bigbang rocks the night

last night, i went to my third [yes, third...don't judge me] BIGBANG concert.

the 2010 Big Show.

and it was amazinggggg. like, best concert EVERRRR.

basically, it was three hours of pure awesomeness. they opened with 거짓말, and also sang that as part of their finale~~with a lot of other greatness in between. each of the five members got a chance to sing their solo stuff, and of course they were all amazing [making it really hard to pick a favorite].

the show was completely sold out, and i'm still so excited that i got the chance to go!! the only bad thing about it was that cameras were banned...which meant that i had to take super stealth pictures. that is, until the guy behind me got his camera taken away. and the guy next to me got all of his pictures deleted by security. so i figured it wasn't worth it.

during one song, seung ri and daesung came out through the audience...so they were literally ten feet away from me. annddd, seung ri definitely waved at me. [excitement!!] also, 2NE1 performed two songs during the show...which was definitely a great surprise!! [they're my favorite of the girl kpop groups.]

great band+amazing performance=awesome night!! [i love korea ^_^]

B to the I to the G [BANG BANG]

T.O.P, Daesung, Seung Ri, G-Dragon, Taeyang

T.O.P [my favorite]!!

this is the post i'd like to call "a fail of epic proportions"

part one: epic fail

on saturday, whitney and i had the brilliant idea to go to the beach in thailand. we were led to believe that there was a beach two hours away from bangkok--by bus. so that morning, we ate breakfast and got ready for a fun day at the beach. we headed down to the bus station and hopped on a bus that we were told would take us to pattaya [which is the beach we were trying to go to].

two hours came and went. no beach.

three hours passed. still no beach.

then, the bus driver dropped us off on the side of the freaking road and told us to get on a new bus. so we did. we rode on the new bus for another hour, before finally getting off, very tired and extremely frustrated. four other american girls got off at the same stop as us, and we were forced to ride in a sketchy open air taxi the rest of the way to the beach.

we spotted a subway near the beach, so we ate lunch there--after travelling for over four hours, we were very hungry. after eating, we immediately felt rejuvenated and ready to spend the afternoon at the beach.

the beach was SUPER CROWDED, but we managed to rent chairs right along the ocean. we put on sunscreen and were starting to relax under the warm thai sun, listening to the gentle sound of the waves.

and then, approximately 2.5 seconds later, it started raining--pouring might be a better word.

gray clouds completey blocked out the sun, and there were no blue skies in sight. we tried to escape the rain by running into the ocean, which we then discovered was completely littered in trash [making the environmentalist in me quite angry]. refusing to trudge through trash to cleaner, deeper water, i chose to stand in the rain.

we tried to wait it out, but 30 minutes later, there was no end in sight. so we hailed a cheap cab and were off to bangkok.

or so we thought.

turns out, the taxis from pattaya can only go to the airport. so that's where we went. this--ordinarily--may not have been a big deal...except that we had to go through the freaking airport to get downstairs to find another taxi to take us back to our hotel. still doesn't seem like that big of an ordeal, right?? wrong. we were wearing swimsuits and cover-ups, not to mention we were looking SUPER beautiful from having been rained on.

aigoo. [this is a word that koreans say--i'm told it has no real translation, so i assume it means something like this: asjdfklajsdfklajsdklfjerjklakljsdajknljasdfkljasdfklj!!]


part two: poverty leaves you stranded in bangkok during a storm for thirteen hours and five minutes

sunday. check-out day. and of course the hotel would be fully booked so we couldn't do late check-out, therefore forcing us to be out by 12.

no problem.

except that our flight wasn't until 1:05...AM.

soooooo, we had time to waste. a lot of time.

we went to the mall, and saw a movie--"cloudy with a chance of meatballs"--it was actually pretty good. we saw it in the imax, which was cool to me because i'd never seen a movie in an imax before. and then we had lunch and some white guy skipped me in line because i am invisible. and then we walked around the mall. and then we went to starbucks. for three hours.

for dinner, we decided to go to hard rock cafe because i wanted a t-shirt [especially since i had gotten one from the hard rock in ho chi minh city]. well, we had no idea where it was, and no one would tell us so we took a taxi. and the taxi driver drove us around in a big circle for 20 minutes and dropped us off about 100 feet from where he had picked us up. fail.

but, dinner was very good, and i got my t-shirt. so things were okay.

finally, it was time to go to the airport, which is where we did a lot of waiting in line. like a ridiculous amount of waiting in line. for two hours. only to find that our flight from bangkok to beijing had been...DELAYED...from 1:05am to 1:20am. well, 1:20 rolls around and we still hadn't boarded the plane. we didn't take off until after 2.

