Scoot Scoot Coasts and Mountains of Taiwan

Definitely disappointed in myself because of last night! After getting back to the hostel, we had a few drinks, K had a few more than I. He didn't want to drive, and I didn't blame him, so I became the DD except it was on a scooter. I don't know if anyone reading this (if there even is anyone reading this) has ever had a passenger on a scooter/motorcycle/bicycle (passenger slightly under the influence, nonetheless), but it's not really easy to stop/go/steer freely, particularly when your comrade doesn't trust your driving (brief introductions in hostels don't do much for trust issues)! Anyway, after searching for a particular restaurant that we never found, we had to opt for McDonald's due to restaurant closing times. Can you believe it? I ate at freaking Mc'D's in Taiwan, what the heck? I was determined to start AND end TODAY on a much better note!

7/11, as usual, was the first stop then we headed straight for Highway 11 which is the coastal highway on the eastern side of the island. The day was beautiful and the ride and views were phenomenal.

Laughing at the helmet is acceptable!



Unfortunately, photos and words can obviously do no justice. The waters around Taiwan tend to be rough, particularly during the early part of the year, so no swimming was attempted. After riding and stopping every 10-20 miles along the coast, we took one of the east/west windy roads to get to highway 9, which heads through the mountains.



The colors of the fields in the valleys were a shade of green to remember



On one of our many stops to take in the view, I remember telling my riding companion, Kewin, that two things would make this already awesome experience even better. One, if I had some tea to drink while enjoying the view, and two, instead of Kewin along for this ride, a lady! Fortunately, I was able to remedy one of the two dilemmas when we stopped at WuHe tea farm to sample a crapload of tea (maybe even two of the dilemmas were solved as tea clerk was indeed female). I was easily sold, and after drinking literally 10 cups of tea (they are small cups), possibly more since I would sneak pour more if the lady was taking too long to refill my cup, I bought a tin of tea and we began our return trip back to Hualien after a quick stop at, you guessed it, 7/11



The route we took

Scoot Scoot Taroko

Waking up early has never been a strong suit for me, particularly on misty drizzly days! However, I was determined to put my two full days in Hualien to good use. Another one of the hostel guests, Kewin, and I haphazardly created a sore excuse for an itinerary. Today was touring Taroko Gorge and tomorrow would be down the coast and up through the mountains. We knew there was a plethora of scooter rental shops near the train station, so after stopping by 7/11 for breakfast we headed towards the station. Consulting Lonely Planet for the scooter shop they recommended, we quickly saw how fast an LP pick goes to a store's head. There prices were significantly higher than everyone else and they required more paperwork and documentation. Fortunately, we found another store down the street that requires only passports (no license required, crazy) and the payment in cash! We negotiated for a two day rental which cost us about $10/day per scooter. Off we went to Taroko Gorge, fortunately, the rain had let up (first a quick stop at 7/11 again to stock up on water and snacks, of course)!

The gorge was a perfect place for a scooter or motorcycle. There were plenty of windy roads to test your tire traction with bits of straightaways to let loose on the lovely 125cc scooter (as I'm typing this I'm laughing to myself because 125cc is tiny BUT surprisingly those things haul ass more than you'd think). You did have to mind the countless number of buses that would be weaving through the lanes, particularly when heading through narrow areas. Buses don't slow down or yield in Taiwan (it seems to be a very common trait in all of Asia). We stopped briefly at the next major "town" for a quick bite then headed back towards Hualien. On our way home we decided to take the scenic route and saw a random assortment of villages and coastal areas and even got funny looks from the coast guard as we rode up right to the beach! For giggles, I found a nice dirt patch where I thought doing donuts would be a good idea. I almost broke multiple bones in my body by nearly falling down a ravine, but by the grace of whoever you believe in, I didn't! I was humbled for the day as I rode back to the hostel!





Links to the Taiwan Albums with all the photos:
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2484180&id=14815291&l=c9cb42fcc7
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2484737&id=14815291&l=6253c1ca32

Dumplings Help Me Feel Complete

Up somewhat early to hit up a bank and grab some coffee for a big walking day! Part of my motivation was dumplings, more specifically xiaolongbao, from Din Tai Fung. My first tourist spot, however, was Taipei 101. It used to be the world’s tallest tower before the Burj Khalifa shot up over everything else! I decided to skip going to the top of the tower since admission was about 15USD. If it had been the world’s largest tower, I’m sure I would’ve gone up, funny how the mind works!

