Shan in Japan - travel

Sokcho

noreply@blogspirit.com (Shan) — Mon, 08 Aug 2005 18:10:00 +0900

Four hours east of Seoul landed me in the small coastal town of Sokcho - not too far from the North Korean border. I think I got the most plush bus ride in my life! The bus had business class style "lazy boy" reclining seats. My travel buddy for Korea, Andy, kindly noted that comfort travel such as this is all down hill once I get to China;-)

After a busy few days in sweltering Seoul, it was great to get out and breath some fresh air! Sokcho gave us access to Seorak-san. This mountain range was really unique. Reminded me a little of the Blue Mountains in Sydney. We followed the river up through the valley and spent a night in a hikers shelter. My silk sleeping bag worked a treat! We had planned to spend another night there, but as the only food they sell is instant noodles, 3 meals of this made us motivated enough to reach the summit and zip back down by the end of the second day for a feast of Bibimbap. This Mountain was amazing - will try to up some photos later.

Back to Sokcho and looking for accomodation was a little bit of a mission. Being a Saturday, peak summer holiday season we thought it would be hard to get a room. That wasn't the problem though, speaking Korean was. Andy showed me how I need to improve my pantemime skills to get the message across! It was quite a hilarious. We ended up with a cheap room across from the bus stop. I started studying basic Korean and I can see how easy it is to pick up after learning Japanese.

Breakfast consisted of heading down to the live fish markets, choose your fish and have it chopped instantly for you. The obasans in Korea are much more fiesty than in Japan. One lady started grabbing my arm and poking me in the ribs to buy her fish. I sheepishly moved on and thought about giving it a miss and going for a less adventurous breakfast. Andy was keen though - just for the experience. We picked out a squid, a flounder, some weird sea urchin thing that tasted like a half cooked bitter capsicum and one more creature, I can't remember. I'm not a fan of raw squid, but this stuff was great. It was super tender and still wriggling as we woffed it down with red chilly sauce and lettuce. No skilled sashimi chefs here - the fish was boney and sometimes, scaley. Enough said here.

Had a dip in the sea, in my undies. Water was clean and clear and the beach was nice - white sand. I noticed there is a fence with huge bundles of barbed wire running along the whole coastline - at least for the northern part. I guess they are concerned North Korean spies or defecters will be sneaking in during the night??!

I'm back in Seoul now. After ringing a dozen ferry services telling me that all seats were booked up until the end of August, one place had just 2 seats remaining for this Fridays service from Incheon to Tianjin, China. Visa should come through tomorrow. Picked up a weathered copy of the Lonely Planet for China, along with first hand info from Andy and all set to go.

Will be checking out the DMZ on Wednesday.

BTW - Korean food is great, beer is not....

My Korean beer ranking is as follows: 1. Cass 2. O.B 3. Hite 4. Cafri

They all seem to be made by the same beer company and are watery and sweet. Just doesn't hit the spot after a hot day like beer should. Cass kind of passes as beer, but I would rather drink happoshu! Soju is kind of sweet too. I still need to do a bit more tasting before commenting on that though.

Seoul

noreply@blogspirit.com (Shan) — Thu, 04 Aug 2005 19:18:27 +0900

The first stop - Seoul. It feels a little like Japan, but the language is different. I've also found that Japanese is more useful than English here.

Spent the last few days wandering about seeing all the tourist sites. Eating lots of Kimchi and doing the usual touristy things. It's a nice city. Nothing mind-blowing, but just nice and easy to explore. I find myself making comparisons and finding similarities between Seoul and Tokyo, or Japan. It's also pretty cheap! Who said Seoul was expensive?

Tomorrow I will be heading East to Sokcho on the coast. Apparently there is an amazing national park there. Desperate to get out of this heat!! Might even meet up with an old friend from Nagoya university days this weekend.

Met up with a guy at the hostel who has been exactly where I intend on going - China, Vietnam etc. He is heading on to Japan soon, so we have been busy exchanging information on each others experiences.

Once my China visa is processed, I will be catching a boat over to Qingdao on Thursday next week.

Southern Izu

noreply@blogspirit.com (Shan) — Mon, 27 Jun 2005 18:00:00 +0900

Izu at just 3hours drive outside of Tokyo, I can't understand why I haven't discovered this place earlier!!
With a crew from Japan Adventures, we loaded up the plush mini-van and headed down on Friday night.

We arrived to stay in a Guest House just out of Shimoda. Nice place - except they locked us in after 12:30am. We weren't allowed to go out and play! Reminescent of school camp;-)

On Saturday, we got up fairly early at 6am and jumped in the sea for a heart starter swim. The water was fresh and fine, once you're in. After a very light breakie, we all piled in the van and headed over to Koura Bay for the Kayak Festival. A brief lesson on how to use the paddle, qualified us to venture out about 100m from the bay. I did manage to sneak around the headland for a wee while until one of the staff came charging after me.

So this limited play area was a bit frustrating, but still it was good to have a paddle around and try out different sizes, designs and makes of kayaks. My favourite would have to be the collapsable soft skin kayak. slices very quietly through the water. I didn't enquire as to how much they cost. Not an item on my shopping list for some time yet!

