10 June 2014
Yes, this is the flag of South Korea - a red Yin/Yang symbol in the center of a white flag, surrounded by black lines that symbolize basic combinations from the I Ching.
Yes, we are in a very foreign country, where we can't read most of the signs, we don't know the language (although we've learned to say "good morning" - it's sort of "choe notchim" but almost like "Joe not Jim").
We've met a few people who speak a little English, and we're managing. This definitely is an adventure!
Our neighbourhood has very interesting manhole covers and symbols on the road - don't you love this little spigot cartoon figure? I'm not sure if he's saying the open end is on the right, or just cautioning anyone who might dig up the road, or what. He's just cute.
And there are all the rest of the lovely manhole covers, some in multiple colours! Of course, with 
all those manhole covers, we also found the manhole cover store!
In addition to the great manhole covers in this part of town, Dongdaemun-Gu seems to be the neighbourhood for car repairs and detailing. Really, there seems to be a garage on every corner, with tire stores, car painting shops, car seat vendors, and who knows what else - everywhere! Barely any other kind of store! There are various jacks set up along the side of an intersection, possibly for do-it-yourself car repairs - you can buy your car part, pull over on the side of the road, jack the car up, and put in the new car part. (Or maybe there are free-lance mechanics who do this, we aren't sure.)
I found a shop that specializes in taillights, which makes for a great display. Much prettier than the headlight store next door. Or the muffler store a few shops down the road. Really, that's what our neighbourhood looks like. With a few random hotels scattered around, and apartment buildings upstairs from all the car part shops.
To be fair, there also are coffee shops and cafés, with one Starbucks amongst local places. A variety of restaurants, with all kinds of Korean culinary options. We see office workers walking to all these places at various points during the day, groups of people in matching uniforms (a few seem to scream "bank teller") or 
business wear - so we know there are office buildings nearby. We just don't know were, or what the businesses might be.
But, 
especially after Bali, Thailand, and Malaysia, South Korea seems rather grey and plain. It's the pre-rainy season, with partially overcast skies and occasional 
light rain - but the buildings are grey, and there aren't a whole lot of flowers around. Okay, we're in obviously an industrial part of town, or an industrial outskirts of the city of Seoul. For whatever reason, things are just rather grey.
I found a small park across the 
side street from our hotel - it's a lovely little park, between the street and the major highway up the hill. There's a little pond and stream, complete with a bridge, and various ornamental maple shrubs. A path leads up the hill to the highway and a little sidewalk plaza full of flowers in planters. Of course, the cars speeding by don't really notice 
this little potted garden, but there are sidewalks, running paths, and bike trails branching off from here, because the highway crosses the wetlands and a tributary of the major river that winds through Seoul. It's kind of a strange mix of highways, wetland and parkland, and light industry.
There's the occasional vendor - this little cart is full of pillows and comforters provided a nice pop of colour. As do the trucks selling gorgeous green watermelons, fragrant pineapples. And this stand of chamoe - a kind of melon - bright 
yellow with pale indented stripes. We plan to try one of these and we'll report back.
Or how about the bright colourful lettuce, that you can buy leaf by leaf. Seriously, we didn't see an entire head of lettuce - just piles of leaves, neatly stacked, and grouped by type of lettuce. Creating sort of a mosaic of 
lettuce leaves in greens, reds, and almost blue.
And the socks - apparently cute and bright socks, with some 
three-
dimensional aspect to the figures, seems to be trendy. I'm not sure if I love the penguin best, or the kitty. Or the rainbow bear?
Adventures in eating - always fun! We aren't able to read most 
of the menus - every so often someone has a menu in English, although sometimes the names 
are 
transliterations of the Korean, so we really don't know what the food item might be.
But we're experimenting.
Our first night was bulgogi (marinated and grilled beef) with a variety of traditional accompaniments. Our second night, we braved the mysteries of Korean barbeque.
The process - we go in and are shown to a table. We get a menu that has odd names like charcoal pork. We make a selection and tell the waiter what we'd like (after asking him questions that he can't really answer). And we wait to see what shows up.