Since I love walking, I decided to hoof it to lunch while taking my time to stop and see anything else that caught my eye. Taipei is truly a lovely city, it’s laid out fairly well, with good public transportation, and of other importance, it has awesome parks with ponds scattered throughout the city. I stopped at more than one to relax and people watch. After zigzagging my way to lunch (on purpose, in case you were wondering), I finally arrived to Din Tai Fung. I planned for a late lunch/early dinner since this restaurant absolutely buzzes during the lunch rush. After reading my little instruction guide on the proper way to eat xiaolongbao, my food arrived and was absolutely wonderful.

If you ever have the chance to eat there (or a similar type place, as I’ve been told they are everywhere if you know where to look), I would definitely recommend it. On my walk, more like waddle, home, I decided that I was going to forego another night in Taipei and head to Hualien for a few days in search of a nature check. Ran to the hostel, grabbed my stuff, went to the train station, arrived in Hualien, where the hostel owner and a guest picked me up, had a very creatively named beer (called Taiwan Beer) at the hostel bar, and then called it a night!

Taipei Exploring Continued

(by popular demand, this will hopefully be my last long winded post as I will attempt to shorten them significantly and focus on the highlights. Man, I'm doing it again, I'm rambling on in my disclaimer that my future posts will hopefully be shorter. Keep your fingers crossed for me please)

My second full day in Taipei, Sunday, I decided to tackle on my own. After waking up a bit late but sleeping better than the previous night, a little factoid I didn’t share was the people who were sharing the room with me the first night had stinky clothes and bags or perhaps feet. Quite frankly, I’m not at liberty to discuss where they were from since I don’t want to generalize about Swedish people, but they were nice folks, haha! In any case, they were NOT there the second night and I was relieved. I first headed to the CKS Memorial via MRT. It’s a giant square courtyard with a few buildings where kids practice their hip hop dancing and families just stroll and sit. The memorial building itself houses a giant statue of CKS himself and the ground floor has lots of pictures and his two bulletproof Cadillac limos he used. The design of the courtyard and the buildings were quite awesome, but overly nothing too mind blowing. I did enjoy sitting and people watching, though! From there I intended to walk to Longshan temple but a nice fellow who noticed I was trying to get my bearings (with a map, thank you) advised me against it. Back on the MRT I went and decided to postpone Longshan Temple and head to trendy Ximending which was on the way and is where the “young and trendy folks” hang out.

Ximending proved to be exactly what I had imagined. Lots of stores, food establishments, high end shops, tattoo parlors, and other things you’d expect in the trendy part of town. I walked the full bit of it, observed a concert, found a nice outdoor patio area, and then decided to walk to Longshan Temple. Now it really wasn’t that far of a walk BUT the signs weren’t very clear so it took me three requests for directions and multiple looks on my map and a bit over an hour to get there but I finally did. The temple was having a special festival where they were giving out free oolong tea which was amazingly awesome. The temple, in the middle of the city, managed to have a few waterfalls that pleasantly fell into the ponds below them. It was a welcome escape from the hustle of the city, but only vehicle hustle as there were loads of people walking all about. I paid my respects to the gazillion statues and dodged the fiery flames of people holding incense sticks by the fistful and proceeded to head to Snake Alley down the way. I did have to make a brief stop for a girl playing music on a saw, quite neat, oh yeah stopped for a dumpling as well, delicious, oh yeah, and a sugarcane juice, also yummy!

Snake Alley, which apparently has gone down in popularity the past few years, is a street where they are known to dramatically kill snakes and other animals. I wasn’t really keen on seeing this but figured I should at least pass through. Fortunately, they don’t start the “show” until 7pm and I arrived shortly before that. I did see some disturbing sights including live snakes piled into solariums ready to be killed and live turtles that have been removed from their shells. That pretty much made me want to leave and I did. I decided to walk around the other part of the market a bit to get my mind off of the ghastly scenes. I contemplated getting a foot massage but thought I might be too relaxed to get home after one. Instead I perused sunglasses, belts, and other knickknacks till I found another dumpling stand. I ordered and the lady kept pointing and saying something but I couldn’t figure it out until after I left. She was trying to ask me what priced dumpling did I want. Oh well, it was still delicious and energized me for my trip home. When I got back to the hostel, my horror as who was back but one of the “stinky folks” and he was staying in my room again. I had to leave so I went to a teppenyaki place which is the Japanese style where they cook in front of you for some lamb, soup, veggies, rice, and unlimited coke that I don’t drink. Sleep followed . . . in the stinky room!

