Jisan Valley Rock Festival

On Friday, we went to the first night of the Jisan Valley Rock Festival to see Belle & Sebastian, Vampire Weekend and Massive Attack! A quick glance at my lastfm account will show how much I love Belle & Sebastian and Vampire Weekend, so I was really, really looking forward to the show. The festival was actually a 3-day event and we had originally planned to stay all three nights but we were only really interested in Friday's bands and we didn't know anybody else who was going, so we decided Friday's show would be enough for us.

There was a bit of confusion about how to get to the concert because the festival's website had said "shuttle bus information will be updated soon" right up until the day of the show. Actually, I just checked and it was never updated. So, we took the subway to Ori Station, where the buses were meant to leave from and found a line of foreigners waiting for a bus. We correctly guessed that that was where we should wait.

When we got to the festival site we bought our tickets and then entered the concert grounds without anyone ever checking to see if we had a ticket! Note to 2011 Festival go-ers, tickets are optional.

We thought we had lots of time to get there for Belle & Sebastian's 5:30 set but we only got there with 15 minutes to spare before they went on. The band, which is obviously styled by the fine folks at Reitmans, has a huge catalog of great songs to choose from, but they didn`t play any of them aside from "Step Into My Office Baby". It was a pretty good show because they`re a great band, but the set list left a little to be desired. No "Dog On Wheels"? Really??

After Belle & Sebastian finished their set we got a cold kimchi noodle soup for supper; which is obviously a popular festival snack all over the world. There were lots of burger, taco and sandwich stands but it was hot out and the cold naengmyeon really hit the spot.

The festival took place at a ski resort so there was lots of room for camping and a lot of built-in amenities to enjoy. There was even a huge pool to relax in, which would be especially great if you were staying all weekend.

These guys in Ghostbusters costumes walked through the crowds at the concert selling draft beer and Jager from their backpacks. Isn`t that an awesome idea?

By the time we finished our noodles it was time to go watch Vampire Weekend, and they didn`t disappoint. Since they had a full hour to play and most of their songs are about 2 minutes long they were able to perform almost their entire catalog of music- it was great! They were full of energy and the crowd loved it. It was one of my favorite concerts ever.

Ezra!

Click to watch a great rendition of "A-Punk".

We had a bit of time before Massive Attack was starting so we explored the festival grounds a bit more. There were a bunch of tents set up to sell food, merchandise and (luckily for Mel) pointy straw hats.

There were some promotional stages as well. These models (with very strangely shaped faces) posed with these cars for hours on end. "Do you come with the car?" "Oh you, hee hee hee."

Our official opinion on Massive Attack. I love electronic music, but they were so one-note and sleepy that we found ourselves wandering off (we noticed a lot of others doing the same) to buy kebabs and sleep in the grass.

Then we waited in a near-empty parking lot for our shuttle bus home. The buses had to be reserved in advance and from the longing stares our bus got from the approx. one million people waiting for transportation to Ori, they could have made a lot more money off of those buses if they continued selling tickets at the site.

So, Belle & Sebastian were pretty good, Massive Attack was massively boring, and Vampire Weekend were fantastic. All in all, I`m going to give our evening at the Jisan Valley Rock Festival my official rating of:

Woo!

Caribbean Bay Take 2

We'd been to Caribbean Bay once before and it was pretty fun, aside from the fat jokes and life jackets required for knee-deep water, but it was absolutely not worth a $65 admission fee. So, today when we went to the park and saw the price was a full $25 more than we'd paid on our last visit we decided to pass on the park for the day, even though we had traveled all the way there.

So what did Mr. and Mrs. Cheapskate do after leaving the overpriced and over-crowded park?

We went to E-Mart and bought our own damn pool. For our living room. For 1/6th of the price. Piss off, Caribbean Bay.

Thomas The Cat

Facts about Thomas the cat (AKA Tom Tom AKA Tonnes of Fun):

- he has herpes

- he's half-ginger

- we are cat-sitting him for two weeks

- we thought our apartment wasn't big enough for us to have a cat. Turns out, Tonnes of Fun has absolutely no interest in leaving the bed and only does so to eat and poop. Which is something we both have in common.

