South Korea!

Blogging as the sun sets in Incheon International Airport near Seoul, Korea. I'm riding out the last hour of a twelve hour layover here. I'm completely exhausted and days are running together in my mind, but I'm actually pretty happy with my extra long layover as it meant that I got a brief look at South Korea. My airlines, Asiana, offers a tour of Seoul free of charge.



I don't think we went anywhere that I would have wanted to go to if I had done it alone and our tour guide, though nice, acted like she would really rather be any where else. We (the twenty people in the tour) were absurdly underdressed for the 30º F weather as well, but hey! I got out of the airport!

Here is what we did:

1) Drove past (very quickly) the "Blue House" where the President lives.



We also saw the "Grey House" where visiting dignitaries stay.


In the same area, we visited the Cheongwadee Sarangchae Museum which is devoted to teaching tourists about contemporary Korean history. I wizzed through the whole museum in twenty minutes but I did leave with some pictures of me as the president of Korea and sitting at a mock G-20 table.





2) Visited a temple I do not know the name of. Our guide said it is unique because it is the only temple inside of downtown Seoul.



I loved the smiling baby Buddha and the really colorful interior of the temple.



It was interesting for me to observe the differences of Thai style and Korean style temples. Also, they pray differently. Koreans stand up and kneel down repeatedly while the Thais kneel and bow.



The monks also dress in a manner appropriate for Korean weather. In Thailand they wear orange robes.

3) Had lunch at a restaurant called "Traditional Korean Food." I tried several types of Kimchi!



The main course was Korean barbecue-- beef and vegetables with broth grilled on communal barbecues. I think the Korean name for it is Bulgogi.




4) Wandered around a "prime shopping district" called Itaewon. This is no shopping district I would ever shop in, as it was either wholesale shops, souvenir shops, or tailors. There were a few shoe stores and sporting goods places as well. We were forbidden to leave one side of this main road as our guide worried that she would lose us. Naturally, I wandered away from the main road and found a couple steep streets that seemed to have some cute restaurants on them.



Although I feel like I hardly got to see it, I really enjoyed visiting Seoul. It is so different from Hanoi and Bangkok, the two other cities I've been to over here. Everything is modern and shiny clean. There are many examples of interesting traditional and modern Korean architecture that caught my eye. Surprisingly, it reminded me of Seattle more than anything else. It's rather hilly and surrounded by beautiful mountains and water. The modern architecture in Seattle also is quite similar. Lastly, the streets reminded me of home. They drive on the right side of the road, the streets have lots of interesting angles, AND they actually follow traffic laws. I mean, they drive in their lanes. No motorcycles weaving or incessant honking.



I'm racing against my computer battery at this point. Next stop, home for the holidays! I don't plan on posting again until I return to Thailand in the new year. Happy Holidays!

Andaman Adventures

Way early on in the year I took stock of the limited amount of three day weekends I have. In Thailand we actually get a pretty decent number of extra days off, but they often will not reserve the day next to a weekend. Back in October I bought myself tickets to Phuket. After Bangkok, the other two major vacation destinations in Thailand are Chiang Mai and Phuket. Chiang Mai is a city in the northern mountains, while Phuket is an island with beautiful beaches in the south. Phuket seemed like the perfect place to spend the first weekend in December, I would be able to get one last blast of beach and sun before returning to the states for the holidays.



We ultimately decided to spend the majority of our weekend on Koh Phi Phi, a little island a two hour boat ride from Phuket Town. Like Phuket, in the past few decades Koh Phi Phi has steadily been growing in popularity. Koh Phi Phi was rapidly being built up with little regard to preserving the natural beauty of the island with a hodge podge of resorts, dive shops, and restaurants. Then, in December 2004 Koh Phi Phi was wiped out by the tsunami. 40% of the people on the island died and the entire infrastructure was destroyed. I've read that since the tsunami a little more care has been taken while rebuilding island. The main town on the island is bustling today, crammed with all those restaurants, dive shops, and hostels that were there before.



While we ventured into the main town several times to shop and eat, we actually ended up staying on a quiet beach called Long Beach. Our resort was made up of a bunch of bungalows of varying degrees of luxury. We chose the least classy option but were still really happy. The weather was actually rather cloudy and even rained (poured) while we were there, but we still spent a decent amount of time lying on the beach or in hammocks and swimming in the clear blue water.



On our second morning we rented a longtail boat for about $12 a piece to take a trip to the nearby island (uninhabited) of Koh Phi Phi Le.



Koh Phi Phi Le has been a popular day trip location since "The Beach" with Leonardo Di Caprio was shot there. We circled the island slowly, going into inlets and passing by caves. I've posted a clip from the boat in the entry below this one. We were able to jump out of the boat twice to go snorkeling. I haven't been snorkeling in about 15 years so I found this to be very exciting. So many colorful fish swimming were around in the coral! Maybe next time I'll do the shark watch snorkeling trip...