Someone brings over a pan of burning coals and inserts this into a well built into the table. Someone brings a grill and puts that on top. Various dishes appear - some kind of a coleslaw, a bowl of salad that turns out to be a cross between kimchee and wakami (Japanese seaweed salad) which is delicious, a few sauces, and a bowl of lettuce leaves. Someone else brings over a few boiling bowls - one with the reddish soup, another that looks like a boiling and bubbling fritatta. Then a bowl of garlic and oil is placed on the edge of the grill to cook into garlic oil. And a platter of meat appears, with shears and tongs.
We put some meat on the grill and begin with the fritatta thing, which is very tasty but a little wet. Apparently we've left the meat on the grill too long, one of the waiters comes over to turn it and trim off any charred bits. Then someone else comes over to change the grill. I guess we weren't turning the meat quickly enough, or something - we cooked like Americans, not Koreans, so we have no idea what we were doing wrong. But we'd take off cooked pieces of meat, dip it into either the sweet or spicy sauce, and eat it. Delicious!
We noticed that some people wrapped their meat in a lettuce or basil leaf, which would have been tasty. But we were out of meat by then. So we ate the coleslaw and kimchee salad, and had some soup. There were one or two other dishes that we never finished, because we were full by then. One was something soupy with greens (but served cold), another was maybe pickled and peppered onions, or maybe radish curls, we aren't sure.
Anyway, the barbeque was an adventure, and I want to try it again!
The streets featuring the cafés and restaurants light up with neon at night, making a blinking and bright display - including hotels with chase lights in rotating colours. Delightful in a tacky, holiday lights display kind of way. Night really is way more colourful than daytime, so it's fun to walk around and watch the changing colours and designs.
There are the occasional architectural details, like these door pulls and the door, but for the most part everything is industrial modern box.
And my new question is, what is this weird little creature on the side of the taxi?
When we find out, I'll let you know.
8 June 2014
Our hotel in KL, the Ancasa Express @ Pudu Sentral, always has gorgeous flowers in the lobby - there's always a beautiful arrangement on the registration desk, and then related floral arrangements in tall vases on a table by the lounge area. And 
coordinating flowers on the coffee tables by the couches, picking up on an accent colour in the other arrangements and making that the focal point. Even the café where we have breakfast has a single spray of orchids on each and every table. It's one of those small touches that just makes a place worth coming back to, over and over again. Attention to details.
Anyway, I don't have photos that are relevant to the first part of today's blog, so enjoy the lovely 
flowers.
We spent our last few days in KL doing our normal leaving-a-country stuff - laundry, repacking and maybe culling, refilling toiletries if needed, any repairs of clothing or luggage, etc. Nothing major, but necessary kinds of things. And enjoying being in KL.
Aside: If the movie "The Great Lion" is in a theatre near you, go see it!!! This is the story of Malaysia's most famous lion dancers, and chronicles their growing up and attempting to win their first world championship. It's filmed in Mandarin, but has English subtitles. (The version 
we saw also had Malay and another Chinese language.) Anyway, you'll see what lion dancing on stilts looks like in action - absolutely amazing! Great movie!!!
So, we repack. We're ready to go. We have our plane tickets printed, our hotel booked for our first week in South Korea, and we get a taxi to the airport. We have plenty of time since our flight doesn't leave til 1 AM. We have a leisurely dinner in the outer mall area of the airport. We try to spend our last bit of ringgits. And then we check in our luggage, and head to passport control.
And we're stopped. The young lady puts my passport through the machine again, looks at us, says "One moment please" and goes to talk to a few other agents. Comes back and says, "You have overstayed your visa, please come this way." O.M.G. Panic! "What do you mean we overstayed our visa, we came in March 8, today is June 7, we had 90 days, that's 90 exactly!" "Please follow me."
Well, what can we do but follow her. She takes us past all the passport control stations and into a back office, and delivers us to her supervisor, who may be the director of the whole passport control operations, we don't know.
I explain again that by our calculations, we're on our 90th day - when we came, what day it is today, etc. Richard suggests using an online site to calculate the days. The man says our error is that they count the first day we arrive as Day 1 - and there were 31 days in March and May - thus we are on Day 92, and we should have left on 
June 5.
