Monday, July 26, 2010

Mud festival - two point oh


Mud festival punters
I decided I needed to rewind time as best I could, since I spent my entire time at the mud festival the previous weekend literally just covered head to toe and orifice in mud, so I went back again this weekend. Luckily, this thing lasts for a total of 9 days, so I was catching it on the very last weekend.

 I headed out from Daegu on Saturday, planning to spend the day shooting there before heading to another town where I've got a few good friends to stay with. So I went to the bus stop, and got a ticket for Daechon, checked with the bus driver that it was the place near Boryeong, and hopped on and passed out for the duration of the trip.

We got there... and I hopped off... and then kind of stopped and was like 'where the HELL am i?', since I had been to Daechon twice now: once on bike and once on bus, and I saw nothing of what I recognized. 
Bummer.

Turns out the lady put me on a bus to Daejon, so I went a few hours in a whole new directon. Luckily, I just so happen to have an awesome friend who is from here, and he and his best friend just got back 3 days earlier from a 6 week skateboarding holiday of Canada and Japan, and his girlfriend who I'd also made friends with once also lived there. Booyah. Phone call made, stars aligned, and my friend just so happened to have his dad's car that day to take it to get a tune up, and was picking up his girlfriend, who lives 10mins from said bus stop. I kind of bombed their date, but fortunately they are genuinely awesome people and were just happy to see me, so we all spent the night just hanging out and having a blast, and I stayed at Hyelin's house (girlfriend), and caught my bus to Daechon the next day. 
Mud war in full force
Turns out the weather was RIDICULOUSLY good, so things really just panned out for me on all fronts, and I had an awesome afternoon shooting, avoiding mud the best I could, (but still unable to resist one muddy person who wanted a hug) and just having a freaking BLAST of a day. Headed off to the next town to crash at my friends place while she was out of town, and found some work the next day and headed back out to the next city.
 Coloured mud
 LOTS of photographers out for a shot.
 The craziest move of the day

Saturday, July 24, 2010

Mud, Bikes, and Skipping all over the Country-side


 13th Annual Mud Festival - Boryeong, South Korea
It's a friggin good time.
Ok.

So the last few days have been nothing short of wild.

It all started about a week ago, when I headed to Seoul to meet up with my friends from New Zealand who were coming into town. I don't have a home or anything, so when I got to Seoul an awesome friend of mine let me sleep on the floor of his kitchen. It might not sound like he's a good friend from that, but the places here are retardedly small, and otherwise I would have probably just slept outside.

So the next day I met up with my buddies, and we went to the place I found for us to crash for free ... I swear Couch Surfing (couchsurfing.org) is one of the best travel resources I've ever come across. Plus a lot of times, the people I meet from it are totally up my alley! I guess it takes a certain breed to let strangers sleep in their house. Haha.
So our host was this 41 year old ex-pat Texan who simply said he'd host us and 'I hope you kids can drink'. I knew it would be a wild ride, good or bad, so I was in; not so sure my friends would have felt the same...so I just didn't really tell them much detail. ha. Whoops. 
We rocked up at the subway station, and Texas and his dog Uju (universe) came to meet us.
Turns out this guy is a complete legend. Mind you, he seems to survive solely on beer and Marlboro cigarettes. I kid you not; I have not seen this man put anything past his lips other than these two items and the trumpet one evening at 3am.


He is a total blast - a university english teacher, but obviously a complete hippy and one of the most laid back people I think I've ever met. We all came and went as we pleased, drank beer and told tales, bashed around on his array of instruments (time being no prison guard of us, and the neighbours not complaining), and he is also the one who took me out to teach me to ride his motorcycle. This is amazing in itself, but he also offered that I can make his place my home base while in Korea if I need, so that really just made all the difference in the world and made me stoked; since as of August 24th, I will have nowhere to live. 


We also went to the infamous Boryeong Mud festival along the west coast of Koreal about half way down. I came back bruised, a little injured and really tired, but DAMN it was a good time. I spent most of my time in the mud wrestling pit, and also quite a lot at the mud fight area; which is basically like a giant snowball fight with all the kids in the neighbourhood... just mud and a whole bunch of strangers pounding each other mercilessly.


