South Korea

I got to South Korea at the seaport in Incheon, checked my email, got an email from my mate Robin which said something along the lines of "Go to the Korean bathhouses, you can sleep in them..." And so I did, every third night during my three weeds in Korea. A hotel or hostel costs upwards of $20US and a bathhouse includes access to several saunas, pools of various temperatures and a wooden floor (usually heated) that you can sleep on for only around $6. I've been going to bath houses for years, a habit that began in Chicago and carried on to NYC. Going from a very hot sauna to a very cold pool is the key to unlocking life's glory as far as I'm concerned and I was more than a little excited to check out the Korean version. So on my first night I still had the rush of being in a new country and I found myself half-drunk (drank soju with dinner) sitting stark naked in a bath house surrounded by naked Korean men that ranged in age from 8-80. The following 3 weeks i slowly made my way across the country...

Route across Korea

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Seoul

This bike path stretched over 200k along this river

This species is following me around Asia

Seoul consumers use these crosswalks when they are in between consumptions

Busan at night, en route to meeting my cousin Lionel

Gangnam is a neighborhood in Seoul, also it's a famous Korean pop song that plays nonstop everywhere in Korea

Just in case you were wondering what products were up for consumption inside this building, a complete list masks the exterior walls

Hung out with this little guy in my temporary home under a bridge

I must admit that I didn't eat nearly as much Korean food as I'd hoped to but it was simply too expensive. Also most restaurants are designed for groups of people to come and order several things so being by myself, I stuck to supermarkets and simple fare.

The mother of all Korean food is 'Kimchi' - a spicy fermented cabbage, very tasty

Like an omelet with rice and shrimp and I won't speculate as to what the other half is, but it's not bad

Steamed mussels with soju (Korean rice wine)

Boiled octopus with some sort vinegar, tasted like red wine but not sure

One of my typical daily 'picnics'; PB & J, pineapple, pickled radish, OJ

Cold noodles which were OK, but the sauce reminded me too much of ketchup

Excellent bowl of boiling soup; blood pudding, kimchi, rice, bean sprouts

A whole roasted chicken stuffed with rice and served with beer

Dumplings stuffed with kimchi, in front is a yellow pickled radish that is served with everything and is quite good

I love fried dumplings served streetside, no matter where I am

The only Korean words I can say or read are 'Jjimjilbang' which is the name of the 24hr bath houses. On the nights I camped I didn't use my hammock once in Korea, instead I decided to just sleep on the ground with my sleeping bag and a tarp. This proved to be quite nice and is my new standard way to spend a night.

Waking up homeless dude style under a bridge with empty plastic bottles of beer and cheap whiskey

I set up camp in the dark and then in the morning awoke to several old ladies stepping over me and I realized I camped on a path in a public forest park.

Like Thailand, Korea also has these lovely pavilions in parks and on the side of the road. I often slept in them and this night had a nice fire and roasted sausages

Another night in a pavilion next to a very interesting tree

This was some kind of tourist attraction in Busan, I entered after it closed and left before it opened.

This means 'bath house'

I slept in this little hut at a bus stop in downtown Busan. In the morning several people were staring at me as they waited for a bus and I thought to myself "What are you looking at? It ain't my fault they put a hotel room at the bus stop."

China 8: Leaving China

Looking back at these last three months a lot has changed with respect to my view towards China and her people. China is a massive country rich in diversity so this writing is of course based on generalizations that I made during my time there. The first month was definitely difficult and I felt that the people were not at all friendly, or even quite rude. I have since learned that this was not the case and, though I still have a very limited understanding of the vast spectrum of people in China, I have learned a lot about their general state of mind. Compared to every other country I've been to so far, the Chinese seem to be much less 'self concious' in that they simply don't care how they are perceived by those around them. This shamelessness is a quality I eventually came to admire in the people and one I hope to have acquired, at least a little bit. My main tool for which to base my thoughts about the people of any given country is their reaction to me (or lack there of). Often, as in countries like America and Australia, the reaction would be a friendly curiosity. In Indonesia and parts of Malaysia it was shock and awe followed by extreme hospitality and kindness. In Korea people look at me and when I look back their instinct reaction is to quickly look away, as if embarrassed. However, in China the reaction was more or less consistent for the entire 3 months, which was to simply stop and stare at me with expressionless faces for as long as I was in their range of vision. This can be off-putting at first, especially because my natural reaction to people staring at me is to smile and say hello and the Chinese seemed to never return this gesture, just continue to stare. It was about a month before I realized that this was not meant in a rude way and that they simply don't consider (or seem to care) how they appear to me. Once I began to understand this it stopped bothering me completely and I even felt foolish for expecting the Chinese to respond to me in a certain way. I even came to appreciate the beauty of this cultural trait and used it frequently to just sit and watch people without being perceived as rude. In this way, over time, I became very comfortable traveling in China. There were even a couple instances in which I would be squatting on the side of the road attending to the 2nd call of nature and people would walk by and see me and I felt no shame whatsoever, where as if I were in another country I surely would have. Once I broke the 'comfort barrier' I had a great time crossing one of the most beautiful countries in the world. This combined with amazing food, the large amount of marijuana I found and dozens of great books made China a very pleasurable experience indeed.

Route across China

 I left China on a 24 hour boat ride across the Yellow Sea to Korea from the port city of Qin Huang Dao. There are several islands in the region that are currently the object of political dispute between the two countries and, as I passed several islands on the boat, I wondered if they were some of the disputed ones.