- he weighs approximately nine million pounds

- during the day he likes to sleep at the foot of the bed; at night he likes to sleep on your face

- he is 100% love and 0% beast

- he has the second-worst breath in the house

- not a fan of tuna

- he's missing half of an ear (the sick way Seoul City shows that he's fixed)

- he's a huge Big Brother UK fan and really wants John James and Josie to finally get together

- we love him

Swimming In Seoul

Unless you join a gym or buy a high-rise apartment, you're probably not going to have access to a pool in Seoul. We're not huge swimmers but we do enjoy a dip every now and then, especially in the summer, so we were really happy to see that multiple public swimming pools had opened on the park along the Han River. We often hang out at the park and had been dreaming about these pools long before they opened for the summer. Finally, on one hot and humid day after work last week we grabbed our bathing suits and headed for the pool. We went to the one near Sinchon Station because we like that area, and we were sweating bullets as we went to pay our 5,000 won admission to the huge, near-empty pool. There were tears forming in our sweaty eyes as we were told by a giggling middle school girl that we couldn't use the pool because we didn't have swimming caps! And the on-site swimming supplies store had closed.

Swimcaps! We should have known. Requiring swimcaps to swim in public pools is one of those Korean rules we learned years ago when trying to use the waterslides at Caribbean Bay and we'd completely forgot. We were going to give up and go home until we saw an ad for a Daiso dollarstore nearby Sinchon Station. We decided to walk there and buy a swimcap. As soon as the swimcaps were purchased we stepped out of the store and it had begun to pour! Screw it, we weren't meant for the pool that day!

On Monday we grabbed our swimcaps and spent the afternoon in the pool. It was a sunny day, and if you can get past all the ridiculous poolside posing by the Korean men (who ARE they posing for- there were almost no women there!) it was a very relaxing place to spend the afternoon. There's a separate kids pool, so it's pretty quiet too. Grab your swimcaps and head to Hangang, Seoulites!

Everytime We Buy Groceries...

...we get a massage. Both our local E-Mart and Home Plus have massage chairs set up to be sampled. I think we spent 20 minutes in them last night.

I love the Superstore at home, but it certainly doesn't offer a service like this.

Nami Island and Chuncheon

It's officially summer vacation for me- woo hoo! Mel still has to work for a few weeks at her incredibly organized summer camp so I just plan to spend my time off relaxing and doing a little light traveling within Korea on the weekends. On Saturday we met Shanda at Cheongnyangni Station and caught the train to Gapyeong.

Train tickets were sold out but we did manage to buy standing room tickets. There were so many people stuffed onto the train (whyyyy? really- why were so many people going to Gapyeong of all places?) but we still found a corner to squat in while our ass cheeks went numb over the 80 minute train ride.

This is what Gapyeong looks like outside of the train station. Again- WHY were so many people coming here? We went to a very dodgy tourist information booth where a hand drawn map directed us to the bus station where we could catch a bus to Chuncheon, about 30 minutes away. Chuncheon is a much bigger city than Gapyeong and there was some sight-seeing we wanted to do in that area. After we bought our bus tickets we were immediately confused as to which bus we should board to go to Gapyeong so we attempted to board all of them until a kind ajumma pointed us to the correct bus. She really wanted to chat with us but only spoke Korean and all I understood was "where are you from" and "bus-uh go go go".

In Chuncheon we tried 5 or 6 different love motels until we found one up to my standards, AKA one that had a whirlpool. I literally just went to each hotel, approached the desk, said "whirlpool?" and very politely walked out of every hotel that replied in the negative. From the looks of Chuncheon I had a feeling we were going to need a cool room to provide some entertainment for the night. The guy who worked at the hotel we chose brought up a mat for us for the third person to sleep on on the floor, then we researched some touristy sights online and left.

