Vietnam

(Only 2.5 months late...)

Our schedule for the trip was very tight, so we only had a day trip to Ha Long Bay, a day in a half in Hanoi, two days in Ho Chi Minh City, and then onto Cambodia. My quickie review of Vietnam? Beautiful, great food, great shopping, cheap, and boy do I wish we had spent more time there.

We flew into Hanoi late Friday night, and left for Ha Long Bay first thing Saturday morning. Despite the 4 hour bus ride (each way!) and the mist preventing distance views, the bay was stunning. It's odd to experience such silence, which you'll find was a trend on this vacation, while surrounded by tourists, but it's true. We went on a rowboat through the coves in the largest island, saw a girl no more than 10 years old master a boat better than I could hope to navigate any vehicle ever in my life, and visited one of the largest and most expansive caves I've ever seen. Seeing natural rock formations that took thousands of years to form a peak just-so, is awe-inspiring. Definitely leaves an impression.

The floating village's school

Beyond the natural beauty of Vietnam, the cities are a whole new ball game. Hanoi is truly amazing, with the most eclectic architecture I've ever seen. I'm not the most well-versed in history, but I think if it had been explained to me through the building styles of the time periods, my interest would have been piqued. To see French style buildings next to the large archways and stone work of some-other-style-that-I-can't-name, in bright shades of yellows and greens and purples was absolutely beautiful. Ho Chi Minh City was very different aesthetically. The city seemed much more modern somehow, with wide roads lined with large trees, more open spaces of lakes and parks, and scooters.

Oh my god the scooters.

I bought a postcard with a cartoon of a traffic light. Green light says 'I can go.' Yellow light says 'I can go.' Red light says 'I can still go.' Literally the most accurate thing of the entire trip. There are no lights, no pedestrian walkways. You just walk into oncoming cars, bicycles, and scooters and hope that they see you and move accordingly. Thankfully, they do just that. It's surreal, in the most terrifying sense, to be walking through traffic, vehicles weaving seamlessly around you like water flows through a stream. I'm not ashamed to admit that Bhavika and I were intimidated a few times, and had to be escorted across the street by policemen in official uniform. Clearly they were used to this kind of thing.

Of course, the other notable thing was the food. We did a street food tour in Hanoi, and what an investment! Trying so many different kinds of food, learning to recognize and get a taste for new ingredients, and even seeing the city through the familiar eyes of our guide really set the tone for our time there. Even better, when we arrived in Ho Chi Minh City, we took a cooking class. Starting out with a tour of the local market, we could see coconuts in various stages of processing, fruits that I had never tasted, seen, or even heard of before, and more animal organs than Bhavi knew how to handle. For me, the fruit was the most fascinating. In Korea, fresh fruit is very expensive and is difficult to find anything I'd consider exotic. Not so in Vietnam, that's for damn sure. Anyway, the cooking class was phenomenal, and I left it with a recipe book and confidence in my spring-roll-frying ability.

One of the things I loved the most about Vietnam, and Hanoi specifically, were the people. I don't think we met a single unfriendly face, and many people offered us help if we were lost or confused. While we were at Hoan Kiem (a lake near the Old Quarter), we were approached by a pair of students. Now, I tend to be very paranoid when I travel, and people approaching me immediately sets off my 'stranger danger' alarm. But these two were about our age, and were very upfront that they were students at a Vietnam university wanting to practice their English. They were so friendly and inquisitive about our travel, especially so when they learned about our lives in Korea, asking how did Vietnam compare. The four of us talked for so long that Bhavika and I were a little late for our next appointment! But that's what travel is all about, meeting people and having experiences.

You can take a billion photos, but what's the point of going to another country if all you do is see it through a lens? Heck, I can do that through a computer screen.

Next post: Cambodia!
안녕!

Little rain isn't gonna stop us

The second half of our 2013 Chuseok vacation was 2 days in Taipei. Naturally, with my luck, the timing wasn't great; there was a typhoon hitting the south end of Taiwan just as we were arriving at the north end of the island.

The good news is that it didn't hit the city directly, only got caught in waves of rain.

The bad news is that the threat of the typhoon caused the cable cars up to Maokong Mtn to close, which was a main attraction in Taipei. There are tea houses at the top which are said to be delicious and full of traditional Taiwanese foods.

Because of the rain, we were secluded in the hotel room most of the time, which worked out just fine when we were trying new kinds of snacks from the convenience store and playing cards. I taught Alex and Roberta the classy games of Bullshit and Rummy.

I'm not convinced that Roberta isn't some kind of Irish card shark who's just been biding her time...

But when we braved the rain to explore the city, we were all pretty impressed. Downtown was clean and there was art on every street corner.

