Homeward Bound

An airport lounge is not the place for a lengthy blog post, so I'll just say this:

Go to Singapore. Go. Go now. Trust me. You'll love it. Go.





















































Why are you still here? Go!

Malaysia

beaches
sea turtles
sharks
curry
towers
birds
caves
Chinatowns
Little Indias
fruit shakes
mangosteens +

awesome.

Next up: Singapore.

Promise Keeping

Well, I intended to write a blog post from every country, so here's the one for Thailand:

The water is so warm and welcoming, I should be there right now.

See you in Malaysia.

Overload, pt. 2

Cambodia. Kampuchea. Land of the Khmer.

Best surprise to date? The food. Coconutty. Curries. Ridiculously fresh fish. It's quite similar to Thai food, and just as delicious.

Most sobering moment? S-21, Tuol Sleng. The special prison (formerly a high school) where Pol Pot's police would interrogate (torture) prisoners before bringing them out to the killing fields to kill and bury. I've visited the Holocaust Museum in Washington DC, and while that brought about many of the same sentiments and questions, there's something particularly powerful when you're standing in the places where the atrocities were committed, and not all that long ago.

It seems that every place I go these days raises more question than it answers, which is probably a good thing. One of the things the genocide museum at Tuol Sleng emphasized is that the techniques used by Pol Pot's regime were not all that different from those used by Stalin's or Hitler's- or, I think it's safe to say, by the North Koreans today. when you create a culture of fear and mistrust, people tend to comply to protect themselves or their loved ones. I'm interested in learning more about the specifics of Cambodia's civil war, but I'm also curious to learn more about the patterns in general. Any reading recommendations would be appreciated.

Best place in Cambodia to get a sunburn? Rabbit Island, which is either in the South China Sea or the Gulf of Thailand- our map is a bit sketchy on this point. At any rate, Rabbit Island is a 20 minute boat ride from the town of Kep, which itself is on the coast, about 3 hours by bus from Phnom Penh. 3 hours, of course, assuming your bus doesn't break down on the way there, in which case your 3 hour bus ride will become an 8 hour bus ride. Just a little something to keep in mind. I suppose it's equally possible for your bus to break down on the ride back, but this is not something that's happened in my (admittedly limited) experience, so I'll caution you instead about the ride down.

Rabbit Island itself, though, is a beautiful little island with some nice beaches, warm water, and even a little bit of snorkelling. There are a couple of small restaurants on the sand, where the proprietors will be more than happy to stuff you with fresh shrimp and fish (eyes still on!).

Most jaw-droppingly, eye-openingly awesome place to visit? Angkor Wat, Siem Reap. The remains of old temples and palaces, Angkor Wat was the foundation of the Khmer Empire, which had a million people when London had roughly 50,000 (thanks, Lonely Planet!). If you've seen Tomb Raider, you've seen some of Angkor Wat. Moss-covered buildings, stunning rock carvings, giant tree roots wrapping themselves around 1000 year old statuery...my words cannot do it justice.

We have one more day in Siem Reap, during which we intend to explore the town itself, then onto Bangkok.

L'aventure continue...

Coming attractions

...and so many of them.

I'm in Gimhae (Busan) Airport's Free Internet Lounge, killing time before my flight to Bangkok, where I'll spend a few restless hours before my connection to Phnom Penh.

So many emotions and thoughts...

I have a number of subjects about which I want to write, but I'm currently running on about 3 hours of sleep in the past 36 (9 in the past 60), so now is not the time for it.

Over the next month, I hope to have at least one entry written in each of the following countries:
-Cambodia
-Thailand
-Malaysia
-Singapore

In addition to my insightful and witty commentary on the above destinations, I also want to discuss North Korea, my departure from South Korea, and possibly several other topics. But I also want to spend more time on beaches, in jungles, around temples, and eating street food than I do on the internet, so we'll see how it goes.

À bientôt!

