Ancient Vacations Part 1.5: Dave in Jeju

While Dawn and Abby were off galavanting in Cambodia, staying in 5 star hotels and eating breakfast by the pool, Dave went with Abby's husband, Jason and a few others to Jeju Island, a sub-tropical area south of Korea's mainland. With them were Jason's long-time friend Chris, and his friend from work Matt. The plan was to see the ladies off, then get on a ferry for the ride to the island. Things started fine, Jason and I said goodbye to our respective wives at the train station and then headed over to his place where the other guys were waiting. We decided to get some chicken for the ferry ride, but we had timed it wrong: when Chris and I were getting back, we had lost track of time and made us a little late. A slow, long, painful cab ride to the ferry terminal saw us miss our boat by minutes. So we decided that a night spent drinking at our place wouldn't be such a bad way to start the trip. So we ate chicken, drank beer and played cards. The hot night was passed slowly, and 5:30am came WAY too early. But we made it onto the boat at last. However, we were quite a bit worse for wear: during the 3 hour ferry ride, Jason was sick in the bathroom, and the rest of us were not too well either. So we had a slow start, but once we were off the boat, we were fine. We had to get ourselves from the north of the island, Jeju City, to the south of the island, Seogwipo. The easiest way is to bus it, which took us about an hour and a half. Once we were near to our destination, we called the minbak (basically a hotel room where you sleep on the floor) that we were booked at and they said they would pick us up. Half an hour later though, sitting in the hot sun by the bus stop, we decided that they were having trouble finding us. So we hailed a taxi and had him call the minbak to find it. Probably should've done that in the first place. It was a nice place, really nice room, it even had a bed! We unpacked quickly and headed down to the beach. Swimming and tanning and drinking was done until the sun went down, and we headed back to the minbak. We then took a cab into greater Seogwipo, where we had dinner at an awesome restaurant that looked over the river. Wandered for a while, looking for a bar. We found one, but found also that nobody parties on Sunday night in Seogwipo, so we finished our keg and then went back to the minbak and slept.

Monday was spent sightseeing and traveling. We checked out the various waterfalls around the southern part of the island, including Chungbang, which is the only waterfall in Asia that flows into the ocean. We also saw Chunjeyun, which is a beautiful gorge with loads of plant life and a few waterfalls. None of them are really spectacular, but the whole place was really nice. Bought some souvenirs there, then started our journey back up to Jeju City. On the way we stopped at a gun range! Jason and Chris both fired some shots, and we all enjoyed just hanging out for a while. Quite a nice place really, with a ton of different guns to fire. They even had a large yard where you could shoot clay pigeons. After that we headed off to the city!

Jeju City is kind of a hole, it's dirty and seedy at times. We got to see this up close when we rolled in late in the evening of the Tuesday. We had a minbak booked somewhere, and we had planned to call the tourist info line to help us find it. However, the localized tourist info that is available during the day was closed by the time we called it, and the general info based in Seoul couldn't help us. So we had our taxi driver just take us to any place he knew that was in the area we wanted to be in. Eventually we found a fairly nice little love motel that had a large minbak style room. We took it, and enjoyed it for the most part. The seedy part was that it was across the street from a REAL brothel. In Korea you see a lot of little "da bang"s (literally "tea room", but just a name) which routinely send women out to wherever anybody wants them. They typically drive around in small skinny vans (which we have dubbed the 'booty bus'), or on scooters I have noticed in Gwangju. But this was a real brothel, complete with red lights! Don't see that too often anymore!

We decided to go out and see the nightlife before we had to head out in the morning, so we went first to the casino area, which was near where we were staying. The hotels that the casinos are in are REALLY ritzy, and the casinos are really well kept, and the staff all speak English. However, they aren't as enjoyable as the casinos we are used to, because it is illegal for Koreans to gamble. So these places are 'foreigner only' establishments. And since it was low season for tourism, there was NOBODY else there. Not fun at all. The other problem is that since the only people who can stay at these places are rich, the minimums on the tables were crazy. We talked them down to $5 minimum bet at a Blackjack table, though it was originally $20 I believe. We decided that casinos were boring, and that we should find a bar to check out. However, that also was a chore as there were no bars nearby, except for a nightclub. That option would have been expensive and there probably wouldn't have been anybody there, as it was Monday night. So we got some beer at a Ministop and drank in our hotel room.

