The monks and the mafia.

So, this weekend we decided to head to Uljin, on the advice of Marit, one of Busan Ben's friends, who had been there the week previously and mentioned it was one of the best places she had been in Korea during her entire 2 years in the country. On checking the Lonely Planet, I was slightly disheartened, seeing as it seems to hate Uljin and views it only as a stepping point to get to other, better places. Oh how you were wrong, LP.

Seeing as it was the last day of 9-5 it felt like a bit of a long weekend, so all was set to make it the greatest imaginable. Christina was landing at 3.30 so was due to get to mine for about 5.30 - perfect timing, and Amy was due to finishee at 6.30. Christina (minus all her stuff for her journey to England on Tue :( ) and I headed to the ABC mart bus stop for 6.40, due to meet the Swanson at 6.45 and low and behold, who had made it before schedule?! Amy-do, that's who! So we were all there, two of us without mobiles, early! ASSA!!! Amidst must joy Amy headed to the toilet whilst Christina and I popped to Buy the Way and encountered what seemed like a comedy sketch, seeing as the woman serving us took so long, got something wrong and spent about 5 minutes trying to sort it out, when we only had 6 'til the bus was due to arrive. Cue many Mr Bean like antics and a dash to the stop in order to grab the 1112 to Gangbyeon. The journey was ok, and we were all feeling pretty smug, until we hit the Friday night traffic. Luckily, Faye was already at Gangbyeon terminal and purchased our tickets as we were only 2 stops away. As fate would have it though, our bus came to a standstill and Faye had to beg the coach driver to wait for us. Soon as our bus stopped I was off like a shot, with Christina and Amy in tow - though it seems I'd underestimated the depth of my panic and the speed with which I somehow travelled (I'm not normally fast in the slightest, in fact, dead tortoise would be a good description) and the weight of the beer Amy was carrying and when I finally jumped, sweaty and triumphant on to the bus, I realised that I'd left the other two behind - cue more sweating and running, before finally finding the girls and ushering them on to the bus just as it was about to leave. Luckily, the second bus ride was much more calming and, bar the pee'ing incidents, headbanging and the woman that wouldn't shut up, who, however, gave us free cheesecake the ride passed without incident.

On arrival at Uljin, we were anxious to find only one Family Mart and the bus terminal. Seeing as the LP had told us that there was not much about, we decided to sit and have a beer outside said Family Mart and discuss our next step. After a couple of beers we jumped into the nearest taxi and were driven about by possibly the nicest taxi man on the planet. He refused to let us pay more than w10,000, although the fare was nearer 20, and drove us around to many different places which we deemed too dead or expensive, before dropping us off at a minbak which not only cost us the paltry sum of 40,000, but, we found out in the morning, was in a prime location and on the most gorgeous stretch of beach I've seen since I've been in Korea. After we'd dumped our bags, we headed to a lovely place on the beach for a couple of well deserved Cass' (and a sleep for me) and then headed up for a nice kip.

Saturday morning brought the arrival of Ruby and Mallory. I have to take a second here to praise the lovely Ruby for finally getting her ass on an adventure weekend that was further than Gyyounggi-do - we were all so proud when we got the phonecall at 7am to tell us that she was on route! We all decided the easiest thing to do was to meet at Seongnyugul cave, which, housing rocks formed like Buddha, the Virgin Mary, a dragon and a penis was bound to be worth the 3 chunon ticket price. Luckily, the caves were really close to our minbak, so we got there in record time to meet the girls.

