Dinner With The Teacher's

Because it's the end of the semester over here, all of the teachers went out to a big dinner to celebrate some retirements, teachers moving on the the next school etc etc. So we all met up at a big seafood place in Gwang-ju where I sampled pretty much every kind of raw fish you could imagine. I tried sea slug (of course I didn't realize that was what it was until I'd already put it in my mouth) for the first time. Mmmmm... delicious. It was this murky, brownish orange mottled colour, but it didn't taste too bad. Then they brought out the final dish, the "piece d'resistance", freshly cut octopus. Still squirming on the plate!! I had thought I would be repulsed when I saw a cut-up baby octopus, but I was so FASCINATED! I tried not to stare too blatantly since I was surrounded by other teachers, but it was so cool! When you try to pick up tentacles, they'll stick to the plate and they're surprisingly strong. I can't even describe to you the feeling of having an octopus tentacle moving in your mouth, sticking itself to your teeth. But the octopus had been soaked in some sesame oil and chopped greens, so it was pretty good!

Sigh... Almost Valentines Day

Or singles awareness day. There are Valentines Vendors all over the place already. Selling a lot of cutesy crap of course. Not much going on in the office. Yesterday Mrs. Lee asked me if I would be willing to put labels on some new books we just bought for the English Town, but I told her I was FAR TOO BUSY to help with that. She's beginning to understand my sarcasm quite well. So yeah, no classes at all this week, and absoultely nothing for me to do in the office (apart from a bit of label making). Today is also graduation for the grade six students, so they've been coming in with chocolate. Excellent.

I'm a little worried about Mr. Yoon, my co-teacher. He's been in the hospital for a while now and no one really tells me anything. When I ask, all anyone (including Mr. Yoon) will say is that his health is "not good". ACK!

Strange Bangkok Moment

So I'm still sifting through all of my Thailand pictures, and here's another weird moment that I just had to take a picture of.

I was in the middle of Bangkok, just about to get onto the skytrain and blocking my entrance is a baby elephant with its two trainers. What the hell??? They were trying to sell bananas to feed the elephant on the srteet. On the left is a busy road, and on the right, a lot of people. Doesn't this seem like a strange place to put a potentially dangerous elephant??

So I'm at work again today, and still no classes. I won't complain because I'm being paid to do nothing, but I really don't have a lot going on at the moment. I'm thinking of writing a novella over the next few days just to pass the time. I just need something to write about.

More Tats

Hello there. I got a request for some more detailed tattoo pictures, but I haven't got much. I don't know why I didn't get some pictures of the final product. So, this is Kristen getting her tattoos (notice all of the bug bites on her legs! hahahahaha):

This is a "before" drawing, although the entire design hasn't been drawn on yet (that's my foot on the right).

Here's an in-progress shot.

Oh My Buddha!

As annoying as this is, if you want a cohesive story, scroll down and start at Thaliand I.

Thailand VIII

On the 30th we flew back to Bangkok and Monique stayed at the airport because she was flying back to Korea. So I had a couple days alone in Bangkok, and I spent it shopping and checking out the sites. It's really easy to get around Bangkok; I mostly just used the sky train then I'd just wander around all day looking at stuff.

Went to see the biggest golden buddha in the world. It was big alright.


Since I didn't get to see any sharks on the islands, I decided an aquarium was the next best thing.

Here's the entrance to China town. I'd visited Chinatowns before (like in Toronto), but this one was HUGE. Everything was red and gold and being sold at low low prices "What you pay? What you pay?? Discount!".

Here's a typical Buddhist Shrine. You can't really see it in the picture, but there were a bunch of people hanging around, and the air was think with incense.

After all of this I was ready to go back to Korea and sleep in my own bed. My plane ride home was much more eventful than on the way there! There was a short stop off in Hong Kong, and after going through security I was sitting in the waiting room near the entrance gate. I was just doing my regular people watching, when I see a pilot walk up to the gate entrance, presumably waiting to get on the plane. He appeared quite professional, except that he looked about sixteen years old. Then the flight staff approached him, and I couldn't understand everything (because they were speaking in Chinese, Korean and just a little English), but I heard one of the flight staff ask him to take off his jacket. I started laughing at this point, realizing that it was just some crackpot who was REALLY into flying.

Shortly after I was let back onto the plane, and who do you think was to be sitting next to me for the next three hours? The crackpot of course. He starts talking to me, and by this point I'm pretty amused by the situation, so I asked him what was going on. It turns out the crackpot is a young Korean man who wants to be a pilot, and he was in China visiting his father. His English wasn't so good, but he definitely got the point accross that some day it was his wish to become a pilot. He made sure to show me his multiple folders of flight plans, airport terminal maps, China maps, Korea maps etc etc. As the plane was taxi-ing down the airstrip he pretended to be "the ATC" (air traffic control) all in English, so I thought it was for my benefit, but when I tried to respond he acted as though I was interrupting VERY important business. "Take off in one.. two... three". Then we had a semi-literate talk about politics "Bushie... Bushie no good. Bushie stupid", before he tracked our entire flight, pointing important factoids out to me as he read.