334 down, 31 to go

It seems a little strange, but my year in Korea is very nearly up. This time one month from today, I'll be zipping up my backpack and preparing to go to Cambodia and other magical places.

So now, 11 months since my arrival in the Hermit Kingdom, I once again find myself in the position of figuring out what to do next. Fortunately, for the moment I've made my decision: procrastinate. I'm putting off most thoughts of the future until my triumphant return to Toronto two months from now.

This past weekend was spent in Seoul. We had Monday off for Children's Day, and I have a friend visiting from home at the moment, so the timing for a three-day weekend was most opportune. You can also expect a guest column from Sara-Jane later this week.

Random thoughts on Seoul:

I've been there a few times now over the course of the year, and it's always been an enjoyable experience. I like the opportunity to get out of Busan for a couple of days, and Seoul has a cosmopolitan vibe that my "hometown" doesn't. It's not just more international, though that's certainly true. Rather, Seoul as a city emanates a certain confidence lacking in Busan. There's a vitality, a vibrancy to the city which makes it a great place to visit. Museums, restaurants, palaces...I like it.

Having said that, I do like Busan, and in some ways I'm pleased not to live in Seoul. For all its attractions, it's much easier to live a Western lifestyle there, and I suspect I would have fallen even more deeply into that trap than I have in Busan, where one is forced to practice rudimentary Korean regularly, and where Korean food is about all one can eat in many corners of the city.

On a different note, one of the sites we visited in Seoul this weekend was the Seodaemun Prison Museum. During the Japanese occupation of Korea, it's where the political prisoners would be taken, tortured, and often murdered. It is, as one might suppose, a sombre site. However, I left it feeling dissatisfied because of the overall tone of the museum. It's clear that the museum founders and curators have striven to convey an understanding of the horrors committed there and what it was like for the prisoners. This does come through, but not always in the manner they might have intended. I found there to be a certain low-budget theme park feeling to the museum at odds with the respectful tone they might have intended. Many of the cells have animatronic figurines sticking bamboo spikes under fingernails, or screaming mechanically, and one is not allowed to forget, even for a second, that the Japanese were the ones committing these atrocities. One of the cells has been reproduced as an execution chamber, which isn't a bad idea, but visitors are encouraged to sit on a stool which suddenly drops four inches. Presumably, this is to show what it might feel like to be hanged, but instead it gives more an impression of a house of horrors in Niagara on the Lake. So that was a little strange.

We also went to a microbrewery which featured the best beer I've had in Korea. The most popular Korean beers are OB, Cass, and (s)Hite, and are generally even less flavourful than the Molson/Labatt/Budweiser stuff one might find back home, so it was a great relief to try a nice brown ale and a stout that actually had some colour and taste. Hurray for microbreweries!

Oh- and I learned recently that (apparently) Koreans weren't allowed to travel outside of Korea until the late 1980s. I intend to investigate this further; the results will be published here as they become available.

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood

And sorry I could not travel both And be one traveler, long I stood And looked down one as far as I could To where it bent in the undergrowth

As my time here in South Korea starts to wind down, I've begun a list of things to do before I leave.

Some of them are relatively simple, such as certain dishes I have yet to try (live octopus), or mountains that are only a daytrip away, while others require a bit more work. You may or may not remember a poll in the fall asking whether I should go to North Korea- I'm going on May 31st. This intrigues me, but I'm still uncertain that it's for the best. We shall see.

I've also started a list of things to do after I leave. These, again, range from the fairly elaborate (temples in Cambodia, snorkeling in Thailand, jungling in Malasyia), to the more-mundane-but-no-less-anticipated (shopping at a North American supermarket, going to an English-language library).

I've started and stopped writing this post several times now, for the simple reason that I'm not sure what my point is, or even if I have one. I think I'm just happy to have options. I went with Robert Frost for my opening, but I could just have easily gone with Ecclesiastes:
To everything there is a season, a time for every purpose under the sun.

And soon there'll be a new Ask The Waeguk.