After buying our tickets, we donned hardhats and headed into the cave, already echoing with Ruby's cries of, "You can see my pants!! Oh God, what about the jeans?! Mate, you don't even KNOW how hard it is to get stains out of these jeans!". The inside of the cave was beautiful, with stalactites and stalagmites of many different colours and formations, underground pools and the possibility of seeing human bones, which, legend has it, are left over from the Japanese invasion sometime in the 1500's, when a group of people hid in the cave, got trapped and subsequently starved to death. Alas(?), we didn't see any bones, but the views definitely made up for it, as did the chilly inner earth air, which really cooled us down on one of the hottest days in Korea yet. After a long meander through the different rooms and tunnels, some of which were a tight squeeze to get through, and many knocks on the hard hats, we headed back to daylight and to the nearest restaurant for some unmemorable food ('cept for the caterpillar that Mallory found in her chilli - proteiny goodness). After checking out the frequency of taxis from our foody vantage point, we decided the the best thing to do was walk along the road, back in the direction of the minbak and hope that we could grab a taxi or a lift on the way. Lucky us...

About a 10 minute walk on, we all decided to head to a minbak by the side of the road to ask the proprietors to call us a cab, seeing as no one was stopping to pick us up and the sun was pretty scorching. On doing this, a car pulled up by us holding two young western guys, Ian and Jeffrey, and an older Korean dude. Ian, one of the western guys, who was driving, told us that they were on a temple stay and that the Korean dude with them was a monk and wanted us to come over to his temple for dinner and relaxing. Although somewhat cautious due to the look of said monk (he was wearing a string vest for one thing) we all decided (with much enthusiasm on my part) to accept the lift and head to the temple. On arrival, we found a traditional Korean house, with a small temple attached to the left, that we were informed was built in the 70's, along with the rest of the house. The whole plot was pretty simple, with an ondal heating system (underfloor fires that heat the room from below), many exposed stones, that were used to build the buildings and a basic structure. On entering the house, we were presented with watermelon and had a slightly stunted chat with the monk, translated by Ian and Charlie, Ian and Jeff's Korean friend, who was also staying at the temple. There were a few other people hanging round the place, a woman and her child and another monk, who dipped in and out in the early hours, but then became staple figures in the evening (save for the woman, who wasn't very well and didn't seem to happy to be there, especially with all the noise we were making).

After some soju and galbi, we kind of realised that these monks were more self proclaimed than anything else, especially after half of us were given the unwanted attention of one of the monks, later named 'Rapie Monk'. It seems that he'd had a bit too much to drink and decided that at least one of us would be his future girlfriend. Still, the they were all pretty cool, and the master monk seemed to be somewhat holy, and somewhat excellent, after he gave us a traditional Korean drumming lesson and let us dress up in all of his ceremonial gear. Amy drew the short straw in the fact she was dressed as a bald man (bion-te, which means pervert) with a small doll blessed with a huge wang but we all looked bloody amazing, and all got well into the lesson. I'd like to think that, after half an hour of constant teaching we were fabulous, but I feel that may be a lie, though Jeff definately had the actions down. Later on, master monk took me to the side and gave me a singing lesson. He told me that I had a very powerful voice and he really wanted me to stay and study with him. I was flattered! Alas, I didn't take him up on his offer, but it's nice to know I've got a career option for when I finally grow up and my feet stop itching!

The rest of the evening heralded more beer, more partying, more attempted fondling on Rapie Monk's behalf, some chicken on the beach, cool monk buying us soju, sea fighting and sleeping. A good night was had by all and I think that we were all really glad that we got in that car. Yey for random fun times!

