Return to Jeju

I'm trying AGAIN to get back into blogging regularly. I haven't been writing here because there's so much else to do (not for lack of anything to say) so I DO have lots of exciting things to catch up on! To pick up where I left off, I looked through my old journal and notes to find this, most of which I wrote right after moving into my apartment in Jeju-si.

I left China on August 24th and arrived in Incheon late that night, with very strange deja-vu feelings - it was like I had been home for just a quick weekend, not ten months! By the time I got my baggage it was after 10pm and I wasn't expected at the orientation until 2pm the next day. With all my luggage, and since my directions were all from the airport, I decided to just stay where I was. Spending the night in an airport doesn't sound comfortable or restful, but ICN wasn't voted best airport in the WORLD, SEVEN years in a row so far, for nothing. I pushed my cart down into the basement and checked into the jimjilbang, Spa on Air (I wrote about staying in jimjilbangs back in April 2010...I think the post is "Seoul with Hyun Ju" if you want to look it up).

Like any jimjilbang, there are public lounges and sleeping areas where you just crash on a mat on the floor, but I was feeling spendy so I shelled out the extra $10 for a private cubicle:

The cube was great - and not even big enough for all my luggage! There's definitely no such thing as privacy in a jimjilbang, so this was just a foam cot with a glass door and no lock. You leave your big luggage in the lobby and hide valuables with your shoes in a little locker.

So that night and the next morning I enjoyed the showers, saunas, and a $20 body scrub/massage. I highly recommend Spa on Air to anyone traveling through Incheon. You can stay the night like I did, or just shower and take a quick nap. I had a very Korean moment when I stepped out of the jimjilbang (wearing the pajama uniform, of course) to find some dinner. Most things were already closed so I ended up wandering the airport in my pajamas and finally eating on a bench outside a 7-11!

The next day I found the orientation site in Seoul, after a bus and taxi ride. I don't remember much of the one day + one night I spent there...I was really overwhelmed by all the new people who'd all already gotten to know each other over the past week, and was so tired and crazy-feeling after North Korea and Beijing. I think I attended one class, an assembly, and spent the rest of the time hiding in my room and sleeping. We got our school assignments and found out where we'd be living. I was placed in the island's biggest city, Jeju-si and at two middle schools. I'd wanted to live in Seogwipo, but wasn't too worried given the size of Jeju Island (less than half the size of Rhode Island). And I was happy to be back at a middle school.

After flying from Seoul to Jeju Island on Friday, we met our coteachers at the POE office. I learned that I'd be working that fall at Halla Middle School in Jeju-si, and Jocheon Middle School, in a small town named Sincheon a ways outside of the city. I met Bridget from Halla M.S. and Mrs. Oh from Jocheon M.S. They were both really nice, and I felt comfortable with them right away. I'd start work right away on Monday with Mrs. Noh, so she gave me directions to the school and said goodbye. Bridget and I made plans to meet on Saturday night for dinner. I was pretty happy with my situation - the only downside was that some of our apartments weren't ready yet so a few of us had to spend that first weekend in a hotel.

So on Sunday I was so, so relieved to finally be in my apartment in Jeju-si. I'd been moving constantly throughout August - checking in and out of hostel and hotel rooms every other day, seven flights in 2.5 weeks, luggage in storage, luggage out of storage, luggage in the Chinese post, Beijing for two days, North Korea for ten days, Beijing for six days with a two-day break for the camping trip, Seoul for two days, hotel in Jeju-si for two days...all while hauling or worrying about an entire year's worth of luggage plus a carry-on, and flying tiny crappy regional or budget airlines that charge for every extra ounce. There is definitely an unglamorous, sweaty side to traveling alone and on a budget! That's one complaint I have about working for EPIK - they offer no help with the logistics of moving across the world. I wish that I had had an address to mail some of my stuff ahead of time, rather than carry it all with me while traveling.

Sorry again that this was such a long time coming! Thanks for reading it and all your patience!

Visiting the Great Helmsman

The last major thing that I hadn't seen in Beijing was Chairman Mao in his mauseleum. The mauseleum is in central Beijing, near Tiananmen Square and other touristy stuff, but I think it's safe to say that Mao's body is the most popular thing for miles around. Every time I've gone by this place or attempted to visit it before, I've been put off by the THOUSANDS of people (totaling about ten million each year!) standing in a line that snakes up and down and around a huge city block.
That building in the background is the actual mauseleum.
This is just the beginning of the line...it goes for on for blocks!

You have to stand in line forever to check your bag and camera, then you have to move to the real line and stand there even longer to get to the mauseleum, and then it's only open from 8am-12pm! But I was determined not to leave Beijing again without seeing Mao, so I went to bed early and was up at 5am on my last day before leaving for Korea. I was in the square around 6:30 or 6:45am, and wasted at least fifteen minutes just trying to find the end of the huge line that had already formed. Luckily, I'd had the foresight to leave my bag at the hostel - I just had some money and my room key in my pocket.

