Thailand Day 3: Flight of the Gibbon and massage by a prisoner

Day 3 we had to get up early yet again, 6 am this time, to eat breakfast at the hotel and be picked up by The Flight of the Gibbon people. Flight of the Gibbons is a tour group that takes you on a zip line tour of the jungle and then takes you on a hike to this beautiful waterfall. We drove for about an hour to the headquarters of the Flight of the Gibbon, which is located in a tiny village in the mountains.

After arriving, we were ushered into the office where we signed release formed that basically stated that we would listen to our guide and if we didn't we might die. We were definitely prepared to listen and not die. We then all headed out to the platforms to start our zip line tour.

The zip lines were all so amazing and fun. We also met a cute little 9 year old named Lucy and her mom on the tour. Lucy was so cute on some of the lines, but she was actually less scared than her mom most of the time. It was kind of funny.

Flying through the trees, sometimes having to avoid them and trying to watch for gibbons in the trees was so fun. Unfortunately we never saw any Gibbons, but the group after us did. We also had to be dropped straight down three different platforms through the tour to eventually each the ground level. I was really mad at one point though. I bought a brand new digital camera, and the lens cap wasn't attached to the camera with a string. I was afraid I would lose it at some point, but I had been pretty good with it so far. Cody and I went to go on a couples line,w here two people can go together, and my bag got tangled in the line, so not only did I almost pull one of the guides off the platform, my bad gave me a huge bruise on my arm, and my camera cap fell off into the jungle. Oh well, at least I didn't lose my brand-new camera.

After we finished the lines and were back on the ground, they took us to a nearby waterfall that we hiked up and we were able to take quite a few beautiful pictures. The only annoying thing about the whole tour and hike was the humidity. The heat wasn't bad, since we were in the jungle, but the humidity was probably 100%, so we were wet the whole time.

After the hike, they took us back to the main office for lunch. We had some delicious green curry, rice, chicken and veggies, and some fruit.

After lunch, they took us back to the hotel and we changed our clothes and headed out for our Old City walking tour so that we could see some wats and get a massage.

We checked out Wat Chiang Man, Anusawari Sam Kasat, and a couple of other random wats along the way. We also picked up some Pad Thai at a street vendor, which was delicious. We then decided to take Lonely Planet's advice and head to the nearby womens prison to get a massage. They were full when we got there, but they let us wait, and we were lucky, because they were not letting anyone else in. Unfortunately for us, some of their massages took a little long and the prisoners aren't allowed to work after a certain time, so we were only able to get a 1/2 hour massage instead of an hour, but we got a discount. The massages were pretty intense. A lot of the things they were doing felt good, but a few of the things actually kind of hurt.

The prisoners aren't violent offenders and they are scheduled to get out between 30-90 days. The massage center is intended to help them save money for their release as well as have a life skill so that they don't have to get back into illegal activities when they are released. Many of the women actually go to work at another massage center after they are released.

After the massage, we went to see Wat Phan Tao, stop for a drink and Wat Phra Singh.

Afetr we finished our tour, we headed back to the hotel to clean up and then pick up our finished clothes. We were very excited to find that they fit perfectly on the first try. We then started packing up our things, and headed out to the Saturday night market to buy more art and things. We spent as much money as we could spare (and wished we had more, we are obsessed with picking up foreign art) and we picked up dinner from the market. Our hotel picked us up and we headed back to the hotel to finish packing our new art, and we went to bed.

Thailand Day 2 – Cooking and New Clothes

For day 2 we got up pretty early to head down for the hotel breakfast and to meet our pickup for our Organic Thai Cooking School at 8:45.

2Flowers growing next to us at the pool at breakfast

The first order of business was to go to a local market to learn about coconut cream and milk, curry, and Thai spices. We first learned about coconut cream and milk. We found out they are the same thing, they just add more water to the cream to make it milk. They let us watch while they made it in a machine, and they let us taste the coconut. It was pretty interesting. Our teacher then taught us about red, yellow, and green curry paste. We found out that they are all the same level of spicy, but green is made with green chilies, yellow and red is made with red chilies and yellow had turmeric added. You can add these tiny peppers to adjust the spiciness to any of the curries. We then learned about the different oils they use, the sugars, and the sauces.

