!ncredible !ndia

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'The paradox of our time in history is that we have...

taller buildings, but narrower viewpoints;

more conveniences, but less free time;

more knowledge, but less judgement.

We have multiplied our possessions, but reduced our values.'

-excepts from Dr. Bob Moorehead

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We had each heard stories about India ranging from threatening to absolutely horrid. Truth be told, only very few positive words had been said about it, and that may have been exactly why we were so rigidly braced for the worst when we arrived that things ended up seeming so wonderful instead!

If you remember, India wasn't in the original plan. Instead we were all booked for Cairo, Egypt until the shtuff hit the fan and we had to re-route. India is a place that can BARELY be tasted in the 8 days that we had as a result of backing into the plan. We knew that, yet we were determined to do our best to experience it enough that we could decide if we should ever want to return again and give it a real, thorough run-through (would take a MINIMUM of six months)... not to mention, maybe find a wife for Broey. 

Because of all the horor stories, we decided to shell out the few extra bucks to have someone from our hostel pick us up personally outside of the airport terminal - this would turn out to be a WISE decision. New Delhi is chaos. There are more than 18 million people living in the city with no traffic laws, and you'd be hardpressed to find blacktop on city streets, much less painted lanes or directions. You're likely to see cows and sheep in the median as you pass a camel-drawn cart driven by a 12 year old boy on the wrong side of the road while the grill of a bus is barrelling down right at you from the other way! All of this goes on normally without the driver batting an eyelash except when he opens the door and hangs halfway out of the moving car to spit out nearly a liter of chewing tobacco spew. 

At one point, there was an old man's body laying motionless on the sidewalk with nothing covering his bottom half at all - dead or alive, I will never know. Moments later, a 6 or 8 year old boy squatting to take a dump about 3 feet away from the vehicle window as we cruised by on the dusty road. I can't say from experience, but it might feel like watching the Twilight Zone on acid... And we hadn't even gotten to our hotel yet!

All of us in awe by the time we arrived at the Smyle Inn Guesthouse, we unloaded our bags and were greeted kindly by a gorgeous and comfortable room. After gathering our brains, we went to arrange our morning train to our first destination - the city of Jaipur in Rajasthan, where our first couchsurfing host of the trip would be waiting for us.

As we sat with the 'travel agent' guy in our hotel, he started laying out day-by-day plans and offering us a private driver/ city sight-seeing guide and all this extra stuff that we hadn't really planned on. We immediately got a bit defensive and had flashbacks of the fat Welsh-man trying to rip us off in Bangkok... but then something wonderful happend - he offered us the price and it barely costed more than doing it ourselves. Suddenly, we had an airconditioned car with personal driver who would show us around, drop us off where we request and then pick us up in the morning whenever we wanted - compare that to trying to fend for ourselves and lug our backpacks from one dumpy train station to the next amidst the India madness!! We were on our way early the next morning and explored the essentials of Delhi before heading West into Rajasthan.

Near New Delhi's main bazaar area - unlike anyplace I've ever seen before or probably will again!

The Lodi Garden. This beautiful FREE little stop turned out to be one of the hilights of the city!

The tomb of Sikander Lodi, a ruler of the region around the year 1500. (Thanks wikipedia! ;)

Sarah and I donning our new Indian (or at least Indian TOURIST) attire as purchased the day before in the bazaar.

Our driver, Nagdajin (or 'Nads' as we came to call him) fought off the insanity of the Indian commute as best as he could but still it took almost 5 hours to make it to Jaipur only 150 miles away. Now, I'm no math major, but that's averaging about 30 miles per hour, and even that was risking our lives most of the way!

Finally, we met up with our couchsufing host and his wife, Sunny and Nilam, just in time for them to invite us along to the park. We got to know each other a bit before settling into their beautiful home. Sunny's is a story of self-made success since having had to live out of his car, work two jobs and chase grants so he could afford university. Now still before his 30th birthday, he owns his home outright, is building one for his brother next door, has opened a school for poor children, (financially) adopted 60-some children and hosts anyone and everyone who wants to come and see Jaipur via couchsurfing.org!! I absorbed some powerful reminders about hard-work, dedication and GENEROSITY during our stay with him. This is a man who contributes to the karma pool as much as anyone I've ever seen. I consider myself very lucky to have stayed with him!!

The next day, he offered to show us around some of the temples and explained basic belief systems and principles of the Hindu religion before personally driving us around the city for our first full day there. He was so helpful that we were able to give Nads the whole first day off as we unleashed ourselves upon Jaipur with our host.

Beautiful pure white marble Hindi Temple that Sunny took us to in Jaipur. We were the ONLY tourists there. 

One of the most beautiful things about their religion was their open-ness and recognition of all the world's religions. Pictured here in marble are Jesus Christ and St. Peter on the outside of their temple. Now if ALL religions could just follow that lead........

Our host (and general helluva guy), Sunny. Pictured here showing off his new-found hugfive skills in front of Jal Mahal (or 'water palace') - a five story building mostly underwater and built hundreds of years before they had even electricity.... how DO they do these things??

We had noticed that our time in India would coincide perfectly with the Cricket World Cup Finals when the U.S. State Department issued a terrorism target alert for the event. We didn't really mind the government's warnings at all, and instead got excited about the chance to finally figure out just what in the heck is going on out on that cricket field!

By the time we arrived, India was using their homefield advantage and had advanced to the semi-finals against their real-life blood rivals, Pakistan. Since the two countries have been at war or on the brink of war since they broke away from England some 60 years ago, the match was more than a little bit personal - maybe like North Korea playing South Korea, or The US playing Iraq for an olympic medal?

Sunny used the other semi-final game, Sri Lanka vs New Zealand, to teach us the basics so we wouldn't be asking questions during the real match. Amazingly, with some patience on his part, we actually got the jist of it fairly quickly. It's far less complicated than it has always seemed to we of the western hemisphere. The only biggest surprise was that the average game at this level lasts between 7 and 9 hours! Luckily, there's highlights and all the exciting action takes place in the last hour or two.

With basic cricket knowledge in tact, we got some sleep and had Nads pick us up in the morning for another day of sight-seeing. We kept him until about half-time of the India-Pakistan game before we cut him loose to go and enjoy. He did a much better job of being patient and driving around some spoiled tourists than I ever would have if the Vikings were in the middle of the Superbowl!!

The three of us in front of the Wind Palace.

Amber Fort in the background up above and Tiger Fort lower.

Sarah was like a celebrity with all the people of India - usually the men moreso - but here at Tiger Fort, these women approached her and started throwing babies in her lap. "Have it," one of them said to her, although we're pretty sure she only meant to borrow it for a picture. :)

When we got back to Sunny's house, he was glued to the TV. We joined him for the second half as India bowled and fended off the Paki batsmen! They won with a safe margin and advanced to the finals where they would play Sri Lanka for the title in Mumbai. Near the end of the game, Sunny emerged from his bedroom with a shopping bag full of fireworks and we headed to the roof to join the rest of the city in celebration. His favorites were firecrackers that made M-80's seem like a lake cabin toy. There were fireworks exploding, people screaming, cheering and waving flags in the streets, sirens and horns sounding off in every direction; it was pure madness! .... and this was only the semi-finals.

The finals would finish just hours before we were scheduled to fly out of the New Delhi airport the following Saturday. We KNEW we had only seen a taste of what was to come!


With that, our time in Jaipur was finished. We said our long-winded good-byes and left all kinds of open invites to someday repay the favor if ever they should want to visit a place what we end up living.

When you're home, there are very few good-bye's where you literally mean just that - 'I'll probably never see you again; have a great life.' Living out of a backpack, it happens consistently and can be a bit depressing from time to time, I have to admit. All we can do is take lessons from each encounter and know that every person you've met along your way was not by accident.


