Sneak Peak: Bangkok

10 November 2011

After sundown, I go with Pete and his family for dinner. There's a never-ending spread of food. Every time a dish is close to clean, the remaining food is placed on another partially clean platter and some new delicacy replaces the empty plate. My memory is unreliable because I blacked out from pleasure, but I recall rotisserie chicken, fried fish steak, spicy papaya salad, saucy laab, spinach omelet, crispy pork slices, and a sharp vinegar and fish soup. Each plate came complete with its own unique sauce, and we ate pinches of sticky rice like dinner rolls.

Tonight the moon is full, marking the second largest festival in all of Thailand. People have gathered by the river banks, where numerous food carts are set up and the smoke and crackle of fireworks is thick. Each person carries a painted foam lotus flower, the top of which is speared with a narrow candle and sticks of incense. Around the base of these are marigolds and irises, held on by the faux leaves of the lotus. The people light the candle and incense, then concentrate on all the sin and sadness they've experienced over the past year. Then, the shrine is launched into the river, hopefully taking all the misfortune out with it. The dark waters are filled with tiny pyres, each one a twinkling prayer passing silently toward the sea.

In the northern style of Chang Mai, some people are launching makeshift hot air balloons, a thin, rice paper cylinder turned upside down and lifted by burning fuel hung from the mouth of the bag. Now the river is reflected in the sky. Bright ruby stars float past the orange harvest moon up into the stratosphere, drifting and impermanent constellations that change the once familiar firmament into something alien and beautiful.

The festivities are somewhat grim in conjunction with the flooding in the west. Pete and I are discussing what to do with our day tomorrow, and he makes an original suggestion. He is going with the family to assist with the relief effort and invites me along. It certainly would be more interesting than another day full of temples, markets, and walking. Thinking it a great opportunity, I jump onboard. What Pete doesn't mention is the extent of the problem. Or the army presence in the district. Or the utter lack of other white faces, destining me to be a spectacle. Or the escape of hundreds of crocodiles from the captive breeding center.

Sneak Peak: Ulaanbaatar

The first hours of Mongolia.

20 October 2011

The train arrives in the dark of the early morning. We are all shaken awake by the sheet collector around 5 am and out in the cold by 6. Ben and I both have an address on Peace Avenue, so we decide to walk it together. With what little clues we have, we set out into the dim pre-dawn for what unknowingly will become a three hour trek.

Both of us carry poorly scrawled maps of places sprouting off Peace Avenue, and neither of those maps contain our homes-to-be. It wouldn't make a difference anyhow, since not a single road is labelled nor building numbered. Fortunately, when you're lost with another traveller, nothing seems quite as hopeless. The threatening situations of lost, cold, dark, illiterate, and getting mugged on a street called Peace are much diminished.

* * * * *

By now the city has come fully alive. The streets crawl with honking, dusty automobiles and over-laden buses, and once empty sidewalks are teeming with people. The staring is intense, but whether its the height, beard, whiteness, piercings, evident lostness, bulging backpack, or a combination of all factors, I can't be sure. Fed up with aimless wandering, we decide to stop someone. Who better to locate Gandan Monastery than two monk boys, geared up in their golden robes with sleeves hanging past their hands and maroon belts holding the garb together?

"Excuse me, can I ask you a question? Do you two happen to know where we can find Gandan Monsatery?" Ben asks. Silly British courtesy. I pick up the directions and point to the word Gandan and ask, "Gandan: where?" The gap-toothed monklets turn and point their droopy sleeves up the hill.

This particular hill is mounted by a major highway which runs along the eastern edge of the slums. As we climb up, a painfully obvious temple, reminiscent of pictures I've seen out of Bhutan, rises above the dingy hovels. Monastery? It has to be, but just to be sure we turn and look back down the hill to see if we've passed anything bigger and more Buddhist.

Jaws hit pavement. The sun has just crested the mountains in the southeast, turning a pale dawn into a golden painting. The city is like stacked sheets of gold, each further layer brighter than the one before it until finally the city fades into the sky. The dust rising off the now busy roads gives every roof, every corner, every antenna a golden aura. It's so magnificent that neither of us can move or speak.