The coconuts used for making coconut cream and milk at the market

We found out that Thai food is actually pretty vegetarian and vegan friendly and they have options for making it those ways. After that, we wandered the market for a bit, taking pictures of all the new food and fruit and flowers. I wish we had markets like these in the US, but we’re too afraid of germs, and not all of the things in these markets are kept sterile.

After the market, we drove out to the farm and we proceeded to pound out our own curry paste.
Making your own curry was pretty labor intensive, but only in terms of the pounding, but in terms of ingredients, it’s pretty easy actually. I plan on making my own when we go home… It will be much cheaper than buying it. After making the curry paste, we proceeded to make our curries. I did a green curry with chicken, and Cody did a yellow curry with chicken.

My green curry

Cody making his curry paste

Me making my curry paste.

After curry, we moved on to our soups. Cody did the traditional Tom Yam soup with shrimp, and I did the well-known coconut milk with chicken soup. Finally, we made our meat/veggie dishes. I did basil chicken, and Cody did fried chicken with cashew nuts with vegetables. We then broke for lunch to consume everything we had made, and everyone sampled everyone else’s dishes.

There was also red curry with chicken, Thai vegetable soup, sticky rice, and papaya salad. We all sat around eating and getting to know each other. There were four people traveling together from Quebec and a couple from somewhere near Berlin. We talked a lot about Korea, the US, and what we had learned about Canada from all of our Canadian friends, and the people from Quebec kept telling us that everything we knew was wrong. They were a bit pretentious and kind of fit everything our Other Canadian friends had said about people from Quebec.

After lunch, we got back to work. We made our desserts, which were bananas or pumpkin cooked in coconut milk, or sticky rice with mango. I did the sticky rice, and Cody did the bananas in coconut milk. Everyone was stuffed at this point, so they put our dessert in take-out bags for us to eat later. We then made our noodle dishes (which we also took to go) I made Pad Thai, Cody made stir fried big noodles, and there was also the option of spring rolls.

The cooking school then took us back to our hotel and we went straight to the swimming pool to cool off. We ordered happy hour Caipirinhas, and Pina Coladas by the pool. After the pool, we checked out the hotel shops and had the hotel tailor try his hardest to sell us clothes. We weren’t sure, but were tempted, so we headed back up to our room to enjoy our cooking school leftovers. After we finished, we decided we did want to hand-made clothes and so we headed back down to the tailors. Cody ordered a suit and a new dress shirt, and I ordered a Thai skirt and a Chinese-style shirt.

After we finished, we headed out to wander Chiang Mai a little bit, and we found an internet café, and then we found a street food called a Rotee. It’s dough made really thin and fried on one side, It’s then often filled with banana and egg, or just banana. I’ve read that sometimes it’s just the fried dough. We had it with banana and egg in the middle the first time, and the dough was folded around it like a square envelope and the package was cooked on both sides on the griddle.

They then pulled it off the griddle, cut it into 12 pieces and drizzled it liberally with condensed milk. It was delicious.

We took our Rotee back to our hotel and turned in for yet another early morning with Flight of the Gibbons.

Thailand Day 1 - Arrival

Day one of our trip to Thailand was exhausting. We left home at 2am to hop on the 2:30 direct bus to Incheon international Airport. We spent the five hour drive fitfully sleeping and we arrived without incident to the airport at around 7:30 to check in for our 10:20 flight to Bangkok. We spent the flight to Bangkok sleeping fitfully again, only really waking up to eat. We arrived in Bangkok at 1:30, and got through immigration really fast, in fact, almost too fast as our flight to Chiang Mai wasn’t until 7:10 because we didn’t know how long it would take to go through immigration, get our bags, and check in to the new flight. We were also annoyed to find out that our flight was going to be delayed at least 45 minutes. We made the best of it and headed to the food area of the airport to have our first yummy Thai food. Cody had his first banana smoothie of the trip and a chicken veggie and noodle dish. I had my first Mango smoothie of the trip (it was so nice to have these things in a country where they are native and fresh) and a bowl of duck curry. It was all so yummy.

My first mango smoothie of the trip

My duck curry....YUM!

