Returning to the Motherland

It's official.  I've booked my ticket back home.  I'll arrive March 12 at 2am.  I expect my huge fan base to be there.

I'm finished teaching April 7th.  Only 11 more teaching days left.

Big Debut

This year 12 teachers from my school left to go to other schools.  The school had a big farewell dinner at our provinces best galbi (beef and pork ribs) restaurant. During the dinner, all the teachers had little speeches likely saying about how much they will miss the school.  I say likely because I didn't have a sweet clue what they were saying.  We have a few dinner's throughout the year, and although it usually involves a nice free meal, they're pretty boring.

At the end of the dinner, my principal hands out a bunch of different envelopes and my co teacher gets one.  Out of curiosity, I ask what it's for.  Apparently the school has given out money given to us so we can all go out together after the dinner for the next phase of the night.  Phase was the word used, so I wasn't really certain what to expect. I was hoping it just involved having a few drinks, but only time would tell.  As everyone is getting their coats and things on they ask me if I'd like to go to a Norae Bang (personal Karaoke place).  I'd only had about one beer at this point, and whenever I've been to a Norae bang in the past, its usually at the end of a night of drinking.  I'm not liking the looks of it all, but decide to man up and go.

We get there, and I'm in a room with about 13 other women.  No men.  First thing, my principal comes into our room and sings a Korean song and he does pretty well.  Everyone claps.  My principal doesn't speak much to me at school, but with perfect English he asks what my favorite song is.  Trying to stall and not sing, I tell him that I have a few but I can't find any in the song dictionary (it contains songs and their codes) .  Without hesitating, he informs me that his favorite song is Love Me Tender.  He enters the number into the machine (all songs have a specific number) without looking at the book so I'm certain that he's sung this song a good hundred times before.  He starts it up and doesn't even look at the words on the screen, just belts it out.  He was good, really good. Once your finished, the machine gives you a rating from 0-100. Sure enough he got 100.  A Korean man singing an English song and he aces it.  I don't know how they rate a singer, but I've never gotten 100, and I think this may be the first time I've seen anyone get it.  Due to some Korean Norae Bang tradition, he takes out 10 000 Won (about $10) from his wallet, wets it and sticks it onto the TV. I'm under the assumption that if you match the score, you get the money. Thankfully he leaves the room and I continue to stall to put off singing.

My co teacher asks me who sings my favorite song and I tell her The Killers, but unfortunately they aren't in the book.  To my dismay, she flips to the bank of the book which just happens to contain newer songs that have been recently added.  I'm starting to get a little worried and as luck would have it, she found The Killers.  Mr. Brightside to be exact and entered it into the machine.  Within a matter of moments, I'm given the microphone and sent up to sing.  I'm a bad singer, not even OK on a good day so I wasn't too thrilled about this.  However, I give it my best. I quickly realize that all those times when I'd had a bit to drink and thought I was singing pretty good, I'm now pretty damn sure I wasn't. On top of all this, some of the women stand up and start dancing and shaking tambourines.  I'm almost feeling like a rock star here.  Singing it up, women dancing all around me, shaking their junk.  By junk, I mean their tambourines. The song finishes and I get a huge applause.  I think its out of pity but I guess it's better than getting booed.  My score........ 96.  Not quite enough to get the 10 000 won sitting on the TV, but its a nice score and I'm happy its over with.

That's not the end of my singing career at the school though.   A few other teachers belt out their favorite old time Korean songs, and despite the fact that I clearly never grew up in Korea and can hardly speak the language, they always feel the need to ask if I know the song that their singing. Clearly not.  Next, my vice principal comes into the room and says she wants to hear me sing.  I'm not angry, but I'm far from happy.  Not sure of what song to do next, I tell them to pick an old one for me and hopefully I'll know it.  Ohhh, the suspense builds as a couple teachers look at each other with smiles, then slowly turn towards me.  Dancing Queen.  Oh, how could they have known I was a die hard Abba fan?  I manage to persuade one of the other women to accompany me in singing.  Luckily, most of the teacher's know this song, so they all sing along.  As a result, it was hard to hear my horrible voice.  Score this time around is 97.  Somehow I'm getting better.  Not good enough to get paid for it yet though.  Two songs down, I must be done.