For those who've heard about my Chinese...immigration complications...fear not, it's all sorted. Best thing that has happened to me was getting deported from that awful country. The universe works in mysterious ways.

Calendar!

Wow this is convenient. I've been using it since the start but only just figured out how to share...what's my age again? All entries begin October 2011.

Sneak Peak: Atlantic

I couldn't in good conscience leave everyone hanging for five solid months, so I've chosen an excerpt from my trip to share. Enjoy!

19 September 2011

After Marin's watch, he escorts me to the focsle, or forecastle, or that pointy front deck area. Because the weather is windy and the seas rough, we thread through the tunnels between the ship's hull and her fuel tanks. These are narrow but high ceilinged and protect those inside from the elements or pirate RPG's. Coming out into the sunlight again a few minutes later, I see the waves for the first real time. What I had been gazing down on all along from the fifth floor of the accommodation tower had seemed like the stuff of lazy rivers. In fact, this was not the kiddie pool. Undulations crested along the lip of the deck only to plummet back down into cavernous recesses. To look at them one would think they'd get air time on the crest, each wave a trampoline.

"Now we can play Leonardo," Marin instructs. We walk to the forwardmost point on the ship, peering off the edge while the freighter cut the ocean in two. The water, in protest, picks the focsle up until we can't see the horizon then drops us at terrifying speed toward the deep blackness. Marin begins to tell how dolphins play Frogger by jumping back and forth in front of the ship, when suddenly a massive sneeze of sea spray blasts over the edge and into our faces. I sputter and shake off like a Saint Bernard and we both laugh. Marin turns to me and says, "It's ok. This is baptism," and I agree.

The Eve of Departure

It's been a comfortable, satiating, relaxing 2 weeks, but my American vacation is coming to a close. My attempt at circumnavigation begins Tuesday, September 13th, at four in the god-forsaken morning. I will board Amtrak bound for Chicago and, ultimately, New York City, where I will catch a freighter across the Pacific and the adventure will truly begin. After 9 months of planning, paper work, and headaches, the route is finalized and the visas are in hand.

I will depart from Newark for Morocco on the morning of the 17th. From there, I will cross the Strait of Gibraltar into Spain. Easing my way through early October and Europe, I will pass through southern France, northern Italy, Slovenia, Austria, the Czech Republic, southern Poland, and Belarus before arriving in Moscow. From there, I will cross Russia via the Trans-Siberian Railroad, plunging down from Lake Baikal, through Mongolia, and into Beijing before Halloween. I'll spend the next few weeks whisking southerly through China, Vietnam, Laos, and Thailand. When I arrive in Singapore or maybe Indonesia, I will ride a 21 foot crocodile to Australia (actually, this leg is still not tacked down yet...) where my pace will slow and I will sashay around with my friend D. Our traipsing will deposit us in Melbourne in time for my boat to New Zealand, set for November 30th. I will have a measly 3 days in NZ before I will again take to the high seas, this time for the long haul: Panama. Sometime between Christmas and the New Year, I will arrive in Central America, ready for a scenic January. I'll bus my way north through Costa Rica, Nicaragua, Honduras, and Guatemala, inching ever closer to home. After clambering through our increasingly hazardous Neighbor to the South, I will arrive at last in Texas. After that, it's a simple matter of getting back to Michigan by February first and thus completing my global circumnavigation by surface transportation alone!

Quick question: what foreign foods do Americans love best? I believe they are Italian, Mexican, Chinese, and maybe Thai as a distant 4th. Who is going to Italy, Mexico, China, and Thailand (not in that order)? Food trip extraordinaire! It only just occurred to me that this is what is happening. Maybe it's my subconscious at work.

Sadly, there will only be maybe one more blog post if that for the next 5 months. I will probably have the time and the means to post my trip through NYC and Chi-town, but everything else will have to wait. I would be remiss to share my stories without their accompanying photographs, and anyways the Internet access will be infrequent and unreliable. I will be documenting everything thoroughly, don't worry, and I intend to release the adventure day by day, as if were happening, except much after the fact. Believe me, you'll be glad for posts with pictures.