Cody's first banana smoothie of the trip

Cody's noodles

I am tired, but happy with the yummy food

While we ate we rolled our eyes and laughed at the teenagers who snuck away from their school group to take advantage of Thailand’s leniency toward drinking. It’s 18, but they almost never check for ID apparently, unless you look underage or your causing problems. I fuess bars get shut down for a month though if they are caught serving minors, so many of the better bars check, but this was a little airport restaurant, and they didn’t think to check or wonder why people would want to order liquors used for mixed drinks as shots (they kept ordering Malibu rum…which I think should have tipped these people off). They also kept complaining loudly about the taste of the rum, which no person old enough to order drinks would do loudly and continuously. Ah, if only their parents knew what they got up to on their summer trip. These kids were pretty good at dodging their chaperones. Hopefully their parents had a little bit of an idea of what can happen on a school trip like this.

Anyway, so we wait for what feels like forever for our plane, and we finally arrive in Chiang Mai at 9:20 and out hotel pick-up was waiting for us (we had called to say we would be late). It was really nice to have someone else carry our bags and they gave us cold water to drink. When we arrived at the hotel, they brought us welcome drinks. It was some sort of juice with little chunks of fruit floating in it.

They took us to our room, and we were surprised to find that they had decorated our bed with hearts made of rose petals and there was a small cake saying happy honeymoon. We were very surprised at this, because we had ordered this for the Amari hotel in Bangkok for our last day in Thailand, but we hadn’t ordered it for this Amari hotel. They gave it to us as a bonus because we had told them that this was our honeymoon.

We were tired at this point, but also hungry, so we headed to hotel lounge to listen to the piano player sing and play and have some delicious cheeseburgers, a banana cocktail for Cody and a Mojito for me (I’ve missed these in Korea).

After we ate, we went to bed, where we fell asleep very quickly after our long day.

Perogies, inducement party, last waydaldo trip, and attack dogs

On July 31st Cody and I headed over to Abby and Jason's to learn how to make Perogies and to have the inducement party to try and coax baby Anneke to come on her way already. Jason Showed me how to make potato and cheese Perogies, and they were really good. I already have plans to make them and try different variations when we get home and I have a kitchen to work in. I have some ideas for some dessert ones in mind and I’ll buy a set of three different size dumpling presses when I get home.

After we made dumplings everyone came over for the inducement party. We all showed Abby the funniest things we could think of to try and make her laugh her way into labor. We watched How I Met Your Mother, the Chappel Show, South Park, and various YouTube clips. We thought it worked, because it started her contracting, but alas… no luck.

The next day we all headed off to Waydaldo for what was probably our last trip there. We were lucky because the weather decided to cooperate and be nice for once. We headed out to The island and spent a nice day in the ocean and then at the free water park on the island.

Everything was really nice, but very busy, until we went to take one of the last ferries home. Apparently, some of the Naval or Coast Guard families had taken a day trip to the island and they shut down the dock for an hour or so while the families loaded all of their stuff onto the boats. It was really annoying because there was a steadily growing line of people waiting to get off the island, and the ferries can’t run after dark because they don’t have the technology.



Luckily, we were allowed to board a ferry after about an hour and we arrived back at Mokpo without any further incident.

After arriving, we said goodbye to Jason, Abby, and Chris Snell and headed off with Joe and Shanna to go grab something to eat and go see Chris Strugnell and his bulldog, Chubbs, at the waterfront where Mokpo was having it’s Mokpo Maritime Cultural Festival and Chubbs had been made the unofficial mascot of a local dog club for owners of big dogs. We were just hanging around and playing with the dogs when Chris told us they had asked him to be in a demonstration for police dogs in training. The club trains all sorts of dogs, and police dogs are one of them. Not long after, one of the people came and asked Cody, Shanna, and I if we wanted to be in the demonstration. After some trepidation, we said yes.

It turned out to be scary but pretty cool. After the dogs attacked us and but the attack gloves, we could try to fling them around all we wanted, and they wouldn’t let go until the trainers gave them their command to let go. It was definitely an experience I won’t forget.

Wonderful Jeju!

We finally made it to Jeju! We had wanted to go and we were starting worry that we wouldn’t make it, but we finally went.