The next morning Amy and Mallory headed down to the beach really early (and sans sunscreen - we warned you about the burns, girls!), and met some Korean guys covered in coloured in tattoos of dragons and the suchlike. They kindly offered all of us a free banana boat ride, so, after being plied with a bit of soju and some bulgogi, which was really rather nice, we took off for a ride. Much fun was had, though we were thrown into the sea a couple of times - all in the joy of it though. I went off to ask for prices for scuba diving, which I had been spotted earlier in the weekend, but found, to my dismay that there were no dives to be had that day. Sad times. Still, I shall dive before I leave Korea, it is my mission. And not just in Busan aquarium. Instead of lying on the beach all day, which I tend to get bored of, I decided to head over to Bulyeongsa (temple of the Buddha's shadow), an amazing ascetic temple located in the middle of some breathtaking hills, taking with me Faye and Ruby. After a long and farcical taxi ride, due to insufficent funds on our part, we were chauffeured up to the temple and given the chance to have a look around, before being driven back to Uljin's bus station. Bulyeoungsa temple is amazing, I have to say. It's not huge and isn't set up a mountain, or even a very big hill, but it is beautiful and immaculate and the Buddhist paintings, located in the buildings, are superb. To top this off, the views are spectacular and you can really see why sitting around the lake, (which is the main feature of the place, owing to a rock atop one of the hills that casts Buddha's shadow on to the water), is an amazing place for the resident female monks to attempt to reach Nirvana. We spent a while walking round and taking in the scenery before, as I mentioned, being taken back to the station to pay our fare. Not ones to hang around a station for long, we promptly got into another taxi and ended up paying a lot to get to Deokgu hot springs spa - where we bathed in natural hot springs, took delight in gawping over the hottest man in Korea's body, froze ourselves in outdoor waterfall baths, relaxed in lemon and jasmine baths and took in more breathtaking scenery and smells of pine and clean air before returning, 2 hours later, to the station, with enough time to spare to say bye to the boys from the day before and hop on to our bus. On the way back, we were informed by the girls that stayed at the beach, that the banana boat guys were in fact, mafia (a) it was obvious and b) the tattoos gave it away, plus the heads up from Charles and later chats to people), and that they had been really weird all day and then demanded money from the ladies for what they thought was service rides on their jet ski and rubber tubes. Hmm, scary times indeed. Still, no caps were popped in any asses and we all returned home safe and sound.

On a sad note, last night was Christina's last night in Korea, seeing as she'd had some personal problems and had to leave Jeju before her contract was up. She spent the last night at mine, and we went to dinner with Amy and ate some lovely galbi, before heading to the local dvd bang to watch 'Broken English' - an excellent film and then heading home to mine. She will be missed.

On a more positive note however, John arrives for his visit in two days!!!!!!! Yey to the English buddy! I can't wait and have been boring not only my friends and coworkers, but the kids about it nonstop for the past week! Bring on the fun times!

A salute to a jimjilbang (don't read on if you're affected by the thought of old naked women and rubbing!)

It has become clear to me of late that whenever I've mentioned jimjilbangs in this blog, it's either because I was seeking somewhere to stay due to being drunk or I've gone there to fight off a hangover. This is because, bar that one time with Amy, it's the only time I visit them. I've been meaning to visit one sober for a while now, and as today was the 5 month anniversary of my becoming a teacher (and therefore payday), I decided to head on over and treat myself to a massage.

The jimjilbang in YoungTong is located across from Homeplus, on the 7th floor and is lovely, though pretty small. On arrival, I paid 9,000won (about 4.50), was given towels and pajamas and sent forth to the women's section (after depositing your shoes as it's very rude to wear outdoor shoes inside most places in Korea, save for some restaurants and most bars). Once safely through the doors of the female section you are expected to get naked, and completely so. Some people have attempted to bathe whilst wearing swimsuits, however, these have quickly been discarded in most cases. I chose to be Korean, as do all the girls that I know. From here you head to the showers and scrub yourself so that you are nice and clean. After the wash you can take a dip into any of the baths on offer, at the local there is a burning hot one, a waterfall bath, a cold bath, ginseng tea, and a normal like-you-would-at-home bath. There's also a steam room and a couple of saunas which are nice. Oh and jade beds, which Koreans think are amazing for health and some kind of shallow pool, which I think is filled with salt water. These baths are communal, so expect to be seated next to a Korean lady, who will often stare at you for a while, before getting bored a couple of minutes and a full up and down later. As it was, tonight I had a good few hours to spend, so I took in all the baths and worked my way around for about an hour, before deciding to take the plunge and get my massage.