Our next stop was in Pushkar - a charming small town where we seemed to be just a step ahead of the curve. There was no single major monument there, we didn't read about it in a 12 year-old copy of Lonely Planet, and generally speaking, there just weren't more than a handful of other foreigners there. The signs weren't in English, the prices weren't inflated double and the street vendors didn't harass you to buy from them just becuase you stepped foot into their shop. I felt like a traveler instead of a tourist for the first time since arriving in India, and it was really satisfying.

Broey and Sarah camelback in the central market of Pushkar, India. Our guides led us out to a sunset look-out point in the middle of the desert. 

Some local musicians came and serenaded us as we watched the sunset! This picutre reminds me of the old game on Sesame Street where they would divide the screen into 4 and make you try to figure out which thing 'didn't quite belong' - apple, pear, rhino and an orange; which one just doesn't fit here?? hmmm....... :)

Freedom! Camels are MUCH taller than I had realized, and I never saw them spit even once.

We came upon an interesting lesson along the road to our next stop when Nads took us to a tourist trap roadside restaurant for dinner. We sat for just a minute looking at the menu before realizing that the prices were more than double what we should be paying. We got up and left the restaurant and the owner chased us down outside. "It's okay, what do you need? 30% discount?... 50%?? No problem. Just don't tell the other customers please." If we had just arrived in India, we would never have known. The same thing took place along the way many times. Like when we arrived at our Agra hotel and the first price they quoted us was again, double what we ended up paying. Do your homework before you get to a new country! If I could re-do a couple of things, I would take back bartering the extra 20 cents out of the little lady street vendors in Cambodia, but paid more attention to the flat out 'we are blatenly screwing you because you don't know any better haha better luck next time' rip-offs. Lesson learned!

We arrived in Agra just in time to play a game of circle 15 on the roof with our dinner and get some rest. We would wake up at 6-something the next morning to explore the incredible, unprecedented, masterpiece; The Taj Mahal!!

Sarah and my mandatory reflecting pool picture. Some places never live up to their hype... Taj is NOT such an example!

Taken to record the fantastic detail inside the center tomb. If I'd been caught taking this picture, they'd confiscate my camera without any questions asked, I was later told by another tourist!

Close up to try to demonstrate the incredible detail of the Taj. None of the designs that you see are painted or colored-in in any way. Individual pieces of marble, hand-carved one by one over 500 year ago throughout the entire complex!! Unreal!

After Taj Majal came some dramatics unlike anything I would ever want to detail, but the incredible help we received from strangers that day make the story worth telling! It all starts when we stopped at an ATM to withdraw some cash...

I pushed the buttons on the ATM like I had done at least a dozen times all over Asia already on this trip, except this time, the machine didn't give me cash. Instead, it displayed a message on the screen that said plainly, "Your card has been retained." Just like that, Sarah and I had absolutely no access to our card - which meant no access to any of our money that was still in our Korean account .... namely, everything we had!

Our situation was severly worsened by several other factors: it was a Saturday afternoon where this particular branch of HDFC Bank was hardly open for a few hours in the morning and to retrieve the card was a process that would normally take 3 or 4 days, but we were leaving the country later that night! We were not citizens of their country, nor even customers of their bank. They had NOTHING in the world to gain by helping us. Oh and did I mention, all of the favors we were asking them were right in the middle of the cricket world cup finals (AKA the Superbowl, World-series, Christmas and Indi 500 all rolled into one)!!! The odds were not in our favor.

With nothing to gain except the satisfaction of helping strangers whom they'd almost certainly never see again (!!!), it took phone calls to Korea in the middle of their night, regional managers being interrupted mid-game and about 6 people's Saturday afternoon, but the people of HDFC Bank did what it took to get us our card back in an unthinkable show of goodwill!!!! We finally left them with our card in hand, about 3 hours after their bank should have been closed for the weekend!!

I'd call it legendary customer service, but it goes well beyond that considering we were never their customers. This was just people caring for others. As a service industry worker myself; my goal in my professional life has always been to be able to treat people that way. They cared about our situation and fought for us as though we were their family members and I promise that neither of us will EVER forget it!

So, Taj Mahal and this unthinkably great human experience in the same day - how could you beat that?? Well, we decided to celebrate an India World Cup Championship in the heart of it's capital city! Joe talked us into venturing back into the mayhem for a few hours before heading off to the airport. It turned out to be just enough time to absorb an undoubtedly epic life experience! India beat Sri Lanka comfortably and the city instantly lit up in a way that made the pervious experience in Jaipur seem like child's play! I wish I had captured more of the riot that ensued an hour later as we tried to make our way out of the city center!


This will never come close to capturing the pure bliss that was New Delhi at the end of that game, but it does give record of a hint of it. Note the nervous cows in the middle of the mayhem at the end! :)

I think there's a chance that Cairo decided to have its uprising when it did to help us fulfil our destiny to spend those 8 days in India. Strange that the stop we were most warned about from every direction, turned out to be my (and I think all of our) favorite and most valuable travel experience of my short life so far!!

13 months and 9 countries later, it was time to leave Asia. It's safe to say that my very last day there was one of my most memorable on the continent - perhaps one of the most memorable of my life. The next morning we'd wake up in Roma, Italia.

All Thai'd Up

~~  Every birthday should be one year long.  ~~

We had been previously made aware that Cambodian buses are not allowed to enter into Thailand so we'd have to change into vans that would be waiting for us when we got through customs. As usual when traveling, things don't always go quite according to plan. After a miserably long and slow process of checking out of Cambodian customs and into Thailand's we found everyone from our bus-load standing around in a group. No one knew where to go and no direction was being given. We sat there confused in the blistering heat for about a half hour before noticing that most of the people we had come with were gone, having snuck away one-by-one. Any one of the guys in charge who were standing around there looking just as confused would only answer, “I'm not your tour guide.” no matter what we would ask them.

Finally Muc went to investigate. He found that everyone was sitting about a block away outside of a convenience store. We made our way and sat in the 90-something weather for a bit; and then a while longer; and then another hour. Still no one would tell us any information or direction beside to say in an annoyed voice, “Just wait. I'm very busy.” when we'd try to ask them where the hell our bus was or when it would arrive. At one point, a bus came and they loaded to the brim with people and luggage. At first we were really annoyed that we weren't getting let into it, but that sentiment changed quickly as it sat parked in exactly the same place that it had arrived to for another hour! In the end, it took us more than 3 hours of sitting clueless before we got on a bus. Even after making us sit there for what felt like an eternity, there was no apology or explanation offered.

To add insult to injury, they even made one girl get back off of our bus to wait longer despite having plenty of empty seats on it because she had booked through a different company. If only because I was looking for an excuse to curse these guys out, I tried to come to her aid but with no success. After some nasty words were exchanged, she got off the bus to sit in the sun some more. “Welcome to Thailand!” I said sarcastically to our van-load as soon as our bus finally got on it's way.

I realized later that it wasn't the delay that bothered me, but the complete lack of communication or apology that made me want to pounce on the intestines of our 'guide'. (Yeah, I kind of wanted to do that!)

It was a very LONG day but we finally arrived in Bangkok just after dark. Bangkok is a huge, bustling mega-metropolis with people from all over the world. I instantly came to think of it as Southeast Asia's version of New York City; and although I've never been to New York, I'm pretty sure that's about right. Despite its size and bustle, it felt comfortable, safe and very welcoming to it's hundreds of thousands of tourists.

We had the good fortune of being with two experienced Bangkok travelers – Muc and Jason had spent a couple of weeks there each. The main backpacking area is along Khoasan Road and the guys lead us directly to a great little spot where we set up shop for the week. We were instantly reminded that we were on Thai budget now as we had to shell out more than double what we'd gotten used to paying for our accommodation in Vietnam and Cambodia.

