Day 80: Fungi, Madam

So I'm reading this book called Fresh Air Fiend by Paul Theroux. I mostly like it so far, haven't decided yet. It's a collection of short travel essays that he compiled over the years. The stories are interesting, but the author himself seems a bit smug. Anyway, there's a part where he's taking about the act of "travel writing" itself. He quotes Nabokov who is quoting another unnamed writer. So here goes a writer (can I call myself that?) quoting a writer quoting a writer quoting yet another writer:

"....the fellow who writes: 'Before turning in I put out my wet boots to dry and in the morning I found that a thick blue forest had grown on them ("Fungi, madam," he explained)...' and at once India becomes alive for me." 

His point (or rather, Nabokov's) was that telling the truth about the everyday ups and downs of living abroad in one's travel writing makes it much easier for the reader to visualize what it's truly like to be in that country. That's not really the reason I'm writing all of this, though. I'm focusing on the fungi. I just have to rant a little bit about how frustrating it is that we had to spend all morning scrubbing down all our walls and the whole bathroom, scraping all the tacky texture off the wallpaper, to attempt to get rid of the nasty gray-green forest of mold that seems to grow absolutely everywhere in our apartment! If you want to get a good idea of a Korean apartment, just imagine very thin, poorly insulated walls where the condensation is so constant that pools of water form in the corners of our living room and we have to keep towels in the corners all the time so that it doesn't spread to the rest of the floor. It's a losing battle that we're forced to fight daily, but we won't succumb to the fuzzy armies advancing down the wallpaper! Also my flats grew a thick layer of mold just sitting in our shoe cupboard. Ahhh.

Sorry about that, just trying to make Korea come alive for you! It's really not too terrible, we manage just fine. It will be better when it warms up a bit, too.

On a more exciting note! I'm pretty convinced I saw my spirit animal today. We were running in the mountains and on the way back down, up on a rock near the top of one of the bigger peaks, there was this little black goat! It was definitely not a mountain goat, just a little farm goat that must have been yearning for adventure. She got herself lost in the mountains and decided it was a nice place and she would just stay up there. We definitely had a connection for a second.

We had a really good week here, I'd say. I'm having so much fun with my students. The more I get to know them, the more I really love being their teacher. On Thursday we got to take some of them on an "outing." We went to the movie theater and watched Kung Fu Panda 3 (in English with Korean subtitles). It was a lot of fun to see them outside of a classroom setting. Speaking of outside the classroom, I was out and about with my friend, Brittany, today and I saw two of my students - a boy and a girl. The girl was very happy to see me. The boy was with his friends and was super embarrassed and obviously way too cool to talk to me.

Brittany and I also went to a dog cafe today. It's basically a spacious cafe, like an indoor dog park in a way, where people can bring their dogs (there are also some dogs who live there), sip their coffee, and watch them play. People without dogs go there to get their dog fix and their caffeine fix at the same time. Brittany and I were those people. It was so much fun.

Day 74: Book Alley etc.

Since we've gotten back from Cambodia, things have been pretty routine, in a good way, though. Last weekend we stayed on the island and did some hiking. It's such a beautiful place. We hiked up the 2nd highest mountain, which is kind of in the middle of the island, and got some great views of both the north and south coasts of Geoje-do. There are trails everywhere, which can make running pretty interesting almost every day. Many of them are too mountainous to run the whole way, but hiking is good exercise too!

The North coast of Geoje

The more rugged, island-dotted South coast - my iphone can't do it justice

On a different note, we've made a few friends at church! A few Indian families get together on Saturday nights for this amazing homemade food. We went last weekend and it was really, really nice. I've been realizing just how difficult it is to make friends when you aren't obligated to be with the same people every day either in an academic setting or on a sports team. I've never really met people in any other setting, and, being a bit of an introvert, it's not easy! Church is an easy place to connect with people, though, and we've gone out to coffee a few times with a nice group of people from all over. Last weekend we had a great conversation with a couple of South Africans about teaching, travel, prestige dialects, language learning, and so many other things that Steven and I are both nerdy about. It was so good to get past the "Where are you from?/How long have you been here?/What hagwon do you teach at?" same old boring get-to-know-you conversation.

