Vacation!

So for the last couple of weeks I have been on vacation. It was a pretty active vacation but I did manage to not let my self stress out over it, trying to see everything in Korea, or alternatively, panicking about money, and how while I had some, it was not a terrible lot.

So this is how it went.

Week 1.

Saturday: slept in and then hung out in Yesan. Simple.

Sunday: I took the train to Daejeon, because I had read that there was a Anglican Church somewhere there abouts that had a English service, and it is also close to a couple of big national parks. I figured I would check out the church hang about in Daejeon the rest of the day, check in to a Hostel, and then check out the parks over the next couple of days. I ended up not finding the church or the hostel. But determined not to worry about this, I hung out that night in Deajeon, and ended up staying up all night in a PC bar.

Monday: Very tired, I took the train back to Sapgyo, and bascially crashed on my bed and slept the rest of the day.

Teusday: Refreshed, and determined not to let my failure in Deajeon keep me down, I went to Seoul. I met up with a friend there from the INFP forum I am on, and we hung out all afternoon. I ended up going to see "The Dark Knight" which was all the hype said it was, and I successfully checked into a Hostel at 2am.

Wendsday: I woke up, had some breakfast, and checked out of the hostel. I went and wandered round Seoul. Went to the Nagwan the musical instrument market, and ended up buying a set of "boom sticks" which are tuned tubes you can hit anything with and they make a note. They have great comic potential, so I felt justified. I also got a set of actual banjo strings for the banjo. However, I also realized that if I stayed in Seoul for much longer I would have no money very quickly, so I went and got a ticket back to Sabgyo. But before I went and did that. I took a very long subway ride to pick up a Slack-line set that I found for 10,000 won or about 10 dollars. A couple who were leaving the country were selling it, and I found out about it on Facebook market place which is a very handy thing for the ex-pat community in South Korea. They ended up giving it to me for free since that is how they got it, and they were impressed that I knew what it is. Here is me on my slack-line behind the school.

I did make the train home. I slept comfortably in my bed, and planned on going to the beach early the next day.

Thursday: I slept in. I got up bout 10am. But I managed to pack a couple things get a ticket and hop on the train to Daechon where the closest beach is. It was a packed ride there and back. Lots of people had the same idea. Unfortunately it was actually pretty boring beach, the tide was incredibly fast. The waves were small and most people were being entertained mainly by friends, a resource I lacked. But I made the best of it and had some fun just floating and generally hanging about.

Then I came home.

Friday: Slept in, tried out the slack-line and went to Yesan, and about midnight, jogged and got soaking wet from rain.

Saturday: Slept in, and went to Yesan. I think you might see a pattern.

Week 2

Sunday: Slept in. Then about 11 pm put on some clothes and went and jogged.

Monday: Slept in. Went to Yesan and transferred money to my home account to pay student loans. It made me feel better.

Teusday: Payday! But I slept in and then went and played on my slack-line for a while.

Wenesday: I slept in and then I went to Doeksan to wander around a provincial park they have there. I forgot my camera but I made a couple of sketches. It was a really cool place. It felt like walking in middle earth. I climbed up to a ridge then went along the ridge to a peak where there was a great view of Yesan County, and a big pile of stones with a stile in them:


I then went down the trail from the peak, which about a fourth of the way down started following a spring fed stream, and when through a lot of cataracts, pools and small waterfalls. It was great. I learned on this trip that Koreans don't believe in switch backs. Their trails are almost straing up, made out of stone stair cases. It was hard going up, and sometimes even hard coming down. But ended up at home in one piece, and bought a ticket to Busan for the next morning.

Thursday: I somehow managed not to sleep in and packed and got to the train in pleanty of time. To get to Busan from Sapgyo, you first have to go up to Cheonan and transfer to a KTX bullet train. The bullet train was cool. Extremely smooth and extremely fast it has a 300km/h cruising speed which is 186 mp/h. Towns and mountains were practically flying by.

When I got to Busan, I found a computer and tracked down all the hostels I could find in Busan, and I got a room for few nights. It took me a bit to find. It was with in a apartment building and I had to call again to discover what floor it was on. But I checked in, and then had to decide what to actually do in Busan. I ended up going to The Busan Aquarium which was quite good, and complete with a tank tunnel where sharks, turtles and rays would swim over you.


