29 August 2013

Summer in Korea

Summer in Korea is a different experience than I have ever had anywhere else.  For one thing it is always humid.  Not just a little humid but on average around ninety percent humidity.  The average temperature in the heat of summer (from about June to mid-August) was pretty much a steady ninety degrees Fahrenheit.  That isn’t that hot compared to Arizona, but throw in the ninety percent humidity and then it is pretty bad.  Plus air conditioning in South Korea isn’t constantly on everywhere you go.  The air conditioners here aren’t all central, but instead it is usually wall mounted air conditioners.  At school how it usually works is that during the morning no air conditioners are supposed to be turned on.  After lunch the air conditioners are allowed to be turned on.  The reasoning behind this is they are trying to save power.  I don’t know if anyone is familiar but Korea usually does do rolling blackouts to save energy.  This is especially true this year because some nuclear plants that produce the power have gone off line.  I am not sure exactly why they are no longer working but either way it has been said that there is possibility of rolling blackouts.  They are trying to avoid the whole country from losing power at once.  There haven’t been any blackouts yet, but it wouldn’t surprise me if there were some in the future.     

So over summer camp it was pretty warm.  Luckily I am out by the beach (can see it from my window now) and so that means it is a little bit cooler compared to in town.  During summer camp I did have the windows open and hoping for a breeze.  With no air conditioning in the morning sometimes the students do complain that they don’t want to learn.  I see their argument, but I am always visible hotter even if it isn’t the case.  This is because I sweat a lot easier than Koreans.  This is true for anybody from the West.  I have heard the argument that Koreans don’t have as many sweat glands as people from the West.  I don’t know how true that is but no matter what us foreigners always look hotter because of the sweat.  I am enjoying the summer weather because it isn’t too bad and bearable.  I know that the winter time will be a lot harsher to handle.  
           
Another interesting thing about summer in Korea is the constant noise.  In summer time there is a bug known as Cicadas.  These bugs could possibly live other places, but this is the first time I have heard them.  They are a bug that comes out in the summer to mate.  They are only out during the warmest months.  I have never seen the bug because they are high up in the trees and don’t bug people like a mosquito or fly would.  They simply make noise all day long (usually stop at night around 9:00p.m.).  Someone told me they live underground the rest of their lives and when they are making the noise they will die by the end of the summer.  If that is true that means it is the old male (females don’t make noise) Cicadas that are the soundtrack of summer in Korea.  I read somewhere that some grocery stores play the noise in their music loop that way people will buy watermelon and other summer related items.


It is actually starting to cool down already.  In the morning it is pretty nice.  By lunch time it is kind of warm, but then they kick the air conditioning on.  Fall supposedly happens around the mid to end of September.  Plus fall is a really short season and then it kicks into the bone chilling winter.  Last week was orientation.  Basically we were locked down on this campus and went to classes from about seven in the morning to eight at night.  There wasn’t that good of information on teaching, but I was able to meet some more foreigners.  This week is my first full week back at school with regular classes.  This weekend there is a going away party in another city for a friend I plan to attend.  Plus the weekend of the 6th of September there is a 5K color run up near Seoul.  Basically it is a 5K race but you need to wear white because people on the side will be throwing color stuff all over us.  Now it is off to play some football (a.k.a. soccer).     I will write later next week sometime.    

15 August 2013

Trip to Thailand

So it has been awhile since I have posted.  It was the end of the semester and I had been busy with planning both a Summer Camp and my vacation.  Summer Camp is more like Summer School and for me it was five days long with only teaching from 9:00a.m. to 12:30p.m.  Funny thing about Summer School is that I never had more than two students.  They didn’t want to be at school learning English.  Right after Summer School I took my vacation.  My destination was a country known as Thailand.

I left Seoul, Korea on the morning of August 1st and ended up in Phuket, Thailand around 11:00p.m.  I did have a long layover in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.  Anybody planning future vacations avoid a long layover at that airport because I was able to walk around the whole airport in ten minutes.  Anyway I did make it to Thailand and right away it was known that I had never been to Thailand before this time.  This is because I tried to get into the taxi on the driver’s side.  In Thailand they drive on the opposite side of the road than in the United States or even Korea.  With driving on the opposite side of the road that means the driver side is actually on the right hand side when looking out the front windshield. After making it to my hotel basically the next morning (it is about 60km from the airport) I went out and found some food.  Even though it was a Thursday night/ early Friday morning there were still a lot of people out on the town.  Now Phuket is actually the name of the whole island and my little area where I stayed is named Patong Beach.  It didn’t matter what day it was there was always people out all night long.  The next day it rained majority of the day.  I was busy seeing the town and making payments on some reservations for scuba diving.