The action-packed and very welcoming backpacker area of Bangkok, Khaosan Road.

Ronald McD showing off his world sense and open-mindedness (or at least an uncanny ability to sell cheesburgers!) along Khaosan Road.  

After my first sandwich from Subway Restaurant in more than a year (delicious!!!), I dedicated a good amount of time resting and writing during our first night there. Day 2 was for exploring and making our plans for the rest of our time in Thailand. We had a tuk-tuk (a kind of motorbike taxi) take us around the town and quickly found out why his prices were so cheap. Everywhere he'd take us was in hopes that we'd buy something there and he'd get a cut from the owners. We figured the joke was on him when we would buy exactly nothing, but it wasn't quite that simple. He would take us one place that we wanted to go and then two of his own, but we got so tired of it that we finally just bailed on him and had to find our own way home. We had spent the whole day, and still never even saw the palace that we had originally set out for!

Also, during the little tuk tuk rip off, we ALMOST made our first major mistake of the trip when one of his stops was at a travel agency. A big and fat fast-talking Welsh-man got into our heads and had us worried that we wouldn't be able to find any affordable places to stay on the islands we were planning to head to as our next stop. Before we knew it, he had our whole trip laid out for us minute by minute and was talking about numbers close to $600!! He kept cutting stuff out and giving us 'discounts' in a way that when it got down to $390 each, we were starting to actually consider that it might be worthwhile.

Just then, Sarah was able to step in and help us snap out of it and get out of there without blowing a cent. When we got back to the hostel, it took her less than one hour of internet sneussing to get us everything that fatty had been offering for just under HALF of his best offer! Gotta' love her!! ;)

We had a variety of options to sift though for the upcoming days. Thailand has dozens of islands on either side of its isthmus and all have very different offerings. In the end, we decided to skip the legendary 'Full Moon Party' on the eastern side's Ko Pha-ngan. It was a tough one to miss because there's a good chance it was once in a lifetime, but sometimes you have to balance – over-priced and over-crowded Euro-trash drunk fest in the East... OR... more relaxed beaches and snorkeling of the west?? Again, I'd like to thank my wonderful fiancé for the level head and past-her-years maturity on this one! Finally, the path was decided with our first stop being to Phi Phi (“PEE-PEE”) and the surrounding islands. Having to choose between a 12+ hour bus ride for $20 or a 1 hour flight for $60, we booked a one-way flight to the port city of Phuket (“POO-ket”, you pottymouth!! ;) )

Feeling like we'd pretty thoroughly seen Bangkok, we decided to commit the day that remained before our flight to a unique day-trip in a smaller town called Kanchunaburi about 2 hours away. The trip included our transportation, WWII museum, lunch, bamboo river-rafting, a 20-minute elephant ride through the jungle and a visit to the tiger temple!! At about $40 per person, we couldn't beat the price and couldn't justify missing these once-in-a-lifetime shots!

Sarah and I hanging out with our newfound elephant friends. We decided mama deserved a snack after carrying around our extra weight!

Posing with a tiger who (I'm pretty sure) was unsedated! This giant's calm nature and willingness to NOT eat my face can be attributed to having been raised by monks in their Tiger Temple. Kanchunaburi, Thailand.

The day after Kanchunaburi, we made our way to the airport and arrived in Phuket with about a 30 minute delay on our plane. The last boat for Phi Phi would leave some 25 minutes later and we were 45 minutes away from the dock. As that was the last boat bound for our destination that day, we were just starting to realize that we'd be stuck in the dumpy port city of Phuket over-night when we met an amazing taxi driver who told us he'd get us on the boat if we rode with him!! We had nothing to lose so we jumped in and held on tight. He flew through the city – passing on the shoulder, running red lights and whatever else it took. At one point he even called the guys at the port and told them we were coming and to wait for us! We tipped him good and ran to the boat that took off almost immediately after we boarded. We made it!... and we could finally relax.

Moments later, Muc came out of the interior part of the boat with three glorious, icy-cold cans of beer! Amid the chaos, we'd nearly forgotten that it was St. Patrick's Day and of course, the one-year anniversary of the night Sarah and I met in Daejeon! We sat in the sun for the course of the boat ride and arrived in Phi Phi in plenty of time to find a suitable hostel, get some dinner and don any green we could find for the festivities!

That night, the other's dropped out one-by-one, but Broey and I barreled on into the wee hours. At one point, we earned 17 baht (about 60 cents worth) while Joe played guitar and I sung and danced outside of a convenience store. That turned into a groovy crew just singing along with us and hanging out. Much later than that, we would ourselves sitting in a circle on the beach doing the same. Anyone who wanted could grab a guitar and everybody sang whenever they felt like they might know a word or two. Knowing that our time in Southeast Asia would be ending soon after, Joe left his guitar with another traveling man who would be sure to put it to good use and we stumbled back to the hostel right around dawn. It was truly beautiful and a night I will re-live as many times as my life allows me to!!

We would spend the next couple of days bumming around beaches, snorkeling and playing plenty of frisbee around the amazingly gorgeous islands. We even got to spend some time on Maya Bay – made famous as 'The Beach' when Leonardo DiCaprio filmed his movie there about 10 years ago. If you know me, you know we searched HARD, but couldn't find Leo ANYWHERE! ;)



Finally getting to relax and enjoy a beer for St. Patty's Day after BARELY making our boat ride to Phi Phi. 



World-famous Koh Phi Phi's main port where thousands of toursits pour though every day.



Sarah the wonder-babe and I at Maya Bay - locally known as simply 'The Beach' after Leo's movie.

Would you like some breakfast? Have a seat! :)



Muc enjoying the beautiful snorkeling off of one of the Phi Phi Islands. Gorgeous enough weather and setting to cure even the most severe of St. Patty's Day hangovers!

 Next stop was Koh Lanta as recommended to us very strongly by our good friends and ultimate frisbee organizers, Kobe and Woody. This is a neighboring island to Phi Phi – much bigger, but much less touristic and crowded. Most of our time there we rented motorbikes for less than $7 a day and tooled around the island freely. For the first time in our trip, the weather played a major role as we had to dodge a major downpour at least once daily. The downtime was used to try to get caught up on some long overdue FB photog and blog updates for..... well, you guys! :)



Sarah soaking it all in. Lanta National Park on the Southern tip of the island.



Certainly in the top 5 (at least) sunsets I've ever seen in my life!! Koh Lanta, Thailand.

Broey and I living up to our favorite Karaokee song of all time.... Born to be WILD!



And in the end, we must wish Muc a warm farewell with one last late-night dance party rager together. Godspeed my friend!!

From Lanta, we made our way to the port city of Krabi. Krabi in and of itself doesn't have too much to boast of, but it IS the gateway to all of Southern Thailand's uncanny and epic rock climbing. Of course, I had been WAITING for this stop excitedly!! Each morning there, I would wake up like a kid on Christmas morning just to find out it was pouring rain.... again.... and again until it was time to go!

I was temped to be upset (or even devastated) by the realization that we would NOT get to climb in Thailand, but had to keep reminding myself that that IS travel. We took a big gamble leaving only a three days climbing window in Krabi. And, as we all know full well, for every gamble there is a winner and a loser. I have been winning more than my fair share lately and so figured it was simply my turn to absorb some crappy (unseasonal) luck!

I'm sure if you're reading this far, you know that I'm not the kind of person to sit and sulk for very long though! What's the UP side of all this rain?? While rain might making climbing difficult or impossible, it actually improves water levels so the white water rafting would be great instead! We headed out our second day for some class III and IV rafting for about $30 per head. The day also included hanging out with some monkeys and some simple cliff jumping into a waterfall! The weather held off okay for us and we ended up turning a bummer situation into a surprise Thailand highlight!