Rain apparently keeps everyone inside...? More room for us to play!

My lovely travel companions :)

Interesting and providing valuable public service!

 We spent most of our full day in Taipei at Taipei 101, the tallest tower in the city. The top floor is an observatory, but was decidedly more interactive than Shanghai's. The entire floor was full of interesting facts about Taiwan and the construction of the tower itself. Not only that, but we got to go to the center of the building and get a look at a damper, the giant wrecking-ball-thing that keeps the massive building steady during at storm with gusting winds. The cartoon damper people were a little excessive, but it was still fascinating to get a firsthand look at something I had never given much thought to before.

After the observatory we stuck around and looked at the shops, sat outside of a Starbucks waiting for the rain to take a break, and did a fair amount of people watching.

At night we saw the Shilin night market, the largest in Taipei and only a few blocks away from our hotel. We ate at a Mongolian BBQ restaurant, which was delicious and SO cheap, then walked around to investigate the content of the booths. There were T-shirts for several dollars each, carnival games, and cheap knick knacks that make you wonder who actually buys them. Walked away from the market with several 'gifts'. I put gifts in quotes because I have grown attached and am unwilling to part with them. Namely my stormtrooper and smurf t-shirts. Terrible grammar and all, they're mine.

Night market, where you can find anything and anything cheap

Oh and food. Glorious food. The smell of roasting chicken and some kind of bread dessert product was everywhere, and it was mouth watering.I was surprised not to see very many strange food items. The stinky tofu (yes, that's the actual term) was expected, but besides that I only saw some gelatinous thing that had pictures of frogs on the side. Assume away.

Mongolian stir fry at the night market.
Cheap, delicious, and filling!

I would eat dumplings every day if I wouldn't look like Jabba

'Crab Hand Roll' flavored chips. They were surprisingly delicious

We also got to visit Longshan Temple, one of the oldest, most intricate temples within the city. There was a service being held at the time, and walking around taking photos while people were offering incense and singing prayers felt disrespectful, so we didn't stay long. Although not particularly large, it was still incredibly beautiful. I am always intrigued by how vastly different the Chinese/Japanese/Korean temples are in style, even those of the same religion (Buddhist, typically).

Overall, I really loved Taipei, so much so that it's on my short list of cities to potentially live in one day. The people were incredibly friendly, the food was delicious, it was clean and relatively easy to navigate. Not much more I can ask for in a city.


안녕!

Can't quite make up my mind about China

Let me preface this entry by saying that Shanghai was not my favorite place. We started off on the wrong foot (getting horribly ripped off by a taxi, which my pride will not let me forget) and it somewhat soured our time there. I tried to be as objective as possible and would overall give the city a 6/10, but there were a lot of negative aspects (namely the overcrowding, smelliness, and rudeness of the people we met).

Once we arrived at the hotel, the trip got much better. Our hotel was fantastic. Anyone looking for a recommendation, Les Suite Orient is at the top of my list. Taking a nice hot bath while overlooking the river and the picturesque Shanghai skyline was pretty amazing.

Ahhh. Bliss.

But you're not here to read about the hotel. At least I hope not. That'd be weird.

First thing we did after settling into the hotel was to visit the observatories in Shanghai's tallest building, the Shanghai World Financial Center (or as I called it, the bottle opener). I say observatories because Shanghai scoffs at the paltry attempts of other buildings by offering 3 floors for viewing. The 94th floor has a shop and restaurant, the 97th  has glass walls and ceiling, and the 100th has glass walls and floor (kind of). We got there are dusk, so the photo quality wasn't ideal, but it was still amazing to see how far the city stretches beyond the small area we explored.

Dusk or pollution?

View from the 100th floor. Not as impressive as I'd imagined.

 The second touristy thing we did was go on a river boat cruise. 'Downtown' has built up around the Huangpu river, and taking a tour up and down the notable parts at night was incredible. The skyscrapers are lit up with messages in Chinese and English, with ads for Samsung phones covering over 70 floors with blindingly bright blue, and nearby towers are trying to compete with sparkling reds, greens, pinks, and purples. There were a surprising amount of boats on the river at night, many of them as lavishly decorated as the one we were on. It was one of the experiences that really enforced that we weren't in Kansas Korea any more...

... do I?

We started the next day by going to the YuYuan gardens, one of the top tourist places to visit in the city. Different parts were built at different times, but all within the 19th century. The architecture was amazing, my favorite features were the entryways into new sections; each frame was a different shape. As can be expected in every garden ever, there were a lot of fish. But these were not normal fish. Brightly colored and HUGE, they were everywhere. I spent a lot of my time watching them interact with the children that were so clearly enamored with them. There were toddlers being pulled back a millisecond before falling in headfirst trying to pet one.