We go to a lot of coffee shops...these are from our favorite one: "Love Tree"

The main reason I wanted to blog today was to write about Book Alley! Now, if you know me and Steven, you probably know that we have a "problem" with buying too many books. The Ithaca public library puts on this huge book sale in the fall. This year, we happened to be home when it was going on this year! I think we bought like 27 books? At Calvin, any time the Campus Store or the English Department had a book sale, we'd be there between classes. I really noticed this "problem" when packing for Korea and organizing all of our worldly possessions. If you go by weight,  I would bet that books probably make up about 75% of everything we own.

So yesterday, we went to Busan to search for this street that foreigners call "Book Alley." It's actually called Bosu-Dong Chekbang Golmog, but Book Alley works too. Book Alley began around 1950 as one simple book/newspaper vendor run by a few refugees of the Korean war. After the war, it grew as students, professors, and other intellectual-merchanty types caught on to the idea of an entire street of book shops. Now it is an alley, about a block long and 10 feet wide, maybe? with over 70 used book shops crammed in. There are books absolutely everywhere. Inside each little stall are stacks and stacks of books just piled to the ceiling. The stacks are so close together that you can only walk through a row in one direction. There was no room for me to turn around, let alone for Steven! Probably 95% of the books were in Korean, some in Japanese, and fewer in English. But that's a good thing. If they were all in English, it would have been dangerous. The way it was, it felt more like a scavenger hunt to find the books in English than an actual shopping trip to find books that we wanted to read. It was around dusk when we were there, icy cold, and it actually felt kind of magical, like you could wander down one of those tiny hallways, or up a narrow staircase, and never come back.

 My pictures don't really do it justice, you can't tell just how many books there were. Well, maybe you can tell that there are a lot of books, but look at the pictures and then imagine like 100 or 1000 times as many books as they show, depending on how good your imagination is ;)

A Belated Cambodia Post

It's been almost a week and a half since we returned from our trip to Cambodia, and after recovering for a weekend we got back into the swing of things with work. We haven't gotten around to writing about our trip until now, but better late than never, right?

Anyway, our trip got off to an adventurous start. We landed in Siem Reap at about 11:30pm local time. They mostly use US dollars in Cambodia, but since we've been in Korea, not the US, we didn't have any with us. We had read that there were ATMs where you can withdraw dollars from international bank accounts, so we were planning on doing that. None of our cards worked. We were really worried because we needed to pay cash for the visa fee just to get out of the airport and into the country. Fortunately we met some nice guys from Stockholm who were willing to lend us the money we needed for the fee. We promised them we'd repay them by getting them dinner if we ever encounter them somewhere in the world. After that fiasco, we were okay for the night at least. We had booked a hotel online and they had an airport pick-up, so we hopped in the tuk-tuk (motorcycle with a cart behind it; the most common form of transportation in Siem Reap) and got to our guest house safely.

After breakfast at our guest house in the morning, we went into town. We tried 3 more ATMs, and none of them worked. We were getting very nervous, but fortunately we went into a bank/Western Union and they were able to get one of our cards to work there, so we finally got cash and were feeling much better about things. We explored Siem Reap for a while, then found a bike rental place ($2/day). There are several places in Siem Reap that have a strong commitment to helping the community with their profits from tourism, and the place we rented our bikes from was one of those. We took our new wheels and rode to the War Museum.

The only word I've thought of that even comes close to adequately describing the experience is sobering. We got to listen to a guy who fought against the Khmer Rouge for about 10 years. He told us about his experiences and also about the history of the war/genocide and the weapons we saw around us. His nickname is "The Cat" because it is so incredible that he has not died yet. He was shot at least three separate times, has shrapnel from landmines embedded in multiple places in his body, and lost part of a leg to a landmine. Hearing his stories and seeing guns and tanks that were actually used reminded us how little we have to actually complain about. It wasn't exactly a "fun" experience, but we were glad we went since it gave us a more well-rounded view of the country of Cambodia.

That afternoon, we biked to the largest religious monument in the world: Angkor Wat. There's nothing I can write to do it justice. It is enormous and intricate at the same time, and all-around impressive. And no single picture can tell the whole story because it's impossible to get the entire complex in one picture unless you were in a helicopter. We'll just put a couple of pictures here, and there are more on Facebook.

This is part of the wall that surrounds what used to be the city. At this point we've already crossed a moat almost 200m wide.

After entering the gate, the main temple was still this far away. There is a raised causeway that runs all the way from the entry gate to the main temple in the center of the complex.