Waterfall jump! Unfortuanately we got no pictures of our white water rafting because we arrived just a bit after the bulk of the group and the cameras had moved on.

Monkey Temple! Literally thousands of friendly monkeys walking around plainly everywhere!

Of course, the consistent rain didn't cut out our ability to party down! Broey and I had a blast at this groovy funk Reggae birthday party with the locals one of our nights on Koh Lanta.

Our time in Thailand was up and we would be heading for India shortly. We left ourselves what amounted to just a long layover in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. We had been told we wouldn't want to stay much longer than that and found the tip to be a good one! Kuala Lumpur seemed to be little more than a city full of ultra hip, fashion-conscious popularity contestants. In other words, it reminded me of Asia's version Los Angeles. I wish we would have had time enough to explore Malaysia properly, but that plan fell by the wayside when we had extended our stays in each of the previous three countries.

Kuala Lumpur's busy posh night-life scene. It depends what you're into I suppose, but if you're anything the same type of traveler that we are, one night will suffice!



And of course, THE iconic image of Kuala Lumpur, The Petronas Towers. Formerly the tallest building in the world and still the tallest set of twins.


After a night of walking around scoffing at the Gucci stores and snapping photogs with the towers, we were on our way to a place that even the most well-traveled people I've known have warned about. It was time for New Delhi, India!!!

Cambodia, Kingdom of Wonder!

~~ " ...There's no such things as time. IT'S OUR TIME." ~~

Jack Johnson

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Our first stop in Cambodia was to participate in an Ultimate Frisbee Hat Tourney in the capital city of about a million and a half people, Phnom Penh. If you remember from November or so, a hat tourney is one where you register as an individual and are later broken up into teams 'randomly' but also as evenly as possible according to your reported skill level. We wouldn't know anyone on our squad and that's kind of the beauty of the event – watching a rag-tag group of strangers from all over the world's Ulti communities to come together and become a TEAM within the time frame of their first day together.
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Not surprisingly, Muc and I ended up on separate teams and scheduled to face-off against each other at the end of the first day. Before we had even met our teams, we made a bet that I would whoop his little behind – the loser to perform a full-fledged Buddah bow and smootch the other's cleats at midfield after our game!!
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Muc and I in good spirits despite being a few minutes from the end of our game against each other. I think the score was TIED at this point if I remember correctly!

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The tourney was light-hearted – serving free beer all day, blasting music and then throwing a party every night after the action. The only downfalls might have been serious dehydration, smashing my head off of our low ceiling exit to our hostel bathroom (twice) making it even more lumpy than it already was, losing to Muc's team by exactly one point and making a spectacle of myself in paying off our little bet. We met a ton of great people, spread some hug-fives around, caught a few scores each and won a handful of games. The event was ultra well-organized from start to finish and absolutely a riot through and through!
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Thanks in no small part to a perfect huck (long frisbee toss) from 'Peach', I haul in a long score during the semi's.

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After getting knocked out in the semi's by the only undefeated team, we decided to settle our final score for 3rd place by dominating the gray team in an old fashioned beer chug-off! A fitting end to the day since there was basically NO ONE left physically able to play another game at that point. :)
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Boat race to determine 3rd place in the Phnom Penh Hat tourney 2011. Note how the green team DOMINATES the grey guys!

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After a packed weekend of out-of-shape Ulti in the steaming hot jungle, it was time for some serious relaxation. We headed south for the dumpy tourist port city of Sihanoukville. Luckily that was not our final destination. We found a place to crash, and the next morning set out on a 2+ hour boat ride not really knowing what we should expect from the private island resort of Lazy Beach, Koh Rong Saloem. It had been briefly recommended months ago by a South African friend in Korea, but if the stay was to be anything like the boat ride out there, we were in big trouble! We were in a tiny, rickety, homemade looking piece of wood in the middle of the ocean. The waves were ridiculous and almost half of the 10 or 12 other people on our boat ended up sending the contents of their stomachs over the side rail. Water poured on board every few minutes when the boat would rock from left to right, bags were falling and sliding arond the deck. It seemed endless and for some reason the theme to Gilligan's Island kept playing through my head.

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This had better be one hell of an incredible stay to make up for this, I remember thinking to myself; and IT WAS!! Finally we landed in heaven on Earth. This resort, it's 10 villas and bar/restaurant were literally the ONLY structures on this entire island! We had no reason to look at our watches for the four days to come and couldn't have been more stoked.

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We learned a new game from the bar-tenders there which occupied plenty of our four days - Monopoly DEAL (if you're at Kilworry this year, you WILL learn this game!) We also dedicated time to some volleyball, floating, beach-bumming, good eats and cheap drinks. I was SO impressed that, despite having the ability to literally charge any prices they want for food and drink (as they had the ONLY source on the island) things were very reasonably priced. Thanks for not price gouging, Asia!! :)

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Private beach resort on an undeveloped private island for $6 a night each!

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There's me - well, about one fifth of me - enjoying my paradise!!

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Our canadian buddy, Jason, who we picked up along the way in the frisbee tourney. He was traveling alone and didn't have much of an agenda so we invited him along to the beach!

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One of the days found Sarah feeling really sick with a 24-hour bug. She was barely able to move the entire day, but luckily, she had no reason to do so anyways. I used the day to plan out the final execution of my secret plot I had been brewing for months before. It was to be her Chirstmas, 1 year dating anniversary and birthday presents all rolled into one, so it needed to be good!

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Broey and I scouting out the perfect spot and plotting the secret plan for my sick girlfriend whenever she would start feeling better.

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The following day, she was feeling much better and up to a short 'sunset hike' as suggested by me. We made our way slowly up the steep train I had discovered the day before. After about 15 minutes, the trail ended at a flat rock platform that overlooked the entire island. The sunset was beautiful, we'd taken a couple of pics and soaked it in. Then, perfectly, the only other guy that had been there decided to take off. It was time.

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I told her we should take a self-timer pic and showed her where to stand. I arranged the camera and pushed the button. When I came back to take my place, she mentioned that the timer wasn't blinking on the camera. She started to realize that I was shooting a video – not a picture – when she looked over and I was down on a knee at her side. I took her hand and said, “Baby, I've loved you as long as I've known you. I promise to always do everything in my power to make you happy. Will you marry me?” I tried to look her in the eye but she was staring at the ring and trying to wrap her brain around what was happening. She smiled and nodded excitedly so I put the ring on her finger and we shared the moment.

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Muc shot about 5 mintes of footage to add to the video that I took of the proposal itself and a couple dozen pictures. Armed with just that, he put together a really touching and incredible engagement video for us within a couple of hours! Most people reading this would have surely already seen it, but for the sake of commiting it to the record: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wx2FzDPZvl4

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After gathering ourselves, it was time to head back down to our friends who were waiting for us with a table, bottle of champagne and their congratulations. We were ENGAGED TO BE MARRIED!! Everything went as smoothly as I could have hoped and we have truly enjoyed and appreciated all the online support of our decision from our friends and family though most of them have never met one or the other of us! Thank you all, we love you!! :) No date or even time frame picked yet, but we'll be sure to let everyone know as soon as we know. If we had to make a ballpark guess for now, we'd say summer 2012.

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The next day we woke up early and settled our long tab with Lazy Beach; all food, drinks and accommodation for 3 nights and 4 days on a private island came to less than $90 per person!!

As you can tell, dollars go along way in Cambodia since unfortunately, the average wage for a working person seems to be less than $5 per day. That means that whenever they see tourists, they literally NEED your business - even if it's only for a dollar worth of bracelets or post-cards. This makes for VERY aggressive sales tactics and even being just plain bothersome to tourists anytime they see one.

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Another tactic is for disabled parents to beg in nightlife areas with their small children. It puts you in a kind of a guilt-ridden predicament. It's tragic to see the unhealthy and dirty children, but I also always fear that any money tourists give them may very well not be going to the child, but to support parent's booze, drug-habit or who knows what else.