Also, big news for February! The international blur just won't stop since I will be shipping off to Kazakhstan for my Peace Corps assignment. Borat jokes: ready, aim, fire.

My Tribute to a Week of American Food

As promised, I’m back to liven the mood of the blog. No more gloom and doom, no more lamenting what’s over. It’s time to turn my attentions towards what I have and what’s coming. In the spirit of this new outlook, I’m here to gloat to all my friends back home in Seoul about the foods that I’ve missed so desperately for two and a half long years. I give you my food binge of the past week.

Act 1: Ingredients

What’s that? Limes?

Unlimited, fresh, versatile limes!!!

Breads of all types, for all occasions.

Focaccia in olive oil and balsamic, buns for hamburgers, bagels or whole grain toast in the morning, crusty loaves for sandwiches, pita for dipping.

Local maple syrup.

It flows as abundantly as soju.

Raspberries in your face.

Throw them in vanilla yogurt with granola or bake them in a pie!

Garden fresh vegetables.

Literally picked all this with my mom from the garden in our yard*.

*yard: an expanse of grass that surrounds one’s house**.
**house: a Western-style building consisting of many officetel onerooms in which each individual room serves a designated purpose.

Act 2: Sides

Corn, done right:

On the cob with butter.

Veggie tray to the rescue.

It comes complete with bleu cheese dressing. Dill pickles and celery on request.

Salads everywhere!

No cabbage or pineapple dressing here, folks. Just vinegar based sauces, fresh vegetables and tomatoes, whole milk mozzarella cubes, cucumber from the garden, and happiness.

Mac’n’Cheese.

Is it even fair to show you cheap pasta covered in legendary white cheddar goodness and baked to a crisp in an oven? Is that cruel and unusual?

Act 3: Mains

Wing night at the house.

That means big, meaty drumsticks off the charcoal grill slathered in mango habanero sauce. Face-melting good!

More grilling goodness!


Chicken thighs and vegetable skewers. Note the eggplant, baby portabella mushrooms, and yellow squash.

Chili dogs.

Homemade slaw. Optional upgrade to Amish sausage. Don’t forget the diced jalapenos.

Breakfast of champions is not called Wheaties.

It’s called cheddar grits, eggs over easy, and spicy breakfast sausage. Good enough for any meal of the day.

Act 4: Dessert

Rasberry pie.

It’s all there needs to be and more.

I’d say I’m sorry, Korea, but I’m trying to lie less. I do wish that you all could have been here to share it. It’s been a truly stodgy week here in Michigan.

Farewell

Stripping down the walls and wiping out the drawers. Sending off the clothing and heirloom bottle openers and Thom Yorke posters. Change of address, phone cancellation, key pass off. Tomorrow I must leave my apartment of two and a half years, my palace on F Floor, the one room to house them all for more time than most take to get a graduate degree. In other words, this shit is real, folks. Korea is definitively over and it finally feels as such. Months of planning and preparation for a some day which is finally today.

Only one tear-jerking moment as of yet: 2 weeks ago my students threw me an early farewell party. They taped balloons and a message on the board. They insisted that I eat the entire cake alone (After much debate about whether they should contribute to its consumption by merely picking the white chocolate shavings off the top or each taking a sliver of the cake itself, in the end they opted for both). The part that realy choked me up though were the letters claiming that they'd "never forget" me and thanking me for being a "great teacher." Hold it down, be strong, you can cry on the boat across the Atlantic. After all, what more will you have to occupy your time?

I've spent my last month in the way I love best: eating all my favourite foods, singing my heart out at noraebang, and introducing everything I love about Korea to the fresh eyes of replacement teachers. Between meals, playlists, and tours, I've spent my nights for the past several weeks bidding a fond, inebriated farewell to my haunts, my neighbours  my hometown, and all my friends. I don't use "my hometown" lightly here: I'd hate to be one of those foreigners who comes back from abroad and feigns a closer connection with a country after 2 years than after 20. However, since my family has left my hometown of Georgia, I've been faced with a unique dilemma. All the people I love are in one state, and all the places with which I am familiar are in another. It takes both people and locale to make a hometown, and now I don't have that combination anywhere in America. Until Korea empties of close friends, this is the most "hometown" I've got these days.

