Go fly a kite!

There have been a lot of festivals lately, eh? A couple of weeks ago Gwangalli Beach hosted the Oedong festival. I saw signs for this festival throughout March but they didn't give any indication of what the festival involves.

People brought their dogs, of course. This one not only has wings, but also a teeny tiny little bow on its head.


This is the best example of a dyed dog I've seen, and it's wearing little booties!


It was a windy day and lots of people had kites. Somebody took this further.

This line of kites stretched far into the sky, and there was a box on the beach with many more that he didn't put up (the existing line of kites swooped down and interfered with the "Oedong Festival" sigh that was suspended with balloons over the water.)

The festival included booths with demonstrations of pulleys and basketmaking, and free samples of kimchi and makalli (Korean rice wine--it's really good.) There was also a dance representing a bullfight.



The brown bull won.

Use a little muscle

A few weeks ago I visited the Cheongdo Bull Fighting Festival. It's nothing like Spanish bullfighting, and instead the bulls fight each other. Or sometimes they don't.

Korea really likes tourists. You'll see this if you arrive in Seoul, where the airport even has a culture museum and free arts and crafts for foreigners. I went to the festival with a few other foreigners, and we were greeted at the train station by people who handed us English brochures and told us how to get to the festival (a taxi is expensive--here, let me walk you two blocks to the bus station!)

The most inviting thing on the brochure was the "Magic Show of Levitation." So we saw that. The first part was this guy, who danced around regally while his mask changed colors and then disappeared. It's a difficult thing to capture in a picture.



Then some guys came out in bull suits to help with the levitation part. First, a little boy was levitated, but he started crying so they started over with another volunteer. The bulls removed the supports and look: there's nothing holding up the platform!



Also they had coconuts! Here is Pete using the official Coconut Skewer to make a straw hole. After drinking the juice, we broke them open on the concrete and ate with our hands.



And then my camera battery died... this is what happens when I start using my camera again suddenly. Shame on me.

Here's a good picture that I stole from the Internet:


So what happens is this: two bulls are led into a ring by handlers. The bulls are pulled together, face to face, by ropes through their nose rings. Like magnets, they suddenly lock horns and push each other back and forth until one of them turns around and jogs away. The other bull is the winner!

The bull fights were done by weight, so that the largest bulls fought last. For the last three fights though, the veteran bulls did not even fight. One bull would give up before they touched, and the other was declared the winner (to much booing.)

Spring, spring, spring!

Korea gets very excited about cherry blossoms every spring. I mentioned something about the cherry blossoms in Japan being famous, and my students were shocked that Japan even *had* cherry blossoms. It was as if I told them Japan has four seasons too. I mean, Korea *invented* having four seasons!

For a couple of weeks Jangyu was full of them. I didn't realize that most of the trees that line the streets here are cherry blossom trees until they all exploded in pink.





The blossoms blew away, and now the trees are green and the weather is finally warm. The yellow dust also blew in from China, so my eyes are burning, but spring's still better than winter.

carnival

In Ban Phe, I stopped at Christies in Ban Phe for some curry and to say hello to Oui and Chan and everyone.


Look, it's Oui! I forgot how tall I am in Thailand.

I went to Bedrock for the fried red curry with prawns and long beans (this trip is about 90% about the food, I think.) I also saw Aum.


The carnival was in Ban Phe too. Unlike last time, the carnies constructed the roller coaster with no extra parts, and there was *not* a baby in a hammock underneath it. There was a ferris wheel.


Then I went back to Bangkok.

Everybody had a hard year, everybody had a good time.

Yikes. It's been over a month with no blog posts at all. I've been to Thailand and back, but let's start where I left off, which was the start of 2011.

The start of the year was great. I rang it in at HQ Bar with some lovely ladies and live music...

(Yes, Autumn and I wore matching dresses)

And Pete.

(I was making that face in nearly every picture from that evening.)

In Korea, people don't pay much attention to midnight and instead the start of the year is celebrated by watching the sunrise. I was going to try...but couldn't stay up that long. It was still a good start to the year.

you can get anything you want

I didn't celebrate Thanksgiving a month late; I just wrote about it a month late!

Some rad people (from BELLINGHAM) hosted a Thanksgiving party on the Saturday after the holiday. There was turkey. And pie. (They have Costco in Korea, so it was a lot like home.)

Here we are, fat and sleepy:


Thanksgiving festivities included some party games (which went from charades to more "we don't have to stand up to play this!" question and answer games as the day went on) and American tv shows! We made a list of things for which we are thankful, and took a picture, and it was good. Happy really late Thanksgiving, all.

Fire in the Sky!

Friday and Saturday evenings I climbed onto Autumn's roof to watch the Busan International Fireworks Festival. It's the biggest fireworks show I've ever seen.



This is the beach early in the afternoon. It is roped off at the tide line; otherwise it would be completely full. There was a huge crowd, and I was glad to be on the roof.


That's one of the barges used for the fireworks.

The view was only obscured a little bit by buildings.









And here's a half-minute video of part of the finale.

It's getting near dawn

Saturday was the last night of my extended Chuseok holiday. Autumn and I took a walk on the beach (as usual… I was so spoiled by this whole thing.)

It was like the last day of summer. When I got back to work on Monday the students had all switched to their Fall uniforms, adding sweater vests and switching from gray to black. But Autumn and I made the most of this, and she showed me this great Indian restaurant with little curtained-off tables surrounded by pillows on the floor.

They offered these appetizery things that resemble cheetos, but with caramel instead of cheese. They’re fantastic.


Autumn thought so too.


It was a great Saturday, with dancing and live music and pool and more dancing. When Autumn and I got back to her apartment, I gasped at the sky “is that the DAWN?” Yes, Emily. That’s the dawn.

The Autumn moon lights my way.