A stranger asked me take a photo with her (is it weird that I don't think that's weird anymore?).

Possibly the highlight of my trip was the acrobatics show. Roberta was determined to go to one while in China, and I am so glad that she was insistent. Parts of it were expected (2 man strength demonstration, jumping through hoops, and the young girls with the bending and the flipping and whatever else hurts my back just to watch), but there were also spinning plates and diablos, chair balancing, bicycle pyramids, roller skating (WTF?), and a motorcycle cage. For the last one I'm pretty sure I didn't breathe, which caused Alex and Roberta great concern and amusement. Sorry for the lack of photos, they were very insistent about no cameras. Although there's always some guy in the front row with an iPad who thinks he's James fucking Bond being all sneaky. Dude. We see you.

And of course the food was amazing. We mostly ate dumplings (both the xiao longbao that's famous in the area, and other dumplings like gyoza, bao, and shumai). So. Many. Dumplings.

Eat ALL the dumplings!

Living in Korea for so long has made me comfortable with where I am. I hardly ever feel rushed or panicked in my day to day life, at least when I stay in my safety bubble of Daegu, and have so many people that I can call in an instant if I need help. Traveling (not by myself) outside of Korea was a bit of a wakeup call and reminded me very quickly that I am a very far way from home. In Korea, I can sound out most of the words I see on signs and menus, but when I tried to do the same with Chinese and obviously failed, the panic set in.

Writing this post helped me to remember that coming back to Korea was like coming home (a home where a trip to Hong Kong is a feasible weekend plan). I've decided to stay right where I am, at least for now. I'll revisit the idea of switching to high school or another country next year. Thanks to everybody for the support and advice :)

Next post: Taipei!

안녕!

The Land of the Rising Sun

This is a long one. Bear with me.

Before any trip, I research what major attractions I should take the time to experience while I’m in the city. The list of recommendations for Tokyo was enormous, and I knew I couldn't do everything. Because this was my first time traveling alone, I decided to do something a bit different. Instead of cramming in as many sights as possible (my usual plan of attack for big cities), I wanted to do memorable activities. I signed up for a day-long tour to Mount Fuji and Hakone, a hands on cooking class, and a temple/beach walk with a company that organizes informal tours for foreigners living in Tokyo. Unfortunately, due to a stupid alarm mistake, I missed the beach walk. The cooking class was absolutely AMAZING, and I’ll be doing an entirely separate post on it later this month. Mount Fuji was cloudy, so I didn't get many good pictures, but I learned more about Japan in that day than I did the rest of my trip.

No one wants to hear boring step by step details of what I did, so I’ll put a bunch of pictures with captions, then finish this post with my overall impression of Japan. How’s that sound? It sucks? Too bad. This is my blog.

Capsule hotel my first night. The beds are essentially boxes with 3
inches of padding to sleep on. Cheap and a very cool experience. 

Tako yaki = octopus balls. Too much dough, not enough octopus.

Sensoji Temple in Asakusa. Very touristy, but pretty.

Another temple in Asakusa

5 story pagoda in Asakusa

Tokyo Skytree, the tallest building in Tokyo. Didn't get to go up, as a reservation was required, but the huge mall built around it was great fun

Kabuki-za theater in Ginza. I saw a Kabuki show here and was very impressed
(kabuki is traditional Japanese theater. Men only, very exaggerated and bizarre costumes).

Ginza is the glitzy shopping district of Tokyo, where every other building is an expensive brand name

A photo of a photo of Mount Fuji. I was not so luck as to get a great view

At the fifth station of Mt Fuji, with the mountain behind me
(I believe the white building is a hotel)

Mt Fuji candy. Lava candy, on the left, is sugar that looks like lava.
On the right, crispy rice cookie shaped like the mountain

Lake Ashi, as seen from a river cruise

Cable car ride to the top of Mt Hakone

Mt Hakone, active volcano. Really windy and a mild sulfur smell due to the volcanic gasses 

Kurotamago = black egg. Eggs boiled in the volcanic hot springs turn black from the iron and minerals
that are in the water. It's said that eating one will make you live 7 years longer.

What kind of 90s kid would I be if I didn't go to the Pokemon center?

Amazing park next to the Pokemon Center. Completely calm and separated from the hectic feel of the city

Yet another illustration of the coexistence of the old and new

Meiji Shrine, one of the largest Shinto shrines in Japan. This is called a Torii, a gate that marks
 the entrance to a Shinto shrine. It cleanses the souls of those who walk through it.

Sake barrels at the shrine. Sake is offered to the shrine as it is considered to bring good luck on the donor

Me at Gonpachi restaurant in Nishiabuza, the restaurant that inspired my favorite scene in Kill Bill.