I'm not sure if he had some sort of disability; he seemed like a smart guy, and he spoke three languages which is more than I could ever do, but man he was WEIRD, kind of an Asian rainman! But hey, he didn't have a homemade bomb on board, so I was happy. And even though the flight attendants thought he was a psycho he got to take a picture with the pilot in the cockpit (which he reminded me of about five times. "Yeah, you told me! That's great! You're very lucky!".

So I arrived back at Incheon airport in Seoul at about 10pm and was able to take a train to Naju arriving around 2:30am. Back to my Korea home.

Thailand VII: Oh Crap, I Still Have So Many Pictures

During our stay at the Wang Sai, we decided to check out some elephants, and went for a ride, which just wasn't as scary as I thought it would be. We were strapped in there pretty well, and our elephant was only interested in eating palm leaves.

Monique and I on an elephant. The elephant handler guy stopped to give the elephant a hosedown at the top of a big hill and took our picture for us.

I bought some bananas to feed to a baby elephant and the elephants trainer had him stand up on his hind legs as a thank-you. When the baby did this, he let out a huge elephant fart. Isn't it nice how classy I try to keep my blog?

After this fun stuff, we headed back to Koh Samui for a couple nights before we had to had to head back to Bangkok. Koh Samui was waaayy more expensive, and in my opinion, not as nice. I really wanted to see some monkeys, so we went to check out a "monkey theatre"



There was the cutest little baby monkey that was crawling all over me (trying to steal my peanuts). I want a pet monkey!!! During the show you could tell how bored the animals were though, and they were not treated well. In between each "set" they would turn on this really loud, really bad music, and at first I was just vaguely annoyed by it, then eventually, when the monkeys weren't behaving so well, we realized it was to hide the sounds of the monkeys screeching as they were hit by their trainers. Nice. That just made me want to steal the baby monkey, but I don't think I could have gotten the little guy on a plane to Korea.

Thailand VI

After a few days of Haad Rin, we needed to get away from the rampant tourism, and the incessant beat of the Euro-pop that was constantly being played on the beach. So we travelled to the other end of the island and stayed at the Wang Sai Resort (for about $3 each per night). This area was equally if not more beautiful, and was a big site for snorkelling, which I was REALLY excited about. I'm not a good swimmer, but snorkelling was amazing! All kinds of tropical fish, choral and these disgusting looking but totally fascinating big black sea slugs. At first they were kind of freaking me out. At one point I was swimming around in some really shallow water and something brushed my foot. I'm ashamed to say I had a bit of a mini-panic-fit; I was utterly convinced that it was a sea slug, trying to eat me (hahahahahaha... it was actually a strap from my life jacket). What I'd really wanted was to see a shark, but it was a no go (which is for the best because then I REALLY would have freaked out!). A tour guide had claimed there were sharks in the region, and I heard a diver talking about seeing a tiger shark on a dive nearby, but I saw no shark.

This was our bungalow at Wang Sai. The walls were made of woven bamboo, so when you were inside the light shone in through all of the holes. This also made it quite easy for the geckos to come and go as they pleased. Geckos were EVERYWHERE. You could just look at the walls or ceilings of any of the restaurants and you'd see a few crawling around.

The view one night from the resort restaurant.

sigh. palm trees.

Thailand V: The Tattoo Parlour

It turns out that going to Thailand is synonymous with getting a tattoo. Kristen got two designs tattooed onto her feet, Monique got a gecko, and Vanessa, alittle design on her wrist, so we spent A LOT of time at "Dong's Tattoo Palace" (or whatever it was called. Hahahahahahaha... that wasn't it's name at all, but the owner's name was Dong.

Everyone had their tatoo done using the bamboo method, which was really amazing to watch; usually tattoos are done with gunns, but the tattoo artist had a bamboo rod with a needle attached (it was clean, don't worry). Dong, the owner, was hanging around the entire time entertaining us, for example he had taught his three year old son to say to foreign girls "me love you long time". How wrong is that?? But it was very funny, and that kid was so cute (no tattoos yet though).

And no, I didn't get a tattoo; I couldn't decide on anything. I really only knew what kind of tattoo I WOULDN'T want: like a dolphin, or a butterfly, or a snake wrapped around a naked lady.

Thailand IV

Sorry this is in little chunks; blogger can be a bit of a jerk when you try to upload multiple pictures. So, while in Haad Rin we sat on the beach, shopped, and drank delicious watermelon shakes like there was no tomorrow. I think that I ordered some sort of fruit shake at every single meal, in fact; they were delicious. We also made a very large mistake: drinking "buckets. The place we were staying at in Haad Rin was very famous for it's "Full Moon" parties, and all you had to do was walk along the beach to get to the "bar" (i.e. low tables on mats on the beach) and buy yourself an entire bucket of alcohol.

