The beginning of South East Asia: Myanmar (Burma)

After a tearful goodbye to our home for a year we began an incredible journey around and about South East Asia. We started out where few dare to go in Burma. If you're confused, the militaristic dictatorship there changed the name to Myanmar, but it's often still referred to as Burma so as not to grant any authenticity to the dark and dangerous government currently and illegitimately in power.

We spent 2 weeks in that hot, beautiful place where the going is rough but the people are kind. We visited Yangon, Mandalay, Inle Lake, Kalaw, and Bagan. It was one of the most rewarding parts of our trip, but also the most difficult.


We've got a lot of catching up to do, so it's light on words and heavy on pictures.

A note on ethical travel in Burma:
Amazingly, it's fairly easy to prevent most of your money from going into government hands. If you take privately owned buses, stay in privately owned guest houses, and sneak around the back way to temples with government fees then the only money that you send directly their way is your visa fee, entrance to Bagan and entrance to Inle Lake. We were conflicted whether or not to go, but having been I highly encourage travelers to visit. You'll support the people living off the tourism trade and you'll protect them with your presence. You'll hear people's stories first hand (highly illegal and dangerous for the local telling it, but very common) and see what pictures can't show you. But you should read the pros and cons and decide what you are personally comfortable with. The Burmese themselves say come.

It's not a weekend til someone's sleeping in the bushes

Last weekend was extra long thanks to my school's granting Friday off. Great job! Luckily, I spent the day relaxing on the beach and at the baths, soaking up energy that would prove to be much needed around 4 AM the next morning when I found myself piping Lovefool by the Cardigans at a norebang (kareoke room). But let's not get too far ahead.

I was the only person I knew with Friday off, so I spent the alone time well. Later, when everyone finished with school, David and Brian came over to our apartment (Duck left that Friday for a wedding in the States, so she was probably eating good pizza, or good cheese and drinking delicious, flavorful beers while we had our traditional Korean style weekend). We relaxed there for a while before Ryan and Shannon arrived from Sunmudo with Sam and Heather in tow. Sam and Heather live in Boseong and Ulsan respectively, but they come to Busan every now and then for a good time. This good time we spent having drinks in the apartment before a late dinner at a meat and seafood grill restaurant. There we got lucky with freebies. There were some girls doing a soju promotion who gave us 4 bottles, and the restaurant owner gave us free mixers, including aloe juice that tasted like white grape which he assured us was "very expensive". It was delicous and fun and we didn't leave there until after midnight.

Next stop was Ghetto Bar, which normally Brian and I dread, but this time it was filled with Koreans instead of the usual slimy foreigners that flock there, and the soju buckets abounded making it easy for everyone to get their dancing pants on.

After buckets and schwarma (for the carnis) from our friendly neighborhood schwarma man we were off to find another dance party and we went searching for it at Vinyl Underground. My memory's a bit blurry, but I'm pretty sure only people that worked there were there before we showed up. But we brought what we though a pretty spectacular time to the place. The workers disagreed. We eventually got kicked out after a few people had their try at the drum set. But not before Ryan showed us how to fly.

There's nothing to it!

When we realised we weren't making any friends at Vinyl Underground, we decided to show Heather, the only member of our posse who hadn't been thusly initiated, how to noraebang. She took to it like a hippie to patchulli oil. I suppose we all did. And we kept being granted more minutes on the hour we paid for, so we didn't leave there until 4:30 or so.

Brian lights up the room with his singing.

When we finally made our way out of there, it was donkas (fried pork cutlets) for some, and bed for others. The majority of us made it home safe and sound after the sunrise, but at least one person woke up in the bushes of the nearby university with a friendly grounds keeper asking if he was ok. And that's how you spend a Friday in Busan.

Needless to say, we slept in on Saturday. Then we went to the beach and slept some more. Then we ate burritos at a great hole in the wall and then we went home and slept some more. But Sunday was another odyssey. Shannon met Brian and me at Beomeosa for a hike that we've been wanting to do for some time now. Up to the summit of Geumjeongsan from Beomeosa, then over the mountain to the East Gate and back down into PNU to catch the subway home. It was a perfect day for hiking, and the views were spectacular, for a city of 4 million. We took a detour near the top to visit the standing Buddha carved in a rock face.