Heading up to the front desk, I asked the kind, and clothed, lady where I could find the massage ajumma. She pointed to a wrong side of middle age woman, who immediately took a dislike to me, not sure why, but I think it had something to do with the fact I was a fat Westerner and was paying her pittance to scrub my naked body for half an hour. After I had paid (having to don my clothes again, walk out, pay and come back in), I spotted my ajumma getting her kit off and followed her to the massage room, which is placed to the side of the baths, in full view of all. Luckily my ajumma didn't stay naked, but donned a slightly fraying and mismatched set of lacy underwear, that, being mesh, showed everything anyway.
The ajumma asked me to hop on the table and then proceeded to rag doll me about somewhat to get me into the right position. This was to be a reoccurring theme through the process as our language barrier meant phrases like 'move over this way a bit duck' were obsolete. First, I was rinsed down thoroughly with hot water and then the ajumma came at me with the scrubbers, one on each hand. For the next 15 minutes or so she scrubbed me all over, and believe me when I say that no orifice was left unexplored. I felt somewhat perturbed about this at one stage and decided to close my eyes and imagine that it wasn't a 50 year old woman scrubbing me, but Johnny Depp and that bloke from the Notebook. This made me feel even weirder as I was in a room full of naked women, so I decided just to lie back and think of anything but what was happening. After my very thorough jiggle and scrub I was covered in baby oil and then alternately massaged and spanked (loudly, it was a proper cup, like you do when you clap really loudly to get attention), until I was as malleable as silly putty, in body, but slightly jumpy in mind, seeing as I never knew where the next hit was coming from and when it would strike - damn ninja she was. After a few rinses I was turned over and then the ajumma applied what smelt like honey and milk to my body followed by a strawberry concoction to my face. As this was soaking in she washed my hair for me and gave me a bit of a head massage before showering me and deeming me fit to enter the jimjilbang again. I even got a smile from her. Seems that being that close to someone will mellow the hardest of hearts. . .

After the massage, which left me feeling amazing, I spent the rest of my time in the sauna, touring the baths again and falling asleep on the jade bed. I topped it all off with a nice rinse and then made my way into the night. That was about two hours ago now, however I still feel amazing, truly relaxed, and my skin is so unbelievably soft that I keep stroking my arms and marvelling. Also, you know that line from 'Sin City', 'She smelt like angels oughta smell'? Well I do, despite the fact that it's boiling outside and I've got a bit of a glow on. Thank the Lord for naked scrubbing, it seems.

So all in all, jimjilbangs are amazing, and cheap and beat the heck out of English spas. Doubt they'd catch on in England though, you know what they're like. Right shame that, right shame.

3 days off and no money. Bah!

So, it turns out that my boss only wants to give me 3 days holiday this summer. She told me that 5 years ago, I would have gotten 5 days, but since we are such a busy hagwon, with so many kids, I will only be allowed 3 days now. This is something that I am going to fight, but, seeing as at the moment I am completely brassic, I have taken the three days, like a small whimpering child, whilst whispering 'thanks,' and will resume the good fight next week when I return - hopefully I'll get the extra two days and will be able to head to Tokyo in September time for the changing of the leaves. See, so it'll be worth it in the end.



Wednesday, the first day of my holiday was spent in the best way possible for me - lying in bed! Whoop! I use the excuse that I was completely wiped out and that I needed the break, which is partly true, but it's also that I'm an intrinsically lazy creature and a day in bed appealed to me. It wasn't a total loss though, I did a ton of Korean homework, listened to loads of ace music, read some and generally chilled out. It was great.