Surprisingly, I didn't really see any major injuries. One guy broke his arm and had to get surgery, and I hear rumous of a broken nose, but other than that, the only thing people suffered seemed to be lost posessions or mud in their eyes. I was in the latter catergory, and had to get my eyes flushed and swabbed out, and I kid you now, I was finding mud for the next few days when I would blow my nose or clean my ears. It was like it was seeping out of me. It was kind of gross, but I had such a good time i really didn't mind paying such a small cost. I normally slightly detest such huge crowd evens involving liqour, but the only real drunk people I saw were two of my friends; one having a better story to tell than the other. He was discovered drunk with no phone, no money and I believe no shoes, and covered in sweet & sour sauce shivering. 
After a wash in the ocean and a good sleep, he was good to go again for the night (still drunk, mind you), but it was definitely a wild weekend with not too much debauchery going down; in public at least.

Monday, July 19, 2010

1:11/ July 19th

I'm about to start learning to ride a motorcycle!
I'm with bob/buddy/Gary the guy who let my friends and I couch surf (couchsurfing.org - one of my traveling on the cheap's biggest allies) at his place, and he turne out to be so awesome it was almost unfathomable!

Last night we were up past three am playing guitars, trumpets, violins, tamborines, and drumming and singing to our hearts satisfaction.
I'm really excited to learn to ride a motorcycle. I actually think it's imperitive, since I want to travel light and easy and do trips across Europe, Asia and wherever else my heart yearns to go (which I
kid you not, is everywhere). A motorcycle would make things doable in a solo fashion and cheap. DOPE.

Thursday, July 15, 2010

The simple days

 Police guard outside of the Blue Roof House entrance
Today was a good day, I slept in and had no new mosquito bites (the previous night was rough with not a good sleep and three big bites on my face), and a great hang out with a friend I met in Canada, but is home visiting his family. It was fun having a local who is a buddy ahow me around; and we went to this great park (line 9 near 산유도역)which is actually a small island in the Han river; the majorly huge river running through Seoul. Next we got some eats - mine was so freaking good. It was a black sauce seafood noodle dish, which is a Korean hybrid of Chinese food, and is just really tasty and a bit of a nice deviation from the typical Korean flavours. We had a bit of a bash at the arcade; which are fairly wildly popular with an astonishing variety of ages. I personally have seen everyone from the expected young school kids there to a group of men in business suits having a shoot out on some arcade games after midnight one evening.
We also had 'Milk Tea batbing-su', which is milky tea flavoured ice shavings with red beans, kiwi fruit, and ice cream on top... I love it! It comes in a bunch of flavours, but so far I've just tried the aforementioned one and the traditional red bean option. Yum like woah though, it's easily the best snow cone type treat I've ever had.
Afterward, I decided to show my buddy one of my favourite parts oforown he'd never been to; Insadong(Anguk station / 안국역). My favourite bib em bab place (red and blue neon sign behind the tourist info booth) coffee shop (Coffee Bang at Gan / 커피 방앗간), and a bunch of other fun things are here. It's the old part of town, meaning everything is small, cultural and there's really not many cars compared to most places I like to hang out. Apparently, this is also where Koreas version of the white house is 'the house with the blue roof', which it's known as), but you honestly can't get close enoughoro see what colour any roofover there is, all you see is a big wall and some guards and policemen doing their best to look preoccupied.

 the subway is just teeming with bodies constantly

Sunday, July 11, 2010

Saturday adventure!

My friends dad (I'll just refer to him as Appa[Dad in Korean] since
that's what I call him)had the day off from work today so we all went on a huge adventure! Firstly I'd like to point out that it's a Saturday and they thought it was great that he had the day off. Boo-urns! I often tell people who ask that I love being in Korea not as a Korean, I just can't cut the unpaid overtime and additional work days on top of everything else, so I am glad I'm just a traveler.
So! Today was huge. Like epic, huge, and all over this end of Korea itedelt like. We woke up at some horrible hour like 7am - I'm a natural night owl and so I just kind of stumbled out the door and then passed out in the car. My bad. I think we drove am hour or so, and then woke up to some HUGE grassy mounds. This alone was kind of rare, since space is such a commodity in this small and heavily populated country.
Turns out these big bad boys are their version of the Egyptian pyramids, just grassy and a lot smaller from what I hear of the pyramids. They buried their kings and queens inside, along with their servants who were bludgeoned to death to join their masters and serve them in the afterlife as well. All their gold ornaments, weapons, and other fun paraphernalia like horse riding gear, and wine cups in the shape of birds. It was cool! There was a tonne of foreigners on this patch, but I weirdly saw none after this.
Next we went to what is apparently the most popular bhuddist temple in Korea - which I will refer to as 'Bukoki' until I get my facts straight with Appa. It was $4 to get in and everyone but me gawked at the expensive price to get in.


