air? Sound nice?

We took the gondola to the zoo entrance and the view was nice. There was a net under the gondolas and when we looked down we saw that someone (ajumma!) had dropped the most beautiful rhinestone covered visor. What a loss! An ajumma without a visor is like a restaurant without kimchi- it just aint right.

The zoo covers a lot of ground and takes a few hours to walk around, and it only costs $3 to visit. They have all the animals you'd want to see, including the following cast of characters:

Giraffes

Tigers, and lots of other big cats that made us miss our little cat at home.

Happy-looking elephants

Hungry Hungry Hippos

There were signs everywhere saying not to feed the animals, but absolutely no one paid any attention. The ostriches were being thrown corn chips and this guy was feeding crackers to the monkeys. It's fun to feed the animals, but whoever threw the monkeys WRAPPED candy is an asshole. We saw them trying to eat wrappers. I realize monkeys probably eat their own crap, but at least that's not made of plastic.

Ostriches <3 onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgVh8GQUAo60TPABQ_kHDoszt8r6Zgdfl78m4YOqm88hHbypeS65yvx4Ho-F1TOYdREmNaSBMPyzKXIDb0z9cqmPhmIN_DC_18IhMULyizUj7sJ15eWwrs21twxwnkNc9SPgTtC/s1600/DSC04760.JPG">Something called a "lesser panda"... how cute is this thing? And who named it? So mean.

There was a giant aviary cage to walk through. The last time we were at the zoo you couldn't go in the cage... you just admired the fowl from outside the cage but there were obviously holes in the top of it because there were all these long-legged exotic birds flying around outside... so it was probably a good idea to renovate. We saw some Canadian geese trying to fly in a V together... but there weren't enough of them to really make a V :(

The star of the show was the animal nursery and this little lamb. The. Cutest! We've been talking about how much we'd like to get a cat or dog, but now I think I want a lamb.

It's so nice to feel like summer is finally here! Have a good week, everyone.

In Which The Author Has A Little Rant, Goes Hiking and Then Becomes A VIP For 1/6 of The Day

Surely the morning was a test. Mel's pay came in at 500,000 won lower than it should have. Why? The explanation came via phone call at 9am: her security deposit was taken out. Wait a minute, security deposit for what? It's certainly not in her contract so what. the. hell? Can't do much about this over the weekend, but it was not a good way to start the day.

So we decide to get brunch at Smoothie King before we start our day. We're just about to the store when we hear a mocking "hello". Now, you might think this is nice: locals are saying hello to the foreign visitors. It's not really like that. Usually this only happens when a group of teenagers are together and one of them wants to show off to his friend by saying hello to the foreigners and then the whole group laughs in awe of this hilarious word. Still, we're Canadians and we're nice, so we say "hello" back. In an even more mocking voice he replies "niiiice to meeeeeeet youuuuu". Ignoring this we carry on, and then, in the distance we hear it: "motherfuckers". MOTHERFUCKERS? What? Oh the things I could have said about his penis size, but we just went for our smoothies instead.

At Smoothie King all of the smoothie flavours are Konglish. For example, the Strawberry Kiss smoothie is pronounced "stah-ro-beh-lee kees-uh" when you order, even though "strawberry" is "dalki" in Korean and "kiss" is presumably something else as well. So, basically, when you order at Smoothie King, you order in English. We ordered our smoothies and the table next to the cash, which had been awkwardly staring at us anyway, cracked up laughing. They were in tears. It was hilarious. Mel gave them the look of death (I get this from her all the time) and they stopped (it works on me too). But still, isn't that so rude? Can you imagine laughing at a French Canadian accent in Canada? You'd probably be arrested. Yeah, we ordered with an accent but have you ever heard a Korean try to speak English? It's the most accented accent you'll ever hear. We could laugh all day long at it if we wanted to.

After we finish our meal, we walked towards the subway station and it happened again. A group of bratty kids: "HELLO *laugh laugh laugh*" as if we're parrots who will say funny things to them if provoked. I'm going to go ahead and make a huge generalization: Korea is a little bit ignorant. Melodie showed her students a video about table manners for a restaurant-themed lesson a few weeks ago, and every single class- 24 in total- cracked up laughing when the video featured *gasp* a BLACK woman. Nearly every class shouted out "monkey". It's a big problem in this country... and they should be ashamed of the reputation they're making for themselves.