First Days in Taiwan

Though I’ve skipped a boatload of updates from Korea and the Philippines in my sporadic blog updates I wanted to write about my trip to Taiwan before I forgot too many details about it. To start out with, it’s my new favorite place. It's the type of place that renewed my travel energy, much the same way Japan started my travel bug. Korea and the Philippines are also great, but they took a bit of time to grow on me; Taiwan, not so much! I knew I wanted to visit there, but didn’t think the trip would be so soon. Basically, while in the Philippines, I needed to pay about $70 to extend my visa. I’m a bit bitter about that since it’s pretty much a scheme to collect money. You get 21 free days when you arrive then need to pay $70 dollars to give you another 38 days then another $70 for another 59 days. In any case, I figured I should just take a trip to another country for a “few more” dollars instead. Looking at Cebu Pacific Air (a Philippine low cost airline) I checked the prices of Singapore, Kuala Lumpor, Thailand, and a couple other countries that aren’t coming to my head right now. China and Vietnam were out for this round since I only noticed my visa was about to expire about five days before the actual date which didn’t give me enough time to secure a visa for those countries. A trip to Taipei proved to be the cheapest at the last minute with a RT ticket running about $215. The crazy part about it is if I had planned even more in advance I could’ve gotten a RT ticket for about $50 to $60 (gotta be lucky for those ones) or for $120 if I had a bit more time. I gave myself “9 days” in Taiwan and you’ll soon learn why the 9 is in quotes.

My flight took off from MNL around 10:40pm on Friday, April 09, 2010 and arrived around midnight early Saturday morning. Unfortunately, there was no bus service at this time but surprisingly my lack of planning self did have foresight and talked to the hostel owner where I was going to be staying and she reserved a hired car for me. The hour trip to JV’s Hostel in Taipei took about an hour and cost me 900NTD or about $30. Obviously, I associate this cost with my airline ticket since if I arrived earlier I could’ve taken a bus. So now the price of my flight just went up from $215 to $245, haha, I’m so Indian! Everyone was still up or out when I arrived so I got the quick tour, chatted it up with the other hostel folks, and called it a night around 3:30am.

I had posted a thread in the Taipei Couchsurfing forum a few days earlier asking if anyone had suggestions of things to do while I was in Taiwan. A girl posted a response and suggested I go to Danshui, a town about 40 minutes or so north by public transportation, to meet up on a photography walk. Even though I’m not amazing at photography, I had no plans so I said why not. It ended up being a group of three people and me, two Taiwanese girls, Jessica and Debbie, and a guy from the UK, Nick. Everyone was so nice and welcoming. We sort of casually strolled around the town, stopped by a few sites, and even managed time to scale a rock climbing wall. Jessica suggested I try a-gi and bought a bowl for me. I’m not sure how to really describe it except that it’s a steamed/fried tofu ball with glass noodles inside served in a broth and a spicy sauce and that it was quite delicious! We had some tea at a lovely tea stall then did some more walking around.