To all my friends here, thank you. There is little in my short years that I could describe as "stand out," but Korea has been an experience that will change me for life. I've experienced great happiness and tragedy here, and to the people who've shared either with me I am indebted. To everyone back home, it has been too long. Many will have to wait a bit longer, but I'm coming around the long way. Whether I see you before or after my trip this winter, I'm looking forward to the relationships in my life that I've always been able to count on, regardless of time or distance.

A coworker asked me this week what I regretted about my time in Seoul. Though a fair question, I didn't have an answer for him. Were I to be asked now I might say, "I wish I studied the language harder," or, "If only I could have made more local friends," but in absolute honesty there's nothing I would do differently. I came to travel, and I did a great deal of that. I came to hone my Korean, and I'm more than satisfied with where I've gotten. I came to bolster the resume and make paper: done and done. All the goals were accomplished without sacrificing comfort, experience, or fun. Korea has been good to me, and it will be under my skin during the foreseeable future.

너를 사랑했기에 후회 없기에 좋았던 기억만 가져가라 I don't regret having loved you, so carry with you only those memories which were good.

~Big Bang

Speed Update

I could be back in the states at 5:35 pm August 31st! Maybe. Stand-by is 1/4 of the price, but the uncertainty makes up for the other 3/4.

Summer Vacation

In an effort to take a last spin around Korea and keep things cheap on the eve of a much larger trip, I used my summer vacation last week to scrape west along the southern coast of the peninsula. Busan, as usual, under-performed, but it did make for a nice springboard into Jeolla Province, a collection of largely farming communities and islands in the south west.

The first stop in Jeolla was the historical capital of the region: Gwangju. Unlike Gyeongju in the southeast, Gwangju's history is much more modern. Rather than the seat of the ancient government, these citizens boast the birth of the modern one. Although "democracy" in South Korea was established after the war in the 50's, it didn't really take root until the 80's. To spare you the boring details, after 2 decades of "presidency," Park gets assassinated and the military wipes out the interim government. General Chun becomes the new "president" of the "democracy" and on March 18th the people of Gwangju start demonstrating. The "communist rebellion" is violently put down however, and in what Koreans consider their own little Tienanmen Square, somewhere between 127 (government's claim) and 2000 (most extreme estimate) civilians were killed. Visiting the memorial grave site left me with both the awe of meeting a celebrity (for I had studied this event when I was at Yonsei) and the humility of being faced with sacrifice (especially for something Americans hold in such high regard).

Jeolla is known as the bread basket of Korea, and the food there doesn't disappoint. The highlight meals were the barley bibimbap (substituting steamed barley for plain white rice) and the massaged duck (massaged in sugar-vinegar-red sauce!), but everything right down to the barbecue or steamed pork was fantastic. The surprising thing was that it didn't rely on any "specialty foods" that couldn't be procured in Seoul, like Andong did. It wasn't even that the seasoning was more brilliant or complex. By and large, the stand out difference in the south west cuisine was freshness. Be it vegetables, rice, or meat, every ingredient tasted like it hadn't been packed up, cooled, preserved, or shipped, probably because it hadn't.

Compensating for the regions lack of vast cities, Jeolla's natural wonders were both breathtaking and expansive. I took the time to get up a mountain once I arrived in Mokpo, Jeolla's primary port. In contrast to the sprawling, tawny mess of spray-tan tourists that is Busan, Mokpo was the most quaint I've ever felt from a Korean town. A combination of the quiet atmosphere, the islands throughout the bay, and the wreath of mountains gave gave the effect either a hot version of Hokkaido or some Michigan lake town that was miraculously also in Appalachia. As wikitravel could tell you, there's not much to do here beside eat ray or leave, but somehow you don't care. Scaling Yudal mountain in the late Friday morning heat was not exactly agreeable, but it turned out to be one of the few times I've gotten a sense of gratification from a climb. For me, altitude doesn't add much to nature, but peering out into what looked like a mountain range sprouting from the ocean was terribly impressive.