And I remember Shanghai

How I wasn't sure just what was safe to eat
The chickens pecked and wandered at the barefoot ankles of the children hawking figurines of workers smiling
What's the Chinese word for cheese?

Thanks to Bishop Allen for the above lyrics. As it happened, I didn't see any live chickens, but I do, nevertheless, remember Shanghai.

In my previous Shanghai post, I mentioned the architecture downtown, which is radically different from that of Beijing, Seoul, and Busan. The guidebooks had made mention of this, however, so I wasn't completely unprepared. What I wasn't ready for was the traffic.

Oh, the traffic. The dizzying, exhilarating, anarchic traffic.

Shanghai!
A city where stoplights are suggestions at best.

Shanghai!
Where flocks of bicycles and scooters roam the streets.

Shanghai!
Where pedestrians defy death with every step off the sidewalk.

Springfield!
Where skateboard-riding youths urge you to eat their shorts.

Er, moving on.

Given my reputation, not as an expert economist, political theorist or even as a PhD. candidate in Sino-industrial history, but as someone who has spent more than eight days in China (four in Shanghai, five in Beijing), I feel particularly qualified to comment on the socio-political situation in contemporary China.

As I understand it, it's like this: China is still "communist" in much the same way that Stephen Harper is a "good prime minister." Between the condo developments and the Ferrari dealership, Shanghai does not show many signs of being a society in which property is shared equally. I think it's probably fair to say that communist China has never had such a society, but now there's isn't even any pretense of such a thing.

Historically speaking (or so we were told in Mrs. Findlay's Grade 13 Mod. West. Civ. class), revolutions have come from the middle class. When you're struggling to get enough food to feed your children, it can be hard to worry about more abstract issues such as voting. The reason Great Britain managed to avoid the equivalent of the French Revolution was that the nobility wasn't as rigidly hierarchical: those of sufficient wealth were able to buy their way into some form of power.

In China, the middle class is growing rapidly (though still dwarfed by those living day to day), but it's uncertain just how much power they have. At what point does one decide the Porsche isn't sufficient compensation for a lack of free speech? Is China's economic growth sustainable environmentally, economically, or socially?

I did enjoy the dumplings.

Oh, Ok

Well, 24 hours and much pedestring later, I return to the interweb to find that blogger is, in fact, accessible. Must just have been standard e-difficulties. I don't know whether to be relieved or disappointed to find that the Chinese government doesn't object to my writings.

You know what? That's all for now.

Interesting...

In attempting to update this blog from Shanghai, I seem to have run afoul of China's notorious internet censorship restrictions. At any rate, I am unable to access blogger in the usual manner. However, I have vague memories of setting up "blog by email" at some point in the past. So if you're reading this, it's because

a) Not only did I set up the blog by email (bbe) feature, I also
b) remembered the email address by which I can can use it.

If you're not reading this, of course, the point is moot, but since hope is the foundation upon which all creation must be built, I will proceed under the assumption that the blogging is proceeding as planned.

So...Shanghai.

First impressions? London mixed with Gotham City by way of Metropolis. The principal tourist area, known as the Bund, is filled with imposing Neo-Classical structures which date back to the late 19th and early 20th centuries. This gives the city (or parts thereof, I should say) a decidedly Western feel, most reminiscent to me of London. Across the river from the Bund, however, is the Pudong area, the exaggeratedly modern skyscraper district which seems like something out of a cheerful optimistic and future-looking comic (Metropolis). Yesterday, though, was dark and damp and foggy; the buildings loomed through the clouds as though screaming for Commissioner Gordon to shine the Bat Signal on them.