A few moments later, my principal rushes into the room and grabs me.  This comes as a bit of relief.  I'm thinking that maybe he wants to get out of this madness and grab a few beer.  WRONG.  Let's parade the white boy around to another room and have him sing for some more people.  It's not all bad though.  This time my principal wants to sing with me.  Must mean he like's me.  What in the world will we be singing together? Yesterday by the Beatles.  I don't really know the song all the well.  He did.  I think there's something wrong with that.  Things went fairly well though.  Sounded just like Paul and John back in the day, with a Korean accent mixed in.  My principal gives me a high five afterwards and leaves the room.  I turn to the TV to see our score.  100. Holy shit, I've done it.  I've never attained this level of perfection in the Korean Karaoke scene, but today was the day.  It started out well at 96, slight improvement to 97 and then with the aid of my principal I can now call myself a pro. 

My fingers and mind can already imagine spending the 10 bucks.  After all this insanity, I feel as though I have earned that money.  Unfortunately though, that's not how things works. If you get 100, even if there's already money on the screen, you don't get to take it.  You have to but more money up.  Who get's all this money in the end? Well, the company that runs this great establishment.  As a reult, it prolonged my singing career.  Once your time runs out they hand the money to the manager who adds some more time to your machine.

I was not quite finished yet though, there was still one more song left for me on this night. Within this new room and new group of teachers, they all come to the consensus that I should sing again.  Like they could read my mind and passion for music they chose my favorite song.  Dancing Queen.  My jaw nearly falls off my face.  I try to explain that I've already sang it once, but before I can get through to them, the music begins in the background and I'm off again doing my best to sound like a blond Swede.  Once the score is revealed at the end, its clear I did not give my best effort, but I'm happy.  91.  That means two things: 

1. I can keep the last bit of money in my wallet 

2. We are finally out of time and so are all of the other rooms.  No more Dancing Queen for this guy.

Vietnam Vacation 3

Yes it has been ages since I made my last post about my vacation, but I'm not getting paid for this, so sometimes its difficult to get myself motivated.

Last I left off, we were leaving Mui Ne and headed to Saigon (Ho Chi Minh City) for New Years Eve.  I feared for my life and that of others at first due to my personal problems, but they were cured by Imodium. This bus ride, although not as luxurious as the previous (no sleeping bunks) was smooth and we didn't have any gross water dripping on us.  When we first arrive in Saigon, I was actually a little uneasy about the whole thing.  The moment we get off the bus, we look around and see a sea of scooters flying up and down the streets.  We wait for awhile in the hope that they will stop and allow us to cross but they never do. We had to turn to the local method.  Just walk across and hope to god you don't get hit.  Scary as all hell, but it works, and they don't even honk at you.

We decided to stay at a small hotel called the Bich Duyen.  If your ever in Saigon, stay here.  It was fairly cheap, and the owner/operator may have been the nicest person I have ever met.He goes above and beyond for the guests!  The moment we arrived he quickly greeted us and gave us a small map of the area telling us about numerous sites to see and also signed us up for a tour the following day.

We were both really tired from the long bus ride, and decided to go grab a coffee.  We found a little spot just down the road from our hotel.  We ordered two coffees and we got two of the strongest thickest coffee's I've ever had.  We both thought they were weird and maybe this place didn't know how to make coffee.  However, this turned out to be a typical coffee in Vietnam.  Sure this is seeming like a brutal story because you don't care about my coffee. I only tell this story because what we thought was just a little coffee shop, was actually a little brothel posing as a coffee shop.  Shortly after we sat down, another foreign man came in, sat down by himself and was quickly joined by two ladies from the back of the place.  Feeling a little awkward, we quickly finished our mud like coffee and left, not wanting to stick around and see what happened. 

Both Kristin and I were still a little under the weather so we took it easy that night. We went out for a supper and had a few drinks.  With a sketchy beginning to this day, and uncertain of whether I was fully over my case of the runs, I thought going easy was a good plan.  It was actually a pretty relaxing night, and to my surprise, at the strike of midnight I didn't see a single firework. Not one.  The Vietnamese follow the lunar calendar (Westerner's follow the solar one) and this wasn't actually NYE to them, but I still expected to see a couple fireworks.  The Asian culture just loves fireworks they could have least fired a couple off.

The following day, we were up at about 7 am (told you I didn't drink much) to go visit the Cu Chi tunnels.  They were created during the Vietnam war by the Vietcong and also by farmers in the region.  They would hide in these underground tunnels while their area was infiltrated by the Americans and then when the Americans would least expect it, they would hop out of a hole and kill them.  The tunnels were extremely small, and you had to squat down for most of it, and in some areas you had to crawl.  I was a little uncomfortable being down there for about five minutes, I couldn't imagine actually living down there.

