If there's one lesson to be taken away from seeing a six year old with blood running down his nose it's that games of tickling can sometimes go wrong. Very wrong, like 'him falling off a chair and hitting the wall with his face' wrong. Luckily this lesson happened on a Friday, which meant I wouldn't have a chance to plausibly terrorise the youngster for another 72 hours.
Speaking of weekends, the Director decided to take her employees out for a bonding dinner on Friday. The dinner and the bloody nose events are coincidental and unrelated, in case you were wondering. We gorged on a pork buffet and said "gun-bae" a couple of times with shooters of soju. "Gun-bae", pronounced something like 'kuhn-bear', is the expression Koreans use to say 'Cheers'. Well, we gun-bae'ed a lot, and together with the pork buffet life certainly wasn't kak.
Well, I lie, it wasn't kak until plus/minus 8 hours later when I had to board a train at 05h30 to Sinyongsan Station, Seoul. Soju is a devil of a drink and the 1 hour and 45 minutes it took to commute was like riding to Hades' front door. Anyway, I managed to get to Sinyongsan Station in more or less one functioning piece of human flesh. Once there I met up a bunch of other hikers for a day's exploring of Ganghwado Island.
We started off at Yeonmijeong Pavillion, an observatory of sorts on the northern side of the island. A piss and a trickle away down from the place ran the border fence, and a stone's throw further was the North Korean territory of the Han River. And I tell you, we were all gathered in that pavilion chatting away when everyone hushed simultaneously. From across the Han came this celebratory-natured Korean music. According to rough translations from the Koreans in our group, it went along the lines of "Why are you being dumb? North Korea is best Korea and the President here is immortal and life is good". Unfortunately it's hard to imagine what kind of good life was (and is) being had in North Korea when the mountains on their side have clearly been cleared of all trees for fuel purposes.
We then moved along to Goryeogungji Palace which at one point in history housed the highest of royal families during the Mongol invasions. The original palace was destroyed by French in response to the execution of nine of their Catholic missionaries. Soooooo ya there was no actual palace but there were the administrative headquarters, so to speak, that we were able to take a squizz at.
From there we had lunch of tofu, kimchi, raw crab, veggies, shredded pork and a bunch of other food stuffs. And makgeolli, which is another alcoholic brew these buggers make from fermented rice or wheat. Day buzz round one!
After lunch the crew headed south to climb up Mount Mani, a breezy 469 meters of ascension. At the top we happened upon an altar. The jokes came thick and fast not unlike "the spilled blood of virgins from eras past" as one of the members eloquently put it. It was a busy day, and we were among many of the other Korean residents, permanent and temporary, that were stretching their Saturday legs. We, however, were the properly cool cats and poured ourselves 'somac', a combination of soju and beer. We sacrificed sobriety for day buzz - round two!
Not much happened after that on Ganghwado, but when we returned to Seoul, a few of us went to dinner and then watched an amateur comedy night. The highlight of the comedy night came at the end when the oak parodied John Lennon's 'Imagine'. It was a bold strategy (cotton) but it paid off. He inserted a sequence of 'irritated but accepting guy in a foreign country' experiences which replaced Lennon's lyrics.
Ya no leka! The 2 Mega-Pixel Camera-Phone was giving shit last week so I had to borrow a couple photos from other people...
Speaking of weekends, the Director decided to take her employees out for a bonding dinner on Friday. The dinner and the bloody nose events are coincidental and unrelated, in case you were wondering. We gorged on a pork buffet and said "gun-bae" a couple of times with shooters of soju. "Gun-bae", pronounced something like 'kuhn-bear', is the expression Koreans use to say 'Cheers'. Well, we gun-bae'ed a lot, and together with the pork buffet life certainly wasn't kak.
Well, I lie, it wasn't kak until plus/minus 8 hours later when I had to board a train at 05h30 to Sinyongsan Station, Seoul. Soju is a devil of a drink and the 1 hour and 45 minutes it took to commute was like riding to Hades' front door. Anyway, I managed to get to Sinyongsan Station in more or less one functioning piece of human flesh. Once there I met up a bunch of other hikers for a day's exploring of Ganghwado Island.
We started off at Yeonmijeong Pavillion, an observatory of sorts on the northern side of the island. A piss and a trickle away down from the place ran the border fence, and a stone's throw further was the North Korean territory of the Han River. And I tell you, we were all gathered in that pavilion chatting away when everyone hushed simultaneously. From across the Han came this celebratory-natured Korean music. According to rough translations from the Koreans in our group, it went along the lines of "Why are you being dumb? North Korea is best Korea and the President here is immortal and life is good". Unfortunately it's hard to imagine what kind of good life was (and is) being had in North Korea when the mountains on their side have clearly been cleared of all trees for fuel purposes.
We then moved along to Goryeogungji Palace which at one point in history housed the highest of royal families during the Mongol invasions. The original palace was destroyed by French in response to the execution of nine of their Catholic missionaries. Soooooo ya there was no actual palace but there were the administrative headquarters, so to speak, that we were able to take a squizz at.
From there we had lunch of tofu, kimchi, raw crab, veggies, shredded pork and a bunch of other food stuffs. And makgeolli, which is another alcoholic brew these buggers make from fermented rice or wheat. Day buzz round one!
After lunch the crew headed south to climb up Mount Mani, a breezy 469 meters of ascension. At the top we happened upon an altar. The jokes came thick and fast not unlike "the spilled blood of virgins from eras past" as one of the members eloquently put it. It was a busy day, and we were among many of the other Korean residents, permanent and temporary, that were stretching their Saturday legs. We, however, were the properly cool cats and poured ourselves 'somac', a combination of soju and beer. We sacrificed sobriety for day buzz - round two!
Not much happened after that on Ganghwado, but when we returned to Seoul, a few of us went to dinner and then watched an amateur comedy night. The highlight of the comedy night came at the end when the oak parodied John Lennon's 'Imagine'. It was a bold strategy (cotton) but it paid off. He inserted a sequence of 'irritated but accepting guy in a foreign country' experiences which replaced Lennon's lyrics.
Ya no leka! The 2 Mega-Pixel Camera-Phone was giving shit last week so I had to borrow a couple photos from other people...
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