The body was a little faint, but the face still shows up beautifully.

Shannon picturing from the top.
This is not the summit, though it looks like it could be from this angle, but it's a beautiful view of the reconstructed wall ruins and the sky that day.

We packed in our kimbap and crackers and despite our many viewing and snacking breaks, we were all pretty wiped at the end of it. We're not in the same form we were on the AT, but it was nice to do a longer hike again. Hopefully soon we'll take a trip to Jirisan (mountain) for a less urban hike.

Monday we were back to a full work week after all the hollidays we'd had the week before. Brian has his dreaded open class today and I've got mine tomorrow, which means lots of practicing the same class over and over again with a very intimidated group of 4th graders for me, 5th graders for Brian, and very strung out teachers. But once it's all over I've been told we'll have a volleyball scrimmage and then a wine and dine. It will be nice once all the open class frantic-ness has died out around us and we can go back to focusing on our volleyball games. Our women's team's first game is this Friday and coach says we've got a shot at the championship! I disagree, but then I haven't seen the other teams.

Here are more pictures from the weekend.

K pop means Korean pop music

Before we came to Korea, we'd heard rumors of how awful the pop music was. But we never knew... it's everywhere, and there is a rotation all of 3 songs long. By far the most popular song right now, and ever since we got here, is Nobody But You, by the Wonder Girls. Allow me to demonstrate.

Everyone in S. Korea knows that entire dance by heart. I wish I'd videod this incident, but every school puts on what they call a festival. It's like a talent show but not a competition and a whole class does their gig together. Well, I watched the dress rehearsal at Dong Cheon, and not only did the kids do a great job, so did the cleaning ladies, who put on a spectacular jump roping exhibition, with double, quadruple, and 10 people dutch. But perhaps even better (and stranger) was the mothers' performance. That's right, the moms had a spotlight too. There were 5 of them and they did the Nobody But You dance... and they were good. They sure showed up those 1st graders.

Which reminds me, Koreans never let kids win at something. David plays soccer with his kids after school with another teacher, and the other teacher plays as hard as he can against 3rd graders. David said they all jump out of the way when the guy shoots on goal because he kicks it so hard the kids are afraid to try to stop it. Yun Jae told us about how his son cried one day when he lost the board game they were playing because he never wins and found it frustrating. Yun Jae said he got mad at Yae Dam (the son) for not understanding that it was ok to lose. When will these kids learn? Their parents fully subsrcibe to the if you can't run with the big dogs, stay on the porch mentality.

But back to the K pop, here's the second most popular group - Brown Eyed Girls. This is their painfully popular How Come.

"Revenge" is hillarious.

And to finish it off, song number 3 on the current cell phone store rotation (these stores are always blasting K pop into the streets): I'm so hot by the Wonder Girls.

So the songs are kind of awful, but the girls are lovely. The make a pop star formula's the same here as in the states. For our next adventure we're off to the mountains of northern South Korea this weekend for a ski trip with the regular gang (David, Duck, Ryan, and Shannon). And now we're all booked up for our winter vacation in the Philippines!!!!!

Jess

the ole Korean song and dance

Last Thursday and Friday at Yong Dang (my second school) a troup of traditional Korean performers came to the school to teach the students about their culture and I got to check it out. This is at a church near our apartment. These women are wearing the traditional Korean garb called Hanbok. The performers in the videos below are also wearing Hanbok, but you can't see them as well because they're seated. This first video showcases various traditional instruments. They are playing an excerpt from a Korean opera that Kyung Mi told me lasts for 8 hours! There's a lunch built into the opera. I don't know if I'd love it for 8 hours, but the instruments are beautfiul.
In this video the woman is wearing the clothing of a queen. The dance she is performing is a palacial dance usually danced before royalty. The flowers are peonies.

The man in this video is not wearing a Hanbok, though there is a male version. This headress and drum dance were often performed in a millitary context, but also to drive evil spirits out of the rice fields in order to insure a good harvest. I like that twirlygig. I couldn't figure out how to rotate it, but the advantage is you can lay down to watch it!

And that's a bit of Korean tradition. We'll show you more as we discover it.