Decisions

40 days remain until my contract is finished. The Iran hostage crisis was 11 times longer; Justin Bieber toured for 9 times longer; James Garfield's presidency was 5 times longer; Even the Chilean miners were underground longer than I'll remain in Seoul. The immediacy of the end has crept up on me, and so the time has come for final trip decisions. When I depart in mid-September to attempt (and probably fail) an around the world land bound trip, I have decided that given the absurd difficulty of securing a visa to Saudi Arabia and the state of the rest of the middle east, my most reliable route to Asia is the Trans-Siberian Railroad.

I've already made reservations to take a two-week tour through the Urals, Siberia, lake Baikal, Mongolia, and finally arrive in Beijing near the end of October. This means that I will have to crawl down through China and southeast Asia in order to make my way back to the original route. I'll cross the equator almost as I cross into Vietnam, completing one of my two trip goals in early November. I will probably fail the second goal (my challenge to stay grounded) somewhere beyond Jakarta, as no viable route from southeast Asia to Australia is presenting itself. I've not given up hope yet, but, like many others before me, I do have to start considering that the dream will be dashed in Melanesia. There's a looming feeling that the rest of the boating and training and trekking becomes fruitless if it's only for a partial circumnavigation, but we'll see how I feel after the new year.

In the meantime, having decided to spend more than two weeks on Russian soil or tracks, I took the opportunity last week to acquaint myself with their cuisine. In the heart of the Russian district (it's real) of Seoul, a friend introduced me to Gostiny Dvor (Гостиный Двор! I've been practising my Cyrillic). It had been so long since I'd had rich beer, rye bread, or potato-laden cuisine. Quite a gratifying experience overall, giving me yet another satisfaction to anticipate when I arrive in Moscow (Москва!). Food recap below.

Our Father, who art in Calgary, Bobsled be thy name.

Sunday afternoon,

raining on my window panes,

I need Jamaica.

That's a little haiku I whipped up in honor of our Cool Runnings party today. Yes, the Disney-portrayed Jamaican bobsled team that slid into the Olympics and our hearts graced my apartment today in one of the most random and awesome theme parties I've ever witnessed. What are the ingredients? For starters, you need a heavy supply of rum beverages. In this case, we used enough piña coladas to turn anyone into the kind of club-toting, raw-meat-eating, Me-Tarzan-You-Jane-ing, big, bald bubblehead that can only count to ten if he's barefoot or wearing sandals. Step two involves a bit of almost Caribbean dessert: namely, bananas foster.  Once you've got the coconut pineapple juices flowing and some happy bellies stuffed full of brown-sugar-rum-butter bananas, you're ready to feel good with Doug E. Doug and John Candy. We laughed, we cried, but there's one key element missing: bobsled style pictures. Nothing makes you feel like the best pushcart driver in all of Jamaica like lining up some chairs, setting the timer on the camera, and coordinating some fun. The inspirational classic of pride, perseverance, and friendship brings a little sun to any Asian monsoon afternoon.

Feel the rhythm! Feel the rhyme! Get on up, its bobsled time! COOL RUNNINGS!

"Left!"

"Crash!"

"Gold!!"

Where Have I Been?

Wondering what I've been up to? Resolving a lot of issues and finalizing a lot of details with my trip for starters, the details of which I'll publish soon. I've also been finishing up all my medical paperwork for my Peace Corps application. Friends have been in Seoul all last month it seems, which is time-consuming in and of itself, but I'm also trying to dedicate a lot of chill time to my friends who live here, since I've got 51 days (!?!?!) remaining. Although I've finally squirmed my way out of the head teacher position at my academy, I've not been entirely idle. Between grading essays (best line so far: on an essay about gender and toys, Tony writes with a wisdom beyond his years that "Boys like swords because they like fighting and fucking.") and making creative lesson plans (read: water bottles full of dirt to illustrate pollution or drinking games to practice grammatical structures), I've been digitally embalming myself for future Avalonian generations.

