Wally Nes’ Blog

Inter continental travel can be very tiring, demanding and other words with negative connotations.

In my case it was setting itself up to be even worse than usual. I was to have a lay-over of 18 hours. Leaving the Netherlands in a blizzard and headed to South korea, where the temperature also expressed itself in a negative sense, I was to spend 18 hours, 18 miserable hours . . . in Malaysia.

Let me illustrate this.

This was the Netherlands when I left

This was Korea when I arrived:

And Kuala Lumpur is best represented like this:

I could post a picture of my sweat soaked T-shirt, but I think we’re all happier if I keep it abstract.

Now, I had the option of sitting the 18 hours out in the wonderful international terminal of KL Int Airport (which has won “world’s best airport” award repeatedly) or I could hop out and explore.

Tough one.

Due to weather conditions in Amsterdam at the time of take of however, I was not to have 18 hours of gallivanting. I was to have 15. Plenty.
Raph has actually lived in this city and therefore had some recommendations. Like go to the Petronas Towers on time.
Again, due to weather conditions in Amsterdam I was not able to do this. 15 hours was all I was destined to get. The last 5 hours were to be spent in the international airport anyway. After a 16 hour plane-ride, making the absolute most of a city trip is just not what’s foremost on your mind.

But for now: I give you Kuala Lumpur.

I first ambled over to the fabled Petronas Towers. I would have been more impressed though if I’d not recently visited Taipei 101, a tower which stands over 50 meters higher. Still, that’s just one tower and this is 2. The damping required to keep these things from tumbling down in a stiff breeze is actually done by the bridge . . . bridging the two towers. Very ingenious. But as reported, I was not to climb these towers. They sell tickets for the entire day early in the morning and if you show up at 10:00 . . . you’re simply too late.

Instead I went to the KL tower. It’s observation platform is quite a bit less elevated than that of the Petronas Towers, but it is helped by the fact that it’s on a hill making the observation platform higher than those silly towers. It was cheaper too. And it came with a “free” zoo visit. All the pictures of this can be found in the link under the boldface Kuala Lumpur earlier in the text.

This guy though, deserves special mention.

Yes, those are two heads. I suppose someone was trying to make his own ninja and failed.

I spent some time in parks, enjoying some shade

Walking around in the National Temple.Very nice place.

Touring the small markets and generally roaming the city.
On my own and Raph’s advice I ate streetfood. And I nearly got my meal right. I mean I don’t speak Bahasa Malaysian, but most of the stuff is also described in Chinese (Who knew that one day I’d be walking in a foreign city glad of CHINESE descriptions of stuff).

At 18:00 I was still 6 hours from departure but my brain had shut down and I wasn’t actually in an exciting new city anymore, merely in a place with people and buildings that wasn’t home. I needed sleep.

And a wintercoat.

And a dry shirt. Ew

My flight to Seoul departed 20 minutes late, arrived on-time and had me home in time for a nap at 09:00.

It’s a nice place though. If you have a 18 hour layover anywhere, KL isn’t a bad place for it.

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Quote of the Day:

Hey, can you tell me what’s your name? “My name is Roosevelt E. Roosevelt.” Roosevelt, what town are you stationed in? “I’m stationed in Poontang.” Well, thank you, Roosevelt. What’s the weather like out there? “It’s hot! Damn hot! Real hot! Hottest things is my shorts. I could cook things in it. A little crotch pot cooking.” Well, tell me what it feels like. “Fool, it’s hot! I told you again! Were you born on the sun? It’s damn hot! It’s so damn hot, I saw little guys, their orange robes burst into flames. It’s that hot! Do you know what I’m talking about?” What do you think it’s going to be like tonight? “It’s gonna be hot and wet! That’s nice if you’re with a lady, but ain’t no good if you’re in the jungle!” Thank you, Roosevelt.

- Robin Williams, Good Morning Vietnam

Sunday October 17th marked the end of my visa in Republic of Korea. Originally the plan had been to be finished with my thesis now, fly back, graduate and other things of that nature.
Instead, I was merely required to get the hell out of the country. Well, I was sorta expected to come back too. By Raph at least. And maybe Orion, if he’s capable of rational thought.

