Summer Vacation!
(pictures are on facebook.....)
This year, my summer vacation was only 2 weeks! My semester ended on Saturday, August 1st. On Sunday, August 2nd at 7 in the morning, I had packed a small backpack and was off on my bike towards the bus terminal. I made amazing time and caught an early bus for Gwangju and then made it to Wando by 3 in the afternoon. I visited the Wando Tower (from which you can see all the other islands in the county) and saw some of my Wando friends before settling at Jes’ for the night. I woke up at 5:30 in the morning and felt motivated, so I took off… later realizing that I must have left my camera at my friend’s place. I didn’t feel the need to go back for it. And thus, I have the amazingness all to myself.
I crossed the bridge to Shinji and took a quick ferry ride across to Gogeum. When I got on my bike again, my back hurt so much I thought I should just give up. But I peddled through the pain and I was fine after a few more moments when it relaxed up. Then it started raining, and I put on a huge blue poncho and kept going, across Gogeum, across the bridge to Yaksan and all the way to the end of the island, to Dang Mok harbor. I was surely a sight to all those island people, a blue bag streaking by. It was about 10:30 and I caught the ferry to Geum Il. I stopped to try to get some food but the lady wouldn’t serve me because I was alone… I tried to get some fruit, but another lady would only sell in bulk. I was getting pretty pissed off and hungry, walking my bike up an exceptionally steep hill, when a man stopped his truck and tried to ask me where I was going in English. Then he laughed at himself when I responded in Korean that I was going to the beach. He was going there too and so he put my bike in his truck and I got in. I don’t really think of it as hitch hiking… because that’s dangerous right?
It turns out this man worked at the shop that rented ATVs, tubes, gave out jet ski and banana boat rides. Sweet! And he introduced me to his friends who were from the diving camp (People Taking Care of Sea) just next to his shop.
There were about 6 semi-English speaking scuba diving instructors that had all studied diving in Australia and some students who were living in a lovely tent commune on the beach. All the other “hotels” were full anyways so when he insisted I eat my meals with them and stay there for the night… I accepted. Part of the program was doing beach and harbor cleanups, and getting an open water diving license (optional and extra money obviously). After a quick lunch I was suited up in a wetsuit and flippers, cruising on a boat and wondering at my fricken luck. The rain had stopped too! I went snorkeling during the scuba diving lesson and saw a jellyfish so I nearly crapped my pants. After his lesson, the instructor, Jay, took me diving for a few minutes just to introduce me to it. Normally a first plunge would be in a pool or somewhere shallow but I got to go down 5 metres and see little creatures running around in the sand. It was difficult to equalize the pressure in my ears so it hurt and I had to fight a bit of panic, but it was quite magical. Being underwater was like being on a strange planet, just being under the surface a few inches is a whole new sensation, a whole new world. So cool!
Me and Jay, the instructor from Australia
I spent the next three days there and they are a blur of happiness. No money in my pockets, no cellphone, no mirror, no television, no advertisements. Just blue skies, clean water, fresh air, suntans and Aloe Vera, hopping on my bike with a snorkel and mask and going to a random beach where I got a not so severe jellyfish sting (I always wanted to get one!), visiting a temple and drinking fresh mountain water, waking up and running into the sea for a morning pee, racing ATVs down the empty beach, getting flipped off the banana boat, taking naps, climbing a not so littlish mountain alone and singing at the top, taking a tour on a motorbike of the whole island with a new friend and then watching the sunset, finally getting to see an abalone “farm” out on the open water, watching a huge fish that had just been caught get cut up and then eating it with some delicious alcohol and about 8 other lovely Koreans who adopted me and gave me the name Mal-Ja, cleaning up the beach, being forced to sing a song in front of 30 elderly people who all swayed and clapped in time awkwardly. Those three days were packed to capacity with amazingness.
I had to leave Thursday morning to get back to Ilsan and get ready for Japan. On Friday, I needed to get a re-entry visa and a waterproof jacket, headlamps and walking sticks for our ascent of Mount Fuji. Jes (my Canadian friend from Wando who is amazing!!) came on Friday night and we had a good sleep at my place before getting our flight to Tokyo on Saturday at 11 am.