we thought this would be no big deal--it would just cut down on our layover in beijing. yeahhhh, we were wrong about that too. it turned out that our flight from beijing to incheon had also been...DELAYED.

aigoo.

part three: incheon, sweet incheon

sooo, don't get me wrong--vacation was great!! i think that both whitney and i had a lot of fun, and it was a really relaxing time...but i didn't expect to miss korea. at all.

but i did. a lot.

i'm sitting here at work, and vacation seems almost like it was a lifetime ago. but it's so good to be back. during english camp this morning, i realized that i had really missed teaching, and i had missed my kids. i missed being in a country that kinda sorta has traffic laws [guidelines may be a better word], where i kinda sorta understand what's going on. i missed kpop [just ask whitney...i got excited every time i heard a kpop song on the radio in vietnam and thailand]. i even missed korean food.

i think that being in different countries made me really grateful that i live [and work] where i do. i had seriously considered teaching elsewhere. i even applied to teach in russia--before i had applied for korea. i mean, i may get frustrated with korea sometimes, but overall it's a really great place to live. and work. [my current complaint is that i don't have a channel that picks up [american] football games. soooo, i have to miss the super bowl. and peyton manning is going to be in it. no fair.]

basically, this entire post was just to say: after 13 hours of being stranded in bangkok with no hotel, 2 delayed flights, 3 hours of sleep during a 36-hour period, and 1 meal during a 24-hour period, it feels so good to be back in korea.

aigoo.

annddd, we're out of toilet paper...

...because the rolls are abnormally small and the hotel won't bring us more.

...today, whitney and i went to the zoo. we got lost. in the zoo. thanks to the stupid map which was absolutely no help at all.

the zoo was fun [because i freaking love the zoo], but not much different from your typical zoo found everywhere else. this zoo had all my favorite animals, like lemurs and meerkats...and allegedly, penguins. we wandered around for forever looking for the penguins, only to find that you had to pay extra to see them. pssh. LAME. we left in protest [except not really, we had walked around the zoo for hours and seen everything--several times--due to the fact that we kept getting lost, thanks to the clearly faulty map].

after leaving the zoo, we walked around the area for a while and saw some really cool buildings, like the national assembly and the wimanmek mansion. then, we took a super sketchy open-air-taxi-thing to the golden mount, which is a really big temple.

after wandering around the golden mount for a while, we decided to take a taxi back to the hotel, which was another super sketchy adventure. the taxi driver was really friendly, but made us stop at like a million places and talk to people. first, he dropped us off at some kind of tailor. and then he dropped us off at a travel agency and made us talk to a really mean german guy. finally, after like a kazillion hours later, we arrived safely at our hotel. we did venture out for dinner tonight--we went to a really good thai food place.

annddd, tomorrow we will go to the beach~~yayy!!

until next time,
~m~

hello from thailand!!

whitney and i are now enjoying day 2 in bangkok!!

our last day in vietnam was kind of a bummer...it poured alllllllll day long, so most of our plans were rained out. we did go to notre dame cathedral and the post office [which is a historical landmark, apparently...] to mail post cards home. we ended the day by going to our favorite coffee shop :] even though it was yucky weather, it was good to get out in the city one last time before leaving.

we arrived in thailand around 11pm on tuesday...bangkok is a huge city--but it's super nice!! on wednesday, we went to get massages [my first one ever] and it was sooo relaxing--the perfect way to start our trip in thailand!! today, we went to dreamland, a theme park just outside of bangkok, which was a lot of fun. the biggest roller coaster was closed for maintenance, which sucked...but we still had fun at the rest of the park :]

it is storming tonight, but hopefully it will stop soon--we plan to go to the zoo and a palace tomorrow!!

until next time,
~m~

sketch happens

my adventure in vietnam is drawing to a close, but my thai adventure is about to begin...

since my last update, whitney and i have done quite a lot around vietnam...

on saturday, we wandered around ho chi minh city, and the highlight [for me] was the war remnants museum--formerly the museum of american war crimes. [once again, i'm pretty sure we were the only americans there...] the exhibits included weapons and bombs used by americans in vietnam, u.s. army planes, helicopters, and tanks, and a prison recreated for the purposes of the museum. it was all very interesting, and of course very biased. regardless, i thought the exhibits were very interesting [as some of you know, the vietnam war era is one of my favorite periods of history--along with wwii.]

on sunday, we explored ho chi minh city a little more--we went to the reunification palace, which is where the truce was signed between the north and the south in 1975. we were able to see all four levels, and go in to many rooms. in one room, whitney made an announcement on the microphone [probably against the rules...] and in another room, there was a sign that said "do not touch"...so naturally, i had to--and i have the picture to prove it [definitely against the rules...]