Sort of lost track of time and Jessica wanted to show me Fisherman’s Wharf and its lovely sunset but had run out of time due to a prior engagement. Here’s the crazy nice part, because she wasn’t able to, she volunteered her other friend, Debbie, to show it to me instead. In any case, we didn’t actually make the wharf from a mixture of running out of time, it being kind of far, and us getting lost, however, we did catch the sunset along the river nonetheless. Heading back to the MRT, we walked through the food street, and Debbie suggested I try taro covered durian and mountain bubble tea. The former was interesting (if you don’t know what durian is, it’s the “stinky” fruit) and good, and the latter was awesome, tea made with edible seeds from some tree. We both decided to take the MRT back to the city center but on our way we had an impulse decision to head to the famous Shilin Night Market for even more food, because you KNOW I love to eat . . . and I eat a lot . . . and I can’t stop . . . and I have a problem :( kidding, kidding. So we actually got a bit lost again, but it really wasn’t our fault since we got off at the Shilin MRT spot BUT the market is actually the stop after it with a name not even similar to Shilin (further in our defense, the market has moved over the past few years), honestly I don’t get lost much, well not THAT much, but sometimes, from time to time, I like maps and how does a guy that likes maps get lost? If you do figure that out, let me know please! The night market was a smorgasbord of food but we only settled for an oyster omelet, a couple of sausages where the ‘bun’ was made out of seasoned rice, a couple juices made with bitter melon (good for the blood), and a giant chicken fritter. After our meal we had just enough will in us to ‘roll’ around the streets and visit the other aspects of the night market with everything from a giant pet market, clothing market, carnival games, bowling, the list goes on and on. We finally got ourselves on the MRT, headed back into the city, and called it a night! I am not sure I could’ve navigated my way as functionally around the market without Debbie. The niceness of Taiwanese peoples, so thanks Jessica, Debbie, and Nick!

As usual, pictures are (or will be) on my Facebook account!

The Rest of the Weeks in Gwangju – Weekends Two through Four

I’m not even sure anyone is reading this blog anymore since I’m so damn slow in writing it, but I shall keep going. It’s funny because I’m actually sitting in the Philippines writing about quite a few months ago, to properly document this for me and my 2-3 (maybe 0) followers I will continue. So, the rest of my weekdays with the English camp were like the first with only the weekends to really differentiate the weeks (keep in mind it’s one day weekends, too).

I did notice certain matters of interest that anybody who has lived in Korea will probably recall the first time seeing them and being a bit surprised. Now, of course, it’s nothing new and possibly quite boring. However, here I go: people run red lights in Korea, stopping at them is optional and often times discouraged, as I drove some months later I, too, was encouraged with the words “go go go, what are you waiting for” so off I went through the red lights; interestingly, there are lots of traffic cams that monitor your speed and where you park but interestingly not if you are going to run a red light, hmmm; almost every restaurant has a call button, you need something you push the button, it’s easy, it’s efficient, I love it; couples love to match each other hats, clothes, shoes, even purses; brings me to my next point, some men in Korea have purses, not the manly satchel thingies but proper purses, some look like bowling bags, some look like large makeup bags, but ALL look like purses; Korea takes their recycling seriously with most public places having 4-5 different containers, the challenge lies in reading the Korean text and figuring out what to put where, I’m a fan of all the recycling, though; Koreans advertise by throwing flyers on the ground, this doesn’t really make sense to me since they are pretty big about recycling but it is what it is and is a bit upsetting to me; there is no open container law in Korea so many people buy beer and drink outside the convenience store or wherever they please; everyone has a GPS device and they are so advanced many people drive and watch TV, yep, figure that one out (coupled with people running red lights, too); if they aren’t watching TV on the GPS, they are watching it on the mobile phone, they can also video chat on their mobile phones, pretty neat; their internet speed is blazingly fast, I hear you can download hundreds of MB in a few minutes, not too shabby! There are plenty of other things, but I’ll let you come to Korea and experience them for yourself.

Since I couldn’t read Korean at this point, when my colleagues and I went out for dinner we would just randomly pick one item each at various price ranges and share them. We successfully did this on 3 or 4 occasions never really getting anything we didn’t like. Pretty damn lucky if you ask me! Other highlights include me successfully staining each one of my white work shirts (4 in total) by various methods, most of which are food related. On the other end of the spectrum, I setup the dorm shower room to provide me with a 4 showerhead shower. I can tell you there isn’t quite anything like it! The remaining weekends included seeing the Boseung Tea Fields, the southern tip of mainland Korea, hiking up a mountain then wading through a river, and a trip to the Indian restaurant buffet. Each class had to put on a final presentation for the rest of the camp and their families. My classes had to perform Cinderella where in one of the two performances Cinderella was played by a boy. It was very well received, surprisingly, haha! The last Saturday of the camp was a huge celebration for us all, but mine had to be cut short since I had to report to another camp up in Seoul the next day . . .