Today? Still cloudy, but no rain as of yet, fortunately. I've returned to the hostel for a mid-afternoon rest after much walking ce matin. The Shanghai Museum was interesting enough in its way, and comforting in the familiar museum-smell that seems to permeate all such institutions. I also took the time to meander through various roads and sidestreets, stopping only to sample an occasional steamed dumpling- which are, I am pleased to say, as exquisitely delicious as I had been led to believe. The Yuyuan Gardens, though not at their most floral in late December, were pleasing in their verdant, labyrinthine way, and I also made acquaintance with a most loquacious young man named Jimmy, who spewed forth a semi-prepared speech in such a manner as to turn Aaron Sorkin green with envy.

"Hello my friend where are you from? Oh, Canada! Canada is a very nice country. It rhymes with banana. I like to meet new and interesting foreigners and make conversation with them. You are very interesting looking with your blue eyes and many mustaches and big nose. You look very funny, don't you think? Anyway I am sixteen years old and I like to learn English but I cannot live at home anymore because my father beats me and my mother very much so I have had to leave home but under Chinese law children are not allowed to work so I have no means of supporting myself and I ask you my friend for some small money to help me feed myself-"

I gave him 5 yuan (roughly $0.60) and wondered, as I always do in these circumstances, whether I should have given more or nothing at all...

But now the city beckons once more. If nothing else, there are postcards to be written and street vendors' wares to be sampled.

At long last...

This time next week, I'll be in Shanghai. In honour of this, and as an early Christmas present of sorts, I've put up a slideshow of selected photos from my Beijing trip. Enjoy.

Kansas, Toto, and all that

After a while, life begins to consist of routines, patterns and habits. Every day in Korea is no longer to the filled to the brim with glorious epiphanies, touching moments of intercultural understanding, and moments of intense revelation. This is not to say that these do not occur, merely that the quotidian living is, perhaps, less exotic than some might imagine it to be.

Having said that, I do often experience many things which remind me, subtly or overtly, that I am no longer living in the shadow of the CN Tower...

On Saturday, one of the secretaries at our school got married, and all the teachers were invited to the wedding.

As I waited for my coworkers before heading over to the wedding, a group of boys aged 12 or 13 passed by. Despite my wearing sunglasses, they were somehow able to deduce my anglophone nature, and called out to me, "very handsome!" with thumbs raised to underline their approval. On the one hand, it's simply a case of kids seizing the chance to practice their English outside of class, but on the other, it's an instance of young males commenting favourably (and without sarcasm, I assure you), on the appearance of another male. It must be said, of course, that I do look damn good in a tie.

Korea is a very conservative and homophobic country- there are very, very few openly out people here, and paradoxically, it may be for this reason that men are much more affectionate towards one another than they would be in Canada. It's not at all uncommon to see teenage boys sitting on each other's laps in the subway, or holding hands as they walk down the street. Being gay is so unheard of that one is able to engage in such affectionate activities without the fear of being called gay because being gay isn't even an option...but back to the wedding.

In many respects, it was a fairly Western affair: the bride wore a white dress, the groom wore a tux, and it was held in a wedding hall not hugely dissimilar from ones one might find in Mississauga or Don Mills. A major difference, though, was evident before the wedding, as the bride sat in a small room off the lobby and guests were invited in to pose for pictures beside her. During the actual ceremony, the parents of the bride and groom sat in big chairs on either side of the happy couple, who bowed to each set of progenitors (I do love me some big words every so often) at the conclusion of the nuptials.

I had my first Korean lesson today. It's mightily exciting, after four months in the country, to be finally learning the language in a formal, organized manner. It was even more exciting to learn that Korean verbs have only three tenses, and that there is no conjugation as such- the ending is the same for each person- I am, you am, he am, we am, and so on. Furthermore, Korean is largely a contextual language, so "are you going to Seoul" is written the same way as "you are going to Seoul" would be, with the only difference being the inflection at the end of the sentence to indicate a question.

Apart from the obvious advantages of speaking the language of the country in which I live, I think that learning will also be give me a better grasp of the perspective of my students, a from the general sense of learning a new language, but also of the differences between English and Korean specifically. I look forward to learning more.

