Our Asian Adventure: The Plan

Hello again folks! As September begins we are entering the final chapter of our Korean adventure. We have only 3 months remaining until we set out traveling through Asia next year and WE. CAN'T. WAIT!!! 

We really enjoy living in Mokpo, and in Korea in general, but our feet are itchy and we are ready to get  going somewhere. We are tired of work and it has become more stressful this past month. Our director opened a new academy and it requires more from the students in both the difficulty and volume of the work. In short, its just more stressful than need be. The kids are great but there is no longer time for games just work and studying and there isn't even enough time for that. With so little time left it is hard to get attached to the new academy. After almost a year of this with little to no vacation time we are ready to hit the road and just wing life for a while. Fortunately, that is coming soon enough and we will have heaps of time to relax. 

We have ambitious plans for next year and they all start in India! On December 4th we leave Seoul and fly to New Delhi. This has been the plan for a long time but we final have our tickets and it seems that much more real now. Our travel plans will last for more than a year so I think it will be easier to explain this via pictures and steps. So lets start with step 1 because that seems logical. 

STEP 1: GO TO INDIA!!!! 

We plan to travel around India for 3 months, from December 2012 to the end of February, 2013 (presuming the world doesn't end). A while ago I tried to make a rough plan to follow when we are there and I came up with this:

That is definitely a bit ambitious and we most likely won't get to all those places because India is rather massive but we will give it a shot. We most likely won't head to Kashmir and Jammu (north of New Delhi) or to the Darjeeling area between Nepal and Bhutan as they are rather out of the way, but we will head to Sri Lanka! When we get down south we will either fly from Bangalore or just try to haggle our way onto a cargo ship headed for Sri Lanka. I've read that this is not too difficult and cheaper. We shall see, I am definitely hoping for the cargo ship plan though. 

STEP 2: 6-MONTH ESL JOB IN CHINA...OR KYRGYZSTAN

When our Indian adventure is finished we are headed to....well, we don't know yet. We are in the process of searching for a 6-month ESL contract in either China or Kyrgyzstan. We are talking to one school in Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan who have been on and off are far as consistent communication. We think it looks like a good opportunity, and certainly something new and interesting, we aren't getting our hopes up yet. We are also talking to a few recruiters and schools in China, they seem a bit more hopefully. An issue we are coming up against is how early we are apply for these jobs. ESL schools don't look to hire until about 2 months before they need teachers and we are 6 months out so we are a little early. We would just like to know where we are going to live before we go vagabond around India. Is that so much to ask?

STEP 3: THE HIMALAYA OF KYRGYZSTAN AND NEPAL

Where ever we end up, China or Kyrgyzstan, we will head to the Himalaya afterwards. If we live in China we will head to Kyrgyzstan for a few weeks to hike and train and kick our selves into better shape. Also, this will give us an opportunity to train at a higher altitude. 

This is where Kyrgyzstan is if you are wondering

After exploring the old Soviet stomping ground we will head to Nepal! This (if all goes to plan, which it won't) will be around October/November 2013 so almost a year from now. Oh man, that is so far away! We plan to spend over a month here exploring the mountains and getting our trek on. We hope to first go explore the Annapurna region and then head over to the Everest region and hike to the city of Gokyo. We don't have much interest in Everest Base Camp. If I'm not climbing the mountain than I don't care about saying that I have been on it. There are plenty of other awesome and places to go. Plus, we will hopefully avoid some crowds. 

STEP 4: SOUTH EAST ASIA

After several months of backpacking and living in the wilds and towns and villages of the Himalaya we will be ready for a beach vacation so we will hop on a plane in Kathmandu and fly to Hanoi, Vietnam! This being December-ish, 2013. We then plan to spend 6-months making our way by land from Northern Vietnam to Bali, Indonesia. The planned route being to head down the Vietnam coast, do a figure 8 in Cambodia, follow the Mekong River along the Laotian/Thai boarder and into Northern Laos, cross over into Thailand and work our way down to Bangkok, hop on a plane to Myanmar for 2 weeks, fly back, head down the peninsula and into Malaysia, stop over in Singapore, catch a flight to either Sumatra or Java in Indonesia and work our way east to Bali.  

After all of this we will finally got on a plane somewhere and head HOME!

This time line gets us home about April/May, 2013. Given this all works, we will have been gone 2 and a half years. If we include our trip to New Zealand, we will only have been home for 3 months in over 3 years. I imagine at this point we will be very ready to come home and see all of our friends and family. We miss everyone and being able to just call or make plans with people. This is our adventure though and we love it, for now, those are just the things we have to do with out. Unless anyone wants to come visit us of course!!! 

So that is the plan. We have spent the year planning, budgeting, saving, researching, and re-budgeting over and over again and we are pretty sure we can make it happen. If it works, fantastic, if it doesn't, we tried. We are thinking big and setting out to make it happen because thats the only way it will. Now, all we have to do is survive Korea.