The Rest of the Weeks in Gwangju – Weekend One

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The rest of the weekdays in Gwangju were pretty standard with the first week. The only real exciting events were the one day weekends where we, as a group, usually took full advantage of our time off. I just checked my previous posts and noticed that I never mentioned the people that I work with. There are six English teachers in all, 4 foreigners and 2 Korean, and 6 Korean teaching assistants. Of the 4 foreign teachers, 2 were a British couple, Jonny and Jessy, who were spending a year traveling the world together (so cool, here is their blog: http://www.globenotes.com/travel-blog/jonnyandjessy/1684/1/) and two Americans, me and a married older guy from Oregon, Peter. The first weekend started with a traditional Korean BBQ on Saturday night (which is essentially our Friday). Only four of us went, Peter, and I along with two Korean TA’s Suji and Amy. The Korean girls helped us order everything, and I had to snap a photo because of all the side dishes that accompanied our meal (hopefully I can figure out how to insert the photo in the blog).

The food was so delicious, marinated pork and was a lot of fun to eat . . . until my amazing chopstick skills landed a piece of meat on the shoulder of my white polo! This would foreshadow the many stains to show up in the upcoming weeks! The BBQ place was also where I first was introduced to and began to love sesame leaves, which have a little peppery flavor to them. You are supposed to wrap a piece of meat and some other accoutrements (haha, I’m so refined using that word) in the leaf and eat it, but I enjoyed eating the leaf plain. Weird, I know! Then there’s the story of me eating and finishing the ‘salad’ at the table only to find out it’s actually what you’re supposed to put in your leaf wraps and not the salad, oops!

After dinner, some of the other TA’s joined us for drinks and karaoke, or as they call it in Korea Noraebang (literally translates to singing room). Not gonna lie, I gave it a go singing I’m Yours by Jason Mraz. I can’t remember my percentage scored but it doesn’t matter, right? It was actually pretty addicting singing. 

 I also learned you can make beer/soju/coke shots, hmm! The night ended kinda early, I suspect because the TA’s had enough English speaking for the day, and because we, the teachers, had to be back to the dorm by midnight—curfew, haha! Interestingly, one of the TA’s offered to give us a ride back, which we gladly accepted. We all of a sudden stopped at an intersection and were just waiting. I was a little confused, but didn’t really want to ask questions since she was on the phone. Turns out her mom picked us up and gave us a ride, whoa! Anyway, ended up really working in our favor as they offered to scoop us up again Sunday morning and show us around the area! We said, “Hell yeah!” (not those exact words despite the quotation marks) and attempted to head to bed early to rise early!

I actually got ready on time and headed downstairs early to meet our guides for the day. However, I went to the wrong meeting point and eventually ended up being late. So it seems my punctuality is forever doomed. Anyway, our TA, Tiffany, her brother, and her mom drove me and Peter all over Gwangju and the surrounding areas. They were amazing hosts for the day taking us to so many places and not letting us pay for anything despite our repeated offers. We finally snuck in the tab for some coffees and teas, which made Peter and I feel a little better! Some of the highlights of the day were amazing bamboo and zen gardens, eating steamed corn on the cob, coffee/tea at a hotel spa, the Gwangju Democratization Uprising Memorial, a canopy of trees park complete with bike ride, and an amazing dinner of fish and mixed rice baked in bamboo! The memorial was a very sobering experience and very well nicely done. The short story is that starting on May 18, 1980 for a period of 9 days, the people of Gwangju rose up against a military dictatorship. They were ultimately defeated by the army but they are forever seen as heroes of democracy and ultimately their actions helped restore it. In 2002, they created a memorial for them. The casualties and atrocities committed during this time, including a pregnant woman being shot, made me quiver. It turns out that many of the soldiers that committed these crimes were actually told by their superiors that these people were actually barbaric/evil and not innocent.

 A much happier place was in an area called Damyang which had a walking trail with a canopy of trees where you could rent bikes or mini power vehicles and just ride along a path. It was quite entertaining to see grown adults ride these mini power vehicles obviously designed for children.

  Before heading back for the day, I had some Minute Maid aloe vera juice that was super delicious!