My favorite is slide 17!

Nomination

Although it's nowhere near definite or specific, I have a nomination from the Peace Corps. Assuming that I do my part with the legal and medical paperwork, I should be going to "South or Central America" sometime during "February 2012" for "Primary Education/Teacher Training."  All of that information is subject to change drastically, but even "we've narrowed it down to a month and a hemisphere" is progress.

Russia Was Nothing Compared to This

In all of my traveling, I have never had to bother with visa applications. Thanks to my blessed blue American passport, Japan, Taiwan, and Bangladesh have all let me in without a second glance. Now it seems it is time to pay my dues. The greatest challenge to overcome in the execution of this trip is not the planning or even the financing; it's the paperwork. I had a taste of this bureaucratic madness when I attempted Vladivostok in February. You know, when I had to apply for an invitation to apply for a visa?

Everything before Turkey and after Australia is a freebie on account of my citizenship, but that whole middle zone wants a full visa application. This means during the final months here in Seoul at least 10 embassy runs. While many of these have proven annoying (like only being open 4 days a week or only for 2 hours in the afternoon), nothing holds a candle to getting into Saudi Arabia. Here's the break down so far:

The Plan:
My route has me going through the middle east and then on to India, but this is hindered greatly by the fact that seemingly everything between Algeria and Mumbai is either in civil war or hates Americans. Even the waters are unsafe due to dysfunctional Somalia and somewhat less than vigilant Yemen. Now with Syria falling apart and Obama screwing my chances in Pakistan, the noose is tightening. If I can't make it through Saudi to the UAE, I have no choice but to scrap it and reroute through the Trans-Siberian Railroad. I've been trying hard for a week to discover if that Plan B is necessary or if I can lock down a visa to the Kingdom.


Click to view Middle East North Africa in a larger map

The Process:
The visa seemed next to impossible to get, but I have an in. My good coworker E was born and raised in Saudi for 21 years, and knows several people still inside the country. The necessary invitation for a travel visa seems plausible, so I started hitting embassies.

1. I went out to the location that was throughout maps and the internet indicated as "the Embassy to the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia." It seems they've moved locations over a year ago and this building is a husk. Also, visiting hours are exclusively during the hours when I'm working. After some finagling I manage to secure the new address as well as permission to come in the morning.
2. The next day, I approach a lady at the counter of the KSA embassy. She looks at me as if I were insane, then tells me I have to wait for the consular to come in. You see, they're not sure whether I even need a travel visa (which they don't do anyway) or simply a transit one. Don't ask me why the consular is not in the consulate nor ever once showed in an hour and a half. In the end I had little choice but to leave my number and a copy of the map.
3. The KSA secretary calls me back with the information that, while the embassy in Seoul could not grant me the visa I required, I could get the necessary transit visa from the consulate in Amman, Jordan. My fear is that this is not true. What if I arrived in Jordan to find a dead-end, no re-entry permit for Egypt and therefore no hope of backtracking, and a wasted booking on a freighter from Dubai?
4. By now it is Friday, and though I attempt to fact check with the Saudi consulate in Amman, I have forgotten that Friday is the Muslim Sunday.  Of course there is no one there. Instead I call the D.C. one, but then realize that the time zone math I had done isn't applicable to both Jordan and Virginia...
5. When I finally contact D.C., they tell me that a visa is not even on my list of concerns: I will not be allowed to take this bus because I am not a middle eastern national. I know for a fact that this isn't true, as it was recommended to me by an American. However, now I have to confirm that it's still available for whities.
6. In the meantime, E sets Plan A.2 in motion, which involves one of her friends applying to sponsor my transit through the KSA. I spend some serious time researching the TSR from Moscow to Beijing, as Saudi is looking more and more unlikely.
7. This morning, just as I'm warming up to thoughts of Siberia, Raed Haddad of the Jordan Express Tourist Transport Company, or JETT, writes me a very cordial email informing me that riding the bus will absolutely be "no problem at all" and that I should specifically acquire a land transit visa. All this to be back where I was before calling D.C.  Can I get the visa here in Seoul, by mail to D.C., on the ground in Amman, or not at all?