Shanda really wanted to go a white jade mine that she'd read about online. The city website lists the mine as one of its top attractions. So, imagine our surprise when our taxi drops us off at a small jade jewelery shop in the middle of nowhere with no mine in sight. The store had some brochures about the mine so we showed it to the clerk and asked where we could find the mine. She laughed and said "anio", as she made an X shape with her arms. So why the hell are they still promoting this destination on the tourism site??? FYI, that's the state of the mine in the picture above. I wonder why they aren't accepting visitors?

The shop had a few slabs of white jade that you could touch. It's supposed to have healing qualities so I rubbed my moobs on it to see if they'd tighten up but no luck.

We got the store to call another cab for us and we asked it to take us to dakgalbi daero (which is not at all the name of the street), a popular alley full of restaurants selling only one thing: chicken galbi. Chicken galbi has been one of our favorite foods in Korea since we moved here and Chuncheon is said to have the best stuff in the world, so we were pumped to try it.

We were told to go to the restaurant with the line- it would be worth it. Well, none of the restaurants had a line but only one of them was extremely busy inside so we went there. Man, we were not disappointed. This was the best chicken galbi I have ever tasted. Chicken galbi is chicken, cabbage, rice cakes and sweet potato stir-fried at your table. It's usually really spicy and results in a swift trip to the can after eating, but this galbi wasn't so painfully spicy. It's as if the spice was there to add flavour rather than cause pain! We were given so much food but finished every bite and even made friends with our waitress ajumma who was very happy that we enjoyed our meal and that we loved Cass.

Within minutes of our arrival a line had formed out the door and around the corner for our chicken galbi restaurant. A sure sign that it's good, but I'm glad we avoided that line!

After Shanda made a new friend at Cold Stone Creamery (he juggled her ice cream for her) we took a taxi to the citizens park where there was a large lake and two parks. We rented a swan boat for the THIRD time this summer (summer of the swan!) and relaxed in the water for an hour as every swan that floated by gasped and said "Hi" to us.

After we got off the swan a man came up to Mel and presented her with a 4-leaf clover and then disappeared just quickly as he'd came (leprechaun?)

Korea must be the #1 purchaser of statues so naturally there was a statue park.

The second park across the bridge was lined with these cool lit-up trees.

We took a cab back to our hotel and walked to a Family Mart for some snacks and drinks for the rest of the night. The clerk at Family Mart gave us each free melon popsicles after I correctly answered the question "where are you from". When we got back to the hotel I had trouble hooking up my karaoke machine to the space age entertainment system we'd been provided with, so I asked the guy at the front desk to help me by presenting him with the cord and saying "help". I asked him if he liked karaoke and he said "No. I like dance." He hooked up the machine in 2-seconds flat: the people in Chuncheon are truly the salt of the earth.

Just like a trio of white rappers, we then drank our bubbly around the hot tub, listened to music and ate beef jerky. We were truly living the dream.

The next morning we had a quick E-Mart lunch and then took a taxi from Gapyeong to the Nami Island ferry terminal. We took the taxi to save time, but I would recommend spending a few minutes to figure out the bus situation because the taxi was 30 bucks! Regardless, at the terminal we went through "immigration" just like at the English Village, since Nami Island is a self-proclaimed independent nation. There were approximately 500,000 people waiting in line to get on the ferry with us, and somehow we all fit.

Boats run constantly and each one seemed to have a million people on it being shuttled to this speck of an island above. I realize I'm one of those people, but- really- WHY??

The island was easily traveled on foot in under 20 minutes from one end to the other, and it is scenic enough in that there are actual trees and it does seem like you're a million miles from Seoul. All of the shops and restaurants resembled wooden cabins that gave the whole area a real rustic feel. The prettiest parts were probably the tree lined paths as seen in the above photo, but it was spoiled a bit by the fact that you were sharing the path with thousands of other people. We were there on a Sunday, which was our own mistake, but if you're planning on visiting I'd do it on a weekday if possible.

Nami Island became a tourist destination after the most popular Korean drama series ever was filmed there. The show was called "Winter Sonata", and I'd never heard of it. Most of the sights on the island are in relation to the show and we attracted a small crowd when we posed with this statue of the lead characters embracing.