Here's Vanessa with one of them. Thailand is also the home of Redbull, and when you mix alcohol and Redbull, things can go wrong. The next day I was not feeling well at all. So that was my first and last time drinking in Thailand. It was a lot of fun though; lots of people to see, and free fire shows on the beach.


Very hot (aren't my puns hilarious??). Those crazy Thai boys with their piercings and tattoos. Speaking of tattoos...

Thailand III The Islands

So, after about two days in Bangkok looking around, we decided to catch a flight out to the island Koh Samui to sit on the beach and meet up with Kristen and Vanessa. After a quick one hour flight, we were on paradise. The kind you see in movies and think, "I'm never going to see a place like that" (if you're from farm country Ontario, like I am). When we landed at Koh Samui airport, I kept asking "so... where's the airport?".

So THIS is Koh Samui airport; a series of grass huts made with bamboo and palm leaves. We were driven from our plane in buses. Very cool! From Koh Samui we took a Catamaran to Koh Phangan, where we hired a "taxi" to take us to Haad Rin (which turned out to be the big tourist town on the island). Eventually we found our hotel, "Paradise Bungalows" which was right on a beautiful beach, and cost us about five dollars each per night.

A view from the plane on the way to Koh Samui. Our plane left the Bangkok airport at 6:30am, so we had arrived at the airport at least two hours before that. EEEKKK! But they served us breakfast on the short flight, so I wasn't too difficult to deal with.


Various views from the area around Paradise bungalows. The weather was mostly sunny and ridiculously warm while I was there, so thankfully, I was able to work on my sunburn and multiple tan lines.

One morning I woke up to a bit of a downpour. This picture was taken from the front porch of my bungalow; it's one of the many buddhist shrines that are all over the place. This one is very simple and rustic looking compared to the others I've seen (I'll have more pictures later).

Thailand II The Grand Palace (Wat Phra Kaeo)

Words and pictures cannot describe how truly ridiculous the Grand Palace was. It was a beautiful place to be; and yet it was so freaking gaudy and over-the-top. Everything was gold and mosaic; every building glittered and shone in the sun in the name of Buddha. It was by far the largest palace or temple I have ever visited, and there are some pretty large ones in Seoul.



There's me looking like a tool in the last one. There were also a LOOOOOTT of tourists of course. Strangely enough, there weren't a lot of Canadians, or even Americans; it all seemed to be big European men in their speedos (although you wouldn't be able to wear just a speedo to the Grand Palace because there's a dress code).

I just had to add this guy. He looks so jaunty.




By far the best part was the temple of the Emerald Buddha. The exterior of the temple was like all the others: grandiose, gold and ridiculously big, but inside was really interesting. To enter the temple there were a lot of rules: we had to take off our shoes, our toes couldn't point directly at the Buddha, we weren't aloud to take photographs, and we had to be silent. So upon entering there's a sudden silence, and the inside is equally ridiculous. The Emerald Buddha itself was so high up on an altar of sorts that you could barely see it. The walls (which of course were immense) were covered in a beautiful, ultra-detailed, gold-illuminated paintings. The actual Buddhists were kneeling and praying, but tourists such as myself who just wanted to see pretty things, felt like they didn't belong as they sat in the back, looking at everything.

Thailand I

Sawaadeekaa! (hello in Thai, the only thing I learned while there, which is shameful)

So, yeah, I'm back in the office but I don't have any classes, so it's time for my major blog update. I know you're excited. Thailand was a lot of fun. I left on January 20th via Thai airways, and everything was pretty standard. It ended up being about a six hour flight, with a nice little stop in Taipei to break things up. After flying from Canada, fourteen hours straight, this felt like no time at all. I arrived at the airport in Bangkok at about 11pm and met up with fellow Najuite Monique at a hostel she was staying at. The next day we did some touristy stuff. There's a big famous river in Bangkok, so we went for a boat ride to see the sights.

This is just a random boat. There were a bunch of them on the river, kind of like taxi's for the richer tourists.

Another nice looking boat. There were all sorts of tours going on. Thailand makes a lot in tourist dollars.

Featured here is a picture of the King of Thailand. There are billboards of him absolutely everywhere, signs hailing the King, he's on every Thai Baht as well etc. etc. On certain days Thai people wear yellow t-shirts with his insignia in his name; I guess he's a pretty cool guy. His reign has lasted 60 years, so he's also a very old guy.

The Bangkok River (Mae Nam Chao Phraya) was a dirty dirty river, but there was lots of interesting buildings to see. Seeing palaces and temples next to skyscrapers is always very jarring.