The only weird thing about it was the Disney knock off show, complete with mermaids and people singing songs from Beauty and the Beast in Korean. I back tracked and looked at the jelly fish for the duration. It also had a really cool 360 seal tank.

You crawled through a very short low tunnel into the middle of the seal's tank. It was so cool.

I had some dinner, some coffee, and wandered the beach that the Aquarium was at, which was almost Mediterranean. Then I went back to the Hostel before the subways stopped and I had to take a cab. I hung out there talking to people (Irish, German, and Japanese) and then went to bed.

Friday: Friday was the best day of my entire vacation. I got up and decied that I would check out a giant fortress in north Busan. When I say Giant, that is what I mean. It is huge, vast, not all that high of a wall, but you have to climb up a mountain first and after climbing a mountain in full armor, I am pretty sure a ten foot wall would be pretty daunting.

But of course the same applied to a lightly packed tourist. So I actually spent most of the day way below the fortress, in a sizable park filled with Temples, shrines, streams, a folk performance center, a carnival park, and a marine natural history museum.


It was a very wet day, so not much was open and not many people were there, but that was fine by me. I wandered around the park and into the Folk performance center where a group was practicing "Dongrae Hak Chum" or "Crane's Dancing." Being people used to having tourist wandering in, they invited me to join them, and so I did. It was a very slow simple graceful dance. When they stopped warming up, I got off the stage and watched them rehersing their actual dance before moving on.

I then wandered around some more and went to the Marine Natural history Museum, which was pretty cool except to the stuffed penguin with a bow tie and the fact that the night before I had gone to the aquarium.

I then left the park and got some lunch, then wandered back, and ended up starting going up one of the trails up to the fortress on the mountain. I ended up going about a third of the way up, which is how far the stream went up, stopping at every interesting water fall, natural cave or any other interesting spot. It was amazing. Words fail me. Here are some pictures.


I then went back down, and on impulse took the Sky line tram thing to the top of the mountain. This was at about 4:30pm. It turned out that there was a cloud on top of the mountain. It was very foggy. But I figured that since I was there, I should go find the fortress. One of the gates was about half a kilometer away.


But it turns out that the trails are not well marked and it took be a bit to find it. Coming back I almost got lost. It was getting dark, it was foggy and I did not know my way around. I ended up back tracking to the last sign (I learned the hard way about going off trail looking for the right one on mountains long ago) and after several nerve wracking minutes with "Into the Woods" playing in my head I found the Skyline station again.

I went down, and went and found a place to buy some dry pants (the only thing I didn't have a dry set of back at the hostel) and got something to eat, and went back to the hostel, and hung out the rest of the night talking with people and sipping whiskey (Irish, Belgian, French, Japanese, Korean (the people not the whiskey)) then went to bed.

Saturday: I got up, and decided to explore the market down town. I love markets. They are so exotic to me even though they more often then not, sell the usual suspects. I spent most of the day just wandering around the market looking at stuff. I ended up buying a huge foam prop pistol which has great comic potential, and works well into a gag I have envisioned that is basically a pantomime with a banjo that thinks it is a helium balloon. The gun is perfect for breaking out and shooting the banjo with which then "deflates" and hits me in the head. Hilarious right?

I also got my first haircut here in Korea there. It was great. It was a hair cut place for men, and they had a poster of nine styles you could get, all numbered. So I didn't have to explain anything. And it cost only 6 bucks.

Anyways I wandered around the market then went to Busan Tower which is a big 110 m tall tower on a hill next to the market where for a small fee, you can ascend to the top and look out at Busan. It was a nice view. Busan is a port city nestled in a valley between high mountains. How could it not be? It also had a Musical instruments of the world museum right next to it. The second floor was filled with percussion instruments to bang on which was a lot of fun and I spent a good thirty minutes there showing off and having ones I wasn't familiar with explained to me.


Coming back down from the tower plaza was a little old lady who had a bird fortune telling set up. She had a cage with two finches in it, and a box of folded up pieces of papers stacked vertically in front of it so that the edges faced up. She would open the cage and a finch would hop out, and pick a piece of paper out of the box, and that would be your fortune. It was cool, but being a missionary, I decided that maybe it wasnt such a hot idea to do myself. They take such things seriously here.

