Monday, May 21, 2012

Its been awhile....again

Yo-

Havent posted in awhile again, no good excuse really. We spent this last weekend at Daecheon Beach, it was nice. This place is known for their mud. The mud in this town/beach apparently is really high in minerals and vitamins that are good for the skin...every year they have a mud festival, its a big deal, you should google it:)
In the above picture Liam is enjoying an ice cream cone that was purchased by the parents of the children behind him, a very nice gesture that was. Liam was the only shirtless person on the beach. It appears they are very conservative when it comes to showing skin. Everyone I saw jumping in the water was fully clothed.....we saw a group of Americans strut down the walkway at the beach in skimpy bikinis, they stuck out like sore thumbs! Kind of embarrassing...

Just about every restaurant in the town was a seafood restaurant and when I say seafood its not what you're thinking...It is stuff you have never seen for the most part. They have these tanks in front of all the restaurants and they kill whatever you want to eat and go cook it for you....we went with blue crab, sounded great til it came out. Four large crabs were given to us and that was that. We couldnt determine what to eat and what not to eat. I mean there was roe, lungs, some really gross brown @#%. We were at pizza hut two hours later.....starving. So we order a pizza, I wanted to go with a large but we settled on a regular and some wings. We got a pizza that was the size of a butter plate with six wings and some sweet pickles??? I wanted to throw the pizza in the river! How could that be considered regular size?! Oh right Koreans wouldnt eat a whole large pizza by themselves like some of us. And by us I mean me....

Our train ride there was interesting....there were no seats left so we got "standing room". That meant standing in the bathroom, literally. How cozy....we managed to snag a couple floor "seats" on the next stop. You just have to fight fire with fire and start pushing, not in my nature really but after a half hour standing in a shitter you would be surprised what you will bring yourself to do....we fought our way into the cafe car and actually a couple nice hikers let us have their floor space, it was very nice of them. I offered them some pringles in exchange for their nice gesture but they insisted I eat them, they must have thought I looked like I hadnt eaten in awhile. :) Heres a picture of our accommodations on the floor....
The picture below is of Liam on the way back from the beach....this was the subway portion of our trip, not the train portion. Liam snagged a seat and was insisting the girl next to him look at "his" phone. Pretty funny, she was trying to sleep and he was holding the phone an inch away from her nose....
And the final picture is of the elusive E Mart....its the Korean Wal Mart but much much nicer than Wal Mart...they have very nice merchandise. We have heard of E Mart many times but never have come across one til this weekend....glad we did. They have a great grocery store, clothes, toys, sporting goods....okay thats all, until next time...



Wednesday, April 18, 2012

Wednesday night in Southeast Asia

Hello-

Its been awhile so I should get back to keeping my legion of follwers in the loop about whats going on in Korea. Let's see what has transpired in the last week or so:
  • North Korea failed miserably at launching a rocket into space (admittedly so) which is good. Glad that little moment of tension is over with. Honestly there was no tension whatsoever here. I am sure after 60 years or almost 60 years of living next door to those nut jobs the South Koreans learn to go about their business and not worry about whats going on up North. 
  • I found a good website to watch playoff hockey, too bad the Wings are about to get bounced. Fingers crossed.
  • We may get a little moped to cruise around on. If we get something under 50 cc's we can get away with cruising the mean streets of Pyeongtaek without a license and what not. We can get a basket and just strap Liam up front (kidding, kidding) It would be just for Myndi or myself to run errands, store, gym whatever....Liam is restricted to stroller and train only.
  • I have come down with some weird cough, I think its officially known as the Korean crud. It only comes at night. It wakes the house up. I am going to go to the DR and ask whats wrong with me. Only happens at night. Weird.
  • The weather has finally warmed up here. We went to Seoul this past weekend for a cherry blossom festival. The cherry blossoms werent out in full effect but good enough to snap a few pics. They had some street food vendors and what not, including bugs! They had bugs for sale in the street. They appeared to be popular. I didnt pull the trigger on any though. I got a hamburger instead of bugs. 
  • We discovered that Koreans know how to make some mean, mean fried chicken. I dont even eat fried chicken and this stuff is amazing. Ironically the restaurant is called SakuSaku. For those of you not in the loop Saku is one of our dogs. So its a weird ironic twist. The whole Koreans eat dogs thing. Which isnt true. But they eat really good fried chicken at a restaurant named after our dog. Weird. 
 So thats about all for now. I will attach a few pics from recent adventures.......talk to everyone soon.











Sunday, April 8, 2012

Liams Easter

Here's a video of Liam getting his good on Easter morning...

Sunday in Suwon

So we decided to get some brunch for Easter and head up to Suwon, specifically the Hwaseong Fortress which is located right in the middle of the city. It was pretty amazing. Here are a few pics.....







































It was quite the climb to get up to the top of this place. Its definitely someplace we will come see again. Not sure exactly what the history is behind it, something to read more about. It is impressive though. The city was really big, basically every way you looked from this huge fortress looked like the picture directly above. City for miles and miles.

For 2000 won (2 bucks roughly) I got to toll that big bell three times. That was pretty cool. Its just neat to see something so impressive and think there are so many places in the world that are as equally impressive and we just don't get to see. Here's a little video of it as well......