Our morning had already been so annoying- and it was only noon by this point- so we kind of thought maybe this had all been a sign to stay home today, but we had plans so we went on and we're glad we did.

We wanted to hike Daemosan mountain, which is not really easy to research online. I figured out that it is at Irwon Station, which was only 12 minutes away, but didn't really know where to go from there. Luckily, most subway stations now have these interactive touch-screen maps that you can use to get your bearings. They're all in Korean, but we can actually read that shiz now (!!) so we were able to locate the trail entrance pretty easily.

When we go hiking, things usually end pretty badly: we've wound up penniless two towns over, gotten lost as night fell, and been chased by wild dogs, but Saturday was a great success. After record low temperatures all week, it was about 18 degrees and lovely. The hike only lasted about 45 minutes (our ideal length) and there were nice, colorful lanterns leading the way up the trail.

Buddhist temples are everywhere in Taiwan, but you don't see too many in Seoul. There's one on the Daemosan trail, but don't try to visit it... it's surrounded in not-very-welcoming barbed wire.

There was some kind of trench and a bunker near the top for unknown reasons.

The reason we thought it would be cool to hike Daemosan is because, at the peak, the view is of our hood. We could see Yangjae, the COEX, Seoul Tower and the 63 Building. It's strange that all my pictures turned out looking smoggy, because it seemed like a really clear day. It's funny what we've accepted as "clear" air after being in Asia for so long.

Some hikers enjoying the view. It was a really worthwhile hike because you could see quite a bit of the city. I'd say it's a better view than going up Seoul Tower.

We brought a can of Cass and some snacks to munch on at the top, so we sat on a bench next to a couple of old tires in the ground. I thought the tires were just there to be sat on if the benches were full, but turns out they're great for stretching out your back. The lady in the picture seems to like it, anyway.

After all that exercise the only thing we wanted to do was to get some supper and then relax in a hot tub or go for a swim. We got some good Mexican food at a place called The Tacos, but as far as the hot tubbing... unfortunately, Koreans don't really have places like Saint John's Aquatic Center, where you can just go pay your five bucks and sit in a hot tub with a bunch of fat old men. Koreans don't even really have bathtubs (in officetels like mine, anyway). If you'd like such a luxury you either have to go to a sauna or a hotel. The saunas are divided by gender and you have to be nude. Being the odd one out in a naked Asian hot tub while people say "hello" and laugh at me does not sound relaxing to me at all. Hotel, it is.

We decided to check out a love motel not too far up the road from our place. We've stayed at quite a few of these places in our travels... they're the kind of places that rent by the hour, which doesn't really sound very nice but some of the nicest hotels I've ever ever stayed in have been love motels (some of the worst have been love motels too lol). So we went to this place called IMT Hotel behind the Prugio building between Yangjae and Gangnam Stations. The guy who worked there told us the VIP room had a whirlpool and we could have it for the "rest" rate of 60,000 won for 4 hours. This was less than we would have spent "going out" for the night so... sold! He gave us our package of toothbrushes, razors and lube and off we went.

This was THE nicest hotel room I've ever been in. The jacuzzi had a TV in the room and a disco light flashing a rainbow of colors over the water. Everything was marble. There were 2 giant flat screen TVs and two computers with hi-speed. They gave us free red and white wine, coffee, cookies, orange juice, coke, corn juice and lollipops. I love being a VIP!

The hotel room was huge, as well. We kept finding new rooms to play in. Other than the jacuzzi, the best part of the place was that there was a karaoke machine with 2 mics to use with the big screen TV, just like at the norebangs. We sang and we swam for four full hours and it was awesome.

We wanted some samgyupsal, but it was 11:00pm and almost everything was closed so we went to Pelicana Chicken, a small fried chicken place in the next building over from our apartment. We'd been curious to try it, and it was good. One of my students said it's "Africa chicken" but I'm not sure what makes it African.

So what started out as a bad morning wound up turning into a great day. One of my favorite days so far. When you're living away from home there are going to be things that annoy you from time to time, but then there's going to be VIP hot tubs that make all worthwhile. And vacations. Did I mention that we'll be in Tokyo in less than 3 weeks? The countdown is on like Donkey Kong.