Wednesday evening brought the Butcher to my abode. We had decided to dump the original plan of going to Seoul for the evening and instead stayed local so we could join Amy, who's mummy had just arrived for a visit! Faye and I headed to Garten Bier for a quick soju cocktail to celebrate the holidays and then jumped in a taxi to meet Amy at the amazing shells restaurant near her house. A 9,000won taxi ride later and we jumped back out at Garten Bier. Yep, we'd managed to get completely lost and when calling Amy to let her know this, were informed that the shell restaurant, that was housed in a tent, had disappeared. We ended up going instead for shells at a place just across from GB/Now bar, which was barely satisfactory, but hey, introducing Mommy Swanson to shells and watching her using chopsticks made up for that. Good food, good company, good times. After, we left the Swansons to have a sleep, as Lori was rather tired after her journey, and headed to Now bar, to see who was about. There we met up with Trevie and Aidan and had a lovely pint before heading home.



Thursday morning we headed off to Incheon airport to pick up another Butcher! Faye's sister, Claire, was about to arrive for a two week tour of SK! Faye was obviously quite excited about that (as was I), so we ended up getting to the airport pretty early. You know, only about an hour, it was fine! ;) Claire came through the doors and Faye raced off, leaving me taking the photos of the beautiful reunion and feeling a bit like I was in 'Love, Actually'. Turns out though, the photos were shit and you do need a flash in a fully lighted airport. Sorry, Faybe!



Soon as we'd left the airport, we headed the 15 minutes or so, on the number 302 bus, to Eulwangi beach, which is on the west coast of Incheon. Eulwangi is noted as one of the best beaches in Korea, and we weren't disappointed when we arrived. Neither were the 20,000 Koreans that were also present on the beach, dressed in the usual attire of t-shirt and shorts, which made us feel slightly put out - biggest people on the beach and the only ones in swim suits! Once we'd had a quick scout of the area, we decided to find a minbak to stay in (turns out there's none on Eulwangi beach), so had a look around. The Lonely Planet recommended two motels, one of which seemed somewhat defunct and the other, far too expensive. Cost, it turned out, was a bit of a beggar, seeing as it's the middle of summer, so prices have soaaaared. The motel that we finally chose was 80,000 for one night. Cash was paid and we headed out for a drink. Annoyingly, a few hours later, we were accosted by the bloke in the motel across the road, who offered us a room for 50,000. Bugger. Ah, well. Least the room was nice.



The three of us headed to the beach, which was truly lovely. White sand is in abundance and luckily, the sea doesn't recede too far at low tide, unlike many other beaches, that leave huge mud flats that aren't too good for sunbathing! We took a place under one of the many umbrellas and were soon caught by the locals, who asked us for 20 thou for the use of their umbrella!!! To all you UK people, that translates to a tenner! For an umbrella! We decided to move forward about an inch, so we weren't in the shade anymore and told the little dudes to sod off. A tenner. What is the world coming to?! Soon enough we had a friendly young man come over to talk to us, who amusingly hugged himself as close to the nearby umbrella pole as possible, as he in no way wanted to touch the sun. He chatted to us for a while, before getting bored, seeing as we weren't interested in chatting at that point, and wandered off. Later on, we decided on an umbrella for a while and spent the rest of the sunlight dozing, chatting and drinking. Which was generally what the rest of the evening had in store. I was completely relaxed, which Faye and I discussed, was a completely different type to our usual relaxation, you know, the one we feel after climbing a mountain, rafting, biking or being active. Not better, but equally as amazing. Just what the doctor ordered, we agreed.



The next morning we headed to the beach again and decided to stop pretending that our pasty skin didn't need an umbrella and shelled out the 20 thou for the priviledge of not getting skin cancer. Yey! Again, the day was spent relaxing, drinking and chilling and we were joined, finally, 7 hours after they'd set off (can I just point out that Eulwangi beach is only about 1 and a half hours from YoungTong), by Amy and Lori. Amy had somehow gotten more lost than anyone could ever percieve and took her mom on a tour of the upper Western part of SK. Well done, Ames! We spent the evening eating more shells than we ever thought possible (if you ever go in the day, it's the restaurant on the Carib hotel side of the seafront, with the rainbow umbrellas), which were astoundingly delicious and then heading to the beach to play with fireworks, meet a whole group of Korean men and generally have an excellent time. Especially Amy, who I think shocked her lovely mother with her flirting antics - that's our girl! We headed with our bags (we'd checked out of the expensive place that day, seeing as 160,000 for two nights was way out of buget) to the jimjilbang across the main road set back from the beach and paid 12,000 for a shower and a room to sleep in - there were no baths at all. Massive rip off and we were all a little mad that Lori and Claire's first jim experience was so bad. Ah well, there's always a next time!!!!



