Nine months in....

Ok, so I've now been in Korea for nine months. This means I have another three months left in my contract so I have to decide what to do when I finish. Like most people who decide to come to Korea, I'm not just staying for a year. I've decided to renew my contract for another year with my current employer so break out the tissues cause I won't be home for Christmas (again). On the plus side, I'm still enjoying my job and we've just begun the fourth semester that I've worked here.

In case I didn't mention, my team Lokomotiv Goyang won our league last season. This was followed by a night of festivities, the details of which I wont go into (mostly because I don't remember.) We've had the whole summer off since to get drunk, out of shape and fat, and many of us have succeeded in doing at least two of the three. We then had a 5-aside blitz, hosted by us a few weeks ago where our team came second in a world cup style one day tournament of 16 teams. This was also followed by some revelry, where once again, the details of which I won't divulge. Also, the new season has begun, and as a result of our hectic summer and some players absences, we lost our first game and drew the second. Don't ask me how....

Apart from those couple of intense nights of partying, the summer has been a relatively relaxed one, working during the week and on the weekends I've generally just been sitting outside the 7/11 drinking beers and playing cards (not as 1920s gangster as it sounds, it's legal to drink in the street and the convenience stores actually provide you with plastic deck chairs and tables!), which has been a cheap (or should i say, cheaper) alternative to the bars. One thing I will say though is that I'm getting pretty fed up with crappy Korean beer. Max, Hite, Cass, Cafri, the label doesn't matter, they all taste the same. I'll never take Bavaria for granted again.

On the exciting side of life, I've lots of events coming up in the next month. This weekend I'm going to a Beer-fest held by a micro brewery, 14 hours of all you can drink beer and with 6 different beers on the menu, it should be a good day. Also, the following weekend it's foreigner day in the World cup stadium. Two K league teams face off and for 10,000 won (EUR 6) you get to watch a football match in the wonderful world cup stadium, and if that wasn't enough, you also get a free hot dog and a beer. All for being a foreigner......Cheers Korea! Then, on the 22nd of September (which just happens to be by birthday) is Chuseok, the harvest festival. This is a three day festival so most people have Tuesday - Thursday off work. My school were cool enough to give me Friday off too so some friends and I are going island hopping in the south sea islands. Basically what I'm saying is my next post wont be so boring....

Speaking of boring, check out these guys:

Boracay and Borneo

A brief synopsis of my holidays:

Last week my buddy Chris from back home in Carpenterstown, came over to Seoul to visit me on his holidays. He arrived on a Wednesday and with little haste, I brought him out to a Galbi (Korean BBQ) resteraunt and, more importantly, the pubs. I'm not usually accustomed to drinking during the week, so during the course of his first night here, I proceeded to get enormously inebriated. We played darts and pool as we hopped from one bar to the next drinking crappy Korean beer and talking absolute bollox. The following day in work was not nearly so much fun. The next night however, a friend of mine's brother arrived in from the states so we all decided to meet up. After a few games of cards it was decided that the best bet for the night would be a Norebang (Korean karaoke room) which was a lot of fun, if for nothing other then the ridiculous spectacle of it. Sufficed to say, we weren't sober leaving and the following day in work would be another struggle.

The next night, Chris and I boarded a flight bound for Manila. Seeing as we arrived in late and had a flight the following day, we decided to get some accomodation near the airport and just had a few beers near our hostel. The next day we flew to Caticlan and jumped on a ferry to the beautiful island of Boracay. We also bumped into a few American and Canadian English teachers working in Seoul whom we hung around with for the following two days and nights which basically involved a lot of swimming and drinking. Occasionally I will admit, the two paths did cross. The beach-side bars are a perfect way to kill a few hours during the day in gorgeous surroundings and the nightlife on Boracay would rival most places I've been to. Also, did I mention it's dirt cheap? A bottle of local brewed San Miguel costs 35 Pesos (€1 = 60 Pesos) during happy hour (4pm - 9pm, don't ask me why..) and an extortianate 45 Pesos after. In the words of the Terminator, I'll be going there again.
After our too brief stint in Boracay we flew to Kota Kinabalu (where I hear you ask) in Sabah in Malaysian Borneo. We had one night here and since we had another night here soon, we decided to take it easy and show the locals how to play pool over a couple of beers. After losing most of the games, we slumped up to bed to get a relatively early night.

The following day we jumped on a flight for Gunung Mulu national park. This park is home to the largest cave passage in the world, made famous by the BBC's Planet Earth. In case you're wondering, it's the one in the episode called "Caves". As we flew in it was really spectacular, as there is nothing but rainforest for hundreds of kilometers. When we arrived into the airport (a runway and a tiny building) we were taken to our resort (which we had to book, as all the accomodation in the park HQ was booked up). It seemed really nice, though geared more towards elderly Dutch and German couples who seemed to be the only other people staying there. Needless to say, we didn't get up to much the first night.The next day we set off for a walk through the jungle to the canopy walk, the biggest one in Asia which goes on for about half a kilometer 30 meters above the ground. After the canopy walk we went towards Deer Cave (the big-un, the above picture. If you open it in a new tab you can see in the bottom left corner, the walkway in to the cave, to get some perspective on the size of it). Upon arriving there we were dissapointed to find out that in the last year, two larger caves have been found in Vietnam and Brazil. Still, it was spectacular as it is home to an estimated 3 to 5 million bats. You can hear them before you can see the cave, and let me tell you, there's a lot of guano in there. There are literally huge hills of nothing but bat shit and cave cockroaches. Quite the sight. After that we were lucky enough to see the exodus of all the bats from the cave before it got dark. After a long day we didn't get up to much, just had a couple of beers in the bar and left when the Germans started singing karaoke.
The next day as we were waiting for our flight, the heavens opened. It began raining so heavily, you couldn't see more than 15 ft in front of you. Unsurprisingly (in retrospect) the flight was cancelled. This basically meant that we were kind of fucked. We were stuck in the middle of nowhere, we had missed another night in Kota Kinabalu and worst of all, we had a flight to Kuala Lumpur the following morning which we had no chance of making. We didn't even know if the rain would stop and there'd be any flights the following day. The airline told us that they'd put everyone who missed the flight up in the reort and send details as they got them to the resort. So we decided to do the only sensible thing. We went swimming in the pool in the resort (we were getting wet anyway) and after our free dinner, we found a tin can shack beside the resort that sold beer and we got occified.

The rain eased off around 7am and we were lucky enough to get on the flight the next day back to Kota Kinabalu. We immediatly booked new flights to Kuala Lumpur. I was supposed to be flying from Kuala Lumpur to Siem Reap but decided to book new flights in case more flights were delayed and I'd miss a day of school. I booked an overnight transfer from KL to Shanghai and then on to Seoul. I departed Chris as we got to KL, changed airports and got on my flight to Shanghai. Safe at last. Or so I thought. When I arrived in Shanghai I had 1hr 40 mins to check in again to my connecting flight. But because of the morons in customs who entered in my wrong flight details, I literally checked in with 2 minutes to spare. If I had of missed it I was screwed, stuck in Shanghai with no money, no credit card (it expired that day) and no Chinese visa. After I went through to the boarding gate, I learned that although the check in counter closed on time, the flight was delayed by 40 minutes. Typical. I boarded the delayed flight and after 30 hours of travel, 5 flights, 7 airports and about 20 minutes sleep, I was eventually back in Seoul.
A great holiday but somewhat tainted by the stress of being stuck in the middle of the rainforest in Borneo. Although, when I put it like that, it sounds kinda cool....