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One night, Sarah and I found a way around this when we bought some milk and tiny little 'Pooh' stuffed animals for a couple of such little girls. I have litterally never seen such a simple and small gift be so massively appreciated and it made us both feel really deeply good about what we'd done. If only there were a way to start doing this on a much larger scale; these situations are far too common in our world as people in the western world complain about their mocha espresso not having the correct sweetener. Sarah and I did NOT put an end to world hunger or poverty that night, but we certainly did put a smile on a couple of kids' faces!

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The cutest little girl ever posing with Sarah and her new gifts. She would smile enormous and wave at Sarah from across the bar for the rest of evening! SO adorable!! :)

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So anyways, it was time to head out of our island paradise. The boat ride was certainly not enjoyable, but nor was it the disaster that the original had been. We waited in Sihanoukville for our long over-night bus and arrived before dawn the next morning in Siem Reap; home of Angkor Wat! Angkor is an old and impressive temple complex that dates back more than 1500 years when it was built as a Hindu worship site. The Buddhists would later take it over and change it's purpose. Maybe a century after that, it was abandoned and forgotten there for a long period of time before being rediscovered, refurbished and converted into a major attraction for travelers from around the world. It is massive and in some places overgrown by jungle and trees.

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Angkor Wat. Seim Reap, Cambodia.

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Most historic sites are more like museums where you have a set path that you're asked to walk, being pushed along by other tourists directly behind you. I've always felt kind of uneasy in those places – like you're being slighted a bit and not able to get the full experience. That was NOT the case at Angkor Wat. There were essentially no rules! Run, jump, climb up, go wherever you think you can safely go with no one bothering you! Of course, there were tons of other tourists there, but the place was so massive – a number of miles – that you could almost always get the picture you wanted and take as little or as much time as you wish at a given site. The whole complex was one of the most impressive awe-inspiring places I've ever seen – far blowing away Athens' Acropolis or even Rome's Coliseum!

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The most impressive and awe-inspring day of the trip.... maybe EVER??

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Other than that, we did only very little in Siem Reap. There is a tourist trap called 'Pub Street' with lots of bars, restaurants and quirky little things to do where we entertained ourselves with Dr. Fish and a few beers. My main complaint of the stay there was clearly the overly pushy up-salesman at our hostel who literally thought that we OWED him more business because he had picked us up from the bus station as their guest house had promised. It actually got ugly when he came into our room and kept at it as Muc and I basically told him to take a walk. It came to shouting and cussing by the end of it and made the rest of our stay there really uncomfortable.
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We stayed only 2 nights and that was enough. Overall, the beauty of old Angkor Wat prevailed and we really enjoyed our time in Siem Reap for that reason.
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Our time in Cambodia came to an end that day as we boarded a bus due for Bangkok, Thailand. From frisbee with the foreigners, the serenity of Lazy Beach and the wonder of Angkor Wat all at incredibly cheap and welcoming prices, I think it's safe to say that Cambodia proved to be one of the most UNDER-RATED tourists destinations in Asia. If I had to guess, I would say that 20 years from now, it will be rivaling Thailand in popularity! We were very lucky to get to visit now before the crazy development and price inflation takes place.

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The 'Nam

~ I try to write not about things that I do; rather things that I learn. ~

Aside from a brief delay in Guangzhou, China and getting ripped off major for our meal there, the first LOOONG day of travel went off without a hitch. We arrived in Ho Chi Minh (or 'Saigon' interchangeably) late at night where we were met by our next big rip off when we accidentally paid triple for our 'taxi' from the airport. Live and learn!

We got to our hostel and were working on blind hope alone that it would be open and able to let us in (it was now about 1 in the morning) and that Muc would have found his way there already as we had planned. To continue our early smooth roll of impressive fortune, BOTH turned out to be true with no hassle at all! We caught up with Muc over a 40-cent beer or two and headed off to bed in our beautiful high ceiling room at the Diep Anh Guesthouse on backpackers' row, old town Saigon.

The next morning we got up early and explored the city by foot. Ho Chi Minh is extremely busy, but is also very accessible. Almost all of the attractions seem to be located within a few blocks which makes for some insanely bustling streets in the downtown area. There are more motorbikes at every intersection than in the entire state of Minnesota, I'm convinced. We had a terrific day exploring the central market, their Notre Dame Cathedral, Vietnam War museum (from the other extreme point of view than we are accustomed to) and a few other popular sites all within a few minutes.

In front of the old City Hall in Ho Chi Minh City. Fresh off the boat!

Vietnam's Notre Dame Cathedral.

We had been previously warned that if you try to wait for a break in the action, you'll literally never cross the road. The only way to get where you need to go is just to step fearlessly into traffic walking slowly but steadily directly through it. Crazy as it sounds, as long as you don't stop, slow down or start to run frantically, your path will be predictable and the 600 motos will pass right by you without incident.

Here is the M.U.C crossing the road in Saigon. Do NOT try this at home!

Since we had only a handful of days in Vietnam, we figured that we would have to decide between a jungle exploration at the Mekong River Delta or the beaches, resorts and famed sand dunes of Mui Ne. But when the time came, we realized it was potentially our only time in Vietnam (ever?), so we decided to cram them both in. We found an abbreviated 1 day tour version of the Delta and left ourselves 2 nights for Mui Ne's resorts, beaches, impressive sand dunes and 'fairy stream' walking.

Paddling down a tiny inlet of the Mekong River near it's delta. A slightly fabricated experience but it was still a really cool day!

Just the fellas hanging out in the 'Fairy Stream' area just outside of Mui Ne, Vietnam.

Our good friend and trusty cousin, Broseph.... riding an ostrich! This little experience set us each back a full dollar!

The Vietnam Austria Guesthouse in the beautiful resort town of Mui Ne. The beautiful paradise resort ran about $7 per person each night.

Even through our side trips, we remained based out of the Diep Anh Guesthouse in Saigon. We just couldn't get ourselves to move from there for its comfortable and private rooms, cheap drinks and surely the most genuine and helpful owners/staff that I have EVER encountered. They arranged all of our excursions we were interested in – and for dirt cheap, kept our bags safe for days at a time while we were away and just generally wanted to make sure we didn't have a care in the world while we were staying at their place. Still not convinced? On our last day there, Joe asked the owner where he might be able to purchase a guitar for cheap. He started to draw a map but then realized it might be a little bit complicated and crunched for time, so he dropped everything, pulled his motorbike out and drove Joe to the guitar shop personally! You just don't see that kind of extreme service – wait, I mean CARE – anywhere else!!

Us and a portion of the staff at the Diep Anh Guesthouse. 10 out of 10

In typical Muc fashion, he put together a mega-rad video to summarize the great times that we had in our week there in Vietnam. Please enjoy it by clicking the youtube link here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QPjb1TKv4VI :)

Our time was up and we would head next for almost 2 weeks in the Kingdom of Wonder; Cambodia!!!!

Broey in Korea!

~~ Obviously travel is about going new places; but the more you do it, the more you realize, it's so much more about the people you meet along your way. ~~

Which brings me to Friday, February 18^th ; 3AM.

I was awake well before dawn and on my way to the bus station heading north to meet good old cousin Joe at the Incheon Airport! He thought that he would be meeting Sarah for the first time (in person, although they had talked and exchanged messages online for months) there in the terminal when he arrived. What we didn't tell him though was that Sarah, being the incredible and selfless person that she is, offered to cover work for me so that I might have the honor!