On Tuesday the 28th we headed out to the ferry terminal loaded down with munchies and clothes at around 8:00. We needed to be there by 8:15 to get the tickets we had reserved and be ready to board the boat, which was scheduled to pull out at 9:00. They started boarding the boat at 8:30 and we were on quickly and in our cabin shared by probably 20 other people.

Fallon decided to lie down and take a nap because she hadn’t slept much the night before, and Chris, Cody, and I decided to explore the ferry a bit as it was huge. We found picnic tables and benches on the outside deck, as well as some statues that were an ad for Mini Mini World (we visited this later). We found some noraebang rooms in the ferry, a sauna for men and one for women, three video game rooms, a bar/café, a gift shop, a restaurant, and a GS25 (a kind of mini mart here in Korea).

Cody and Chris settled down in one of the game rooms to play some GoStop (also called Hwatu) on one of the video machines, instead of playing for free with the set Cody had brought, and I realized how tired I was still and settled down in the cabin next to Fallon with my iPod shuffle going to drown out the people. Chris soon came to join, as he was really tired as well, and we all proceeded to nap. Except for Cody, he decided to take some pictures outside because he had never been on a boat in the open ocean before. We were happy to find that he does not get seasick. Yay!

I got up after about an hour to join Cody and we decided to play some card games and get lunch and generally hang out. The boat trip ended uneventfully at 1:30 when we arrived at Jeju. We left and caught a cab, deciding the bus terminal was the best place to go. We got there and immediately had the feeling that we should have stayed at the waterfront area, because that seemed to be the most bustling place. We grabbed a map of Jeju Island and of Jeju-si (Jeju city) and hopped back into a cab to Dongmun market, near where we had just come from. We looked around for a hotel and almost immediately hit the jackpot. We found a really nice hotel for only 40,000 a night called Hotel Dae Dong. We were really happy because it was so nice and so cheap… we usually only get the cheap part with love motels… not the nice part.

After getting the hotel and dropping our stuff off we headed out to get a snack/lunch at Lotteria (a Japanese fast food chain) and then we checked out the underground market there. Fallon spotted a store that sold handmade jewelry made by the owner who was there when we were. Fallon bought some dangling earrings for her and her mom, and I found my first pair of long dangling earrings. They have a black cord loop with a small Lapis Lazuli leaf at the end. I’m trying to expand the jewelry types I like to wear and it’s hard sometimes because Cody has a strong opinion of what he likes on me, and most of the things he likes are the types of things he’s used to me wearing. The things that he likes on Fallon he hates on me. He usually says no to dangle earrings because ‘they are too long’ and then he’ll like longer ones that Fallon picks out for herself. I was happy to finally find a pair he likes. This way we can both get into different jewelry types for me. I am hoping to find a bunch of pretty things for cheap in Thailand. Anyway, so I got the earrings for only 5,000, and I also got a cure hair clip.

After the underground market, we headed into Dongmun market, a huge traditional market. We saw the usual live and dead fish, and some species were more prevalent than they were in Mokpo. We saw the usual steamed pig heads, hooves, innards, and random pieces. We saw stalls overflowing with pots, veggies, and clothing. I decided to buy some Jeju Chocolates. There were a bunch of different kinds that they had, but the most popular are Orange and Cactus chocolates.
After the market the rain that had been slowly, but steadily coming down started coming down harder, but we decided to head to Jeju Love Land anyway, since we had heard that some of it is indoors. We took a cab out there, armed with umbrellas and Fallon in just her rain jacket.

I have to say Love Land was pretty hilarious. All of the statures were inappropriate, so I can’t post pictures so the underage don’t accidentally come by them, but I wish I could post just a few.

For a country so sexually oppressed, it is so funny that they go against all cultural norms by displaying blatant sex figures in this park. Granted, kids aren’t allowed in, there is a video game area for them to hang out in outside the park so that they aren’t exposed, but it’s just surprising in this society.

I didn’t see any old Adjumas or Adjoshis in the park, until some came when we were leaving. I was kind of disappointed with that because I was kind of interested to see how they reacted to the displays of sex toys and the statues having sex. Oh well. It was funny to visit the gift shops because most of them actually only sold normal innocuous gifts, and Chris found some pretty handmade necklaces for his mom and sister, and I found a really pretty necklace for myself there. Cody got a really cool looking magnet as well. They even gave us dirt with each purchase from Mount Hallasan for good luck, which was hilarious.