*All my photos can be found on my FB account

Week One of the Summer English Camp

So we actually teach two camps that meet every other day, one camp meets MWF and the other TThSa. It seems that most of the teachers prefer the second set of students. They just seem more polite and interested in learning. We quickly find out that most of the kids, as you can imagine, have no desire to be at the camp. It took me a bit to come to terms with this, but when you consider this is supposed to be summer vacation for them and many of them continue to go to evening classes, I finally did and even felt bad for them. The kids ranged in age from 5-12 years old and the camp actually took place at Chosun University in Gwangju. Most of the kids were really cute and all the foreign teachers would always be amazed at how black, shiny, and healthy their hair looked. We all got lovely T-shirt to wear as the uniform. The camp gave us lunch M-F, which was fairly decent. I quickly found out that Koreans do not really drink water or use napkins until after their meal. I, however, had to keep a stash of my own personal napkins to tend to the messes I made.

Other general happenings during week one: I left my toothbrush in the shower the first morning and when I went back later it was gone. I did ‘find’ the toothbrush about a week and a half later sitting on the utility sink. I chose not to reclaim it! Smart I forgot to use the voltage converter one early morning and so my electric razor was fried. I also found out sort of the hard way that the girl’s dorm was right across from my window. After I realized that, I then began to change with the lights OFF! Mosquitoes in Korea can be pretty brutal. Even though our rooms were decent, it seemed that mosquitoes from time to time would come out of the A/C vents. After being bit countless times, I decided to buy a mosquito plug in coupled with me blasting the A/C and fans to create a less than favorable environment. It sorta worked! I also discovered my favorite toilet stall in the bathroom which had a heated toilet seat, lovely! We also setup mini bars in our respective rooms which included an array of cheap Korean wine, plum wine, soju, and maple soju. Beer had to be purchased on an as needed basis as there were no fridges. The Korean wine was surprisingly bad. It tasted like grape juice and more like grape flavored medication. I guess that’s what happens when you purchase wine that costs about a buck and half!

The only bad experience I had was when, one evening, I was looking for a cheap alarm clock to purchase. I went to a ‘mom n pop’ shop, greeted the cashier, and then started looking at the clocks. They were all on display with batteries in them and ranged in price from $1-2. As I picked one up, the cashier lady started yelling something at me, ran over, grabbed the clock out of my hand, and proceeded to take the battery out of that clock and every other one on display. She then went back to the register, while I sat there dumbfounded for thirty seconds. I just left after that! I still am not completely sure what happened there, I guess I have my theories but whatever!

First Couple Days in South Korea

Ahhh, finally writing about my trip to South Korea. I had intended to write about it much earlier but the camp kept me pretty busy on the academic and social side. Pre South Korea trip was plagued with logistics nightmares. The jist of it is that Korea has a lot of requirements for foreigners to get a working visa. Essentially I was offered a four week English camp position but for the visa needed to provide a criminal background check, my transcripts, diploma, and go to the consulate for an interview, which wouldn’t have been that much of a problem except the nearest one is in Atlanta, about an eight hour drive. Anyway, once all done, hoped on a flight from Fort Myers via Charlotte via LA to Seoul. The overall journey was pretty good, met some great people sitting next to me and had great conversations. On the leg to LA I ended up in the middle seat because I gave up my aisle in another row to a couple with a baby (I must be full of great Karma now), but the entertaining part was the girl who felt the need to put on makeup for the last two hours of the flight. I mean, she needed it but that’s not the point! To Seoul I sat next to an Indian lady, which is nice, you know sitting next to an “auntie.” Got off the plane, but greeted by these ‘nose n mouth’ masked men at the end of the jet way who were taking everyone’s temperature. I guess it’s Korea’s precaution against that dreaded swine flu. In fact, I would have to take my temperature every morning for the next seven days to make sure I didn’t come down with anything-standard operation for foreigners! I met the guy who hired me then directed to a bus that headed south. Four and half hours later (and about 30 hours after I left the US) I arrive to Gwanju. The other camp guy picks me up and brings me to my accommodation. Hmmm, a University dorm, I never in my life thought I’d be living in a dorm again. Oh well, it wasn’t all that bad since I was supposed to share a tiny ass room but luck of the draw I didn’t get a roommate. Bathroom and shower were all shared and the showers were yep one giant room with six stations. Fun, right? By the time I went to bed it was nearly 1am.

Next day was Sunday which really consisted of resting and doing a little bit of walking around downtown. Snapped some photos (which will be available on my facebook account). That evening was dinner with all of the camp teachers and staff. They ordered plenty of food, beer, and soju! I even learned a couple new games which involve Soju, which always makes things exciting! Hit the hay shortly after the dinner, week one of camp to begin the next day!