The next morning it was time to get out of Jeju. Our ferry was late in the afternoon, so we were able to sleep in a bit. We had lunch at Lotteria, and while wandering after lunch we found a cultural icon in Jeju, the Mok Office. It had been an important building, and as things happen in Korea, had been burned down and rebuilt many times. Nonetheless, it was interesting, and a fun way to kill a few hours before we had to go to the ferry terminal.

Taking a ferry in Korea can be good or bad, depending on how much money you spend. We spent a bit of money getting to Jeju, and it was a really fast boat, we had seats and a table, and it would have been nice had it not been for sickness. Getting back to the mainland we spent less money, so we had a slower, bigger boat, were stuffed into a large room with a larger number of Koreans, and it would have been really bad had we not spent all of our time on deck hanging out and taking pictures. When we saw what our tickets got us on this boat, we all expected there to be Irish people drinking and dancing with Kate Winslet. It was as though we were stowaways, along with the 150 other people in our room. We just walked in, took note of the amount of space allotted to each person (none) put our bags in an inconspicuous place and left. Up on deck it was windy, but nice, and we found a bench to sit on and hung out for the long ride back to Mokpo. We took some nice sunset pictures and just enjoyed not having to do anything. There was also some entertainment to be had a little later on in the trip: a duet between a man and a woman, singing along to canned music. Actually the guy was playing some keyboards and did a decent job. This all took place down in the extremely crowded cafeteria. There was this one old guy (who took a liking to Chris because they had the same hat) who kept getting up and dancing with the girl who was trying to sing, and she kept leading him back to sit down. We got to Mokpo fairly late, so we just went our separate ways: me to our place and Jason, Chris and Matt to Jason and Abby's place. The next morning we had to pick up our wives at the train station, so it was early to bed for me. Overall, good trip. Though I wish we had had that extra day on the island...

Foundation Day

While living, and especially working in Korea, you come to wonder sometimes what the days off you get are actually for. Today is a national holiday in Korea, and I found out yesterday that it is in fact Foundation Day, which means it is in celebration of the founding of Korea almost 5000 years ago. 5000 years seems like a long time, and would be impressive if you didn't read the fine print about Foundation Day. It seems that it is actually the day that "marks the start of the Dangun Era" according to the Chosun Ilbo newspaper. What is the Dangun era? Again, according to the Chosun Ilbo, "Dangun is the mythical founder of Korea".

I'll let that sink in a bit here.

MYTHICAL!!!!!!!!!

We are celebrating, in this fine country, the mythical founding of a nation. That is just nuts. There are a lot of things that I can never understand about the people in this country and the crazy things they do and say, but this really, absolutely takes the cake. People here just can't question something if it was told to them by someone of stature or authority. And it's always been that way. In however long the Korean nation has actually been around, hasn't anyone said, "ummm, I don't think that actually happened, seeing as we all know it's mythical..."? At any rate, it reminds me of fan death, and other such myths in Korean culture. I suppose certain things could probably be found in western nations also, but this just seems like people expecting Neptune to crash a boat, or Thor to send lightning down from Asgaard.

Back to Blogging

Hello everybody, it's your long lost, blogging friends. I can't believe it's been so long since anything has been written here. We've gone through a lot in the last few months, so I'll catch you up on the main points. The biggest thing that happened was our move from Mokpo to Gwangju. An hour and a half northeast, Gwangju is bigger and the school Dawn is now teaching at is better. Plus the Jordan Emmans Band is now closer than ever, so recording and practicing will be easier. Added to the mix is possibly another band/recording project, also in Gwangju. We left some good friends behind, but plan to visit lots.

We've also done quite a bit of traveling. Dawn went to Cambodia during the last weekend in July, and I was in Jeju Island during the same time. Dawn was with our good friend Abby, while I was with her husband Jason, plus a few friends. Then we needed to get Dawn's new visa (you can't get a Korean work visa within the country), so we went to Thailand for 12 days. And on Sunday we finally got home for good, after 8 days in Japan with Jason, Abby and Chris. Those adventures I will be recounting soon on this blog, but I have to compile my notes first. So for now I hope it will suffice that I am going to blog much more now. I've also updated the way the page looks, it should be easier to look at and easier for me to keep up with. Stay tuned for updates coming soon!

Been Busy...