When he came out of the terminal, I snuck up on him with my camera rolling and gave him a loud, “Let the mayham!!.....” In his delirious and jet-lagged state, it took him a long moment of staring at me blankly before he realized what was going on. After about 5 seconds, he smiled and said in a confused voice, “Begin!?” - That's an old thing we picked up from our first back-packing venture years ago. :)

Joe was reasonably WIPED OUT, but we had a serious errand to take care of before we could get him to our hostel in Seoul to relax. We had exactly a one-day window to get our India visa applications turned in and on their way to approval. We had to leave our passports there for 'at least a week' which meant if things went perfectly, we'd still only have a one hour opportunity to pick them up the day before we were scheduled to leave for Vietnam. We had very little room for error.

It ended up taking us a full four hours to get through the whole process. We couldn't find the office, Broey had the wrong passport photos, and the lobby was PACKED, but we toughed through it and nervously left our passports with the embassy just 8 days before we were leaving for a two-month excursion.

Finally, we checked into our hostel, ate a big traditional Korean lunch (including Joe's first real experience with chopsticks) took a long nap and then showered. We felt like new men and were ready to go and meet Sarah at the subway station. She had finished her day covering for me and everything had gone wonderfully smooth!

We decided to dedicate some hours to partying with our new hostel-mates we had met – namely, Luce from France and Leena from Finland. We guzzled 3-foot tall margaritas, sang in our karaoke room for hours and headed for Shisha in the busy college town area of Hongdae, Seoul. This particular shisha house had a new trick for us though and brought us a small dish of bubble soap to blow giant smoke bubbles with. We found this to be wildly entertaining and stayed there into the early hours of the morning. We were enjoying the company of our new-found friends so much that we ended up continuing the party at our hostel until 6 something in the morning.

Finally stumbling to bed, we'd left ourselves about 2 hours to try and sleep before we needed to be at our bus pick-up spot for our scheduled Adventure Korea temple stay at Geumsan-sa. This would be a totally new experience for all of us and we were excited for it, but left ourselves little chance to be feeling good for the event.

Luckily, I was sleep-talking so loudly that I woke Sarah up across the dorm-style hostel room which caused her to note the time and the fact that we had completely overslept. We drunkenly threw our things together and ran to catch our bus. We made it, but in a very fragile state of life.

It turned out to be a really unique and eye-opening learning experience for all of us where we learned some of the ideas, customs and moral-sets that drive the Buddhist lifestyle. We practiced bowing, meditation, and traditional eating style. I had to beg out of a couple of the activities to get my hung-over self caught up on sleep, but overall really enjoyed the first day at the temple.

The main temple at Guemsan-sa. Adventure Korea temple stay February 19th, 2011

After a long morning of similar activities, it was time for everyone else in our group to go, but we stayed behind. Since we were already very near to Daejeon, it didn't make sense to take the train all the way to Seoul. Our plan was to take a city bus from the temple into a near-by town where we could get on a train to Daejeon, but then Stonehead (our grandmaster monk that had been our host all weekend) invited us – in very broken and limited communication – to stay for a quick scenic hike and then tea in his personal chamber! Although we were more than ready to be on our way, there was no way to pass this up. This little bonus quickly proved to be the overwhelming highlight of the weekend for all of us!

Broey and 'Stonehead' up on the viewpoint above his temple complex.

Homemade tea in the grandmaster monk's personal chambers! A really unique experience!

Stonehead brought us to the train station personally and saw us onto our train. Hours later, for the first time, we brought Joe into our temporary hometown of Daejeon. I still had a busy and VERY full week of work left in front of me. Sarah was done with work but had precisely one million things to do in terms of cleaning, laundry, packing, moving out of apartments, sending boxes home, travel plans, doctors' appointments, etc. We felt a little bad that we couldn't be better hosts to Broey during his visit. It turned out to be less vacation and more witnessing our daily lives in Korea as he helped Sarah while I was at work, shadowed me at school for more than a full day, partied with my co-workers and sang plenty of Karaoke.

It was a full, action packed week. We partied lots, worked hard, slept very little but somehow in the end... we got it all done and got to enjoy a nice farewell party with most all of our Korea friends on Thursday night. We had a great dinner at Taco K and one last hurrah at the Shisha House. It was a fun, but very emotional night of memories and good-bye hugs. We were truly blessed to have met such incredible people all year and we'll not forget you guys!!

One last go-round at the Shisha House; Aussie Nic, Northwest Vin and BC Woody. Our going-away party, 02/24/2011

Friday, I headed into my last day of work with backpacks strapped on. Sarah and Joe would later wake up, polish off my apartment (which was THE apartment at this point – tight fit!) and head up to Seoul. They had to be at the Indian embassy between 4 and 5 pm in order to pick up our passports. If there were any hitches in that, our passports would be locked up in Seoul for the weekend and we would be forced to miss our flight to Vietnam and rearrange the first bit of our Southeast Asia trip.... naturally, I was a bit nervous about something going wrong, but I wouldn't know the outcome until they sent me an update online or I met them in Seoul later that night.

School was a laid-back last day. We had our graduation ceremony where I barely got 4 words out of my mouth before I started to cry while Tommy and Sannah giggled to see me reduced to tears. We gave a few tests, played a few games and said many tearful good-byes to my little tykes! I checked facebook one last time to see if I had any updates from Sarah and Joe. Nothing. The embassy had been closed for an hour and they didn't send me anything?? That didn't leave me overly settled but I tried not to worry about it before I knew what the situation had become. Suddenly, the day was over and I was no longer employed by Kids College. I was on my way to Daejeon station for one last time – indefinitely at least.

Me with a big pile of kids taking a break from my last class at Kid's College. Man, I miss these little guys already!!!!

The train station was as jammed as I had ever seen it. I barely got standing room on an already over-booked train and had something of a miserable ride. I hadn't slept all week, was hung-over, worried about the visa and now was to be wedged tightly between 4 Korean strangers for the next hour plus. One nice side-effect of being so crammed in there was that I could actually fall asleep standing up; and did! Soon, I was in Seoul and heading for our hostel.

It took about 40 more minutes of subways and a short walk, but there were Sarah and Joe in the lobby waiting for me; visa'ed passports in hand!! It was a major relief, and they gave me just a moment to enjoy the fact that we had them before adding the details of just how close we came to blowing it! All trains had been sold out, they had to transfer across town the other station where they were able to beg and connive their way onto their own over-booked train. They had to borrow cell phones to contact the embassy and tell them they would NOT be there before closing time. Luckily, the merciful people there agreed to stay open for them. Joe had to run from the taxi and bang on the door frantically, but in the end; we got our passports back at the LAST POSSIBLE MOMENT! With that massive weight off our shoulders, we enjoyed our last night in Seoul (ever?) with our same friends from the week before in that same hostel, Luce and Leena who happend to be back/still at that same hostel!

The next morning, it was off to the Incheon Airport to begin a brand new chapter! Our hope would be to meet Muc at our decided hostel and let the mayhem continue, but a LOT more still had to go perfectly our way for that to happen.

Korea wrap-up

As usual, it's been a healthy long while since I've written so there is far to much to recall the details of what has happened in the last few months. They have been busy; far too busy to ever feel even close to caught up. Life included a good deal of indoor climbing, my first ever ice-climbing adventure and a 'rec' volleyball tourney that turned out to include all of Seoul's best v-ballers and even this Russian team that seemed they hadn't done anything EXCEPT play volleyball for the past decade or two – our ragtag squadron didn't fare too well in that one, but we had a riot as always!

Anyways, instead of trying to recall details of stories too far removed from even my own brain, I should formally wrap up my time in Korea with a pro's/con's list of my view of Korean culture and my experience teaching here for the year. Let's start with the cons and then finish on the positive side:

Things I'll NOT miss about living in Korea. (Not for the sake of bitching; rather explaining cultural differences that some people may find interesting). :)

10. No clothes driers – I have only been able to hang dry my clothes all year. It takes a day and a half eats up any and all space you may have had in an already miniscule apartment.