(I should note here that while Mao is a tourist attraction for foreigners, his body is an object of reverence for the Chinese. The whole time I was waiting in line and going through security, I did not see a single other foreigner. It was all Chinese waiting for a glimpse of Mao, some of them probably making a pilgrimage from their home province.)

But it turned out to be worth getting up so early - we waited in one place for only about 45 minutes, and then from 7:40am on moved slowly but steadily up toward the mauseleum entrance, through security, and then right on in.

Once inside the mauseleum, it's a ridiculously brief expereince - there's no stopping to get a good look at anything (also, no photography, laughing, hats, or speaking loudly). First you pass a statue of the man himself in front of a mural (looked so much like all the Kim Il Sung nonsense in the DPRK), and some Chinese lay down bunches of flowers. You trundle right along to the next room, where Mao lies in state under the Communist party flag. And then you're outside again, the whole thing having taken all of ninety seconds.

I don't know if Mao is worth the wait, and I have absolutely nothing to show for it, but getting up early was definitely a good idea: all the waiting is outside under the sun but it's not too bad before 8am. And I waited less than an hour (I'm sure the people at the front of the line had been there since before dawn, while arriving any later means waiting in that horrible line as the morning just gets hotter). It's really very similar to some sights in North Korea - not impressive in and of itself, but a good experience and insight into Chinese culture.

The best slumber party ever...

The best thing I did in Beijing was an overnight camping trip on the Jinshanling section of the Great Wall. I found the tour with the China Culture Center of Beijing and booked it before I even left Wisconsin. I'd already seen the Wall's Badaling section - that's the part closest to Beijing, so it's what most tourists see. It's also horrendously crowded and full of hawkers, so I was excited for the chance to get out of Beijing and see another piece of the Wall.

On the day of the tour, we left Beijing at 3pm and were at the Jinshanling section by 5:30pm. We had a little snack in the local village, and then headed up to the Wall. After a short hike (maybe 30 minutes) along the Wall, we situated ourselves in a watchtower to watch the sun go down. It was really gorgeous, of course - a little cloudy, so not the most impressive sunset I've ever seen, but the setting made up for it! We were surrounded by mountains and could see the Great Wall for miles up and down in either direction. It was also blissfully uncrowded - our group was ten people plus two guides, and the only other people we could see were some Chinese photographers who had set up their tripods a few watchtowers beyond us to catch the sunset.








This is Faye, one of the employees at the China Culture Center.


Afterwards we walked back for dinner at a "village home" (and souvenir shop, obviously). It was a great meal with dumplings and beer, plus tons of side dishes, and our host was really fun. By the time we had finished eating, it was dark. We said goodbye to our host, electricity, and running water, and hiked up to yet another watchtower, in the opposite direction from where we had watched the sunset. We just had our flashlights to climb the steep, irregular steps of the Wall. Once we arrived on the watchtower, our local guide opened up an inner storage room and we arranged our mats, sleeping bags, and pillows (after checking the corners for bugs!) right under the stars.

As I said, there was no electricity or running water; off on one side and behind a tower wall was a bucket, and we each had several bottles of water. I washed my face with a wet wipe and chewed gum rather than get up and stumble around brushing my teeth with a water bottle and spitting into the same bucket that everyone peed in! The air was really and cool and refreshing, compared to the nastiness that is Beijing in August. I laid out on top of my sleeping bag for awhile, star-gazing and chatting, but we were all asleep before 10pm because there wasn't much else to do and we had to be up at the crack of dawn anyway.

I slept surprisingly well - the ground was hard, obviously, but no big deal (more obnoxiously, the pillows were completely flat so I ended up stuffing my shoes, a sweater, and a pair of sweatpants under mine....I was glad I did in the morning, because then everything was covered with dew but my shoes were dry!). It did get pretty cold between 2-5am, but those sleeping bags were really warm! I woke up a few times in the middle of the night, and was amazed by how blindingly bright the moon was, right above me. By 4:30am I couldn't go back to sleep anymore - I felt strangely rested, the sun was just barely starting to rise, and the Chinese photographers were already on their way back up from the village to hit the highest watchtower and catch the sunrise.

Waking up on the wrong side of 6am.

After everyone was up and moving around (about 5:30am), those of us who wanted to set off on a short walk along the Wall to find a good place to watch the sunrise. It was light out, but the sun hadn't really risen yet. I walked along the Wall and through the watchtowers for about 20 minutes, and found a good place to see both the sun and the Wall. Another amazing view of course - my pictures don't do it justice (when I faced the sun, it blinded my view of everything else, and when I faced away from the sun, everything was in shadows and mist) but it was enough just to be on the Great Wall, by myself, at 5:30 in the morning. I'll always remember how it looked, even if I can't show you :)






After I'd had my fill of sunrise, I returned to our little camp on our private watchtower, and we had breakfast - lots of bread and blueberry jam, moon cakes, instant coffee and tea (some boys from the village brought up a huge jug of very hot water) and bananas. The nice thing about no bathrooms or electricity is that there's no pressure to get ready or make yourself presentable - I woke up and was ready for the day in the same clothes I'd both slept in and worn the day before, washed with another wet wipe, and applied sunscreen! We picked up our little camp and started our hike by 7:30am.