When we left the park, we were all pretty soaked; as it poured the whole time we were in the park. We had to wait around for about a half hour in the kid’s area because we had to wait for the staff to call us a cab and for it to arrive.

We made it back to the hotel safe and sound and went to a nearby Galbi restaurant to get warmed up on grilled meat and then we all headed to bed early because we had booked a cab to come at 9am and drive us to sites around the island for the next day.

We all woke up bright and early the next day and Cody and I found a really yummy toast place (they made freshly cooked bacon and a normal egg for our toast instead of the usual scrambled egg cooked in a form with carrot and corn) and I grabbed some Dunkin Doughnuts and bagels for our breakfast and a snack. We were really happy to see that the day was looking like it was going to be pretty skies and no rain. We munched on our toast in the cab on our way to our first destination a half hour drive away… Mini Mini land!

Mini Mini Land is funny. It’s a park filled with miniatures of buildings and monuments, and statues of cartoon characters and funny displays. We saw everything from a Gulliver’s Travels display to The Smurfs, Niagara Falls, Mount Rushmore, and the Trevi Fountain. It was fun to get pictures of all the minis and take funny pictures with some of the displays. We finished in an hour, which was funny because the cab driver thought we should take two. He thought he was going to get a lazy day with us… think again! Anyway, so we grabbed some ice cream and headed off to Sangumburi crater.

There are other craters on Jeju, but we decided on this one because you only spend less than an hour total getting to and walking around part of the crater. The other main crater to see in on Mount Halla and it’s an eight hour hike total to visit that crater.

We walked up a path and came to an old graveyard that looked like a crater and we were a bit disappointed. We were told this was supposed to be a unique subtropical crater with a unique ecosystem, and all we can see is green grass and a few old graves behind stone walls. We kept walking anyway, even though we were confused as to what all the fuss was about, and that is when Cody came upon the real crater. It was pretty cool, and was probably more so because of the disappointment of the previous ‘crater.’ It would have been nice to see some of the creatures and plant life in the crater, but it was a preserve, so we were not allowed to enter, but we were told there are a lot of unique species to the area in the crater because of the sun creating the subtropical environment within the crater. We walked around and took pictures of the crater and with the crater, and then we checked out the gift shop. I happily procured some of the goofy looking Jeju statues, and Cody got a more serious lava-rock Jeju statue, and then we headed back to the taxi after less than an hour when he was hoping, again, that we would take two hours at the crater.

From here we headed off to Sunrise Peak. The cab driver was a little upset that we didn’t want to go get lunch at 11:30 and that we wanted to wait until after Sunrise Peak. We made him wait though, we weren’t hungry. We got to Sunrise Peak and I was a bit daunted. There were stairs all the way up the side of the almost perfectly vertical cliffs, but that didn’t make the hike any easier. I made it though, and it only took me about a half hour to hike it. I do have to say it was a bit easier than the Greta Wall of China, but mostly because the stairs were more even than on the Great Wall. It really sucked because the higher you went, the more humid it became, and I was convinced that we were in another subtropical region, if not tropical. Either way, I made it to the top and didn’t die, even thought I felt like I was going to. It was so worth it though. The view at the top was amazing and I was happy I made it. After pictures and rest, we headed back down and started walking along the walkway leading around the coast, and that is when we all saw one of the most beautiful sites we had ever seen. The left side of Sunrise peak tapered off into the
ocean and an old rock slide where part of the side of the peak tumbled down wad overgrown with lush greenery. At the base the waves crashed over all the rocks and to complete the picture was a black lava rock beach. It was so pretty and awesome. I don’t even think I do the picture justice with words.

When we got down to the beach, we saw the restaurant that the diving women run. They are some adjumas who can dive up to like 20 feet without air to fish for giant snails and sea cucumbers and such. We also walked in the black lava sand… which actually ranges from coarse sand sized to pebbles. There was also a bunch of glass in the sand, but almost every single piece was like sea glass, but the glass had been ground down quickly by the black lava sand. I even found a piece that was part of a ceramic cup that had been ground down almost smooth. We wanted to take pictures on some of the fallen rocks, but there were these nasty little bugs swarming over all the dry rocks, and we refused to get on the rocks with the bugs, even though they ran away when you approached. Fallon tried getting a picture on one of the rocks in the water, but the surf wouldn’t let her do it without getting soaked, so she gave up on that.