Nami has a lot of recycled art on display and eco-friendly products for sale in it's gift shops, as well as a small museum featuring some very awesome statues that I'm not mature enough to take seriously.

It was hot as balls on Sunday so we escaped into a little cafe to enjoy a beer on a table made from an old tire and some glass. We had planned to rent bikes and cycle around the island for a while but the bike rental line must have had 75 people in it and the line did not appear to be moving so we gave up on that idea. We then wandered around the island a bit more until we saw a couple of ratty looking ostriches roaming around freely. The one in the above picture seemed to be BFFs with the construction workers, walked right up to us and even ate a grape out of one guy's hand. I didn't realize ostriches could be domesticated but these ones don't seem to care to much about all the tourists.

And with that, we decided to go back to the train station to head home. After our "standing room only" trip to Gapyeong we'd tried the day before to get seats on the way back but they were already sold out. However when we got back to the train station we checked the automated ticketing machine to see if seats were available on an earlier, higher class (40 cents more) train and there were. So, we asked the station attendant if we could exchange our standing room tickets for seats on the other train and he said "no seats". When I pointed to the automated ticketing machine and said "this say yes seats" he typed something into his computer and printed out three new tickets for us with seats. Woot!

When we got home we decided to watch an episode of Winter Sonata to see what all the fuss was about. We won't be downloading any more episodes, but it was still a fun weekend :P

Seoul's Secret Slum

In Korea, you can live in many types of homes. There's officetels, lavish skyscraper apartments, toilet houses, hanok villages, and, if your home was demolished in preparation for the 1988 Olympics, there's a slum. Every city has its rich and its poor, but it was really surprising to find out that such poverty was 15 minutes away from the heart of Seoul's Gangnam financial district. I'd never seen a slum before; here's what it was like:

Mel noticed the shacks on her bus ride home from work one day. The city has certainly hidden them from view behind this wall of cement and trees just off a busy highway a few blocks from Costco, but you can see a few of the huts from the road if you look carefully between the spaces in the trees. The bus stop is called Guryongmaeul. From this photo you'd never know about the living conditions of the people behind this wall.

The homes just seem to be made out of "found" materials like carpets, plastic and old signs. We wondered how the residents fared with the torrential rains we had experienced over the last 48 hours.

The homes are all really close together, connected by narrow, twisting walkways. There was one road on the west side of the slum which we followed up to get a view of the area. In the background of the photo you can see some skyscrapers including Seoul's tallest building, the Tower Palace.

We read that 1300 families live in this slum. Their addresses aren't recognized by the post office so they receive no mail, but they do have electricity which is put on one bill that the residents split. When we were walking around we noticed that lots of families have cable TV and satellites too, and there were phone booths for residents to use. The bathrooms are shared, though, and I can just imagine the condition. The area didn't really smell but there was trash everywhere and lots of flies.

Of course any area with 1300 residents has some amenities. One ajumma had a little restaurant set up in a modest shack, we saw a pizza guy making a delivery, and this sign points the way to 2 different badminton courts.

They have their own landfill too. I don't think the city takes care of these people very well so they have to handle things like trash themselves.


There was a little church set up in this shack, and we could hear people singing inside. For being a place with so many residents we hardly saw anybody out and about... the church was one of the few signs of life in this area.

On our way out we stopped into an ajumma's little convenience store to get a cola. Then we went to E-Mart to pick up a few things and headed back to our apartment, but what we saw this afternoon was interesting and we still talked about it with great interest. Who are these people that live there? Do they tell people where they live? Do they go to academy?

But when I opened the door to our apartment and saw the huge mess we'd made over the weekend, reality sunk in- we're messier than the slum. Time to go tidy up... have a good night, internet.

Taco Bell

Taco Bell has officially opened in Seoul! I almost never go to Taco Bell at home- I've eaten there maybe 5 times in my whole life- but Mel and I thought we'd go check out what all the buzz was about on Saturday night. A lot of foreigners are really, really excited to have TB in Korea again.