Mr. Wong, our fearless leader and local guide.

The hike was great fun, moderately difficult (some steepness, both up and down, and lots of stairs), and took about three or three and a half hours. Our guides said Jinshanling is sometimes called the "Wild Wall' because it is one of the least-restored, most natural sections that are left. We started off on the Wall itself, and the first part was in pretty good shape. Then we came to a section that had some sort of military significance, so we couldn't walk on the Wall itself and the middle of our hike was actually down on the ground. We could usually see the Wall, sometimes close enough to touch, but it was pretty rough - a lot of loose rocks and dirt, and since it was hardly ever flat there was a lot of slipping and stumbling around and grabbing for tree roots and leaves. Also, some parts were just through fields or woods. It was lucky that we had a local guide, because there wasn't an established path that I could see!



Finally we crawled back up onto the Wall, and the last part was the most rugged and ruined - we were on the Wall, but in parts there was no rail or barely any stone work left at all, so we were just walking on this raised stony path with a fall on either side!





After 3.5 hours my muscles were sore, my legs were all scratched up from the branches and grass, and I was hungry and sweating buckets. But we made it to the village of Gubeikou for another local meal. I was starving for lunch and beer, even though it was only 10:30 in the morning! This meal was really good too, at the home of an old retired couple that somehow was NOT attached to a souvenir shop...I didn't know such places existed in China.

The views on the hike were incredible, but the best part was how quiet it was. There's no comparing it to the Badaling section near Beijing, or any other tourist attraction in China, where there are always hordes of people and and hawkers. 95% of the time it was just our group, and we only met one hawker. (I can't even complain about her, because she hiked with us for awhile and pulled me up some steep parts!) That was really special, to have something so huge and magnificent to ourselves for a whole night and all of the next morning.

I highly recommend the China Culture Center if you're ever in Beijing - they have all sorts of tours, of different lengths and to different places in and out of Beijing, as well as classes. The guides were great and everything on our tour ran smoothly - I didn't know I could sleep or eat so well on an outdoor camping trip!

Beijing Part I, in which we contemplate the state of your soul.

After the tour to North Korea, I had about a week to kill before I was expected in the South. Due to lack of funds and having gotten really sick in the DPRK (depending on where you are, it's called Pyongyang belly, Beijing belly, Bali belly, etc. You can probably fill in the details yourself...), I spent the week just hanging out in Beijing. Besides camping on the Great Wall, the rest of my 5-6 days there were relatively quiet. I'd seen all the big, famous sights the first time around (February 2010) so I mostly recovered, puttered around, and saw just a few things.

Some pictures from my random wanderings...


Crickets for sale!




Chaoyang district at night. These shops are all restaurants...I was so bitter that I wasn't well enough to eat a lot in Beijing! The food in North Korea was awful AND it made me sick. Once I got to China I just wanted to eat real food again, but it wasn't meant to be.

One my last day in Beijing I visited Dongyue Temple. Dongyue is a Taoist temple; I don't know much about Taoism but this temple is dedicated to the afterlife, final judgement and reincarnation. There are over 70 'departments' and I think the idea is for the faithful to worship or make offerings to the appropriate department for their afterlife or their ancestors' spirits. There were really good English descriptions everywhere, and the statues and carvings were incredible. It was by far the coolest, most bad-ass temple I've ever visited.

It's a huge place, and I didn't have time to visit every department, but I could contemplate or make offerings at such places as...






"It aims to warn people that should they fail to accomplish good deeds they would only find themselves moving about in water."

"The function of this department is to place those souls who have committed during their life times an equal amount of good deeds and evil deeds into a mid-range rank which is a mammal rank as a warning to those who fail to accomplish good deeds." So you can do a so-so job, die and achieve a 'mid-range' rank as a mammal, or be a terrible person and have a lowly 'water birth' in your next life!


All in all, the coolest but also the spookiest, most disturbing temple I've ever visited. According to the Lonely Planet, there's also a "Department for Implementing 15 Kinds of Violent Death" as well as a hall dedicated to the management of the 18 layers of hell! And these were just the descriptions of the departments! The statues and altars inside were even stranger...







That demon is totally kicking that poor lost soul! Taoists make the Catholic purgatory look downright cheerful!




But I'll leave you with nice pictures of wishes and prayers, to offset the fire and brimstone:


Writing on a wooden block is the Chinese Buddhist equivalent of throwing pennies into a fountain.