A bit of internet searching showed me that a flight to Fukuoka was the cheapest option. However, due to the expiration date of my credit card having come and gone I found myself without a means to book it. The internet did offer a place that took cash though. Off I went to a travel agent, outdated I know, but I had little choice. The travel agent knew of a different, even cheaper, destination as well.

Taiwan.
Or the Republic of China if you want to get semi-official about it. Semi-official seeing as how not everyone recognizes that the ROC isn’t still part of the PRC (amongst others: ALL of Europe). But ROC is what it says in my passport.

Anyway, seeing as how I’ve been to Fukuoka and had yet to set foot in Taiwan, Taiwan it was.

Now, people that are in communication with me will have heard me state on multiple occasions that I’m rather busy. Thesis and all (I have a date btw, I’ll get around to officializing an invitation on that soon enough). So I left to Taiwan with: No Lonely Planet or other travel guide and the name of 4 interesting tourist things on a piece of paper.
A good preparation is the cornerstone of a good holiday.

I knew they spoke . . . . Chinese. Hadn’t looked up if it was Mandarin or Cantonese. And let’s be honest, would it have made a difference either way? I can read it well enough, but speaking/understanding either wasn’t on the table anyway. I was pleasantly surprised to learn that their English seems to be at a level above the Koreans’ English. That would make things a lot easier.

I will leave you with my pictures as no adventures of note took place.

You can find my pictures here.

And I am aware that I took only a few pictures of the night market, which is a shame. So I’ll just point you here, or here. And please pay special attention to the “fruit”. If only to make sure you drink some of it when next you find yourself in Taiwan.

Oh well, I suppose most food there was kinda weird

Deep fried bread, with a centre of . . . snot and an ingredient of choice.

Enjoy

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Quote of the day:

Despite its proven stress-relieving effect, I will not indulge in maniacal laughter. When so occupied, it’s too easy to miss unexpected developments that a more attentive individual could adjust to accordingly.

- Peter’s Evil overlord list #20

Two weeks ago we tried to take the dog with us to see some of the palaces that Seoul offers.
Turns out they don’t allow dogs in palatial gardens. Apparently dog shit stinks.
Also, the garden next to the Palace was also a palatial garden. This made things tricky as we now had a dog in the middle of the city and nowhere for him to frolic.
And then on the way back we found out he gets car sick.
We managed to avoid paying a taxi surcharge as he had managed to throw up exclusively on me.
Huzzah . . . .

So . . . . we won’t be doing that anytime soon. I mean, the palatial gardens we could have suspected (and if we’d spoken Korean, probably have found out on the phone about). The garden next to that one was a bit of a bummer though. We do know, however, that the Olympic park has no such restrictions, so that’s on our to-visit list.

But first!
Time to introduce Orion to more of what Namsan park has to offer than just the little slice we’d been walking him in.

There’s many tales to tell of this epic hike (Namsan peak is 262 meters high), but as it’s been a week ago already I don’t recall most of the context of what I thought blogworthy last week. Instead I’ll show you pictures.

First are the competitors for picture postcard I may eventually send (No, they don’t have those here . . .  go figure)

While I did ask I couldn’t get the Korean dude to accept Orion needed to be in the picture. Or that he should hold the camera on it’s side so you can get the tower in better. This guy’s camera was worth at least 5 times what my shoddy camera is worth, but using it properly though . . .

The next picture captures quite nicely how important it is to undertake a hike such as this with only the best equipment you can find.

A picture of Korean cultural . . . . something

a picture to illustrate Orion’s popularity

There could have been other pictures that illustrated this, but the damn kids that kept trying to pet him kept blocking my shot. At one point 3 cameras tried to take pictures of him while Orion was desperately trying to get away from the 5 kids and 2 adults trying to pet him.

You can find the complete series here.

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And then this weekend we decided to ditch the dog entirely and see some of them traditional housings everyone is going on about.