We are crestfallen. Once again, we have what seems to be a major problem - overstaying a visa is a major offense in many countries, and punishable by either huge fines, or time in jail. However, we are obviously middle-aged travellers, and we obviously stayed til this date in 
good faith, merely having miscalculated the 90 day deadline.
Mr. Passport Guy tells us to sit. Richard keeps asking how much this is going to cost. I keep saying shhh, maybe we can slide through. Mr. PG comes back and calls us over, one at a time, to have us do this electronic fingerprint scan thingie. We wait a bit longer. I guess we came back as clear, 
because Mr. PG once again calls us over, stamps our passports and writes in something, and tells us we're all set and good to leave. He shows me he's stamped the passports with 7 June, wrote in something about overstaying, and we just have to go through the security x-ray and we're on our way. YAY! We thank him profusely and head on out.
We still have time before our 
flight; Richard somehow finds a guy with a handicap cart who drives us at hyper-speed through the airport and to the escalator near our gate. Really, the wind was blowing our hair all over, that's how fast we were going in the little cart!
And then, because this is a Phebe and Richard trip, our 1 AM flight is delayed until 3 AM due to needing to change aircraft. We wait, and wait, and wait some more. By the time we get on the plane we are dragging.
We fall into our seats, and fortunately no one has booked the seat between us. We each have an aisle in the middle section. We both fall asleep until about 6 or 7 AM. It's a 6.5 or so hr trip, so we munched on the snacks we brought, drank water, and I paid for a cup of tea. (They gave me a free refill on hot water. Really, Air Asia charges for EVERYTHING. Even a blanket. Yes, it makes for an inexpensive flight. Until you end up with all the add ons.)
Anyway, we arrive in Seoul two hours late, exhausted. We get through the usual red tape, and go for coffee/tea and a snack, since we're hungry. Paris Baguette seemed like a good place to reunite Dad's hat and Korea - I'm not sure if he was here during his time in the Navy or not, but he was in the vicinity so I figured why not.
We're in a hotel on the outskirts of the city, in a neighbourhood called Dongdaemun-Gu - I think that's pronounced DONG-day-mun-GOO, but I'm not sure. Our hotel is rather funky - we're in the Toulouse Latrec Art room, with a large print of his "Divan Japonais" on the deep rose red walls, and his "Jane Avril Dancing" as the sliding window door. Plus a crystal-trimmed sheer canopy over the head of the bed. Recessed red lights along the edges of the ceiling. (It does make one wonder about this hotel!) And a jacuzzi in the front part of the bathroom. Yes, people, we have our own jacuzzi tub in our hotel room. And of course I spent an hour in there this afternoon, although I was so tired I think I may have dozed off. It was delightful!
We had a great dinner with all kinds of Korean foods we've never encountered - we ordered the bulgogi steak set, which came with a spicy red soup with either egg drop or tofu drop, we aren't sure; something like a scallion omelet, in small squares; kimchee; what looked like roasted red peppers but was actually fish; spicy root vegs that we never did figure out what it was; some kind of smoked fish (or maybe it was eel); sticky rice; and then hot water poured into the sticky rice pot when empty, to make rice porridge. Oh, and sheets of seaweed, like nori, that I used to wrap up the scallion omelet and eat it that way. It was delicious (mostly - the fish was a little strange), and way more food than either of us could eat! We had fun being the only non-Koreans in the place, and laughing at our food faux-pas - we weren't sure what the kettle of hot water was for, and I thought it was soup, so I poured some in a bowl. Figured out it wasn't soup, poured it back in the kettle, much to the amusement of a man at the next table.
And we had gelato at a lovely coffee shop, where the barista chatted with us - he spent two years in NYC as a student, so his English is better than that of most of the people we've met thus far.
Best news - there's an exhibit of Michelangelo's works here in Seoul!!!! We're getting more info, and this will be one of the things we do this week. Because who cares where you are if there's fabulous Italian Renaissance art around, right?
We'll also figure out where we'd like to go in South Korea, and start making plans to do that.