I then went and got some dinner, and watched "The Mummy 3: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor." It really didn't make much sense, even for a Mummy Movie. However, it was the only thing in English on and was entertaining enough.

Then I went back to the Hostel and hung out talking with people (Australian, Austrian, Korean, Japanese) and then went to bed.

Sunday: I got up, packed up, and went to the train station and bought a ticket for Sapgyo. I had a couple of hours to kill, so I went back to the market a couple of stops over and had breakfast at MacDonalds. The first MacDonalds breakfast I have had in seven months. It was great. I the took one last look around the market, and then hopped on the subway back to the train station. I got on the train and came back to Sapgyo. That is pretty much all there is to it. The rest of the day I rested here at the apartment, and even cleaned some of the dishes in the sink, then went to bed.

And that was my Summer vacation. I was a lot less stressed by the end of it which was what vacations are supposed to do. This took me several hours to write down. So I hope you enjoyed it!

Peace!

Banjo banjo boinging bright...

So I have a banjo! Whoo Hoo! Huzzah! Hallelujah! and general exclamations along a similar theme!

Here is the story.

I was walking along one day on my way to a wedding with a couple of friends and a old man with a loong hoary beard grabbed my arm and told me some boring story about nearly being strangled by a sea bird. I know it didn't make much sense to me either, and later there was a banjo.

Okay so that is not how it happened, and wouldn't make any sense if it did.

Here is how it really happened:

I was at a coffee shop talking this guitar, a pretty little Epiphone with some nice inlay, when along comes this double bass and starts talking big, I stand up and he is already up right and we have it out. When I woke up there was this cute banjo standing over me bandaging my head. It was love at first sight need I say more?

Alright so that was not praticuarly truth filled either.

But seriously, I was roaming the Yellow sea with some Peruvian Pickle Pirates, looking for the fabled Golden Bananas of Barbadoo.... Okay so maybe it wasn't exactly the Yellow Sea we were in... okay! okay! There wasn't a sea. The Pirates and I - What? Ok no Pirates either. I was alone on dry land. In Yesan. On a Wenesday. It was a fairly nice day. But I was on a Quest! (And this part is true.) A Quest! Which I will always think of as the "Quest for the Can!" [cue Dramatic symphonic flourish]

The Quest for the Can:

Following the failed "Quest for a Banjo, Pereferably an Affordable One!" I resolved that I should make a banjo from found material, also known as a Canjo. A banjo is basically three things. A Neck, a drum, and a some strings. I "found" a sutible neck on the electirc guitar I had but never played. Strings are easy to find no problem. Wood and screws to join everything together was as common as, well, wood and screws. So I had everything I needed. Except a drum. Or drum substitute. As told last time sutible substues are... shallow drums like Bohdrans and tamborines and thin metal enclosed things like cookie tins and gas cans. So I started searching. And searching and searching here, there, over yonder and in between. In Sapgyo, Yesan, Seoul. Nothing. Nada. Nilch. For two weeks.

Then I went to one of the Music shops in Yesan and asked about tamborines to a guy there and then explained what I wanted it for, and he said he had a banjo, with no strings on it at home. I said "oh" and then we jamed out for an hour on guitar.

I thought about this for a couple of days and did a slow double take, and went back and asked "Hey can I buy your banjo?" he (Mr. Kim) said "let me go home and get it" so I hung out in the store for an hour or so jamming out again Mr Kim came back, and brought in this poor beat up banjo, no strings, no bridge, dirty with the finger board starting to peel up. "Needs a little more than strings, I can have it fixed in a week" so he started fixing and I started jamming again. Before I left for the evening he told me "three or four days." I asked him about money and he said we'll talk about it later.

So in three or four days I went back. He finished fixing it up, put some strings (they are a bit big but work) on it handed to me, I tuned it and then we jammed out. I ask him how much again, and he said "Not for sale, I am letting you borrow it, bring it back before you go." I told him I would and thanked him profusely, and then went to the bus stop where I hopped on a bus (after about a twenty minute wait) and rode into the sun set.

And thus was the surprising and entirely unexpected end of " The Quest for the Can."

Summer vacation start tomorrow night! WHOO HOO!