Through this experience, I gained a different perspective on the first Rambo movie.  In the film, Rambo hides in the mountains somewhere in America, and is chased by the local police.  He sets up all sorts of booby traps which ultimately kill most of the cops.  I originally thought Rambo was a genius when he made all the traps, but in fact, these are the same booby traps made by the Vietcong and farmers to get the Americans.  He was just a copycat.  Our tour guide on the trip showed us with great pride all the traps that were created and how they would hurt people.  Some were not even meant to kill people, but actually just shove spikes into a soldiers nuts. Like this one below:

I would have expected our tour guide to have hard feelings towards the Americans and say a lot of things about them, but he didn't.  Instead, he talked about the great things that the Vietcong was able to accomplish during the war.  His favorite was that they were the first people to shoot a B-52 bomber out of he sky.  A feat never accomplished before because the plane flew at such a high altitude.  He must have talked about this event three or four times on the trip.

Following our trip to the tunnels, we decided to visit the Vietnam War Museum to shed some more light on the events of the war.  We were both shocked at all the horrible events and lasting effects on their country.  Not only was their land riddled with land mines, but much of their economy was in shambles because theirs farmlands had been ruined by chemicals.  The whole experience was very informative and enlightening. I actually felt slightly ignorant that I didn't know about everything that had occurred.  As a result, I quickly downloaded some movies about the war when I got back home and I found it quite disturbing.

We stayed a total of two nights in Saigon and then booked a bus to a small river town called Chau Doc.  Our helpful hotel owner helped us book the bus, but to get to it, we needed to go to the other side of the city.  Once we arrived at the bus terminal, we quickly realised that this wasn't the normal bus stations we had been use to.  This was entirely locals, and a little frightening. Not that I feared for my life, but I just felt as though this was an opportunity that I was probably going to be conned.  There was an old woman who may have been 100, that looked at me ticket, yelled at me and then directed me to the other side of the terminal.  My bus, well minivan, was actually right in front of me, and the old bitch was trying to make me miss it.  Even the seemingly kind elder's were out to get me.

The bus ride that ensued was about 6 hours down the bumpiest roads I've ever traveled. We drove through small farming villages along the Mekong Delta and although it was a long drive it was still really exciting.  I actually loved it.  Well, not all of it.  I kept trying to take pictures, but even with the anti-shock option turned ON on the camera, it was no use.  The camera wasn't meant for these roads.  I'm near useless when it comes to camera's.  I'm not technologically inept. I just don't think to take any pictures, or care to take them for the most part.  When I actually do take them, they usually look pretty crappy and this was just another example of that.

Where's the logic?

I felt I was in need of some new denims and went to Ewha University station in Seoul.  The area has tons of cheap trendy clothes.  I've been there a few times, and actually got my lovely Christmas sweater from there.  Overall, I've been pretty content with everything I've bought in the area.  

After a little wandering around the other day, I stumbled on a new store that had some nice looking jeans for about $20.  I decided to look around the area a bit more before buying anything, and in the end I came back to the jean store.  After about 20 minutes or so of looking through their selection, I finally find a pair that I like.  So, I ask to try them on.  Not allowed.  This doesn't shock me though, because a lot of places in Korea don't let you try their clothes on.  To be more accurate, they don't let foreigner's try their clothes on.  I've asked in many places before, only to get turned down, and then see a Korean come out of the change room with some clothes that he'd just tried on.  

I really like the pants, but now I'm unsure if it's such a good idea to buy them without knowing whether or not they fit.  For only $20 though, I figure I should buy them, and if they don't fit, I can just give them to someone else and they won't be a total waste.  I decide to make the purchase.  After paying, the cashier hands me a receipt and tells me that I can bring them back within a month and exchange them if I need to.  Wouldn't it make more sense to let your customers try on the pants before they bought them? To me it certainly would, to them I guess not.  

I get home, try the pants on, and well, they're pretty snug.  The material also feels super cheap, but I could have expected that.  Now, I have to make the one hour train and subway trek back there just to exchange the damn things.  A trip I could have saved myself from making if they would have allowed me to take 5 minutes to try them on, find out they didn't fit, and get the next size up.  My time is counting down in Korea, and I can't afford to make all sorts of needless trips.

I have one fear about this whole thing though.  Countless stores open and clothes (HAHAHAH, pun wasn't intended, but I seen it after editing and had to leave it) within a month or two all over the place.  Could this be one of those stores? If so, and following with my great luck in 09, they'll be all closed up and I'll end up with a pair of really tight pants that I may only be able to fit nicely into by hoping into my Delorean and traveling back to about 2000.