After the beach, we headed to the gift shop and I procured some aloe and berry Jeju chocolate and we all bought a potato tornado. This is a potato cut in a spiral and put on a stick and deep fried then covered in salt and mustard, they are delicious, and we even bought one for our cab driver to try and make him happier. After eating our snack, we decided we needed some real lunch and had our driver take us to a Kimbap restaurant, much to his amusement. He thought we should go to a tourist’s restaurant, but that was before I think he figured out that we live in Korea.

After lunch, we headed to the Manjanggul lava tub, which is the longest known lava tube in the world. We couldn’t take a lot of good pictures because of the really low light, but Cody got a few with his night vision on his camera (yay for night vision!). It was pretty cool, but it was a little chilly and very wet and drippy from the previous day’s rains. The lava flow at the end when it solidified while pouring out of a hole in the ceiling was definitely the coolest part of the lave tube.

After leaving the lava tube we headed to our last stop, a hedge maze. This was pretty cool as well, and a lot harder than you think it will be. For once, the boys actually had better luck figuring out the directions, while Fallon was pulling out the map because we weren’t sure we were going the right way. In our defense though, we didn’t have a lot of time left with the cab, and we only had a half hour to get through the maze and by this time we only had 15 minutes left. We found our way out pretty quickly after that though and we were all happy to hop in the can and go back to the hotel for baths and a nap before dinner and drinks in the evening. I for one took a nap; otherwise I wouldn’t have made it very late that night.

After our rests and refreshments, we all headed out to pick up some aloe gel because we had all managed to get sunburned, as we had all forgotten to apply out sunscreen. Oops. We then went to have a very ’healthy’ dinner at Tom N Toms of pretzels stuffed with cheese and pepperoni. The waterfront was pretty cool. Even at 11:30 at night, everyone was out playing basketball, voccer (a weird volleyball/soccer mix), playing with their dogs, and riding bikes. There were even a ton of little kids out just hanging around. Cody was sweet and even bought me some cotton candy. Unfortunately, the candy was slowly melting while I was eating it, it was so humid out. It was kind of weird!

After the waterfront, we headed to a nearby store to buy some wine for Fallon and me. We opened a bottle and headed toward the hotel. This is when things got weird. As we were heading back to the GS25 to get some beer for the boys, a really drunk adjuma walked up to me (I was holding the wine bottle at the time) and started obviously begging me for a drink. I couldn’t understand what she was saying beyond juseyo (please, or give me please, usually used for things like water please or mul juseyo), but I could tell what she wanted. When none of us responded and kept walking, she actually grabbed my hand and started kissing it and pressing it to her chest, and she wouldn’t let me go! She really wanted our wine, but we wouldn’t let her have it. I decided to hand the wine to Fallon, and she immediately unlatched from me, and we all started walking faster before she could latch on to Fallon. We quickly outpaced her short legs and staggering steps and made it to the GS25, Fallon and I saw her still coming, so we decided to take refuge in the store, but she followed us in! Luckily, she behaved in front of the cashier, and just proceeded to try and compliment us and try to cajole us to give her the wine. We ignored her though and left the store to quickly lose her and make our way to the hotel, when we played some card games and reviewed our pictures from the day.

We rounded out our night by asking the desk attendant to order us McDonalds; because we found out the neighborhood McDonalds did delivery 24 hours! We were so excited to have fast food delivered, but as soon as we all ate, we all realized how tired we were, so we headed off to bed.

The next day we all slept late and then checked out of the hotel. We then headed down to the waterfront to hang out and play more cards until it was time to leave on the ferry.
All around, even with crazy drunken Adjumas attacking me, and pouring rain, Jeju was a wonderful trip. I wish I could have spend a day or two more there in order to see the whole island, but I had a good time and I’ll always have great memories of it.

July 26th Waydaldo Trip

Me and my hubby doing the obligatory self-cam at the beach. Aren't we cute?

Joe and Shanna: hubby and wifey to be next year. Awww... how cute!