As you may be aware, the leaders of North and South Korea have just completed another summit- the second since the end of the Korean War. Unfortunately, my grasp of Korean politics is not much stronger than my grasp of the Korean language. It isn't something which my coworkers discuss at all at work, or at least not in language, and I'm perhaps too careful when asking about it, because the relationship between the Koreas does fascinate me so.

As I touched upon at the beginning of this post, Koreans and non-Koreans may be distinguished from one another by purely physical characteristics, at least 99 times out of one hundred. There is a not inconsiderable number of Westerners in Busan, but I would venture to guess that at least 90% of them are English teachers. This is interesting because, a) it means that almost all white people (and the vast majority of English teachers here are white) in Busan are between the ages of 22 and 3o, and b) there isn't the same level of integration or assimilation as would occur under more conventional immigration patterns. It's not at all rare to be stared on the subway or the street, especially by children. This puzzled me for a little while because the number of Westerners, while only a tiny fraction of the overall population, is still substantial enough that I generally see another waeguk or two every time I go downtown.

But while a small town in Northern Ontario, for example, may be (and here we'll pick some numbers out of a hat), 10% Native Canadian, with the rest of the town being Canadian of European descent except for "that one Chinese family," the point is that even in that small town, the Chinese family is a family. There will be Chinese-Canadian kids in that family, and they will go to school with the other kids, and hang out with them, and so on. There may be racism and suspicion and so on, but there is also a level of interaction that is unusual here. The Western teachers and the Korean teachers may and do hang out, but there are no family picnics or family softball games, for the simple fact that there are almost no Western children here. It isn't rare to see white people (as mentioned, almost always between the ages of 22 and 30), but it's almost unheard of to see white children. A few months ago I was at the beach and hanging with a couple from Oregon who had their two small, blonde children with them. The kids fell asleep under a beach umbrella, and more than one Korean came up and asked to take their photo.

We are migrant workers, though more by choice than by necessity. Most teachers here will leave after a year. Some will stay on for a little while, but the vast majority will return within 3 years to Canada, the U.S., or whatever other corner of Anglophonia from whence they came.

And those are my thoughts for the day.

The waeguk is wondering if he's already answered all the possible questions you could have. If no, feel free to ask.

Attention, Comrades

Warning: This entry may be a bit of a ramble.

How to describe the Beijing trip?

The easiest way might be by comparison. Today (Monday), I spent the day teaching English to children.

Last Monday, I climbed the Great Wall of China.

Of course, the comparison isn't fair, since vacation time outranks non-vacation by definition alone.

To evaluate the trip, then, we need to break it down into its base components:
the tour and the city.

Let's start with the tour.

As most people who are reading this probably know, I am not entirely bereft of experience in the group travel industry. Most of that experience, however, has come from the tour guide perspective, rather than that of the customer.

Anyhow, the tour was good. Not great, but very good. The essence of group tours, though, is such that to a large degree very good is the best you can hope for, in the sense that there will always be questions of time allocation and sights to see, etc, so you aim to please as many of the people as often as you can. Had I been on my own, I wouldn't have gone to the tea shop or the jade factory, but then neither would I have been staying in a 5 star hotel out in the suburbs of Beijing. I've always been happy with hostels- they're cheap, centrally located, though they don't have the swimming pools and bowling alleys our hotel did.

It was fun meeting new people and making some friends, but I've decided to prefer make my own through a new place, exploring at my leisure and at my own pace. While it's convenient simply to be told to be back at the bus at a certain time, it also removes a considerable of the chunk of the free-spirited wanderer mythos with which I strive to imbue myself at all times.

Beijing, then. The Forbidden City (home of the Chinese Royal Family for countless years) reminded me a lot of Versailles simply because of the sheer size and arrogance of the operation. "L'état, c'est moi," indeed. The thing that has often amazed me about monarchies is not so much the fact that people throughout history have proclaimed themselves definely superior to the masses, but that the masses have acquiesced and agreed with them. And while I realize that a large part of this was determined by which hand was holding the sword, let's face it- there was (generally) only one Emperor at a time, but he (and on occasion, she) controlled a hell of a lot of sword-holders.