After a day in sun, we had a good long soak in the onsen. Some nice 'routenburos' at the Gin no Yu onsen.
Followed by icecream and machine foot massages. Just gets better.

The Southern Cafe - very popular so a bit of a wait, but big servings and reasonable prices. We snuck in our own supply of beer. Our attempts to refill our never ending glass of beer (that we originally ordered) became less and less discrete!

Next day, Brad's mates hooked us up with a few boards for a dawn session. The waves were pretty small, but perfect for the 10ft mini mal I was on. It was sooo good to get out in the water and have a paddle. Even though it was just a quick little ride, reminded me how fun surfing is. Haven't had a wave for well over a year.

Then tried a bit of sand surfing at this huge dune nearby. Brad had a skateboard with a mini ski on the bottom of it. Performed pretty well - especially if you straight lined it down the hill. Ended with sand in many places it shouldn't be.

A quick paddle on the kayaks, then hometime. Tried another onsen 'Sen nin Buro' Really old Ryokan style place. Didn't realize it was mixed men and women as I unabashedly made an entrance! Onsens are too good. I think everyone would agree they would have to be the top treasures of Japan.

Today, my neck only turns one way. Must have been that sand boarding!

Guam Experience

noreply@blogspirit.com (Shan) — Thu, 19 May 2005 23:10:00 +0900

To be honest, if it wasn't for the GEAR 05, I don't think I would ever have visited Guam.
A popular tourist destination for Japanese, it is often described as a mini Honolulu.

The desired tourist for Guam is your shopaholic money loaded tourist on a safe all inclusive package deal where they never have set foot out of the comfort of the resort area - Tumon Beach. You can see plenty of them about. I guess they keep the economy turning.

Through the GEAR race, I was priveleged enough to get outside that bubble and see and learn some pretty amazing stuff. Moreover, I met some great local crew. After the race, I ended as a homeless backpacker cruising the streets on my mountain bike. Thanks to the hospitality of James, the race director, I had a place to crash and an insightful tour of the island.

It is much bigger than I expected. I clocked over a 100kms on my bike (including the race) just riding around.
We drove down to the southern part where jungle was dense and quite a different feel to the northern part.

The history of the place is a bit depressing... Like many cultures, the Chamorro people were almost wiped out by Spanish missionaries through disease and failure to believe in a little guy on a stick cross.
Then after the Spanish were done, Americans took over in 1898 and lost it at the same time the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbour in 1941. After a brief but brutal occupation by the Japanese, it is now an unofficial territory of the US.

Hard to think such a beautiful island was razed through fierce fighting during the war. Interesting story about Sgt. Yokoi who seemed to think the war never ended. He ended up hiding in the jungle until 1972!

After reccuperating from the race on Sunday....yeah ok, and Monday, I got out and about. Had dinner and beers with a couple of local lads - Dan and Tommy. Next day, I went for a beach dive with a dive master named Doug. Viz was a bit poor that day with overcast conditions, but plenty of fish about and warm water. Went down to a max. depth of 30metres. Highlight was seeing a huge puffer fish with these little cleaner fish swimming through his mouth and out the side of his gill!

Sat on the beach reading my travel books and pondering this and that. Then along came Tommy and Charlie with some kayaks amped up for a late afternoon paddle. We headed off out past the reef and up past Gun beach (because there is a big black gun on it) and pulled up a bay just before 'Two Lovers Point'. We headed into a huge cave - that I had actually zipped in and out of during the race to note down a code word.
Now I had the chance to appreciate it at a more leisurely pace. There were pools of aqua crystal clear fresh water at the bottom and the narrow entrance that soon opened up into a huge amphitheatre.
Outside there were some ruins of Latte stones - huge foundation stones carved out of the reef by ancient Chamorro people and used for the foundation pillars of their houses.

Back to the kayaks. We found a nice little reef break with just 2footer waves, they seemed pretty harmless.
After picking off a few and trying not to catch an edge with the cumbersome kayak, I went for one of the larger sets. It jacked up and sucked the water dry off the reef and I speared it with my kayak. Kind of similar experience to my mountain crash the other week. I defended myself from the coral with my paddle and played safe after that.

The final night, Charlie and Tommy took me to a local steakhouse..I forget the name.
'I'll have a baseball medium rare' says Charlie...I was like what?!
Turned out to be juicy nugget of steak - about the size and shape of a baseball. Great feed.

On the last day, I had lunch with James. I owe this awesome experience of Guam to his efforts - legend.
At the airport I finally managed to catch up with Roland - a guy I met at the Xterra in Japan last year. There are nearly zero internet cafes in Guam, so bummer I couldn't have gotten hold of him sooner (I guess I could have asked around because everyone seems to know everyone). Top guy - he hooked me up with a bag of goodies for the flight home. Which concludes that Guam has some really genuinely nice people and thats what counts the most. I'd definitely be keen to head back there again - its only a 3 hr flight from Tokyo too.

Back to Tokyo now. I did manage to score some strange heat rash kind of allergy I have just above my brow....