For a bit of a break, I spent a day at Tokyo DisneySea. The shows
were incredible and unlike anything I've seen at any amusement park

It was interesting to compare my experiences there with my time in Korea.  I've included pronounced differences below:

• Japan is so freaking clean. I've traveled quite a bit and genuinely can’t recall a city being as clean as Tokyo, which is astounding considering just how many people live there! There was no trash on the ground, no pockets of sewage smell, or people spitting on the street. Korea is full of those three things, and it’s incredibly unpleasant. The sound of an ahjeosshi hacking a loogie next to you on the sidewalk is gag-inducing.

• Nobody stared at me! This may have been the first time in 7 months that I didn’t constantly feel as if I was on display. It was so exciting! In Korea, being stared at is a common experience for a foreigner. Old men and women will literally walk to within 6 inches of your person and slowly circle, looking you up and down as if you’re being sold at a market. It’s typically more subtle (quick glances away when you look up on the subway is most common, with a side of this), but it does happen. In Japan, however, I only noticed a handful of people looking my way, and that was when I was struggling to use a kanzashi (decorative Japanese hair stick). Heck, I would have stared at me too, flailing about with my hair frizzing out everywhere.

• Order is king. Koreans are not known for their patience, and that unfortunately bleeds over into aspects of everyday life. Most notably, walking down the street and waiting for public transportation. Sidewalks are just constant danger zones. As someone that walks very quickly, the tendency of Koreans to meander and zig zag as if strolling through a frickin empty meadow is intensely frustrating. Mr Bean knows what I'm talking about. The 20-somethings like to walk in rows 4 people wide, older women with pushcarts expect everyone to move out of their way, scooters navigate through crowds at terrifying speeds, and I look like the weirdo speed-walking around people. When I see an opening to finally pass a crowd but there’s another group converging, it feels like the scene in ‘Empire Strikes Back’, when the Millennium Falcon is escaping the space slug’s mouth on the asteroid. Once I've reached the glorious freedom of open sidewalk I’m struck with the desire to high-five Harrison Ford. But I digress. Tokyo was very orderly, with everyone walking at a brisk pace and adhering strictly to the ‘stand on the left, pass on the right’ rule. I already miss it.

• Strangers left me alone. In Korea, it’s very common for foreigners to be approached by people wanting to practice their English. Sometimes they’re men looking for a date, women who want to know how you did your hair, or mothers pushing their kids to say hello. I’m usually approached by middle aged men who smell a little too much of soju. But Japanese people left me completely alone. I wasn’t approached once, which I had mixed feelings about. It would have been nice to make a new friend, but when I travel alone I tend to be very paranoid and distrustful of new people. Wouldn’t exactly make for a good first impression.

• The food was quite different. I've been a big fan of sushi since my sister introduced me to it in high school, but have never really experienced any other kind of Japanese food. While in Tokyo, I had sushi, soba noodles, ramen, and lots of other things I don't remember the names of. What my general takeaway was that I prefer Korean food. Most of the flavors were very muted, just hovering over the point of bland. There was no spicy factor excluding the separate wasabi added to sushi and soba dishes. Korean food is full of spicy hot food, dishes with an acidic bite of vinegar, or the sweet savory-ness of meat marinades. I found myself dreaming of naeng myeon and dweggi kalbi. mmmm

• Many people wore traditional kimonos. The kimono in Japan is very similar to the hanbok of Korea. Both are intricate, heavy, expensive, and absolutely beautiful (I very much want to get one of my own). Walking around in Korea, I’ve only seen women wearing hanbok a handful of times. For formal occasions, sure, but never just walking around a market or grocery store. While I was in Japan, I was really blown away by how frequently I saw kimonos! I’d go so far as to say 5% of the women I saw in Tokyo were wearing kimonos, and maybe 1% of men.
  
   Those may seem like small numbers on paper, but imagine a busy subway platform, just a sea of black and white business attire. Then you pick out the dots of bright purple, red, and deep blue of kimonos in the crowd. The picture practically paints itself.

On the note of traditional dress, it brings me to an important observation of Japan and of Asia (at least in my experiences thus far): the organic combination of the traditional and the modern. I feel like Korea has the concept down pretty well, as a brief walk in any city will have you stumbling upon a historical gate, hanbok shop, or museum/gallery of some sort. But in Japan, that feeling is much more pronounced, more easily illustrated by the architecture of the buildings, the beautiful parks, and the almost refined way people carry themselves. The New-Englander in me admires the stoicism and subtle elegance of Japan. I felt at ease there, maybe more so than I do here in Korea.

That’s the note I want to end on. I love Korea, but can really see myself loving Japan too. Perhaps another visit or two is in order J

안녕!