Yesou World Expo 2012

     Hello again and welcome to another much belated blogpost. More so belated than the last. So one of the major events happening in South Korea during our time was the World Expo. This is an evolution of the worlds fair that is held every 4-5 years or so (I think). South Korea was very excited to host this event and went all out. It was held in the city of Yesou on the south central cost and only a few hours from Mokpo. They essentially built a little city for this event. What they will do with it afterwards, I have no idea. We headed down to Yesou World Expo 2012 to see what all the commotion was about!

We arrived in Yesou and hoped a ride on one of the several free shuttles buses the city has running and got to the expo right away. It is right on the water and looks like it was built in the year 3030. All the buildings are enormous and silver. Not really having much of an idea what to see in the expo we headed for the this giant building in front of us as we walked in. 

This is the International Pavilion (where we end up spending most of our time). The theme of this years expo is the ocean. Particularly, how countries are working to save the ocean and preserve it. The international pavilion had, well, smaller pavilions, from loads of different countries showcasing their relationship with the ocean as well as their culture. Some were really fun, informational, or interesting while others (I'm looking at you Brunei) where incredible boring. Some pavilions even had restaurants which was awesome. 

We spent the majority of the day just cruising along to different pavilions. It was fun to see different countries and talk to the people working there. Every country had people sent out to represent them here so it wasn't all Koreans manning the ship.

Pakistan's pavilion really focused on how they are not all the evil fundamentalists the western media portrays them as.  I actually really want to go to Pakistan. 

Lindsey posing with the cast of the Bollywood version of Finding Nemo

This was a Buddhist shine built in the Sri Lankian Pavilion 

Our very delicious and expensive Belgium waffle. Thanks Belgium. 

The Expo looking like the set of The Jetsons

Man using his smartphone as a sign, they can do everything.

Within an hour of so we had been to India, Egypt, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, and more. We were traveling at a record setting pace. None of those countries were sporting lines to enter though. So when we saw that Kazakstan had a good sized one, we asked why. It was because they had a performance with dancers and music. Given most of the line went in for the next show we hoped in the que. As we walked in we were greeted with this hallway.

Yeah. Awesome.

Dance part in Kazakstan!

Kazak dancers

The Kazakstan performance was really nice and we enjoyed it a lot. It was one of the most unique pavilions. This may or may not be due to the fact that they are hosting the next Expo in Asanta, Kazakstan in 2015 or so. So if you find yourself in Kazakstan around that time, go check out the Expo. It will hopefully have lots of dance party hallways. 

We then headed to Denmark. Although we have no pictures Denmark was one of our favorites. They had a circular room explaining, in detail, what programs they had in place to protect the ocean and their environment. They plan to be fossil fuel free in 20 years. The pavilion was more informational than most. Most talked about their love for the ocean and protecting it while never really mentioning what they were actually doing. Denmark, on the other hand, provided programs and goals that they are following through with. It was nice to see. Argentina also had a great pavilion but aside from the wave-like shape of the room they pretty much decided to ignore the ocean theme in lue of what they really care about: dancing and wine. They had a big stage with a live band and dancers putting on a great show with a bar selling Argentinian wines. Considering the monotony that set in after a while this was a welcome change.  France we didn't quite understand but it looked awesome!

Not sure what the point of this room was aside from looking really cool. 

We were getting hungry so we headed to Germany because we knew they had a restaurant. We order a sampler of different sausages with mashed potatoes and sauerkraut. Oh, and beer. Because when a German asks if you want a beer it is really hard to say no. We meant to take a picture before we ate but we were pretty hungry and didn't even think about pictures until we had destroyed half of this. The restaurant was pumping out these meals because everyone was ordering the same thing and we finished ours so fast that a waiter brought us over a second plate. We could have eaten it for free no problem but we try to keep good karma so we told the truth. 

This is what half-eaten German food looks like.

Cambodian band covering 'Mary had a Little Lamb' - literally

I actually could have listened to these guys play for at least an hour. 

Wall in the Philippines

The Philippines pavilion 

Creepy manikin in Australia 

Just whitewater rafting with some kangaroos in Australia

We eventually got really tired of the International Pavilion and headed outside again facing the problem of what to do at World Expo 2012. We knew of 2 main attractions: the aquarium and the Big O Show (which we will get to momentarily). We headed over toward the aquarium but there was a line as long as the US-Canada boarder and we were unwilling to participate in that so we just wondered. This being our plan until The Big O Show started that night (I can't even begin to count the euphemisms in that sentence). Anyway, we saw these little Koreans playing in a fountain. 

The Big O didn't start for several hours but thousands of people had already begun to gather and get seats for the show. We just figured we would push our way to a good spot when the time came.

The side of a building

What Lindsey would look like as a turtle

Kids in da club fountain

And here we go to The Big O Show!