Since we are running out of time to be able to visit hot beaches with nice water to swim in without traveling to another state or across the country, Cody and I decided to go to Waydaldo with Joe and Shanna. We were worried about the weather, because often the weather in Mokpo will be iffy, and then it will either be the same on the islands, or it will be beautiful. Luckily for us, it turned out to be beautiful. We woke up early to get ready and I headed to E-mart to pick up our staple PB&J cheap lunch for when we go to beaches. Unfortunately, I went at about 9:15, and I forgot that E-mart doesn’t open until 10. Strange, I know. I’m used to things opening up at 8 or 9, not 10. Even being here a year, I am still not used to the opening and closing times of things here.

Anyway, so I go all the way to E-mart only to have it still be closed. I made the trip worth something by running into the Paris baguette to pick up some break for the sandwiches and some breakfast pastries. I took a cab back to our apartment and ran to the neighborhood grocery store (every neighborhood has a tiny grocery store that sells their main essentials for people who don’t want to go all the way to one of the big box stores), which open early luckily. Strangely, but not surprisingly really, the store had jam but no peanut butter. I bought the jam and ran to the Mini Stop next door to find one small jar of peanut butter for the same price as a large one from E-mart. Of Course. Oh well, I bought it anyway as it was now 9:45 and we needed to be leaving for the ferry terminal and I wasn’t ready to go. Luckily, I got everything done and we got to the ferry terminal to meet Joe and Shanna and get our tickets just in time. We were supposed to head out with Nick, Stephen and his girlfriend Su Nah. Nick made our ferry, but Stephen and Su nah missed the 10:30 ferry and so would have to catch up with us later.

When we got to Waydaldo, we headed to our usual beach and staked out a spot underneath the shaded tent area. After eating lunch and hanging out for a bit Stephen and Su Nah came to say hi, only to leave in favor of the water park on the island. We said we might join them, but at the time we weren’t quite sure about the quality of the park, so we decided to swim in the ocean for a bit. We played around and floated in some rented inner tubes for awhile, but we didn’t stay in too long because the water was a little cold, so we got out and prepared to head over to join Stephen in the water park.

We were really surprised by the park. There was a kid’s pool, a mixed pool, and an adult pool with water slides that are on every other hour for an hour. It was nice as well because the lifeguard was making sure all the little kids were staying out of the adult pool. We really liked it because the pools are just salt water with only a little bit of chlorine, so kids peeing in the pool seemed less appealing than in a usual normally chlorinated pool. The guys were really excited because the little store at the pool was selling Hite beer in chilled glasses. They were really excited to drink ice cold beer by the pool. I decided to be a nice wife and bought Cody a cold Hite (taking a sip or two myself though, hehe), and I got myself a Ramen cup to enjoy in the shade by the pools. We went down the slides a few times and Cody managed to scrape his elbow. I swear, one of us always manages to hurt ourselves on most outings. We are a klutzy pair, aren’t we? Haha. Anyway...we left on the 4:20 ferry in order to get back to Mokpo relatively early and have time to enjoy our night.

My hubby waiting in line for the big slide

Me pulling myself the last few feet. My tankini kept bunching up and slowing m down too much at the bottom. Boo.

It was all in all a good day and the pools weren’t that bad. As per usual Korean bad construction they did the pools wrong though. They painted the pools with regular blue pool paint, not thinking about the fact that they would fill them with salt water. We came out with the bottoms of our feet looking like Smurfs because the blue paint was being corroded by the salt and so just rubbed off on our feet. It was quite funny.

The Seoul Trip

The trip to Seoul to get married was a lot easier than I thought it was going to be. We woke up early on Sunday morning at the Hyundai Hotel to go have the wonderful breakfast buffet. It was delicious, and pretty western. Only a few of the things were the usual Korean way of having the right items, but prepared the wrong way. Otherwise, everything was delicious. After breakfast, Cody and I went for a swim in the hotel pool, which was really nice, and then we visited the hotel gift shop, which had various Korean crafts and pottery and such. We were very happy to find a tea set that we liked, that had actually been made in Korea. Up until then, every tea set that we found that we liked had been made in China, and we wanted a Korean set, so we were very happy to finally find a Korean set that we liked.