Yep, the main reason for going to Phuket was for the scuba diving.  It was well worth the trip.  Saturday was the first day of diving.  With the company I booked with they picked me up at my hotel in the morning.  We finished picking up more people eventually ending up at the dock (about 30 mins. away with traffic) where the boat is located.  The boat is a pretty good size boat and there were multiple shops using the boat each day.  So the very basic safety briefing (never mentioned about life jackets) and off we go towards that day’s destinations.  While heading out breakfast is served and after every dive there was food served.  Saturday there was still bad weather hanging around from the day before so it was long rolling waves as if we were on the roller coaster.  People were warned and motion sickness medication was offered but there were still some who did get seasick.  All the days diving I didn’t get sick once.  Also with the company I booked it comes with a dive master.  So each day on the ride out to the site I was being briefed with the dive master about the location and the various fish that we might see.  That first day there was one other diver and me with one dive master.  That boat ride was close to two hours and once we did get out to where we were headed it was possible to hide behind the island.  In doing this it was like glass and looking over the side you could see all the way down to the bottom.  We did two dives at this location moving a little bit and then headed backed towards an island we passed on the way out to dive a shipwreck.  Every dive I did throughout my days of diving I did see: schools of fish, banner fish, clown fish, coral, puffer fish, snapper fish, and different tropical fishes that I don’t know the names.  Those fish just listed I basically saw every single dive.  Other notable marine life I saw the first day was a big leopard shark.  She was sleeping on the bottom and was easily 6 feet long and the dive master said she looked pregnant because of how fat she was.
Second day of diving was at a place called Phi Phi islands.  We did two dives there and then one at shark point.  The shark point dive had a strong current that day so a lot of swimming for the last dive of the day.  Ironic thing is I didn’t see any sharks at shark point but instead at Phi Phi.  On one of the dives I saw three black tipped reef sharks.  This was towards the end of the dive so we also saw them while we were on the surface waiting for the boat to pick us up.  Plus the second day I saw a school of barracuda fish, lion fish, sea snake, triggerfish, and a sun starfish.  The third day of diving we went to the same islands as the first day, but we did dive different locations.  That day I had the same dive master as the first day and so we were looking for the leopard shark again.  This is the only day I didn’t see a shark of any type.  Instead saw the fish listed above plus a couple blue spotted rays, a few moray eels, lion fish, scorpion fish (hiding very well and extremely poisonous), triggerfish, and sea urchins.  The fourth and last day of diving was to a completely different location.  This day it was bad weather again and so the rolling waves with more wind so it was crashing more often.  It definitely made it interesting getting back on the boat the whole entire day.  The first dive was on a wreck by the name of “King Cruiser.”  There was no island for protection but the boat was hooked up to a buoy.  This wreck was quite a bit bigger.  For the second dive we ended up doing shark point because it was a little bit more protected but still pretty crazy getting on the boat.  If you didn’t time it right you would be thrown from the ladder and it was best to just be thrown and not try to stay and crash again with the ladder.  The last dive of that day we hid behind an island and did a wall dive.  The current was strong again but we just floated with it and didn’t try to fight it.  That day I saw three bamboo sharks (look like small nurse sharks), four seahorses (of coursing hiding in the coral), eels, lion fish, trigger fish, sea urchins, two colorful lobsters, big sea fans, and three good size squids.  Overall it was some real good diving and I saw a lot.  Only thing that I missed was a turtle.  On one of the days there were a couple divers who did see a hawks bill turtle but I had no luck.  No complaints though and any day of diving even in the bad weather is a good day in my opinion.  I hope the pictures do turn out and that it does make some of you jealous. 

After getting back to the hotel around 6:00p.m. at night I usually had dinner and simply relaxed.  I did try some of the local beer which one of them had an interesting name.  It was called Tiger beer.  It wasn’t the best one but not too bad.  On the boat I did meet this American couple who also live in South Korea too.  They were on vacation too and so one night we went to a show together.  This show was at a place called “Simon’s Cabaret” and in fact it was a lady-boy show.  If you didn’t know this fact before you would have never known the difference.  It was a pg show with a lot of music and a little bit of comedy.  They kept changing the sets and doing something from a different country and so when Korea came up it was pretty funny.  Afterwards we went out on the town and ended up at the Hard Rock Café in Phuket. 
Originally I had planned on doing a jungle trek one of the days while down in Southern Thailand.  I never did it though because it seemed like it was constantly raining.  It is the rainy season and so it wasn’t too surprising.  So I have yet to visit a jungle yet.  I eventually left Phuket on an airplane on Tuesday night going to the big town of Bangkok.  In Bangkok I wasn’t able to see much.  I blame it on something I ate the first night I was there.  Bangkok is the capital of Thailand and is a huge city.  Like I said I didn’t see much.  What I did see was a lot of buildings, a lot of people selling stuff on the streets (clothes, custom made suits, souvenirs), lots of people (both local and foreigners), and a lot of street food vendors.  It did have the big city smell which isn’t that pleasant.  As far as Bangkok goes, maybe in the future I might end up back there but it isn’t on the list of places to visit again.


I ended up back in Korea on the 11th and back to my house kind of late.  So with visiting one other country I did get four more stamps in my passport (this includes leaving and entering both Korea and Thailand), and some more travel experience in Asia.  Currently I am at work this week but with no students.  It is known as desk warming which isn’t that hard to do with the temperatures in the 90’s and the humidity hovering around 90 percent too.  For the students school will start on this upcoming Monday.  I will only be here for that Monday and then I will need to go to a mandatory orientation which will last for six days.  So I basically miss the first crazy week of school.  I will rest up this week and then get ready for the start of the semester.  I will write later.   

Pictures of Thailand



Motor bikes were all over the place 

A bar game where you race (one at a time)  to hammer the nail in 



I mentioned it rained a lot.  Driving through it wasn't a problem. 


Schools of fish 


It is not knats.  It is a school of small glass fish. 



This isn't photo-shopped.  I ended up in the middle of the school!  

Nemo's cousins Ralph and George.  

Trigger fish.  Can be aggressive so we avoided swimming close. 

Leopard Shark sleeping on the bottom.  If it wasn't sleeping I might not be posting this....


Banner fish


Nudibranch 


Spot known as shark point.  We swam around it a couple times with one tank of air. 


It is hard to tell but it has blue spots.  So it is named a blue spotted ray. 

Some lion fish. 

Close up of another lion fish. 


Lobster that was really colorful. 

I am pretty sure it is called a trumpet fish.   I could be wrong though.. 


Moray Eel 


Another eel but not a moray eel.  It was a lot smaller.  I think it is called the white eyed eel? 

Can you see the seahorse? 

A different seahorse close up