Shots from Southern Vietnam

The final leg started on a nearly private beach in Long Hai, and began its denouement on the colourful streets of Saigon - or Ho Chi Minh City, as the officials call it - for great international cuisine, a Chinese temple, and that fragrant fruit, durian, before our flight back to Seoul.

Shots from Laos

From a gun on the counter at the top of the Mekong, two days down the river to Louang Phabang (experiencing all that riverside living has to offer), a bus ride to the beautiful falls of Vientienne and finally a quick jet to the next stop ... our only option, thanks to a little white book.

Shots from Thailand

From the busy city life and quiet temples of Bangkok, north to the calm sanctuary of Chiang Mai, then across the border into Laos.

Shots from Northern Vietnam

Northern Vietnam was our first and favourite destination, from sea-level in Ha Long Bay to Fanispan's peak.

Let's give this another go ...

It's been too long.

I'll be posting about a few things today or this coming week on:

1) Our trip to SE Asia - Vietnam, Thailand, Laos, then Vietnam again - for those who didn't hear all the details or want a few photos,

2) Our thoughts on Korea after a month away and that good ol' home stretch feeling,

3) Pagoda getting physical on the Hangang (very physical for some, far less physical for the managers),

4) Making, unmaking and remaking decisions for where to live upon our return to Canada,

5) Why this blog promotes Korea better than the Korean government,

6) And all the other little stuff that doesn't fit there; Beano in the oven, daring 5-year-old bikers, and a trip to Korea's tropical (yes, tropical) south.

Until then: HAPPY MOTHER'S DAY to Judy, Pauline, Margaret, Alison, Sallianne, Sally and Betty, and Happy PRE-Mother's Day to Maria!

The Couples Factory

Phew.  Well, we leave for Vietnam early tomorrow morning.  We're packed (aside from a bit of drying laundry), have all our travel docs and foreign currency in order, and the name of the hotel we'll be staying at the first night.  We haven't lost anything since we packed, and I minimized my gear to a manageable weight.  Got some stylish new Merrell hikers for my birthday and we're off to a month of adventure.

But not too much adventure, I promise, mom.  And no street food. The last thing we want is a Shanghai repeat. Honestly.

The lead-up to this trip has been hectic: one hour off during business hours each day, and lots to get ready because ... yes, we left it all to the last.  Some things, however, were out of our control. A wedding date, for instance ...

A British teacher at The School invited us to her Korean wedding with Ja-in. (A second wedding, the British version for her family, will take place in the spring. Coworkers replaced family for the Korean version and Ja'in's family dominated attendance 200:8)  Jon wasn't able to make it because he was working, meaning that he missed quite an experience.

Now, let me explain what I've heard about Korean weddings.  See, I've only been to a couple of weddings in my life; former employees of my parents, my uncle Jeff and aunt Alison's wedding, and the dozens of less significant weddings I 'attended' as a banquet server. (Thank you to the Glen Cairn golf course for invaluable serving experience - I wouldn't have understood the commercial side to a wedding without you.  My goodness those bills were big.)

But Canada's wedding scene doesn't compare to the assembly-line weddings I've learned about from my students.  I expected to be one of 600 guests at Gemma's wedding, which, students told me, would probably last only a few hours.  As I was cautioned by other teachers who have been invited to the weddings of their students, I heard the next wedding party in the hallway while the ceremony was taking place.  Here, it seems, wedding halls are more like couple factories.  

And you thought package deals in Canada were predictable ...

Exhibit A: Wedding invitations.  Straight from the wedding hall in an easy-to-reprint format.

Exhibit B: Wedding photos.  They are taken weeks, sometimes months in advance, and the bride does not wear her own dress, but the studio's dress.  She also uses the studio's makeup, unless, as Gemma said, 'it sucks' and the bride-to-be is already a Lancome/Chanel/M.A.C. shopper (as many Korean women are ...).  For the real event, the dress is rented. (OK, sentimental value of the dress aside, renting a dress is genius - but how many times can a Vera Wang be resized?)  Not sure if Gemma rented or bought her dress.

Shortly after taking pictures of these wedding pictures (yes, ridiculous, I know), they were whisked away by a wedding hall employee and replaced with the next couple's photos.  This is while the bride and groom were still having their photos taken in the hall.  Oh, the hall.  It's exhibit C.  It was artfully neutral and, as one person has commented, quite 'futuristic' when compared to a church.  Character?  Maybe.  Warmth?  Sort of.  High fashion runway?  Check.  If it wasn't for the fact that this room had no doors to close off noise (i.e. chatty wedding-goers, both inside and out), I'd probably prefer it to a regular church wedding.

This brings us to Exhibit D: gifts.  Everyone gives money.  Now, I knew this early and ran around like crazy the morning of trying to find any store open before 10am that also sold cards.  I had to settle on GS25 (a convenience store chain).  I should have just waited.  Everybody I saw used the same white envelope.  You know, like the kind you get at a bank.  In order to get your buffet ticket, you were required to sign the registry and (if you were to follow everyone else around you ... and avoid dirty looks and nasty whispers from many) hand over that cash in a given envelope with your name on it. This is the kind of pressure I could never live with.