At 11 we left the hotel to go get ready to go to Seoul. We gathered our things and left on the 1:10 train, because we wanted to get everything done quickly so that we wouldn’t have to spend too much money there. We got into Seoul around 5:00 but didn’t make it into Itaewon until about 6 because we got on the wrong subway train on accident. We were still lucky that both What the Book and the Foreigner’s Market were still open until 8 or so on a Sunday night, because we were able to get our errands there out of the way, which was nice. After we dropped our stuff off at our hotel and finished purchasing what we needed, we headed to a Mexican restaurant owned by a foreigner and had some delicious chicken nachos and a chorizo burrito. It was so nice eating Mexican food, and I look forward to having a variety of foods when we return home in a month.
After eating, we returned to our hotel room with some snacks to plan out the next day and we went to bed fairly early because we wanted to get an early start.

The next morning we got up at 7:30 so that we could shower and be at the US Embassy by 9:00 when they open. We got there really quickly, not realizing how close it was by Subway and just sat around relaxing and watching all the US and Korean ROK soldiers patrolling around the embassy. We also walked around the block a little bit, and realized that the embassy is right next to Insadong, the Korean traditional craft street (a very touristy area, but you can get a lot of cool stuff there), as well as right next to the big palace we had visited in the winter. We decided that after we finished getting the marriage paperwork filed, we would go visit the National museum that is on the palace grounds and we hadn’t been able to visit before.

Finally, the embassy opened at 9, and we were allowed to enter. First, we had to enter a smaller building where everything had to be scanned by security and we had to go through metal detectors. We had to leave behind all of our electronics (in case any of them were explosives or something that might compromise the security of the embassy I think, which is smart considering North Korea is less that a half hour drive or so from the embassy), so unfortunately we couldn’t take pictures of the process.

Anyway, we finally made it in to the embassy and had to get let through two heavy bullet-proof doors into an office that looked a lot like a DMV, but maybe less crowded. We already had all of our paperwork filled out, so we took a number and were helped pretty quickly. Unfortunately we forgot to fill in our country next to our passport numbers, so he had to step aside and fill that out on five sets of paperwork (we had to have two affidavit forms filled out and three marriage certificates filled out and ready, which caused a lot of hand cramping, lol), but luckily they didn’t make us take another number.

The rest was pretty easy. They took our paperwork and had us pay 110,000 (about $90) and then we waited for our interview. If one of us hadn’t been American, then the interview would have been more in depth so that they could make sure we didn’t just want to get married to get a visa, but since we are both Americans, they just asked us if we were currently married to anyone else. We then had to leave the embassy and take our paperwork two blocks away to the Korean Ward Office to legally get married in Korea.

We were a bit upset because we were there on a Monday, because we found out that if we had been there on a Tuesday or Thursday, then we would have been able to get free Korean wedding pictures in Hanbok done. Oh well. We paid another 10,000 (about $8) for the processing fee and then we were official married in Korea. We then had to take our stamped paperwork back to the Embassy, go through security again (they kept our electronics since they knew we were coming back, so it was easier) and file the finished paperwork with the Embassy so then we were officially married in America. It was all pretty easy and only took about an hour to do.
After we finished getting married legally (yay), we headed to a nearby coffee show to get something to eat and relax for a bit and then we headed over to the palace to check out the free national museum. It was pretty interesting, and I usually get bored at museums really fast. The displays were pretty good and interesting for the most part, and they actually allowed pictures as long as you kept the flask off. It was a big difference from the Mokpo Natural History museum, which was pretty bad. It’s something you really can’t even explain how bad it is, the stuffed animals on display were laughable, and they actually had store-bought souvenirs on display. The National Museum in Seoul was the total opposite.

We finished with the museum around 12:30 and headed through the Insadong Art Street toward the subway to get to the train station. On the way there, we ran into Barry and Lisa, who had been celebrating their wedding anniversary in Seoul and chatted awhile. We then headed to the train station, unfortunately missing the 1:00 train, but that was ok because we were able to hang out at the train station and we found out that there are a bunch of restaurants in the station that we didn’t know existed, and we had some really good bokumbap at one of the restaurants we found.

We finally headed out on the train to come back to Mokpo and we spent the next couple of days just hanging around the apartment resting and catching up on things we had been putting off.