Saturday was spent travelling back to Incheon airport and picking up more of Faye's UK clan, this time, her friends Abby and Maddie. We all hopped on a bus, and the girls departed at Suwon in order to pop home and then take a trip to the Folk Museum, which is definately worth a look. Faye and I have been before however, so I headed straight back to YoungTong for another lovely day of chilling out and blog writing.

I woke up early Sunday to meet Amy and Mommy Swanson for a rather long journey to Sangbong (where we met Faye, Claire, Abby and Maddie) and then to Inje-gun (where we met Panda and Mike). Inje-gun houses the Naerinchon river, which in turn hosts many world rafting competitions and although is not amazingly dangerous in terms of white water, it is very beautiful and worth heading to just to take in the views, despite the amount of time it takes to get there. Not only does Naerinchon offer rafting, but also bungee jumping and a host of other extreme activities too, whether winter or summer. We had decided to raft again, this time with a company whos name I forget, though I'm sure I will be informed by Panda in no time. We were picked up from Inje station by a driver and ferried to the river, where we were quickly put into those lovely lifejackets with the ass strap once more, told to put on our helmets and then got the cool flourescent jelly shoes. Man I love rafting outfits!!!
After we had done this, we were driven by minibus to the start of the course, where a guy who spoke ok English went through the safety briefing with us and then broke our hearts by splitting us into two groups. Faye, Claire, Maddie and Abby were put in one raft, with a bunch of Korean guys and the rest of us stuck with the original instructor with another group of Korean guys. Turns out that the instructors felt that as there were so many girls, we'd have to be placed with men as, you know, they're stronger and all that. Hmph. Not sure that was true, but anyway. We started off nice and slowly, which was good for Amy, as she's a little scared of the water and therefore was a bit nervous. This wasn't helped by watching Faye and Maddie slip quickly into the water and have the raft ride over them! Luckily no one was hurt, which was a good thing and Anda and I were splitting ourselves with laughter the whole time and generally jeering. Heehe. The course took about two hours and during that time there was chance to swim, have water fights, rock the raft, spin, go through the rapids (of course) and generally get wet and have an excellent time. I really do enjoy rafting, specially with the amazing views and the chance to swim in a gorgeous and very clear river. Sometimes I forget how lucky I am to live in such a beautiful place!
After rafting we all had a few beers and headed to the bus station (annoyingly by taxi, the woman decided she was too busy to transport us back, so we had to flash the cash - not part of the original deal). The buses weren't that frequent and the one that we got, to DongSeoul took bloody ages. I think we left at 7.30pm and didn't get in until 11.30pm! We did however, manage to get the bus with our rafting instructor, which was very cool, however, he was of no help at all when Amy, who was rather wasted, needed the coach to stop so she could pee - however I was very proud of using my pidgin Hangeul to get him to stop and explain that she needed to urinate. When we finally got back to Seoul we said bye to Anda and followed the instructor who attempted to put us on a bus back to YoungTong, stuck us in a queue and then left. Despite his best intentions, we realised that the bus had actually stopped running, so, although we were going to take the subway to Gangnam we were taken in by another Korean guy, who told us it'd be easier to get a taxi there. Cue much faffing, missing the bus, finally getting to Gangnam, getting a different bus to Suwon and then having to get a taxi from Suwon to YoungTong. Pain in the ass. Still, turns out the 112 bus from YT goes to Gangbyeon though, will save me hours in terms of getting there for future trips. Bonus.