We also stopped by "The Beach" where the movie was filmed. It was incredibly crowded with people, speed boats, long tails, dive boats, and cruisers with upwards of 300 people aboard. Yuck.



We had intended on heading back early on our third morning to Phuket, but decided that Koh Phi Phi was not to be rushed. We took the afternoon boat back and hit Kata beach around 6 pm when the sky was darkening with rain. So all I got of Phuket was some terrible Mexican food and this beach shot:

Riding to Koh Phi Phi Le

Riding to Koh Phi Phi Le, originally uploaded by AnnaRae.

Relaxing on the Beach

Relaxing on the Beach, originally uploaded by AnnaRae.

Koh Phi Phi

Sunset Swing, originally uploaded by AnnaRae.

I got back early this morning from a fantastic long weekend on the idyllic Island of Koh Phi Phi on the Andaman Sea. I'll write about it in the coming days. Until then, feel free to click here to look at pictures.

In Which I Eat the Traditional Thanksgiving Chicken

Thanksgiving is one of my favorite holidays, which is why I have made it a priority to celebrate even while living abroad. This was actually my third Thanksgiving not spent in the US-- and my very first without a turkey at all. You see, turkeys actually are available in Thailand. Yet even the smallest Butterball is over $30 US. And yes, I know that turkeys are just that expensive in the states, but when the rest of your meal can be purchased for less than the price of a turkey, it just seems outrageous to spend so much.

Of course, Thanksgiving is not a holiday here, which meant that I had to work. My kids (with a lot of help on my part) made some adorable turkey headbands and I tried to explain to them that we eat these birds in the US on this day. I'm not sure that point got across, but they really looked darling. After work, my American coworkers and I went out for dinner at a creole restaurant that we had a 50% off coupon for. There are many big, expensive, all-American buffets on Thanksgiving in Bangkok, including one at the restaurant I was at, but we bypassed it for this cheap deal. I ended up eating a delicious dinner of roasted creole chicken, mashed potatoes, and veggies. It was just enough like Thanksgiving dinner to make me happy.



On Sunday, we (the American teachers and a friend) had our feast. My roommates made stuffing, mashed potatoes, gravy, and an apple crumble. I made a Kentucky Pecan Pie (with homemade crust), my famous cauliflower with sage salt, roasted carrots, a watermelon-feta cheese salad, and a roasted chicken. The whole spread was really delicious and we had a great time celebrating together. I was just really pleased to have an excuse to cook! The only thing that could have made the day better was football. And a turkey.

Loy Kratong

Two weeks ago we celebrated Loy Kratong, a Thai festival where people make wishes and set free little boats, called Kratongs, into the waterways. We first celebrated the holiday at school with our kids. They came to school that day dressed in traditional Thai outfits-- absolutely adorable. In class, we "made" kratongs with them. This pretty much involved them stuffing a handful of flowers onto the top of kratongs that the Thai teachers had constructed beforehand. All the kids took their kratongs and floated them in the kiddie pool out in the yard.

This is probably the first big Thai festival that I've been really eager to celebrate, so I made a point of finding a way to experience it as "authentically" as I possibly could. I'm fortunate enough to have made some wonderful Thai friends through playing frisbee, one of whom hosted a Loy Kratong party.

My friend has an apartment near to the central docks on the Chao Phraya river. We had to push through massive crowds in her neighborhood in order to find our way to her place. Once at her building we joined the other party-goers on the rooftop. Although you can't quite see the river from her roof, the view was pretty spectacular. Fireworks going off randomly, giant lanterns floating through the sky, people milling about on the streets.



My Thai friends taught me how to properly make a kratong. Walking through the streets of Bangkok that night I observed many kratong vendors and learned that there is really no one way of making them- I even saw some made of bread. It is really just critical that they float. After all, the "Loy" in Loy Kratong means float. We used discs of banana palm as our base. Onto that, we nailed folded banana leaves. You then stick a candle and three sticks of incense on top. Last you cover the kratong with the flowers of your choice. Marigolds seem to be the most popular, I put a handful on mine and also added some orchids. My kratong may not have been the most complex or beautifully executed one floated that night, but I was pretty satisfied.





After watching a firework show from the rooftop we hit the streets. We weaved through massive crowds and street vendor stalls to get down to the river. I had expected to see the river filled with bobbing candle-lit kratongs... no such luck. I hadn't counted on the Chao Phraya being so swift. Once a kratong dropped in, it was whisked away quickly. We were told we could pay a few baht to take a boat out to the middle of the river to dump our kratongs if we wanted. We opted to stay on land and dropped them awkwardly off the side of the pier. This wasn't easy, our kratongs were rather small and dropping it from a few feet up meant that there was a high probability that they wouldn't land on their bottoms in the water. A few of my friend's kratongs hit the water candle-first. Mine went in a little lopsided but managed to float downstream for quite a while before the candle went out. I hope there is no correlation between the chance of my wish coming true and the length of time it took for the candle to go out.