Sorry about the lack of posts lately, I've been too busy to sleep, let alone blog! I had to finish a couple songs (that means recorded, mixed and mastered) for this past weekend, so that Jordan could constantly plug our new myspace page, which features the two songs that I finished by staying up late and getting up early for a week. The reason for the deadline and the forum for the plugs was our show in Seoul on Saturday. Finally, the big city! And not just any big city, one of the biggest in the world. Not the biggest stage in the world, mind you, not even the biggest in Seoul, but that will possibly come later... For now, we settled for the Big Electric Cat, in Itaewon (the foreigner district). Not a bad place, a decent sound system, but it was too loud for anyone's good. Couldn't hear much more than noise. But we diligently played our opening set (an hour, longer than I expected), which means we got our originals all out, plus 2 covers. The Dave Martin Band (the Speakeasy's house band) was the headlining band and, regretfully, I missed their show due to Dawn's illness.

So now comes the push before I head to Canada, but we still have a LOT of work to do. We've decided to make this a full length album rather than an EP as was originally planned. This means that instead of the 6 songs we had intended, it has turned into 11. Difficult to do, daunting to say the least, but we should be able to churn this thing out by (and this is NOT a promise) September. Hopefully earlier, but we have a limited amount of time per week, and we have lots to do. But it will be worth it, I can promise that. I also recently took a project from A Fistful of Nice, mastering their new album. Sounds good so far, check them out! I may also get to do some more mixing in the future, so keep your fingers crossed for me, that would be fun.

So what have we been up to besides my vain attempt at a career? Well, good question... Dawn is in negotiations with her school right now, to see how much longer we want to be here, and unfortunately we saw a bunch of friends leave Mokpo for wherever the next step is. What else...

We had our "Cabana Party" a couple weekends ago, which unfortunately was rained out. Abby and Dawn made lots of decorations for the party, including a palm tree in the kitchen, and a Towlie poster advertising the rules for the pool. All in all it was fun, with or without any actual usage of the pool. We did use the pool for about 5 minutes in the rain and wind, but it was so cold we decided to just watch a movie and play a drinking game. Not a bad time actually. We also learned that we have neighbours living in the apartments behind us. And that's about it for now, maybe I'll be able to blog a bit before we head back to Canada on the 16th. Until then, take it easy and thanks for taking the time to read this nonsense!

And visit the new band page while you're at it, in case you missed it earlier. It is:

http://myspace.com/thejordanemmansband

Always Know What You're Giving

It was Teacher's Day here in Korea last week, which is an interesting day because most teachers still have to teach on that day. However the good thing is that they usually get gifts for teaching also. Sometimes the gifts are given with good intentions but turn out to be, ummm, less than stellar. Like the half eaten ChocoPie. And sometimes it's not the kid that gives the less-than-stellar gift, but the parent behind the kid, who just made a small mistake. For example, Dawn got this gift for teacher's day: a bottle of "Cleanser". It even looks pretty normal, like anything you might get for a woman on a special occasion. However, if you read the instructions (which were safely inside the box so no one would read it unless they had already bought the product) you find that this particular cleanser is not a kind you would normally advertise yourself using. Nor would you expect it as a gift, as it implies a certain quality about you. Learn a lesson people: always know what you're giving as a gift, especially if it's someone important like a teacher!

The Importance of Listening

How often do we judge something before we have actually had a chance to experience it fully? This is something I was forced to recognize I had done yesterday.

I downloaded (yeah, yeah, I know, but there's no way I'm gonna find it over here) John Mayer's latest offering The Village Sessions EP. Now, I don't usually pretend to be a music critic, but I have to sound off on this one. It is 6 songs, all of them acoustic versions of songs from his last album, Coninuum, and the John Mayer Trio album, Try! which is, perhaps, not a good start. The first song is also the first track on Continuum, and is called "Waiting on the World to Change". It was a huge hit, won a Grammy I think, etc. This version features Ben Harper also. When it started, I thought, "Hey, they kept the same glock thingy from the album version", and then thought, "Hey, he just played the electric guitar part on an acoustic instead", followed by, "Hey, they kept the same organ part, too", and lastly, "Hey, isn't his vocal the same, too?", which of course it is. So basically they just changed one guitar part (which already may have existed from the original tracking of the song), and re-mixed it. And Ben Harper? He sings backup on the choruses. That's it. What a waste.