Despite all these differences, the wedding was short and sweet. Zoe, a coworker, worked at 2 in the afternoon and was still able to stay through the ceremony (which lasted far less than 1 hour - more like 30 minutes for the marriage itself!) and even eat lunch if she had wanted to. I was able to get a pair of hikers and a travel purse and get home by 4pm.  Overall, it was far less cumbersome than many weddings I experienced, and the ceremony was no less meaningful (again, apart from the gabbers in the back).  And Gemma, for all her indifference before the wedding (I seem to recall her saying something like 'I couldn't care less about this bloody wedding' when I asked her about the dress code at work) smiled ecstatically for over two hours - probably longer.

The final stage of the wedding - after visiting the bride; after the ceremony; after photos; and after the buffet - was what I'd come for.  Gemma in her hanbok (traditional Korean dress) and ceremonial wedding attire.  What I had thought would be a very Asian ornate hairpiece turned out to be just part of her headdress; Ja'in's rather plain blue top and pink "jazz pants" were replaced with embroidered versions.  And Gemma's red lips were matched with rouge like I've never seen rouge done before; one big round dot on each cheek to ward off evil.

All in all, I couldn't have asked for a better birthday: new cultural experiences, time with friends, a teeny-tiny bit of shopping for really fun and useful stuff ... and an ice cream waffle delight from Hagen Daaz to top it all off.  Feed the mind and the body, isn't that what the Olympians did?

Shanghai 2009

I posted photos from our trip online today, but did so on facebook in order to share with other travellers ... if this proves inconvenient for anyone, I'll repost here tomorrow:

To check out the small album, click here.

New Year's (Take Two) and Other Surprises

Well, I was hoping to split this into a few posts and make it look as though I had posted our events in a timely manner.  Instead, I've pretended to do so in two bursts of posting.  This is the second burst (for the first, see the two previous posts, below). Please forgive me if I am repeating myself a little.

Since New Year's, we've had a few interesting events.  I've been given a few more advanced classes (Pschool Intensive Program, or PIP classes) teaching reading and writing in addition to speaking and listening.  This means that I'm with the same group of students for either two or three hours each day of the week, and have actually begun to feel like a teacher.  At first, I felt torn in many different directions and spread a bit thin, covering three or four different activities in an hour rather than presenting one long activity like in the conversation classes (Speaking, Listening and Expression, or SLE classes).  Now, the SLE classes seem slow and monotonous in comparison.

While I was adjusting to these new classes, we got a piece of ... interesting news.  While we were at work, a pipe burst in the apartment above us, causing water to stream down our walls and onto my laptop.  Jon discovered this in the afternoon when he finished work (one of his classes was cancelled so he formally finishes work at 3pm).  I got the call at work at about 4.  My computer was fried, about one or two months after buying it.  And yes, because I made some stupidly impulsive decisions, it was already the second laptop I had bought since I arrived in Korea.

To make a long story short, we were moved back into our old studio for five days while they re-wallpapered our current place and fixed the flooring.  Keedo had been sent to a dog hotel overnight to make this move easier and to test out a place we've had in mind for him during our upcoming holidays.  During his overnight stay, the trainers noticed a bit of blood around his mouth, took him to our vet and found that he needed a tooth removed. Lets call this surgery number one.  Jon then took him back to the vet for a follow-up visit and the vet suggested that the other K-9 also be removed.  Surgery number two.  Keedo came home to a different apartment feeling drugged, woozy and a little bit abandoned.  All of this on the day before and during Jon's birthday.

Jon's birthday!

January 14 is his date, and it was celebrated with lots of food gifts and 'Happy Birthday' serenades from his students (especially the girls ;) ) and a pre-wrapped corporate gift from The School.  Turns out it was a ladies' perfume set - whoops!  For dinner, we went to a traditional Korean restaurant nearby with our close friends David and Richard (others were still working through dinner) and had some makkoli (Korean rice wine) and padjeon (a giant Korean pancake mixed with vegetables and slices of octopus - deelish!).  Then we all hurried off to bed to ready up for a big Thursday ... we'll continue to celebrate Jon's birthday this coming weekend.

A few days after Jon's big day, we moved back into our apartment to find they'd just cranked up the heat to dry the floorboards (heat comes through the floor in most Korean homes - AC from the ceiling.  Heat rises and cool air falls, right?  It just makes so much sense ...).  I got a new laptop identical to my old one within three days.  Keedo got new toys from the dog hotel and Jon got ... a year wiser.

So now it's the night of Friday the 22nd and we're resting up for the last day of a 14-day working streak.  We're a little pooped and would probably be grumpy, too, if it wasn't for our weekend plans.  We're going to Shanghai for the lunar new year.

It's been in the works for about a month now.  We got a great deal on the plane ticket, have our visas ready and secured travel insurance long ago.  We invited some friends to go with us, so there will be seven of us in all.  Jon got in touch with an old coworker, Ken, from the university he worked at in China to help us find a place to stay, and the plan is to meet up with Ken and take it from there.

We're pretty excited!  We'll be back on the evening of the 27th (and start work early on the 28th) so will have photos and stories to share in the near future.

Oh - one last thing.  For the first (real) time and maybe the last, it snowed!!!