To reach the traditional houses we had to pass it’s guardian.
This Korean  . . . dwarf

This lead us to a mighty doorway.

But instead of this doorway leading us to our prize we were led straight into the killing fields

Caught with our back against this mighty gate we now found ourselves on this open field. Providing a clear shot from all directions for anyone that would want to

expose one to a changing of the guard tourist attraction.

A more dire situation we had not yet found ourselves in.

Caught between people with glued on beards on one side

And people with feathers in their cap on the other

we were surely doomed.

Seconds crept by as we considered our position, seeing no way out. When other people with glued on beards, feathers in their cap and wielding aluminium foil halberd  came and challenged the standing order

We made the most of this distraction and headed for a small side gate at top speed, jostling and pushing tourist out of the way as we went.

The gate held freedom

Kicking up dirt while we rounded corners we soon left the guards far behind us, stumbling as they were over their silly robes.

We reached the street of most authenticity.

Here too, we found tourists though, so we proceeded with caution lest we anger one by blocking it’s photography. You wouldn’t like to see tourists angry . . .

Our goal reached we relaxed and let down our guard to enjoy some well earned hot beverages at the end of our quest.

Oh, what folly that was. To let our guard down so soon. Too soon.
For lurking around the corner was . . . .




THE SEOUL MUSEUM OF CHICKEN ART
OF DOOM!

And thus we leave our adventurers. Succumb to the horrors of contemplating their last discovery.
For is it a museum by chickens, concerning or featuring chickens. Is it culinary, expressionistic or Renaissance art. And . . . . most horrid of all. What manner of being could curate this.

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One ninja is an elite and adversary, multiple ninjas make a group of faceless and incompetent pawns.

- Inverse Ninja Law

First one of the “other stuff”
Some people I’ve been in contact with know that I’ve been bitching a lot about the lack of air conditioning in this house. This has been rectified.

We have A/C. Glorious A/C!
I can work in our office with a shirt on (to much relief of our neighbours I should think) and can now wake up/go to sleep dry. Going outside daily still means I go through 2 shirts a day, but inside our house is now as much a haven as the subway, 7/11 or any number of random other places here.

The reason I like the A/C isn’t the temperature difference. Really, between on and off is 3-4 degrees difference. No, what makes the difference is the humidity decrease.
Now, when I lived in the Netherlands I always assumed we had humid summers. I survived a 2 month assignment on a Queensland farm after all and working in 45 degrees (in the non-existent shade) was no exception. Make sure you cover up your fragile skin as much as possible, lather up on the exposed bits and hydrate. Don’t get me wrong, it was hot. But, as I hear my friend from New Mexico echoing in my mind now “It’s a DRY heat”. The Netherlands may, at one point in the last century, actually have gotten above 40 degrees. Perhaps even twice. Mostly though we have mid 30s in our summers. But it’s a lot harder being productive in that heat than it ever was in Oz. It was the humidity.

Then I came to Korea, installed A/C and after 4 hours of running the damn thing this was what our condensation run-off looked like:

That’s a 18.9 liter container. 4 hours of running it and it took that much water out of our air. I still have to empty the thing every 2-3 days now.
Usually people have the run-off outside, but the positioning didn’t allow for that, so we have this. My initial idea was to put a plant under it. I don’t think waterlilies could withstand that much water.

Another notable difference in the weather here and back home is that the heart of summer will sometimes last as long as 3 weeks there. Then the weather gets crappy again. It’s been 3 months here, and we’ve only just reached the worst part of the summer I’ve been told. Oh man.

Next on the list: The time capsule village.

It was a hot and lazy Sunday afternoon when I concluded I hadn’t really done anything touristy in a month. There wasn’t enough time left in the day to go to the area with the palaces, but on the other side of the mountain/park we live on is the Namsangol Hanok Village, featuring “Timecapsule square” which I’m sure gives you more of an idea what the village is about.