So while I was thinking these things, I kept hearing the song, but I stopped listening, which is, sadly, not the same. In fact, when that song had ended, I continued to not listen to the rest of the album, decided it was crap, and promptly deleted it. A day later, I realized on the way to Gwangju that I had put the songs on my mp3 player to listen to later, and then forgot they were there. I played them again, this time skipping the useless remix of "Waiting on the World to Change". I found that a few of the songs are really good versions, if a little bare. But that's the point of an "acoustic" version nowadays, I suppose. Anyway, the point is that I stopped listening, and consequently almost missed out on a nice couple songs that I already knew, but not in this way. I hope I don't make the same mistake again.

Happy Mother's Day

Well, I don't know why I'm having so much trouble keeping up with this blog thing. At any rate, here's the (now) biweekly update! Not much has really happened lately, but enough has I suppose. The weekend before last we went to a party at our friend 현중 (Hyun Joong, or Jeff as he's known to most of the waegookins)'s family house. It is in a really nice spot right on the side of a "mountain" (really just a rocky hill). There's a fairly large yard, and a gazebo on one side. The gazebo came in handy about an hour after we got there when it started to rain. Really rain. Poured, really. So we headed either inside or into the gazebo. Dawn and I spent most of our time inside the house, which was spacious enough for all of us to squeeze in. We even had room for Matt, Stu and I to break out the guitars and have a little jam session! It was nice playing with Mr. Ammond again, espcially since I've been missing the times he plays in Gwangju. The evening was also a chance to get to know some of the people who are new to Korea this month, even if most of them aren't actually new to Korea. Lots of interesting people, hopefully we'll keep getting to know them. To be sure, it was a wet, wet night. More so for some of us than others. For example, Jason, Abby and Kristen were out getting some drinks when it started to rain. So they were thouroughly soaked when they walked into the yard through the gate. Abby decided that they weren't quite dirty enough though, so she and Kristen rolled around in the mud for a bit! That's right, Mokpo's first official mud wrestle! At least as far as I remember... Most people figured Abby won, but I didn't see much of it. So I'll just call it a draw.

The Sunday after the big mess, we found ourselves on our quarterly pilgrimage to Daejeon, to shop at the infinitely great Costco! Unless you have lived in somewhere similarly isolated as Korea, you just can't imagine having to go 2.5 hours by train to the nearest block of cheese! Our good friends Abby and Jason came with us, though Abby wasn't actually with us until she woke up about half way there. Anyway, it was fairly uneventful, until Abby saw the pool. She and Dawn had been talking about having a cabana party on our roof. I don't know where we are gonna get a cabana, but we now have the pool for it. We bought this pool at Costco. It's 12 feet long, wider on the ends, and is now on our roof, full of water and bugs because we haven't found a cover for it and it rained the other day. So now we have to find a way to empty it. We have tried to syphon it, but I think we are losing a bit of pressure through a hole or two, and the hose if probably just too long for that to work. We tried using the hose through the drain on the bottom of the pool, but it wouldn't push the water down the hose. So, we're probably just gonna have to drain it onto the roof this time, and find something better for next time.

This weekend we had a games night at Crystal's place. First we had supper with Kevin, Neal and Crystal at Ha Ming (they have this curried rice with breaded chicken, it's awesome). Neal recently bought a motorbike, so now there's this idea going around that everybody should get their own so we can all go on long rides together into the sunset. But I digress. After that we went back to Crystals and played Scene It and Catchphrase, both of which are really fun, thought the former isn't much fun with a large group. Catchphrase is quickly becoming one of my favourite games though. Especially with a group. Dawn has even integrated it into some of her lessons at the hagwon, in a simpler form.

Yesterday I had to go to Gwangju for recording, and Dawn had a perogy night at Rich and Shannon's place. Kristen and Jeff also showed up to make perogies. Unfortunately, the fun was over by the time I made it home and over there, but I got a couple perogies for supper, and that made me happy. Speaking of recording, we're hoping to have the CD done by the middle of June, so that gives us a month. We've got 5 songs just about done, and 1 song started. We're thinking of starting 4 more to make 10 songs total, but we want to concentrate on getting the first 6 done well before we spread ourselves out more. Jordan also wants to tour a bunch this summer, so that might be cool. Hopefully I'll have some cool samples to post, or at least bring back to Canada to show people this summer.

And lastly, but not leastly, happy Mother's Day, Mom(s)!