Chuseok is the Korean Thanksgiving. I got four days off of school and spent the week with Autumn in Busan.

I worked just the Monday of Chuseok week, and the principal and head teacher gave me presents for the holiday. This was my Chuseok haul:



That’s six cans of tuna packed in oil, two bottles of canola oil, some hand cream and body wash. Most people spent Chuseok visiting family in rural parts of Korea, but I left on Tuesday to go make sandcastles on the beach.


Sometimes there’s a pirate ship.


The moon was full and Le Pot was magnificent.


Autumn and I took an evening walk to the fitness area at the end of the beach. Two of the giant hula hoops had mated, forming the biggest hula hoop ever seen ‘round these parts.

Rocket, man!

On Sunday I hopped on a bus to Vang Vieng.



I found myself saying, "It's only a three hour bus trip! That's nothing!" And it was. Where Ryan and I were the only falang on the cramped trip from Rayong to Nong Khai, this bus was all falang. And it actually smelled like dirty hippie. Very unpleasant. I checked into a guesthouse, and a loud shot went off across the street while the receptionist was handing me my key. We both jumped. I had arrived in Vang Vieng on Rocket Day!

I found my room and took a shower for some reason (showers in Laos are not effective unless administered just before sprawling naked under a fan and not moving for the rest of the day) and then ventured down to the base of most of the vapor trails.

I crossed this rickety bridge.



And ventured through the festival to the river.


Yeah, that's a rocket on the van.

Present Emily is very grateful to Past Emily for the purse umbrella, by the way.





The river was nice and cool, and surrounded by gumdrop mountains. I stood about knee deep, holding my rainbow polka-dot umbrella and eating an ice cream cone. Random people drifted under my umbrella's shade and thanked me for it. And there were rockets.



They're supposed to make it rain, and they worked.

Rubber tommy water gun

Ban Phe celebrated Songkran on Friday. In the morning, the school staff rode in a songthaew down to our base in town. The streets were so crowded with pickup trucks full of people that the songthaew crawled along the road at a speed that let townsfolk board it to throw water on us. We set up shop in front of a hair salon with a giant tank of water and some freshly delivered ice.



Songkran is a fantastic holiday. Pickup trucks full of people rode slowly by and we splashed them and they splashed us. People politely came up to each other and smear colored powder on one anothers faces, so that you alternate between caked-with-paste and rinsed clean.





There was a big wet dance party in the heat in front of Christie's restaurant. People let loose like I've never seen people let loose in Ban Phe! It was fantastic.

When it rains and shines

In Ban Phe, Songkran will be biggest on Friday, but my first attack was on Monday. It's grown since then. There are mobile and stationary groups of children and adults, and both have advantages. Stationary groups are easier to refill, usually have fresh ice and less spillage, and access to hoses. Mobile groups (almost always a barrel of water, a dozen or so people, and scoops and water guns in the back of a pick-up truck) can attack without warning, and from higher up, though they tend to be less efficient at reloading.

As an unarmed pedestrian, I got soaked by both.

Here, a stationary team and a mobile team soak each other. Those folks on the street had giant floating blocks of ice in their buckets.



On Friday, the staff of Siam English Training School will all take part and douse people together.

I really dig those styles they wear

Songkran festival is the traditional Thai New Year. Those who have heard about it in the west know that it's during the hottest part of the year, and people celebrate by throwing ice-cold water on one another. One thing I didn't know until last week is that Songkran is also Ugly Floral Shirt Week.

To celebrate properly, one must first purchase jaunty shirts from one of the many shops around Ban Phe.



Choosing a shirt is a difficult process. Do you try for the least-ugly ugly shirt and make it look presentable? Or should you instead choose the ugliest shirt available, to demonstrate to others that you embrace ugly shirt week fully? I tried for a less-ugly ugly shirt. Unfortunately, the prints are the only negotiable part. All shirts are big ugly rectangles.

The next challenge is trying to look presentable (unless you're just embracing the ugly, which is admirable.)







These were my three best attempts with my less-ugly ugly shirt. I chose the last one.

But what happened when I went outside?

Doin' all right

There are some scary things happening in Bangkok right now, and I'm keeping up with it at the Bangkok Post, but it's now on a lot of the Western news sites. Ban Phe remains serene. I spent the weekend on the island, again, and was surprised to learn what was happening when I returned.

This town is preparing for Songkran, the third New Year of the year. Luckily I've got a waterproof camera.

Just a spoonful of sugar

A Welshman, an Englishman and an American were having a drink.

At first they talked about cars and farms, and true to form, the American had the swankiest car and the biggest farm. Then they got to talking about children's names.

'My son was born on St David's Day', remarked the Welshman, 'So - look you, we obviously Christened him David.'

'That's a real coincidence', observed the Englishman', My son was born on Michaelmas Day, 29th of September, so we decided to call him Michael.'

'That's remarkable', piped up the American, 'Exactly the same thing happened with my son Pancake.'

Being generally oblivious, and also (unrelatedly) from America, I thought this joke was hilarious before I learned from my lovely British ambassador Annie that there is actually a Pancake Day in Britain! I realized, of course, that it must be the best holiday ever.

And it coincides with our Mardi Gras. And so after being reminded that it was actually pancake day by the other Brit in my office, the lovely Bec, I went all the way to Tesco to buy pancake ingredients, and Tim made us pancakes and we ate them and it was the best pancake day ever!

First we mixed up an ancient pancake day recipe. I can't relay the whole thing, but it involves handfuls and dashes and so forth, so you can tell it's authentic.



And we had an assortment of toppings, including lime juice and sugar, marmalade, strawberry jam, and real maple flavoured syrup (with a U in it and everything.)



We presently persuaded Bert to partake in our Pancake Day provender.



A bit, anyway.