Let me first point out the deep, deep sense of authenticity they strive for:

popcorn ₩1,000. Hell yeah

The park was pretty good. It reminded me of a park we visited in Tokyo, it was with the vulcanus crew, before we took the boat to Asakusa, maybe someone remembers and has pictures of it online. Despite that I draw your attention to it, I don’t actually have any pictures to substantiate this claim. It is surrounded by city, but obviously distant, and that makes for a nice sanctuary feeling

Nice relaxing greeneries if you don’t look beyond the treeline though

And the village itself offered workshops in straw braiding


fan decoration

and many other things.

A different aspect of Korean culture, and one anyone that has ever experienced will agree with, is that rules in Korea are guidelines. Traffic lights are suggestions, striping and lanes are hardly adhered to, and signs are . . . . well, pretty.

The rest of the pictures can be found here.

The last major subject of interest is Orion.

There’s not a lot of good pictures of him yet, but we proudly present the newest addition to our family:

Orion is a Shetland Sheepdog/Sheltie of about 1 year old. We’ve had him for a week now and as an anniversary present we took him back to the vet to have his nuts removed. Lucky dog, getting adopted by us. But it’s the reason for the cone around his head. He’s not allowed to lick/chew/scratch/mouth his stitches.

He’s a sweet dog, obviously been trained before as you can see by the following exchange:

Wally: Sit
Wally: Sit
Wally: Sit!
Wally: SIT!
Wally: Ancheyou
*Orion sits*

Because why would a Korean dog be trained in English. Duh. He is a smart dog and has started adapting to English commands. He still has some weird shit left over from living in a cage for 1-2 months being walked once a week, but he’s getting along. He’s obviously a smart dog, knows when you want something, though he’s not always sure what you mean(Seriously, our Korean sucks). Wouldn’t leave the room when we got him, which I think was trained in his last life and: Poops against trees. In a country where you have to pick up after your dog if they poop on the street that’s not a minor thing. Also, I never removed any of his surgery gauze, but he got his cone of when we were out for a bit and did it himself. Gotta keep an eye on him till those stitches are removed it seems.

Pretty much all things have been positive except the early morning walks in the rain; the so called Dark side of dog ownership, the pooping in the room during his post-anesthesia recovery and the baby talk Raphaelle uses to addresses him.

We’ll get more pictures of him over time, some in more natural environments and hopefully soon enough pictures of him without a cone around his neck as well. In some future blogpost I’ll post more pictures and explain why we got this one in more detail.

And I’ll end this blogpost with a picture of one of the other animals Orion shares this house with. Bugs are kinda numerous here I’m afraid.

And in an unrelated matter. If you were to look at the picture numbering in the folders you’ll see it’s gone from 99XX to 00XX. This is the 2nd time it’s done that. 20.000 pictures taken . The camera still performs well, with the exception that it now chugs batteries.

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Quote of the day:

My goal in life is to be as good of a person my dog already thinks I am

- Anonymous

So, the Koreans won’t tolerate me for more than 3 months. We therefor headed to our old flame: Japan. We would land at Kansai airport, and Koya-san, an old destination of ours, is just a couple 10s of km east of there.
Unfortunately, there’s also some mountain stuff in between there, so we had to go to Osaka before we could go down to there. Which made our very efficient flight/travel plan somewhat less efficient.

We flew from Inchon airport with an overbooked plane. This cause many many problems and resulted in us getting businessclass seats.
Karmarific. Lotsa legroom, good service. I can get used to that.
Then there was the trainride. Nice view, good on time and it was just past nightfall when we were dropped off by our accommodation by the free bus. The free bus was free because we only had big bills and the bus didn’t accept those.
Youth Hostels are the same the world over . . . . or are they

Real rice paper walls though, which meant that we could hear the neighbour snore as well as in any dormroom the world over

Last time I went to Koya san it was packed with tourists, but last time had been a weekend. Turns out that even in summer Koya san is all but deserted by tourists during weekdays. If you ever visit this place, go on a weekday. Serene mountain monasteries come off better without crowds of tourists.