So, despite being at the point where we're only moving forward on mental energy because we're depleted, we've had a great first day in Seoul!!!!!
4 June 2014
I signed up for a tour to see the fireflies of Kuala Selangor. Richard wasn't excited about this, but I've read about the fireflies and really wanted to go. (More later.)
So I booked through the travel desk downstairs in the bus station, and ended up being the only guest on the tour. Oh well, not a problem, just a little extravagant. But at least it meant I had the front seat of the car!
We drove out to Kuala Selangor, which is a town on the Selangor River, very near the Klang River. Kuala actually means the point where two rivers meet.
Before heading out to see the fireflies (which one obviously needs to see after sunset), we went to the highest hill in the area. There are two communications towers behind a fence, but the whole place is covered in monkeys! Monkeys monkeys everywhere!!! In the trees! On the fence! All over the towers!
These are very friendly long-tailed silver monkeys, or maybe silver leaf monkeys - I 
heard both names. They are REALLY friendly monkeys, just naturally friendly. And not in the least bit shy!
My friendly driver, Mike, bought food for me to give the monkeys - sliced raw sweet potato, which the monkeys seemed to like. They'd come over for food, and when they saw me reaching in my jacket pocket for a slice of potato, they'd grab onto the pocket to try getting the food themselves - pushy little guys! I gave several monkeys slices of sweet potato, they happily 
munched on them, then one very assertive monkey latched 
onto my pocket and 
wouldn't let go. I couldn't get one slice of food out given the way this monkey was holding on. So I took the entire bag of potato out of my pocket - which, of course, Pushy Monkey grabbed, gave a scream of triumph, and raced off, with the entire bag of sliced sweet potato in hand. Well, what could I do but laugh and yell after the greedy monkey "Don't eat the plastic bag!"
Mike then bought some sliced 
long beans, and I fed some less pushy monkeys. (Or maybe they just don't like the green beans as much as they liked the sweet potatoes.) People fed the monkeys apples, small green bananas, more green beans, more sliced sweet potatoes.
They were in monkey 
heaven!
There was a mama monkey with her little orange baby, just about a week old - bright orange! Good thing the babies cling to their mothers, since the moms focus on getting food. This little baby was holding on for dear life as his mother bounced around looking for food, grabbing beans, tossing down the beans to grab an apple - all the time the mama sat down, she'd be sitting on orange baby's tail! It was so funny!
There was another mother monkey with an older baby who was already grey - they change colour when they're about a month old.
So, remember I said these are pushy monkeys? Assertive? Aggressive about getting their food, although not mean about it.
Well, the monkeys have no problem jumping on people to get food. If they see someone holding food, they'll jump up and cling to a leg. (Did that to me.) They jumped on these two men. 
And just held on, eating. Asking for more food. I love this photo of the older Australian man, monkey eating with one hand, the other arm wrapped around his head for stability. So funny!
At about this point, there was a major clap of thunder, sounded like two shots fired at close range and then normal thunder noise - scared all of us, including the monkeys! They scattered, and one monkey was so startled he flinched and smacked one lady in the face! She was okay, but it hurt enough that I saw her rubbing her cheek.
It took a while, but the monkeys started coming back for more food. Each time a new car arrived, more monkeys would come racing to the parking lot from the trees, despite the fact that it was raining the entire time.
Some of the young guys (people, not young guy 
monkeys) thought it would be fun to have monkeys jump on them. So they'd put some food on their shoulder, and try to call the monkeys over to jump up.
Sounds reasonable, right? Though monkeys aren't very cooperative.
So I'm watching these guys trying to get the monkeys to jump up, with my back to the fence. There 
are some monkeys on the fence, eying the food, but I'm a good 5 or 6 feet (almost 2 meters) from the fence. Standing there minding my own business, just watching.
All of a sudden BAM I'm hit from behind!!! Something smacks into my head/shoulders/neck - and I realize a monkey has jumped on me from the fence! I don't know if I looked like a tree, someone with food, or just an easier and softer landing than the ground - but I'm standing there 
with a monkey on my head! Of course I started laughing - here I am with no monkey food, my camera in my purse, and a monkey on my head!