But yeah. Setting aside the political thoughts (I've always maintained that standing in front of Versailles is the easiest way to understand the reasons for the French Revolution), the Forbidden City is fascinating because of its size...and here I was going to offer some thoughts of dubious originality and interest, but I've just come to the decision that even if it is possible to eliminate politics and social philosophy from the picture, to do so would be absurd and/or irresponsible. The entire palace complex (all 720,000 square metres) was constructed to hold the source of absolute power, and if you fail to acknowledge that when beholding, you are missing out on human history at its most basic.

The Great Wall of China can be viewed through much the same lens, but offers more panoramic and astoundingly scenic photos. Lots of stairs, and a definite highlight of the trip. For me, at least, the Wall was symbolic of an empire with all the positive and negative connotations therein, while I found the Forbidden City to offer more food for thought on human hierarchy and our willingness to subjugate ourselves to others, or have them do so to us. But what do I know.

The Great Wall of China goes on forever, if not in the literal sense then in the figurative. We didn't climb it for very long, but it was enough to get the slightest glimpse of the immense time and effort that went into its building.

From a tourist point of view, the Great Wall and the Forbidden City are the two structures that will remain at the forefront of my memories, but a conversation I had on the last night definitely bears mentioning.

A few of us tourists were making our way to the hotel bar when we noticed our tour guide at the front desk, and so we invited her to have a beer with us. It wasn't a particularly long discussion, but it meandered well, as all great discussions do. We were asking her for her thoughts on the present and the future of China, and in a nutshell this is what she said:

"when you look at China, you see a lot of problems. We don't have free speech, and people are thrown into jail for criticizing the government. But for us, we see that this is the best it's been in a thousand years."

It's an interesting way of looking at the situation. Not to look at it history in terms of years or decades or even centuries, but millennia. It's a slow, gradual, process. That day we had taken a rickshaw tour of a hutong, a traditional Beijing neighbourhood, and we had met a septuagenarian who lived there. I asked what was the greatest change she had seen since she was a child, and she replied that now food is plentiful and affordable.

Is this Mao's doing? Would China have better evolved under free-market capitalism? I have no idea.

I've picked up a biography of Mao, though, and hopefully that will give me some clues.

I'll try to come back to this and add more thoughts and commments over the next couple of days, so if you come back to reread this don't be surprised if it's been changed in some way.

August

is upon us, with everything that entails. Or doesn't entail, one could argue. Because my school year here doesn't follow the Canadian calendar, I'm working most of the month. I've been off this past week, though, and doing the tourist thing to a small degree.

In no particular order, a few random thoughts:

-Beaches are better when you have a frisbee.

-Korean movie theatres have assigned seating. This is useful if you get there early (you can pick your own seats and then show up again 5 minutes before the movie starts), but less useful if you show up late (you're stuck with whatever's left). Then again, people who show up late to movies are generally stuck with the leftovers anyway.

-The odds of being visited by Jehovah's Witnesses are considerably higher in Busan than in Toronto.

-If you choose to order at random from a menu by picking something you can read without having any idea what it is, it's probably soup.

-No matter how hot and sweaty you think you'll be when you go outside, you'll be hotter and sweatier.

-The electronics stores here sell crazy-tiny cellphones, super-advanced computers, nifty little gadgets of all shapes and sizes... and portable cassette players.

-Children like to practice their English when they see white people. Some days this is cute. Some days this is not. The variable cuteness has less to do with the children than the temperature.

-Speaking of cellphones, I'm (hopefully) getting one this weekend. I've never had a cellphone before, but I think this proves I am finally a Person of Consequence.

-Korean public baths are quite relaxing. Cheap, too! For about C$4 one can relax in a selection of hot,warm, cool and cold baths for as long as one likes. An excellent way to spend an hour after walking around a mountain.