It was a miserable rainy night so the line wasn't too bad (click HERE for a picture of the line last weekend!) but we still had to wait 20 minutes for our food, though I'm sure this will get better as time goes on. Actually, there were almost as many people waiting for their food as there were people sitting and eating and it was really hard to understand the employee who was reading out the completed order numbers. Suggestion: invest in a numbered sign. Also, though the restaurant itself is actually 3-floors tall, the dining area still feels really cramped. Where's my damn ambiance, Taco Bell?

Mel got a burrito and I got some tacos supreme and fries bellgrande and they were pretty good. It tasted pretty much like what I remember at home, and that's all you can ask for. There aren't too many Mexican places in Seoul, so TB hits the spot and it's definitely the cheapest Mexican dining option around. I might wait for the line to die down a bit before I check it out again, but I hope it does well and more stores open up. And I hope Arby's follows suit. Imagine how many junior bulgogi burgers with horsey sauce they could sell!!!

just because.

thaaaaaa simponsssssszzzz

The Week In Review: Canada Day/Platoon Kuntshalle Flea Market/Seorae French Village/Lotte World/Insadong/Dlama

Free drinks on Canada Day at Big Rock in Gangnam.

We went on a Canada Day/Independence Day-themed booze cruise on Saturday and saw a great cover band; the hot lead singer obviously stole the show.

Some people liked the band more than others. This guy slept behind the speakers for the entire cruise.

View from the boat.

Shanda won second place in the Canada Day costume contest and was invited to sing with the Tragically Hip cover band.

Mel and I won a bottle of tequila!

Hanging out after the cruise.

Pip borrowed a bike but the owners didn't feel like sharing :(

We went for Chinese food and then to the Platoon Kuntshalle flea market in Hak-dong. The building is cool and is made out of old shipping containers.

The only flea market I've ever been to that was being DJ-ed. The place was a bit of a fail for us. It was like a club with a bunch of crap for sale on the floor, and there wasn't even very much for sale. It would be a cool place to get a drink if they dumped the flea market.

On Sunday we went to Seorae, a French village in Seocho. By "village" I mean "street". And by "French" I mean "Korean". Don't make a special trip to see this place, it looks just like anywhere else in Korea except for a bit of French on a couple of signs. There were some cafes, a wine bar and a Paris Croissant but you can find these kind of businesses everywhere in Korea. Le fail.

Monday night we started our new Korean classes and then met Nareesa at the airport bus stop near Yangjae Station. She was being cornered by a drunk Adjoshi practicing his English- WELCOME TO KOREA. Tuesday we went to Lotte World. This was our third time there but the first time in three years. They've taken down a lot of the Disney rip-off art, but the "magic castle" still remains. We went after 4pm so we got the evening ticket discount plus and additional "white face" discount which wound up saving us almost $20 each!

The very first ride we went on had a 40 minute wait!! Roar! The lines were fine other than for this ride, so we were able to go on almost everything we wanted even though we arrived late.

We watch some Russians posing as Latins do a dance performance.

Offensive graffiti while waiting to get on a ride.

Wednesday was our first day of swimming class at my school. The kids wore more clothes in the pool than they do in class. One of them decided to dress as a chef for the pool.

Wednesday was our second Korean class and then Thursday we were very happy to do nothing after work! Friday we went out in Itaewon with Nareesa and her friend, and then Saturday we met up with them in Insadong at Changdeokgung Palace (which we'd visited recently). We went to Jogyesa Temple and then to Myeongdong to shop.

We had a traditional meal of bossam for lunch. The bossam (pork that tastes like roast beef) was great but the side dishes were a little too traditional for me.

Saturday night we went to see a show of 5 short plays in Itaewon at RUF. Shanda wrote and directed a short for the show and it was amazing.

Actually, all of the shows were creative and great. There was even a puppet show based on Tim Burton's stories. It was one of my favorite things we've done in Seoul this time around.

The candlelit ambiance in the bathroom made for a nice pee.

Sunday we went to the COEX mall with Nareesa for some shopping and returning (I'm having a hell of a time getting my Wii online).


We had chicken galbi for supper and then went up the 63 building to finish the night.

Hope you had a good visit, Nareesa!