The Big O Show is the nightly highlight of the Yesou Expo just as a big O is a nightly highlight for most. The difference being this is a large scale public performance. Our plan to just push our way to a good view worked, although we got yelled at a bit, but we also stumbled into some dumb luck, literally. The shows amphitheater had 2 decks and we made our way round to the top deck about 45 minutes before the show began. Since bumping into people or pushing your way through crowds is much more common here in Korea just started to make our way. Fortunately, there were 2 older men who had the same idea and we just drafted behind them as they trailblazed through the crowd. We eventually got to a decent spot. Half of the deck was sitting while the other half was standing and we reckoned sitting would be more enjoyable than standing in the crowd.

We got to the front of the standing crowd and took a minute to evaluate the best place to sit and almost immediately some guy started hitting Lindsey's bag (it probably would have been her if he could have reached her) while yelling, "NO!" I yelled back and told him not to do that in Korean (hajuma! = don't do that) and just looked at me seemingly appalled that I dare use Korean. Once we got a seat (and yelled at a second time, this time because I am tall) it began to drizzle but no one seemed to care because they were testing the Big O prior to the show and everyone was snapping pictures non-stop. I thought it was funny because the show hadn't started but no one else seemed to care. So much so that when they stop testing it about 15 minutes before the show started everyone just got up and started leaving! I couldn't believe it! We immediately took advantage of this and made our way to the very front of the center of the top deck. We officially had the best stop in the house.

As the show started people still yelled at me to sit but we just had to ignore them. Some woman stood directly behind me, about 2 feet away, while there was plenty of space elsewhere and just started poking me in the back and commanding me to sit. The show was really fun though. It was certainly a highlight. There was a smaller intro set to some U2 and Band of Horses but then the real show began. There was lights and water and fire, all big and impressive. There was some story to the show but since it was in Korean it was hard to follow. There was a little girl and some sea people of sorts. There was a bad guy made out of oil I think, but we just enjoyed the show. Here some pictures. I have some videos that I will try to post. Our blog doesn't seem to like videos.

This is after half of the people left

After the show finished thousands of people headed outside to try and get on the free shuttle buses back to their accommodations. The woman at information told us this would be very easy and she would have been right had there not been a line stretching for several city blocks of thousands of people. After a little while of trying to figure out how to avoid this line we just decided to walk to our destination. We were told it would take a little over a half hour so this was the clear choice. After a little bit stopped to ask a police officer if we were still on the right track and he informed us it would take at least an hour from where we were and he then made it his mission to get us a taxi. It took a little bit of time but pretty much ran into traffic and forced this taxi to take us so that was pretty awesome. 

Our destination was Manseong Beach. We had heard that we could just set up camp here for the night and it worked out great. We certainly weren't the only ones there though. The beach was a big local party beach and about as classy as Hampton Beach. So not that classy. It was rather ironic that not to far down the coast was a large international expo about protecting and valuing the ocean yet here we were at a dirty beach with trash lining the street. We made camp and took a walk along the road. We found a stop with picnic tables and chairs and had a couple beers before heading off to sleep. It was very satisfying and relaxing to sit by the ocean, drinking a beer, listening to the waves with the salt in the air.

After a couple Hite we headed to bed because it was late and we had had a long day but we were the only ones in town to be in bed so "early" it seemed. Until at least 4 in the morning there were people yelling and lighting off fireworks on the beach. Not the best night of camping but it was free and it worked so that is pretty good in our book.

Our spot on the beach

A relaxing night at the beach in Yeosu



Guys shooting things to win bottles of booze

The next morning we woke up early to get back to the Expo and get in line for the aquarium. They built a giant aquarium for this expo. It has a tank with 2 baluga whales! I repeat, 2 baluga whales. 1 tank. 2 whales. This thing is huge. Unfortunately, we were not the only ones with this plan. There were already hundreds of people in line when we arrived. You could enter the expo at 8 and the buildings opened at 9. When we got to the aquarium at 8:20 there was already a 5 hour line!!! In 20 minutes there was a 5 hour line! This was the major problem most had with the expo and we must agree. Aside from the International Pavilion every building had at least a 2 hour line so you would spend most of your day just standing around. Also, the information on the different pavilions was non-existant in English so we had no reason to wait 2 hours to go to the Samsung, SK, or Hyundai pavilions if we didnt know what we were waiting for.

In the end, we just said screw it and headed home. It was rainy and waiting in line for hours on end was not a welcoming thought. With a little help from a British fellow we got back to the bus terminal and ran into our friend Miranda. We chatted the whole way back on the bus and the bus driver yelled at us a lot because Korean buses should be quite (despite there being 5 people on the bus and we were 3 of them). 

Prohibited Items include Hot Air Balloons

Samsung and Hyundai Pavilions - what is inside, no one knows

In the end, the expo was fun but I wouldn't urge anyone to go if they weren't already going. It was fun and I got to eat some kebabs but we didn't need a weekend for it. The international pavilion was fun because we got to visit one country after another and it got us excited for our year of travel next year. I will talk about that in the next post though. As always, thanks for reading!