The first day we went for a hike in the peaks surrounding the temples. As women weren’t allowed in this very sacred site this was as close as female pilgrims could come to this place fro centuries. The hike started pleasantly



But it’s important to remember karma can be a bitch.
First there was a bit of this:

And then there was going down the mountain as fast as we could hoping lightning wouldn’t strike us or too near us (It didn’t oblige on the last bit) and definitely not getting the camera out for it would drown. While initially pausing for the storm to pass on the very top of the mountain, I said it would likely stop the moment we got down.

This . . . is my sock

We took off the sock, the moment we got back to civilization.
As you can tell, the rain had stopped.
2 minutes before
This is a book we borrowed for the trip

One which we will certainly replace for the owner btw.
There were 3 books in the bag at the top of the mountain.

Next time we go hiking, we’re checking weather reports.
And so, the next day, with reports indicating mostly clear skies, we set of on Saturday to hike from Koya-san to kudoyama.

A very pleasant hiking experience at times

with many bits of wildlife on the way down



And at least 3 snakes and many many spiders which didn’t make it to film.

The trail we walked has been hiked for many many many years. Centuries even, which makes the path somewhat . . . .well trodden and slightly eroded at times


It was usually well cared for

Though not always kept to its original purpose

Usually dangerous to get off the path

and many many other things. I’ll leave you with a link to the album.

We arrived after 9 hours of hiking at the bottom of the hill with just enough cash left to buy tickets to Osaka.
Last time we were in Japan we had bank cards and mobile phones which all worked there.

This time we spent 1 hour walking around after bank closing times looking for an ATM to accept our damn foreign cards already. Citibank Japan didn’t accept citibank Korea, and from there on it was an uphill struggle getting anything to accept our Dutch/French cards.

We eventually got cash, a place to sleep and the first restaurant we walked into was a damn Korean restaurant. 3rd one did the trick though and we fell in to an exhausted slumber.

The next day was spent in Osaka, lounging and getting back to the airport. Where we were told there were no seating arrangements, but there were problems with me entering Korea. Eventually they did let us on the plane, but we were removed from our bulkhead seats because we had seat 20. Karma was back with a vengeance.

We arrived just fine and I’ll leave you with a picture of one of the things that makes Japan great:

A wasabi kitkat.

And just in case Sarah reads this blog:

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Quote of the day:

What in the world was running through that warped, evil scatological mind of His when He robbed old people of the power to control their bowel movements.

- Yossarian

OK, so we’ve been here for a while and we’re starting to find our stride.
We know what we’re doing, we know how to go about things, we know how to find our way.

Important in finding our way is the Seoul Public Transportation system.
This consists of a number of different parts

• The subway
• The buses
• The trains
• Taxis

Taxis aren’t really something you’d put under the header of public transport, but you will see how it has it’s place when I get to it.

The subway is an extensive network of different lines (10 in total I think) that twist and turn and dig their way through Seoul soil. Looking something like this:

Or, if you will, something like this:

The system is vast and will take you close to pretty much anywhere you want to go. It comes with websites which will tell you how long your trip will take and the quickest/easiest route. Also available in English.

But, as we found out soon enough when we moved into our apartment, just taking the subway isn’t always the fastest way to get around. With the Han (the big river) running through Seoul choices had to be made where lines cross. With the hills and mountains detours had to be chosen.

Enter the bus system. I can’t show you a map with the buslines, as it would simply be stringy confetti. There isn’t a part of Seoul that isn’t serviced by at least one bus. The bus system is complicated, but I’ll give a stab at it.

There are 4 color buses. Blue, Green, Red and Yellow. Then there’s express buses for airport duty and stuff

Blue buses are the major arteries of bus transport. They go from one zone of Seoul to another. The zones of Seoul look like this:

The blue bus numbers consist of 3 numbers. The zone it comes from, the zone it goes to, and the route serial number. For instance, the bus we take in the morning is the 143 or the 401. We get on in 0 (which is one of the start/stop, because of course buses go both ways, zones of the 401. But is also between 1 and 4) and get off in 4. It’s the #1 bus for the 4-0 and the 3rd bus for the 1-4 zone. To give you an indicator of how many buses there are. These are the bus numbers starting in zone 1: 100, 101, 102, 103, 104, 105,   106,107, 108(1), 108(2), 109, 110A, 110B, 120, 130, 140, 141, 142, 143, 144, 145, 146, 147, 148, 149, 150, 151 ,152, 153, 154, 160, 162, ,163, 171, 172.

