Cave Raving and Guerrillas in our Midst

Well it's already snowed once so far this autumn, and there is more forecast to fall tonight. With the weather turning cold so quickly, there is a sense that time is running out for us to have fun outside, and that we should squeeze more into our time here.

I guess I'll open with that as the excuse for why I'm not getting much blog time in at the moment, since we are too busy taking photos to bother putting any on the site.

So what is left to do in this country? A lot actually. A couple of weekends ago we went up to Samcheok, the city about an hour north of us, where there is a quirky little tourist attraction known as the 'Ocean Bike', which is a pedal powered railroad cart big enough for 2 or 4 people, that quietly tracks back and forth between two stations along the korean coastline. Sound interesting? well, the Koreans think so, since we had to book the thing about 3 weeks in advance just to secure ourselves a cart; and there are a LOT of separate carts for hire.

The course took around an hour to complete, and wound along the beaches and through some extremely long tunnels along the way. The beaches were all nice, but the tunnels were totally insane, filled with laser shows, psychedelic LED displays on the walls, bizarre statues that looked like we were under the sea or on mars, and even the odd dummy dressed as a council worker. Yeah, I don't really understand the context of any of it either, but we need to remember that in Korea if something is fun, it doesn't need to make sense, just like karaoke buses and pizza store openings that involve guys on stilts and girls in short skirts.

After the relaxing ocean bike tour, we went out to another local attraction near Samcheok - the Hwanseongul Cave, which is the biggest cave in Korea... and wow is that obvious. The place was HUGE. Kate and I have been to a bunch of different caves around asia so far, and this one ranks as one of the biggest we have seen (I think the one in Laos was bigger..), but easily the best laid out for walking through as a tourist. There are steel walkways, steps, rope bridges, and bright LED lights showing off the bits and pieces the cave has to offer. The signs are even written in korean AND english. It took us over an hour and a half to walk all the way through the complex of tunnels and bridges, and we enjoyed every bit of it. Highly recommended to anyone living or traveling through that part of Korea.

More recently, and closer to home, we went to a birthday party for our friend, Amy, who lives in Uljin. It was a dress up party, since Halloween was the week before, and it seems that celebrating it is a big deal to Americans and Canadians. Kate went in a very convincing ninja outfit, while I went as my interpretation of a 'Guerrilla Fghter', with small stuffed monkeys hanging from a soldier's uniform that i have pieced together over the last few months (Monkey = Gorilla = Guerrilla.... GEDDIT!).

The party was great, since almost every foreign teacher from the local area turned up, and just about everyone had their own creative Halloween costume on. Since all the foreign english teachers in Korea are signed onto one year contracts, there is a lot of turnover of people around here; which means that big parties like Amy's are a good chance to get to know any newer people better in a relaxed environment... Or in a loud environment if you consider the karaoke room that followed the party.

More tales from Jookie (ie - Juk Byeon to those who aren't from Oz) coming shortly.

Till then!
//Brendan