9. Pushy people – One cultural observation that seems immediately apparent in Korea is the need to literally shove people out of each other's way – a firm hand in the middle of your back has become normal. If they didn't do this, no one would get anywhere so I understand it, but am ready to move on from that one for sure.

8. Oblivious pedestrians – This one drove me crazy. People rarely pay attention to where they are going and almost never give the right of way. Groups in front of you will span the entire sidewalk, swerve randomly, stop unpredictably, make you slam on the brakes as they slowly roam out in front of your bike, and on it goes. You have to develop an extreme patience or you'll go totally bonkers. I usually chose the second option. :)

7. Sickness – Blame the pollution, yellow dust, DRY air, or unfamiliar food and bacterias native here, but many of my friends have not felt fully healthy for months (or longer).

6. Brutal street crossings – Stop lights in Korea for some reason like to take sometimes over 3 or 4 minutes to let the pedestrians cross. Even where there's not a car in sight, most Koreans will stand obediently on the corner and wait for the little green man – making you feel like a guilty disobedient foreigner if you break the rule. It always confused me in a country where cars can run red-lights freely, but the people are not allowed to jay-walk.

   Side note. The lights are also a detrimental stride-breaker for a runner!

5. Lack of public bathrooms, drinking fountains, etc. - Most shops will have a bathroom for their customers, but almost always without toilet paper, hot water or even soap. As you can imagine, this usually means, 'When you gotta go; you gotta go ELSEWHERE.' The lack of hygiene can be not only annoying, but often frightening as well. “The guy cooking my food used this same bathroom??”

4. Water heaters – Very few (if any) buildings have central air or heating. Mostly floor-board heating and individual heating units are used to keep places warm. This system doubles to provide shower water since there are no reservoirs. You get used to having to switch on the hot water and mess with it for maybe 10 minutes every shower but I'm really looking forward to not having to do that anymore!

3. Intense pressure on the children – Parents in Korea have VERY high expectations for their children. In short, most of them think that their son or daughter is and should continue to be INFALABLE. Getting 94 out of a 100 on an exam might get a young child in scolded and punished. Further, they often attend 3 or 4 schools starting as early as 3 years old!! (School, English, Chinese, piano, violin, taekwando, etc) This places extreme pressure on the students and leaves them little time to play and ever actually be kids. It's often said that parents' retirement funds here are raising their children to be millionaires.

This work-ethic and intense drive has contributed greatly to the development of the country, but tragically is also a big factor in Korea having the highest suicide rate among youth in the world!

2. Garbage!! - The system of garbage disposal here is to purchase these little green bags which are the only ones to be used for disposing of non-recyclable items. You pay about 50 or 60 cents a bag but really you're paying for the service rather than the bag itself. Seems like a great system because then people only pay for what they throw away, right? You might think so, but this is not the case at all. The real result is that people used to just dump their trash at businesses or any public container which in turn resulted in businesses and the government to stop offering containers! Now the whole country has no convenient place to put their garbage and so throws it anywhere they want. In Daejeon at least, there are disgusting garbage piles all over the city!

Another contributing factor to the garbage problem is that companies are allowed to (and do every single day in reams) just randomly throw their fliers all over the streets as advertisement!! This one pissed me off all the time!!!

1. K-Pop!!!! - Ah, the horrific music scene of Korea. Inspired by America's garbage pop music industry, Korea has thousands of femme looking doods, or trampish little girls parading around every billboard, television, poster, you name it! Completely talentless, cookie-cutter puppets of their producers; I cannot express how happy I am to cut ties with that scene!!

Wow! What an angry rant that must have seemed like. But the truth is, the positives hugely overpower the negatives.

10. Interest in our life-style – It'll be tricky to explain this one without sounding too vain here... but, foreigners are generally found to be of interest to the people; sometimes being offered favors that others wouldn't get. For a prime example, Muc and a couple of our other buddies were driving around a new city and asking someone where to find a hotel. Instead the family offered them a place to eat and stay at their own house with their family! Within 10 minutes, they had the family's kids dumped in their lap for photo shoot. It's kind of fun!

9. Free climbing wall – Daejeon is the only city in the world that I'm aware of who decided that a climbing wall was a necessary enough part of life to include it into the tax budget! There free for use anytime! Loved it!! Maybe St Paul will catch on??

8. Service – Korea is famous for world-class customer service without being bothersome to the guests. There's no dopey guy in suspenders and a funny hat checking in on you and trying to sell you more crap while you only want to eat your food. When you need something, you push a little button on your table and they come running. I've become a little bit jaded on American style service I'm afraid.

7. Not needing a car – I haven't driven a car since last June but have never had to worry about getting where I needed to go. Between the subways, trains, buses, taxis and my bicycle; it has been AWESOME to not have a car. Imagine never trying to find over-crowded downtown parking, filling up a gas tank or paying an insurance bill!

6. Global friends – You guys have been awesome!! I've been learning not only about Korean culture this year, but Australian, Irish, South African and more as well. I have good friends from all over the world and will hope to host and be hosted by them for many decades to come! (You would be further on the list if I didn't feel too lazy to re-number everything here just now, guys.) :)

5. Loose liquor laws – Buy it, carry it, drink it where and when you want. Don't act like a jackass and you're allowed to make your own decisions; isn't that the way it should be?? Real freedom!

4. No price gouging – Not only do they not charge you 7 dollars a beer at the baseball game (for example) you can bring your own in with you! You won't pay $12 for a sandwich just because you're at the airport and they have a captive audience – the people of Korea just wouldn't stand for it!

3. The most rewarding job off all time – I think I've said enough about this one over the last blog entries, but life has been good here! I LOVED my job and the satisfaction that came from helping these little tykes grow up! What a wonderful experience and a nice feeling to seem over-paid for the first time ever! :)

2. Almost NO CRIME or frivolous law-suits!! - It changes how people are able to interact and what you're able to do when people are not constantly worried about getting sued for their whole livelihood ever minute. Here, you take your own chances and your own responsibility for what happens as a result – truly great!

1. My kids! - And of course; my little Korean nieces and nephews!! I would have adopted 10 kids while I was here if they had let me! I will never forget them and hope that we stay in touch! I have often wondered over the year, “Who has learned more? Them or me??”

Thank you Korea! Quite possibly the best year of my life! Maybe we'll see you again!! :)

Is Korea right for you??

Considering teaching English in South Korea for a year?? My goal in this entry is to give an unbiased yet thorough review of my one-year experience living and teaching in Daejeon, South Korea. I am an American (St. Paul, Minnesota to be exact) in my late 20's. I am optimistic, love kids and love travel. All of these factors played a major role in sculpting my experience here. Yours will be unique to your personality and perception of the world (of course), but I hope that you might benefit from hearing mine.

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IS IT FOR YOU?

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I have met every kind of person from all over the world during my time here and it seems that most fall into one of two major categories. The first type is someone who comes here looking for adventure, cultural immersion, travel, new people and teaching experience. These are the optimistic open-minds that love the idea that everything here will be totally different from any lifestyle they might be accustomed to. People in this category generally have wonderful experiences here and get exactly what they came for. These are the kinds of people who may discover that a year is not quite enough to take it all in.

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Conversely, many people come here expecting to find out that another version of their hometown exists in Korea. They aren't interested in exploring Korean culture, they don't embrace change - hell, they may or may not even like kids! They often subtly rank themselves as superior to Koreans (or maybe everyone). This type of person may be running away from problems back home or just has just come to find that they aren't the same god-like being now after college as they were to their little frat-buddies.

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People in the second category rarely last a few months in the country. They are miserable and make everyone around them the same. Search your soul for a moment and make sure that you're in the first category before continuing to consider this kind of lifestyle change any further.

