A Chill in the Air

Fall has arrived in Seoul, I had to figure how to turn the heat on in my apartment, and spicy soup dinners can once again be enjoyed without sweating through all clothing. However my time in Seoul is very short now, I've got all my flights set and leave Nov. 6. For those of you interested here is a partial itinerary:

Nov. 6 leave Seoul and arrive in Chiang Mai, Thailand via Hong Kong and Bangkok. The next week will be taken up by chilling out in Chiang Mai, possibly spending a night or two in some smaller mountain town, and most certainly a two or three day trek into the hills to visit the 'hill tribes' (Karen, Hmong, Ahka, Lahu, etc.).

Nov. 14 leave Chiang Mai for the dark territory of Yangon, Myanmar. I'll spend the next two weeks in this country well off the beaten path. My schedule here will be looser, I'm sure transportation will not always be ideal, to say the least. Ideally I'd like to visit Yangon, Mandalay, Bagan, and Inle Lake or Hsipaw but we'll see what happens.

Nov. 28 leave Yangon bound for Phnom Penh and a holiday in Cambodia. My plans will probably not stray too much from Phnom Penh and Angkor/Siem Reap. I'd love to get up into Preah Vihear, but it all depends on time, cost, and road conditions.

For all of the above I will be on my own, and it should be quite an experience but on Dec. 10th all that will change. On that glorious Sunday I fly to Saigon to meet my compadre Andrew. From there we will explore Vietnam, probably focusing more on the northern regions around Hanoi before crossing into Laos and visiting Luang Prabang. As long as I'm back in Bangkok by Dec. 31st it will be a great trip.

So that's that... and the rest of the Beijing stuff is coming, really it is.

A Few Notes

Firstly, if you're tired of reading my blog, or want more from Canadians that are, or have been, teaching in Korea check these sites out:

seoulpurpose.blogspot.com

yonnybee.blogspot.com

mickileepaul.com/blog/

As for a non-blog website, check this one out if you like Asian food: asiafood.org

Secondly, I'm rather looking forward to my trip to Southeast Asia and have been trying to think of some of the all-time best movies set in the region. So far I've come up with these:

Air America
Good Morning Vietnam
Apocalypse Now
The Year of Living Dangerously
The Killing Fields
Bridge Over the River Kwai

Thats a start, but would like to encourage you to post a comment with any appropriate additions to the list. Remember, they need to be set in Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, Myanmar, Thailand, Indonesia, or Malaysia to qualify. Thanks.

Finally another installment of my Beijing tales should be up in the very near future.

Dateline: Beijing, head-on

We awoke on Monday morning and, after a leisurely and unspectacular hotel breakfast, decided to head for Tiananmen (the gate sotuh of The Foribidden City, not the square) and The Forbidden City. Thankfully our hotel was a mere twenty minute walk from Tiananmen. While successfully navigating the broad avenues of Beijing the streets were becoming more and more crowded, when we got close to the gate the concept of elbow room had left us about six blocks back. Now I'm used to the crowds of Seoul, but this even made me feel cramped for space. It would not surprise me if 100 000 people passed by Tiananmen that day. Tiananmen is a famous place, most of you would probably recognize the giant painting of Mao that hangs on the wall, and the top of the gate was where he proclaimed the birth of the People's Republic of China in 1949, and is a mandatory photo op for the Chinese. We climbed up to the top of the gate and looked out on the sea of people below, and across the road in Tiananmen Square and could instantly believe that 1.3 billion people call the PRC home.

After that we made our way into the Forbidden City and the crowds began to thin out, China is a poor country and admission wasn't cheap. It was quite an impressive complex of buildings, life as a Ming or Qing emperor would have been very posh. Unfortunately a couple of the larger buildings were being restore before the 2008 Olympics, and we were unable to go in. After we'd wandered around for a couple hours we exited to the north, went into a park whose name I can'e recall, climbed a hill and had some excellent views of The Forbidden City. By this time heading back to the hotel for some food and sleep was priority one.

After regrouping with a good night's sleep we decided to head straight back into the heart of Beijing, and check out the area around Tiananmen Square. The plan was to hit Mao's masoleum, the Great Hall of the People, Chinese History Museum, Monument to the People's Heroes, and the square itself. Mao's final resting place was the first stop, but Mao was closed that day... and the soldiers inside the compound were busy playing basketball. Next we tried to get into the Great Hall of the People... it was closed as well. This was probably the biggest disappointment of the whole trip, it's supposed to be quite a cool building for anyone with a sense of modern Chinese history. Next we decided to climb a gate at the south end of Tiananmen Square, and it gave some amazing views of the world's largest public square. Then we decided to amble across the square and check out the Chinese History Museum; only half of that was closed. However I did get to see was replicas of Bill Gates, Michael Jordan, David Beckham, and Hu Jintao among others. The Musuem of the Chinese Revolution is in the same building, and seemed to be quite interesting, but there was no English at all.

Despite a couple unfortunate closures these first two days in Beijing were good ones. They provided a nice contrast of old and new Beijing, and the old and new China. In more ways than one those two Chinas still sit astride each other, and are hurtling into the future together, for better or worse.

Dateline: Beijing, initiation

"We need total coverage!" - Lacerda, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas by Hunter S. Thompson.

In the spirit of the above quote I've decided to break up my tales from Beijing into a currently indeterminate (probably 3 or 4) number of entries. It was most certainly a fantastic, and it was great to see my dad... and have a whole week off work. Beijing was a city I wanted to visit for a number of years. For me it was the essence of historical China; that great eastern power that us in the west can barely comprehend, let alone completely understand. I know I'm not even close to being able to comprehend China, but I'm going to try and articulate some of my experiences in Beijing with no specific goal. If I can offer a little bit of insight into this fascinating city, even better!

I landed in Beijing and emerged from forty-five minutes of customs, etc. to a sea of people. Unfortunately the driver I had been expecting was not among them. I waited around the terminal for a while, and eventually bought a $20 phonecard and called my hotel, wondering where the driver was. They said there had been a mis-understanding (more on this later) and they would send a driver right away... then the phone wouldn't give me my card back; $20 for a 3min. phone call. Eventually my driver arrived and was very apologetic, even sporting a conciliatory cell phone charm. After a quick ride into the city I arrived at my Ming-dynasty guesthouse, and quickly learned that my reservation had been cancelled because my father, who was scheduled to arrive the day before, had not shown up yet.

Thankfully I was able to secure a different room and immediately hit the internet room, trying to figure out what vortex my dad had inadvertently slipped into. Rather quickly it became clear that he had forgotten that he was travelling over the dateline and had made the reservations a day early. These things happen. He did eventually arrive, and after an average dinner and an above-average scotch we began to plan our assault on the megaopolis that is Beijing.