Green buses connect subway lines and blue bus routes. They can cross zones, but only ever one. Their numbers operate the same way as the blue buses except that the serial number is a 2 digit number. Because there’s more of them. Want a list of zone 1 green buses? Go here.

Red buses connect the center with the sub-suburbs. That’s the gray bit which still have numbers in them. There’s not so many of them, and with good reason. This is a metropolitan, which in today’s world doesn’t just mean lots of people but most definitely means heavy congestion on the roads. Seriously, take a subway.

Yellow buses. Funny thing, our yellow bus is a green bus. Someone got confused I think. Yellow buses travel within a zone and connect useful points. The number is based on 2 numbers. The zone number and the serial number.  Except those called ‘city center circulating bus’ and the like.

The trains. To be honest some of the subways run above ground, which make the difference a bit hard to spot. But the KTX system stops in a couple of major hubs (Seoul station, Yeongsan and Gwangmyeong) and connects them with Busan, Mokpo, Incheon and the like. There’s also some express subway lines which may be worth mentioning*.

Example time.

We live in Itaewon-dong, a dong in Yongsan-gu.
Our office is in Garak Market-dong, a dong in Songpa-gu.

Please keep in mind that Seoul is a a BIG city. That’s about 12 km as the crow flies. The way the subway runs is this:

Birds fly more efficiently than that

Add a bus to it and you have this:

Now, I named this post ‘Public transportation in Seoul’ because it’s mostly an integrated system (Damn you, line 9). That means that while we use 2 different systems we pay one price.
By subway alone, a ride roughly 18 km, 1 hours long, costs us ₩ 1100. This translates to a whopping 72 cents (07-07-2010 conversion rate)
Bus and subway combined, 15 km and 40 minutes long, costs us ₩ 1100. Again, 72 cents

No matter where you live, that’s a deal. Japan comes close, Singapore will too. Nationale Spoorwegen (Dutch National Railways) . . . .  no. Not close. Not nearly close. You may spot it on the horizon, but you certainly won’t believe what you see.

It gets better. We live on a hill, you might’ve heard me say it’s 100 meters vertical from the subway/bus station to our house. When we get off the bus, we just wait for our green yellow bus #03 to take us up to the Hyatt hotel, and walk down to our house for no extra charge. That’s 2 transfers, 2 buses and a subway ride. Totaling 45 minutes, for 72 cents.

If you’ve been paying attention, I’ve not mentioned taxis yet.
Taxi culture here is quite different from Western Europe. Somewhere there’s a flip over point where you go from ‘very few, but expensive cab rides’, like the Netherlands, to ‘lots of readily available cheap cabrides’ and have it make economical sense. Korea isn’t the only country which has this. As Raph is quick to point out, other countries in S.E. Asia are cheaper still, but that’s probably because everything is cheaper in those countries.

When we moved from our office to our apartment I got a taxi. During rush hour, with extra costs for delay time and everything leading up to over an hour travel time, I rode a taxi across all of Seoul, for ₩ 14000. That’s €9.13. It used to costs me 6-7 euros to get a taxi from Delft station to my house. And while that is also all the way across a city, it really means 2.5 km and 5-10 minutes. During the night (High rate), coming back from Hongdae, some 11 km away as the crow flies, costs us ₩ 7000 (€4.50).

Can’t say much good about the national food identity yet, I still prefer a kroket to kimchi, but the public transportation in Seoul certainly beats what I was used to in the Netherlands.

* but I’m not going to

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I may not have gone where I intended to go, but I think I have ended up where I needed to be

- Douglas Adams