Me, Jes and the blanket I stole from Japan Airlines…
From the plane, I randomly looked out of the window about an hour into the movie Seventeen Again… (groan) and I got a glimpse of this immense triangle poking up through white clouds.
Wow! It’s Mount Fuji!
We got into Tokyo and got on the subway to find our hotel, stopping at convenience stores and seeing how different all the food was from Korea. For my tastes, like 100 times better than Korean convenience stores! We found our hotel and decided to have a few hours sleep before hitting the city. We left around 7:30pm and got dinner at a sushi train, which was the best sushi I’d ever eaten… It was a room down a little set of stairs, just jam packed with people sitting on stools around a table, watching little plates of sushi going around and around. I looked up at the mirror on the ceiling so I could see the sushi chefs in the centre, their quick hands and focused eyes, their abrupt calls to people who were coming and leaving and ordering. It was a bustle of Japanese sounds and tastes and sights. I just sat there and took it all in like a child.
Shibuya crossing
After walking around and finding a sake place, getting a bit lost and then found again at the busiest pedestrian intersection in the world, we were off to Womb by 11:30. Womb (haha) true to its name was very warm and cozy. We met a bunch of nice people (that we may have to come back to visit) and danced to crazy amazing music until 4:30am to catch the first subway back to our hotel and sleeeeeeeeeep. We were kicked out of our room at 11, so we went out for food and relaxed in a park until our bus at 4:30 to Mount Fuji.
We arrived at the Fuj at 7:00, when it was just getting dark. Put our stuff in lockers, dressed up as warm as we could and set out. We were already 2000 metres up at this point, so we were looking down at city lit up like stars, looking down at clouds and a lightning storm in the distance, quietly hiking up the volcano. We made a video blog. We were stoked. Our plan was to hike up all night and then see the sunrise at 4:00am. This is not really as crazy as it sounds because there were lots of other people with us doing the same thing.
Still feeling good after 2 hours climbing
Up and up we went. Jes was beginning to feel the air get thinner. It was raining off and on as clouds passed around us and soon we had to start climbing rather precarious paths like spider monkeys. At 3020 metres the weather changed rather quickly. Rain was coming from every angle and the wind almost blew us off the mountain. We huddled by a shelter and a small boy squatted and puked right in front of us. People were quiet and there was a strange sort of fear in the air. I felt quite terrified actually. And I had to go the bathroom. Inside was so much nicer than outside, so I told Jes we should just hang out there for a bit. For fear we would be kicked out, we locked ourselves into a single stall. We heard voices throughout the night (English voices that we could understand) and so we learned it was a typhoon and no one was allowed to climb any higher. And then the people were kicked out of the washroom. But not us. We were still and quiet in that stall. Alternating positions throughout the night, we waited 7 hours until daylight. I don’t know about Jes, but I was freezing cold. Shivering on the ground, sort of curled around the toilet, there was plenty of time to just sit there thinking about our luck. Plenty of time to worry about what would happen when we would eventually need to leave the bathroom. Plenty of time to reflect on how small we were, just two insignificant young lives, curled up in a bathroom stall on an open face of an active volcano in a typhoon. Plenty of moments I just wanted to scream and cry and teleport somewhere, anywhere, else. But I was there with Jes and we kept each other laughing while we ate grapes, quietly moved our limbs in attempts to get comfortable, and took turns peeing. Keeping yourself together in a situation like that takes a lot of will or courage, or some sort of inner power I don’t often have an opportunity to use. But we did it!