Something tells me that the struggle isn't through yet, but until I answer the question of whether I can or can not pass through Saudi, I can't book anything further or calculate the timing of my trip with any accuracy. This one visa will determine the character of the middle 2 months. Will it be Turkey, the Middle East, and India? Or will I instead be in Russia, Mongolia, the Gobi, and finally city hopping through China?

Buddha's Birthday

Every year on the first full moon of the fourth month in the lunar calendar, millions of people gather at temples all over Asia to celebrate Buddha's Birthday. Preparations start several days in advance, with strings of lanterns popping up all over the city.  When the day finally came this year, it was a rainy Tuesday here in Seoul.  The dreariness didn't stop the festivities though.  I myself hiked up to my favorite local temple.  The street vendors were out in full force, which always adds a bit of energy to the atmosphere even in a drizzle.  Ajumas were serving up a free lunch of mixed mountain veggie bibimbab. My favorite part of the day is musical chanting of the monks, which I can hear from my window in the morning. I was able to record a sample of it.



While wandering around the vendor tents outside the temple gates, perusing the prayer candles and wooden kitchen utensils, I heard a racket. Coming from around the corner, the approaching cacophony was soon recognizable as a parade. Expecting a surfeit of men with ribbon-dancing hats, I was astonished when a barrage of 20 ajumas came barreling around the corner, skipping and drumming with big toothy smiles. Standing slack jawed at the sight of such energetic women, most of whom certainly had grandchildren, I almost became roadkill when the herd took a sharp right and stampeded right through me and into the courtyard of a house in front of which I had been standing. I followed them into the courtyard and watched with a grin as the ajumas jumped, drummed, and swayed back and forth as if they were reenacting a native american rain dance. They soon skipped on as merrily and suddenly as they had come, and when they did I followed them. This is a video of the very same troupe raising hell at their next stop, a tent full of diners.



After the scene had passed, I met up with some friends to see what was left of the weekend's lantern festival in the popular stream that cuts through the heart of the downtown area called CheonGye Cheon. The second musical surprise of the day was discovered underneath one of the bridges that pass over the stream. A seemingly impromptu rave was taking place in an small alcove, complete with boombox and the Japanese equivalent to Gatorade. Though those 10 or 12 friends weren't very impressive dancers, they did seem to be having a fair amount of fun. The most amusing part of it was the elderly couple who weren't completely undisturbed by the hooligans with their loud music. After we'd watched our fill and finished our stroll, it was time to spend the rest of our day off enjoying a microbrew and pleasant company at local pub The Table.

The First Leg

One of the defining aspects of my trip will be that I remain on the surface of the Earth constantly. As this rules out airplanes, it makes ocean crossing one of the bigger logistic hurdles to jump. Until they build a bridge across the Atlantic or a tunnel under the Pacific, this means boating the oceans of the world. Of course, it isn't as easy as it was in Columbus' century. Boats, though still quite common for transporting goods, are not so accessible to passengers as they once were. This is where a community of travelers and a butt load of research have come in handy.

For reliable and affordable* crossing of the big blue wet thing, I will be depending predominantly on cargo freighters. How is this possible? Since the mechanization of most physical labor, the personnel required for the loading and crewing of freighters has been significantly reduced. That means open cabins, which were wasted space until someone had the bright idea to hock them to travelers as a rugged cruise alternative.

Freighter travel is no walk in the park. I've had to jump through several bureaucratic hoops, including some very specific travel insurance requirements and a rubber stamp of approval from a doctor. The latter is to safeguard against the infirm boarding boats, since all cabins are up 3 or more flights of stairs and there is no physician on board. If you are not infirm of body, the greater challenge seems to be a weakening of the soul. With little to do for more than a week and few if any people to socialize with, a maritime path across the ocean means crushing loneliness and irreparable boredom. You must be braced to spend 10 days inside your own head, a book, or off the starboard side.