you walk through this section before the Bhuddist temples, and there's these giant wooden warriors in there, 
who's purpose is to keep the evil spirits from passing into the temple


Next, we headed off to the Eastern shores to the beach at pohang, where a group of Korean guys called me the 'Princess of the Sea'. This proves two things; firstly that Koreans are ridiculously kind, and second that the one foriegner I'm any given area draws a lot of attention solely based on the fact they are not Korean.
I swam for ages in the sea, just reveling in being able to swim for the first time this year, but alas, the time soon came for the infamous Korean "Bali-Balli" (hurry hurry) and I was ushered out of the water and back into the car, for another destination of traditional fish markets (the hot topic of conversation was how nice my "perm" is (it's naturally curly, much to the disbelief of nearly every Korean". Then us and our fresh sashimi headed for the country, to my friends Grandmothers cottage by the lake where she has her own mini farm full of crops, cows, and stray cats. I loved it. It was a part of Korea that honestly may have never yet hosted a foreigner, as I was the first one the grandma and her friends had ever even seen.

Wednesday, July 7, 2010

All over the shop!

At the moment, I'm in Korea's hottest city - Daegu.
I stayed in Jeonju for two weeks, and then headed off one fateful day.
I got literally about 28kms or so, when a family spotted me and pulled over because the mom wanted to meet the yellow haired person on a bike. Ha. So they took a photo with me and then invited me to stay the night at their house, so of COURSE i said yes!
So they drove ahead and waited for me to bike to the street where their shop is - where we hung out, went for a walk in their beautiful park, played guitar (the mom is a teacher and AWESOME at guitar!), and ate dinner (dad is a chef! ha), and the kids rushed home from school to meet the forienger! The best part was, the next day was exam day, but they were exempt from studying since I was there.
I should offer myself for hire.
Kids all over Korea would love me!
So anyways, back in Gimje where reality exists, we went for a bike ride to the local stadium where what seemed like the whole female population of the town was out doing K-Pop (Korean Pop, duh) dance aerobics. The remainder of the town was walking, running, biking around the track and the kids playing soccer in the centre. It was such a freakin blast!! I was a little swarmed by the kids, but still hasn't beaten the time my friend and I were swarmed in Turkey earlier this year. Koreans are just plagued by shyness when it comes to English. My friend has told me conversations she's overheard about Koreans saying 'go, talk to her in english! say ' something! Ive even had questions handed to me on paper such as 'What's your name?' because they've never talked to a forienger before.

My friend (Jenny) has a brother who is in the military at the moment (males are required to do an obligatory 2 years between the age of 18-28), and came home for a few days break for a holiday (Chosok, I believe), and he was too shy to talk to me or mostly even hang out in the same room because he'd never spoken English to anyone but Koreans in school. So he has this bag...that I've been using since I've been staying in his room - and I showed him to make sure it was ok, and he said it was a present for me! So I naturally hugged him. He kind of shot back and first and then hugged me SUPER awkwardly. Later, my friend told me hugging isn't normal here to the extent that he'd never hugged anyone before! Not a girlfriend, not his sister. Ha, just me.

Awesome.

Yesterday another friend of Jenny's took us on a 'tour of Daegu', which means he picked us up in his car and drove us into the freaking breathtaking mountains of Daegu, to this mountain-top resturant where we ate, played guitar, and jumped around and had a blast breathing in the fresh air and being on top of the world!

Then I came home to study a bit...turns out Jenny's dad is a teacher and totally went all teacher on me. Ha. We studied for what felt like forever (I think over an hour), and I was drilled, told to think, and asked questions at such rapid fire pace ... now keep in mind he doesn't speak english, and my korean is decidedly beginner. It was so funny, I felt like a cross-eyed cartoon half the time, trying to sort out what was happening, but I definitely got the gist of where it was going, and got the answers in the text book right in the end! Woo!

It's a grand adventure!