This gives an idea of the intricacy of the carvings. All of the walls of the main temple had floor-to-ceiling reliefs telling important stories of the Hindu faith. I think this one was depicting heaven and hell.

After three hours or so there, we biked back to our guest house, where we had dinner. I think we paid about $5US for both of us to eat there. The next day we were going to bike a lot, so we took it easy and rested up.

Our second full day in Siem Reap was devoted to biking the Grand Circuit, which is a loop of about 26km that visits 8 or 9 temples. Since we had already seen Angkor Wat the day before, we skipped that and headed to Angkor Thom, which served as the capital of the Khmer empire for a long time. In the middle of the huge former city is the Bayon temple, which is famous for its faces on the towers. We explored Bayon for a while before going to the next temple. The next three temples were Preah Khan, Neak Pean, and Ta Som. All three were next to a gigantic man-made lake, about 3km by 1km. Exactly in the middle of the short sides lie Preah Khan on one side and Ta Som on the other, and Neak Peak is on an island exactly in the middle of the lake. It was pretty incredible the precision with which the Khmers built these temples (and perfectly rectangular lake). Preah Khan and Ta Som were both a lot more overgrown by the jungle than either of the other temples had been.

Bayon

Some of Bayon's famous faces

Preah Khan

There is a temple in a man-made lake on a man-made island exactly in the middle of a perfectly rectangular man-made lake (Neak Pean)

This tree at Ta Som had grown over the doorway to the temple, but its roots left the passageway open

After those temples, we saw a couple of even older temples: East Mebon and Pre Rup, both from the 900s AD. For some context, that's over 100 years before the Norman conquest of Great Britain. These ones, like all the others before them, had their own distinct feel. Despite the sheer number of temples, no two seemed the same. These ones were built from a different type of rock that was more red and more porous. They also seemed a lot more vertical.

East Mebon

Pre Rup

Jungle as far as the eye can see

After one more temple, Banteay Srei, we were ready to be done biking for the day, but we still had 12km to bike back to Siem Reap. We got dinner at a nice restaurant ($13 for two three-course meals) after returning our bikes, and then got a tuk-tuk back to our guest house.

The next day we had a tour of the Tonle Sap lake, which changes size throughout the year. At the peak of the wet season, it is only slightly smaller than lake Erie, but during the dry season, it is only about 1/6th that size. It was somewhere in the middle when we were there, but receding. After stopping to see some local industries on the way, we got to a stilt village. The houses are 10-15 meters off the ground, and in the wet season the water is just a few feet below the floors, but now they are quite a bit higher. We got on a boat that took us out the the lake itself. As we went, we learned about the ingenious ways the people use the seasonal nature of the lake. As it recedes, they plant rice in the fertile ground as the lake exposes it. They also use water lilies and fences to trap catfish as the water goes down. Once we got onto the lake, we saw a floating village. All of the people who live in it are Vietnamese refugees who came there during their civil war in the 1970s and 1980s. The Cambodian government won't let them buy land, so they just float on the lake. They seem to be doing well, though, since some have TVs, solar panels, and floating gardens. They have a floating school, too. We got back into town around mid-afternoon and wandered around the markets for a while.

Our guide told us that the building on the right is a coffee shop for the farmers who work in the newly-dry rice fields. In the foreground is the water lily-and-fence setup to catch catfish when the water gets lower.

The floating village. Also, I accidentally took a picture of this butterfly.

Floating school

That night, our last in Cambodia, was pretty terrible because I got food poisoning. It was pretty bad, and I had no energy for our last day, which was too bad. We had wanted to go to Angkor Wat one more time, and to Ta Prohm, which was the most well-known temple we hadn't been to yet. Instead, we spent most of the day parked in an air-conditioned coffee shop while I tried to get some food in me. Eventually I felt up to (slowly) exploring Ta Prohm, the most overgrown of the major temples. We got a tuk-tuk driver to take us there, and then to the airport. It was definitely worth going to Ta Prohm, and we both enjoyed it despite the circumstances.

I spent a considerable amount of time resting on the ruins while Sarah took pictures.

Our trip back to Korea was uneventful (thankfully) other than the Dairy Queen in the Siem Reap airport being out of ice cream (bummer). Four days was probably not enough to do Siem Reap or Cambodia justice, but we did our best, and we're definitely glad we went. It was an awesome trip despite the less-than-ideal last night.