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So, you're still reading? I guess that means you've passed what I believe to be the ONLY thing really necessary to absolutely LOVE your experience here!!! You might have the same major concerns that I had when I was pondering this decision.

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1. "I have no teaching experience, isn't that a big problem??" NO. I have a degree in Hospitality and Tourism. All of my professional experience has been in casinos and other service industry positions. I had nothing to suggest that I would be a good teacher other than the fact that I love kids and that I dedicate myself fully to any job that I take on.

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When I first got here, my boss told me at a dinner, "The only thing that will matter is that you truly want the children to learn. With that piece in place, you will be successful." I took that to heart and buckled down to work. Not just for the sake of bragging, but my kids love me, the parents love me and my school loves me! I have never had a job that offered this kind of satisfaction and pride in what I'm doing!

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2. "I don't speak a word of Korean." When I arrived here, my friend gave me a piece of paper that showed me how to say "Hello - an yeong ha say yo" and "thank you - kam sam nee dah" and I made my way through just fine. Now, would learning some tidbits of language have been extremely useful before I came? Absolutely!! ... but it's far from a deal-breaker if you don't get the chance to do so.

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People here generally know a few key words of English, especially those in service industry jobs. People who work at airports and train stations almost always know enough to get our dumb-asses to where we need to go. One important thing to remember though of course - it's your fault you don't speak the language; don't get upset with them when the communication breaks-down!!! As obvious as this seems, we all need reminders sometimes.

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3. "$2000+ a month cash, furnished studio apartment, no experience required, airfare, bonus month salary after your contract, vacation time to travel around Asia... come on, what's the catch??" My dad asked me this when I was considering my decision and my best answer was... "They really like native English teachers." I was kind of guessing (hoping that I was right) when I said that mainly to alleviate his concerns, but I would later find out I had nailed it. Are there some things you will have to get used to? YES. Occasional chaos and disorder in every school I have heard about? YEP. Sporadic worries about border tensions? YOU KNOW IT. etc... but, hey. You're a 'type-1' person from above, right?

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WHERE TO LIVE.

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Maybe you're considering Daejeon specifically and wanting some feedback? Truth be told, Daejeon is a pretty good place to live! There is decent night-life, a solid foreigner (that's us) contingent, and enough to see and do. It doesn't have the super-bustle, pushy nature as much as Seoul and being located directly in the center of the country makes it super easy to get anywhere in Korea within a couple hours (or much less). Also, Daejeon is the ONLY city that I've ever seen to provide a free, full-scale outdoor climbing wall! (If you're into that sort of thing.)

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It's downfalls are there as well however - only one subway line, no coast and no real MAJOR attractions to boast. Every city you'll find will obviously have a different set that it's offering, and I find Daejeon to be a nice average balance. Some other wise choices might include:

1. Seoul can be overwhelming a bit (more people and nearly twice as dense as NYC), but is a really fun and exciting option. All the friends that I've had there seem really satisfied with their choice.

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2. Busan if fabulous down on the beautiful beaches and with its slightly milder weather; but it comes at a price. The average monthly wage for a teacher there is about 200,000 won lower (almost $200) than less-popular inland cities. With the lower wage, it's still easy enough to make a nice living though, so if money isn't a major factor, think beaches!!

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3. Daegu is similar to Daejeon in many ways but just slightly bigger and seemed like some better night-life in my very short time that I spent there. The couple of Daegu friends that I have love it!

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Everywhere else will just depend on what you're looking for. I've met people who live and teach on barely-inhabited islands where they are the only foreigners within 50 miles. Some people pick their location based on their hobbies. For example, the rock-climbing, outdoorsy type might want to consider somewhere like Sokcho up in Kang-wan-do (which I'm told translates to something like 'Lakes and trees Province'). You'll have to do some more homework in this category though - I don't want to over-step my bounds on stuff I know little about.

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Everyone is different and hoping for certain things. Think about what exactly YOU WANT in your Korea experience and try to choose a city accordingly. Your location WILL play a massive role in the unique experience that you have.

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PRIVATE SCHOOL (Hag-won) VS. PUBLIC SCHOOL (Hak-gyo).

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Ah, the great debate. I think everyone you talk to will tell you something very different on this one, but I would estimate that public would be the more-sought after. I personally think private is the way to go, but I'll do my best to outline the pro's and con's of both as I see them through talks with friends. Remember that these are only based on generalizations so you'll have to scrutinize your own contract offer for the specifics.

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Private pros: higher pay and significantly smaller class-sizes (my main class has 2 students!!)

Private cons: less vacation (you should be able to find an offer with 2 weeks a year), evening hours, and can sometimes feel more like a business than a school

Public pros: more vacation time (often up to 6 weeks a year!), usually day shift hours and a lot more prep time for your classes

Public cons: significantly larger class-sizes (up to 30) and slightly less pay

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University: Of course, if you can score a university job, it generally would demolish either of the other two options above. I have friends that get 5 months a year paid time off and work 20 hours a week the other 7 months of the year. These jobs often require ample experience, certificates, a bit of luck and sometimes just knowing the right person.

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MISC ADVICE.

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Getting off the ground may be nerve-racking! The process of my arrival was shoddily organized at best! I was lucky enough to have a good friend here already who could steer me in. Without him, I would have bailed last minute due to the confusion... AND IT WOULD HAVE BEEN A MISTAKE. He convinced me to just get on whichever plane they bought me a ticket for and that everything would be fine.

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You may not be lucky enough to have such a friend here, so I'll fill that role (if I may be so presumptuous). When it's time to go, you'll have already made up your mind. Don't let the butterflies steer your path. My best advice to you is to echo what my friend told me: "Get on whatever plane they buy you a ticket for and everything will be fine!" :)

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Prepare to be frustrated. There will be a lot of things you'd change if you could. Work days can (and frequently do) range anywhere from incredible to impossible. You will find some days that kids don't have the right books, the schedule changed for no reason, the science kits for the month haven't arrived and you have class in 2 minutes, etc.... It took me a while to get good at this, but RELAX; roll with it!

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This job is easily the most frustrating AND most rewarding I've ever had! The relationships that you will develop with these awesome little kids, the way they run up excitedly and give you hugs each morning and the little pictures and cards they draw you will pay you back for all of your frustrations ten-fold or better!!

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It all comes back to what my boss told me when I first got here. Do the best that you can with what's in front of you! 'If you truly want the children to learn, you will be successful.'

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Fight for your rights. First though, I should point out. If you're here, you're likely over-paid and under-qualified. It's also likely your boss can't really afford you. If your boss (who is generally good and fair to you) has to ask you a favor or two to help the school, DO IT! And don't complain - join the team!

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However, many bosses here (it seems to be cultural) recognize and toy with the line that they can cross with you. They may see how much they can milk out of you before you start to complain. Knowing when to (professionally) put your foot down will be a major asset to you. Watch for the big things: trying to skip out on buying you health insurance (which is required by law and your contract), chomping into your personal time by adding duties, taking away vacation time, adding hours without adding pay - these are the kinds of things that you may be wise to squash out or they will continue to expand.

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Be smart here. Realize that there's a fine line between being a team-player and just blatantly getting pushed around and dumped on. I'm not sure if I know anyone whose contract was followed with pin-point accuracy. Be an optimist, but choose your battles.

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CONCLUSION

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There is so much more I could say, but I think I've already written too much. Much of the fun for me this year has been learning, exploring, making mistakes and embarrassing communication mishaps. I feel like I would be robbing you of that experience to tell you any more. If you like what you've read, have no strings attached and you're ready for an adventure; 'Just get on whatever plane they buy you a ticket for!!'

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I hope you found this useful and would love to see any feedback, questions, other experiences and opinions (complimentary or contrastingly). Feel free to comment below or send me an email at andrewwind83@gmail.com.

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CHEERS!

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