He clambered from shoulder to shoulder, trying to find some food, but eventually gave up and jumped off. Whew! Those are heavy monkeys - I swear I have monkey whiplash!!!
In the midst of all the monkey 
chaos, two Malaysian women came up and asked they could take their photo with me. I said yes - so one poses with me while the other takes a photo - but this woman, whom I just met, whose name I don't know, hugs me around the middle and smiles for the camera! I just laughed, it was too funny! Then, since I was so nice about posing for the photo, I asked if I could get a photo of them, since their dresses were so pretty (and so traditionally Malaysian). Well, what could they do but pose for me - so here are the two cute women in the kind of dresses we see everywhere, although these two don't have the typical head scarves we see. (Don't you love the peace sign?)
After about an hour with the monkeys, it was time to head out for dinner. We drove over to the river, and went to a nice restaurant. Mike had pre-ordered dinner for me, to speed things up - I had nasi goreng, the traditional fried rice which comes with a fried 
egg on top. Okay, so I skipped the fried egg, I'm not crazy about them. But with a couple of hot cups of tea, it was tasty and warming after a chilly and rainy afternoon. With lovely watermelon for dessert.
And then it was firefly time!
I know, this doesn't sound very exciting - but if you
check here, you can see why the fireflies are so cool and such a popular
sight and site. http://www.wonderfulmalaysia.com/firefly-park-kuala-selangor-malaysia.htm and this is the place to stay: http://www.fireflypark.com/acc.htm
I walked to a place next door to the restaurant, where all the tour guides had their guests put on life jackets, and climb aboard a few boats. We settled in, and headed up river.
There are huge colonies of fireflies who eat the leaves of a tree, the flamingo tree, which grows along the banks of the river. These little fireflies congregate every evening, rain or shine, to munch on the leaves and signal to friends, mates, potential mates, and everyone and anyone who is around.
So both sides of the river really do look like the trees are covered in twinkling holiday lights, blinking at different rates and speeds. But in little clumps, the fireflies start blinking in synchronized flashes, so it looks as if they've practiced this particular routine! Really, the craziest thing! Imagine little fireflies doing synchronized blinking! Wow!
Here are a few photos from the internet - our boat driver said no camera flashes, and I couldn't imagine the little flashes showing up on my camera.
There has been some firefly die off in recent years due to factory pollution in the area, and the display isnt quite what it was. I'd say what we saw is about half what is shown in these photos. Still really remarkable! It definitely looks like some movie set for fairyland or something!
Our boat pilot caught a few fireflies so we could see them - they look very similar to those little brown moths that tend to get into woolen clothing, very little innocuous looking insects. Nothing like the fireflies of my youth. One of the little Australian kids carried his firefly up and down the boat so we could all see it - so here's this little Aussie kid showing his firefly to a family maybe from Saudi Arabia, the mother being in a black burqa from head to toe, only her eyes showing through the rectangle. One of those very sweet, "why isn't the world like this everywhere" kind of moments.
Actually, the burqa mom picked up a firefly that was on the canopy of our boat, and gave it to her son to hold. Except when the boat got going, the wind blew poor little firefly onto the wet floor. Dad tried to pick it up. Mom tried to pick it up. I tried, with the dad holding his cell phone as a flashlight. Problem was, the floor was so wet the poor firefly was swimming around. So I pulled out a small paper from my purse and the mom used it to pick up the firefly - yay, we saved one! (We were able to converse in minimal English, but I could understand a little of their Arabic, it was close enough to Hebrew that I could catch a word here and there.)
The guy next to me showed me his firefly, and I commented that growing up in New York, we had bigger fireflies. He said yes, at home in Korea, their fireflies aren't this big. Then he says, very seriously, "Just like people in the west are bigger than people in Asia, maybe so are the fireflies." I laughed and could only agree.
Well, our boat tour was about an hour. All too soon, it was time to go back to KL. Monkeys were sleeping. Fireflies were continuing their show without an audience. Mike drove me back to KL, I arrived about 10 PM, home from fairyland and firefly lifesaver. And back to life as a rolling luggager.