We “woke up” around 6am to someone pounding on the door. I took the plunge and left the stall, quickly closing it behind me as Jes locked it, much to the confusion of the Japanese lady that wanted to use it after me. I looked around the sea of semi panicking strangers and I found a climbing guide in a lime green coat. I think I lucked upon the only Japanese person there that could speak English. He told me that this was the last group going down the mountain and that a typhoon was coming. He said we could follow their group and he would show us the easy path down the mountain. Then he shook my hand, well sort of grabbed it, and looked at me in a way that said, “I know you probably just had the roughest time of your life.” He said “It’s okay” and I think I may have cried a little just then… but no one would have known anyways in the downpour. So we set off in the rain to a ridiculously easy path down the mountain. The rain let up and the sun even poked its head out of the clouds to say hello a few times. We were singing and laughing, just pretty much happy to be alive and well.
Good Morning!!!
At the bottom, we got our things and took a bus for an hour to the lake station, where we explored the town of Kawaguchi before we checked into a ritzy style Japanese hotel. We changed into robes, had a dip in some hot pools and relaxed the whole day before a traditional Japanese meal and some sake before bed. I woke up around 5am to an earthquake (which some research says was a 6.5, but I don’t know much about that). I woke up Jes too and we just sat there, feeling the room tremble for a good few moments wondering if we should go under the doorway or something. But it ended, so we just went back to sleep. We got the bus back to Tokyo and went to the airport, back to Seoul.
The very next day, despite feeling a bit sick, I was on a bus back to Wando where I was greeted warmly by all the friends I’d met last week. Thursday was a gorgeous day and I started off the morning with a jet ski ride… behind a guy that was hell bent on making me fall off. It was more than a bit terrifying but I survived. I went on a picnic after lunch with some of the divers and other volunteers. I’m not so much a fan of the wet suit, or flippers for that matter, so I just brought a snorkel. We took a boat out to a small deserted island that my friend “owns”/ rents for 10 years. I dove in and then got right back out again because there were too many jellyfish… big big orange ones that we caught with nets and put in the boat. (I’ve heard that there were not so many jellyfish around Wando originally, but lately the water has been warming up and they are tonnes!)
Jellyfish comparable to this one, maybe 2 feet across at the head… Ahhh!
I swam to the shore and climbed up the rock face, exploring the island and finding lots of bugs. Then I perched myself on a rock and just watched the waves for about an hour. The Koreans must have thought I was crazy! We got back into the boat and took it out into the open water where the divers showed us what they’d found below: abalone and lots of slimy sea creatures which were, one by one, cut up and devoured between a few (pretty harmless) shots of Korean rice wine. We dove back in the water for some swimming before heading back to camp.
Above: Abalone (eat it all, baby) Below: Sea Urchin (we ate only the eggs inside)
That night, a few more people joined the camp and made quite a ruckus until 2am. I was trying to sleep, as I was feeling sicker and sicker. I didn’t sleep for more than an hour that night, so by morning I was feeling horrible and decided to take a break from all the people.
I took a ferry to another island, Seng Il, and intended to explore it and sleep in a temple for the next night, but I got a funny feeling there. It started to rain and I couldn’t find the temple right away so I just took a ferry back to Yaksan Island in hopes to just take the next bus back to Ilsan. I was coming in on the ferry as I saw the bus pull away. I had to wait another 2 hours before the bus came, and I was sitting grumpily in the spitting rain until an old man came up to me with a coffee and said I must sit in his store. He introduced me to his little puppy in the back and instantly my mood changed for the better, as did the weather. I biked to the most beautiful temple I’ve seen yet. As I walked up to it, a middle aged monk in grey robes looked up from his work, cutting grass by hand, and gave me warm smile as he said “Welcome.” He looked at me as if he wanted to say something and after a few awkward moments he remembered how to ask, “What is your name?” We talked a little and then I spent some happy moments alone looking at Buddha statues before I got on my bike and whizzed down the long hill that I had labored up to get to the temple. I got the bus to Gwangju and got there just in time to get the last seat on the last bus to Ilsan. I couldn’t believe my luck!
I felt bad that I left without saying goodbye to all of the great people I’d just met. But, now that I’m back in the city, I’ve been added to the Cyworld group online and it turns out we’re all having a “reunion” this weekend in Seoul! It might not be the same without the sound of waves crashing on a beach, without the fresh air, without sand in our hair, but … it’s something.
posted by Melisa @ 11:19 AM
1 comments
