A Few Travel Notes

As I mentioned in an earlier post I'm off to North Korea this weekend. I'm not entirely sure what to expect, I'd imagine very few people know what to expect in the 'other' Korea. I'm going to resist the temptation to speculate on what I may encounter, and will instead wait for the facts to come from the actual experience. Sufficed to say, it should be a very interesting weekend.

In other news, I purchased a ticket to Beijing for my October holiday. I'll be meeting my dad there and checking out many cool things in and around Beijing. I'm also considering a third trip to China when my contract finishes; I'm toying with the idea of starting in Tibet and ending up in Bali. That would absolutely be my dream Asian trip. It would present many challenges, but that's half the fun right? Anways, keep the comments coming, especially thoughts on the Tibet-Bali idea would be appreciated.

A Sea of Red

Utter insanity is the only way to describe it. I have never seen any place (town, city, province, country) grind to a halt the way Korea did for the Reds opening match of the 2006 World Cup. The game began at 10pm local time, after finishing work at 8:15 I met my friend Terry and we headed out for some dinner. Walking into the market area near where I work and he lives was like walking into a sea of red, everyone had Korea jerseys on. We grabbed a quick bite and proceeded to look for a good place to watch the game. There were many screens on the streets, practically at every storefront, be we decided we'd rather sit in a pub and enjoy the match the proper way... six bars later (in a small suburb of Seoul) we were finally able to get a seat in the back of a bar called Solle. By kickoff the bar was packed, and the soju was flowing (for the Koreans, Terry and I had a light night, long tournament after all). Togo scored first and I'm pretty sure you could here the gasp from Jeju to the DMZ. The second half was a different story, Korea scored twice after a Togolese red card... the place went crazy after the tying goal, and absolutely wild after what eventually became the winning goal. At the final whistle free beers for everyone in the bar were the order of the day, and I wasn't about to complain. Terry, Mike (who joined us for the second half), and myself stuck around for a bit to finish our fried chicken and free beer and were taught one of the Korean national cheers (which we already all knew) by a very... enthusiastic (to put it politely) woman from the table next to us. It was an interesting experience to be sure. I think everyone should try to be in a soccer-mad nation for at least one World Cup, it's an event unlike any other... but what if Korea wins? I think you may be able to hear us in BC...

The madness of the beautiful game

As you all well know the World Cup has begun (I'm writing this in the one hour break between the Australia/Japan game and USA/Czech Rep.) and Korea is into it. As most of my audience is Canadian, I'll put it in Canuck terms; think of Olympic hockey... and multiply by ten. Every game is on at least three tv channels here, I'm not normally allowed to where jeans to work, but am allowed to if I wear a red(the team colour) t-shirt supporting Korea, even my kindergarten kids know what's going on. Not to mention walking into any store and seeing more red than Moscow circa May 1 1946. The level of passion in the average person for soccer here is unbelievable... and Korea hasn't even taken the pitch yet! Names like Park Ji-sung and Lee-young Pyo seen to appear in every other sentence on the street. Stadiums built for the last world cup are sold out; simply to watch the games on big screens. I can't wait to see how nuts this country goes when the Reds play Togo tomorrow night...