The Last Entry about Turkey (with some Greece in there)

Hmm, even though I’m in South Korea right now and would like to start my blog about my journey here I know I need to update and close my Turkey trip. So here goes the ultra abridged condensed version (once again).

The CELTA class kept me busy but we had our share of fun and pain. I also started to meet some of the Istanbul Couchsurfing network who all proved to be pretty cool. I got to see some fireworks from the new apartment which seemed to be a weekly event. Ate some wonderful seafood but not shortly after which my friend and I got pulled the price switch on us. Terribly annoying but the food was still great! I also joined a Language Exchange Circle and met tons of people from all over the world. It is here that I befriended an Australian/English guy and a bunch of Turkish guys and girls who proved to be great hanging out friends during my time there. I also got to explore the Asian side of Istanbul (which you may recall that Istanbul sits on Europe and Asia), saw the Peace boat, rode many a water ferries, saw one of the water ferry terminals/piers overturn during a rough thunderstorm (as in the whole thing flipped over with all the building, turnstiles, shops, counters, etc. still on it). My CELTA friend Desta who I mentioned earlier and hopefully you’ve checked out her music got a gig singing at a lounge in the Sofa Hotel. We checked her out one rainy Friday night and had a great time. Nicely done Desta! I also found out that reselling lotto tickets in Turkey is totally legit and how some people make money. I guess people pay for the convenience of just being able pick up a ticket as they are crossing the street. The markup is only about 1/5 of the price. I also ate fresh seafood at the complete northern tip of the Asian side of Istanbul, saw some sheep just roaming around the area, and saw the Black Sea which was super cool.

Oh yeah, I finally posted pictures on my Facebook page. One weekend took the ferry to the biggest of The Princes Islands where we hired a horse and carriage to tour the island then did a little hiking up to what seemed like an old monastery. The view from there was astounding! I started to become an expert of the lay of Istanbul (at least the central part of it). I pretty much walked everywhere and became familiar with all the shortcuts, watering holes, and dining spots. I found a few lokantas where I would eat almost every day. It ended up saving me more money than grocery shopping as I could eat for the equivalent of 2-3 dollars. One place would even give me free Ceylon tea since I became such a frequent visitor. From time to time, I would indulge in a Sunday all you can eat brunch buffet , and as you can imagine I ate a lot and then some! What can I say, I’m a sucker for a smorgasbord of food AND desserts! I also started frequenting a place called Khave Dunyasi (Coffee World) which, as you guessed it, serves great coffee, sandwiches, and desserts. The last week I was in Istanbul I managed to eat some Kunefe (pics can be seen on my FB page), which was absolutely delicious. Basically it consists of cheese, pastry, cream, and syrup all heated up.

I befriended some random Americans along the way and enjoyed swapping stories about their overseas experiences. I even spent some of the holiday time with them all! I also found it interesting that no matter how cold it got in Istanbul, people would always sit outside. They really made good use out of the propane gas heater lamp thingies. I have to admit, I became homesick one day and ate Popeye’s chicken at one of the malls (which was huge and had a rollercoaster and a bowling alley in it). They didn’t have the spicy chicken that I so dearly love at the American Popeye’s but it kinda hit the spot, sorta, but not really (oh yeah, one day some of the CELTA folks and I did visit KFC, too, we really didn’t know what we were thinking)! I guess besides the normal other sites to see in Istanbul: Aya Sophia, the Blue Mosque, Topkapi Palace, Galata Tower, etc, etc. I did see a cat just hanging out in Aya Sophia which was a little surprising at first, but I guess it shouldn’t have been when you consider how many damn cats there are!

This is getting entirely too long since I took too long to update this all so I guess I’ll end by saying I did get to see some amazing other places like:
-Izmir
-Efes or Ephesus
-Selcuk and Sirince (which was a neat little wine town that specialized in fruit wines)
-Pamukkale (which means cotton castle and is a MUST see and stayed at a very nice little bed and breakfast type place)

Random funny thing about the buses in Turkey is that they are very nice but they decide to forego the bathrooms on the bus and instead install a kitchenette so that people can get their tea fix, go figure!
Oh yeah, also went to Thessaloniki, Greece on my visa run which was a pretty cool place. For one, you could get a better variety of beers and wines!!! Done with Turkey (on to the South Korea blog).