today, we took a super sketchy boat ride up the saigon river to go to the beach at vung tao, which was also super sketchy. when we arrived at vung tao, we had an interesting time trying to get the taxi driver to take us to the beach...whitney ended up drawing a picture for him, but it looked like the loch ness monster and i think the driver was kinda confused. finally, he understood what we wanted and dropped us off at sketchville beach. for real. we were accosted by nearly a million women selling things--and they would not leave us alone!! one lady tried to sell us stuff for fifteen minutes. but, the water felt nice and we had a very relaxing afternoon on the beach. the boat ride home was also super sketchy. the people sitting around us were evidently playing musical chairs--at one point, a buddhist monk sat next to me, and when he got up, a sketchy guy sat next to me who proceeded to stare and whitney and me for the rest of the trip. all in all though, it was a good day!!

tomorrow, we will explore the rest of ho chi minh city, hopefully stopping by the notre dame cathedral, the jade emperor pagoda, and maybe a temple or two...

...and then it's off to thailand we go!!

ninjas, propaganda, and pizza hut

HELLO FROM VIETNAM!!

it's still sooo hard for me to believe that i'm in vietnam--for vacation-->eek!!

i left korea on wednesday with whitney, and after endless hours of flights, a superlong layover, and seeing a crazy man get detained by security in nanning [china], we finally arrived in ho chi minh city [aka saigon] thursday morning around 3.

it seems so surreal [to me] to be in vietnam!! a year ago, as i sat in class learning about the vietnam war--and doing thousand of hours of research about it--i honestly never imagined that i would actually be here experiencing vietnam and the history that this country has. as i stepped out of the airport into the warm night air, i felt like i had not only flown to a different country, but a different period of time. i feel like i've flown about 35 years back in time...this is the way i imagine saigon looked during the height of the vietnam war...

today, whitney and i went on a tour of the cu chi tunnels, which the north vietnamese used to sneak in to saigon during the war. our tour started with a propaganda documentary made by the communists in 1968. [you don't even have to use your imagination to know the kinds of things this film was saying...i lost count of how many times they used the phrase "the american enemy"] after seeing this film, whitney and i decided it would be best to say that we were from canada, if anyone asked...turns out, we were the only americans on the tour, but people did believe we were from canada, luckily... after watching the propaganda film, we were able to tour the area...we saw all of the traps that the viet cong had set to capture americans--we saw at least ten different types of traps that were used, and our guide proudly told us stories about all of the americans that had died from falling in to the traps. we were also able to go down in to the tunnels, at which point my claustrophobia kicked in and i literally freaked out. the tunnels are SOOOO small and dark--i had to crawl on my hand and knees, and i was still bumping my head on the ceiling!! it's hard to imagine how the viet cong lived and fought down there for so long!! it was interesting to hear about this history from a vietnamese point of view--so different from the american point of view that i'm used to hearing in class. i guess it just goes to show that there are two sides to every story...and maybe both are biased in their own way [not that i'm a fan of the "america sucks" point of view...]

yesterday, whitney and i explored the areas of ho chi minh city surrounding our hotel, and we made a few observations. first, we couldn't help but notice the amount of moterbikes/mopeds in this city--our tour guide today said that there are close to 4 million!! you can literally see hundreds [or maybe more] on the road at any given time...and they all drive super crazy, i will never complain about the drivers in korea again!! also, there are communist flags everywhere--i'm talking red with a straight up sickle and hammer on it. and there are huge portraits of ho chi minh proudly displayed everywhere.

last night, we went to dinner at...pizza hut. and i have to say, pizza hut in vietnam FREAKING ROCKS!! there are several reasons why pizza hut in vietnam is superior to all other pizza huts in the world:
1.) they played BigBang [not even the pizza hut in bupyeong plays BigBang...at least, not that i've heard]
2.) a "large" [medium, if we're talking american sizes] pizza cost a whopping $7...for real. and sodas were $1. heckyess.
3.) the pizza was freaking delicious, like best pizza i've ever had. ever. we're talking better than american pizza hut.

this morning, whitney and i saw ninjas practicing ninja-ish things in the street. [we watched from the safety of our hotel room.] i know they were ninjas because of two reasons:
1.) they were wearing all black.
2.) they were practicing synchronized moves, like jump kicks and roundhouse kicks.
so clearly there's no other explanation for this odd behavior; they were obviously ninjas. duh.

i suppose that this is all for now...later, i suppose that whitney and i will go out and explore the city [aka look for the hard rock cafe haha]. but, i promise to update more later [my new year's resolution was to actually update my blog, since obviously i suck at that...and also to learn korean.]

until next time,
~m~