For a taste of what's to come, here's a shot of my first purchased and confirmed freighter. The CMA CGM Kingfish is shown here leaving New York City, as I will be, bound for my first foreign destination (Tanger, Morocco) almost precisely 1 year ago today.

* Let the record show that by affordable I mean in comparison to the alternative: the QE2.  Flying is still vastly cheaper than freighter travel.  At almost double the price of an airplane ticket, I am absolutely not recommending that you boat to save cash.  In addition, it is in no way possible to swab your way across the ocean.  Freighter crew do not ever accept work for transport.

The Next Step

It's true that I've been mentally checked out of Korea for some time now. I'm in the last four months of my job at Avalon. The food and culture are so normal these days that I can barely think of things to write about on this blog. I've hit a linguistic ceiling for someone not taking classes. There are few loose ends left to tie here, and considering that I've even done and seen all the things I wanted to before leaving Korea, I'd say it's been a pretty successful ride. While four months certainly leaves time for an adventure or two, most of my energy these days is consumed with the future, and Korea is more and more a part of the past. On September first, it will be completely so.

So what does the future hold? Well, right now I've been accepted into the Peace Corps, but the details are getting more vague with time instead of more concrete. At first, it appeared as though I were going to "eastern Europe or central Asia" (2,212,896 sq mi), but within a week I was renominated to "central or south America" (7,902,233 sq mi). Mathematically, assuming the increase in vagueness is linear and not exponential, I should be volunteering in "the world" by July 9th.

In the meantime, I am busily preparing for the stopgap. In the five months between the end of Korea and the start of some new adventure in [country name], I intend to do some traveling. The goal is to circumnavigate the globe. I have set two rules for this adventure. (1) I must cross the equator, and (2) I can not leave the surface.

The first rule is simply one of the governing concepts in the definition of circumnavigation. You must cross every line of longitude and you must finish in the same place you started in, but without the restriction of crossing the equator there is nothing to prevent you from heading straight north, skipping around the pole, then going home. While that would be an adventure in and of itself, it's not a valid circumnavigation. Crossing the equator is the simplest way to guarantee that the prospective circumnavigatee completes a "great circle," or a distance equal to the full circumference of the Earth.

As for the latter rule, I don't think there's any excitement in just getting on a commuter jet and showing up nine hours later in another country. A trip of this scale is about so much more than country hopping. I actually want to see the transformation of the land as it happens. Getting way up in an airplane is a fantastic way to skip over the weirdness, the run ins, and ultimately all of the fun of a "global road trip." Not to mention I hate airports, airplanes, and flying, as many do. I've discovered during my surface transport research an entire community of airplane boycotters, either because of health, phobias, or environmental conviction. While none of those apply to me, it is reassuring to discover that thousands of modern people every year travel on freighters, trains, buses, and ferries.

I've resisted the urge to romanticize this attempted circumnavigation, but just the very word conjures images of Magellan spliced with Indiana Jones. One of the great struggles is grasping the reality that this is not a camel ride montage across the Sahara or a pan out to a brown map with an animated red dotted line representing me zipping across the Pacific. Every moment of this will not be waking up outside the Taj Mahal or some other picturesque and magnificent scene. I have to force myself to accept that this will be exceedingly boring and lonely for the most part. I have to approach this realistically or I will not be able to achieve it: I will arrive on the other side of the Atlantic after 10 days on a cramped cargo freighter and think to myself, " This sucks." It will not be a cake walk, of this I am sure. However, I know that in a year I will either remember the experience exclusively in a positive light or I will not have survived it. In the coming months I'll keep you posted with as much concrete information about my trip as I have to share with you. For now and in the future, you can see the route as it develops here.

Anmyeondo Revisited

Every so often, I just gotta get out of the city smog. I went back down to Anmyeondo after my first failed attempt 2 months ago. The weather was still a little windy, but thanks to good fortune and good friends I had a great time nevertheless. With my time in Korea drawing to an end, I have fewer and fewer of these weekends remaining.