A Chronicle of Amy and Sean's World Travels

Happy Diwali

Posted by Amy on Nov 6th, 2010 in Asia, India, Miscellany, On the Road | 2 comments

Greetings from India! We are sitting in an internet cafe with excruciatingly slow internet, listening to the firecrackers going off outside in celebration of Diwali. Just wanted to let everyone know that we most likely will have little to no internet access in the next week or so. We are headed to the kind of place that we dreamed about sitting back at our desks so many months ago. And it is still in India, imagine that. I’ll tell more later – I know the suspense is killing you. The bad news is that the internet in our new location is poor to none, and I don’t have any new posts or pictures to put up. The good news is that we should have lots of relaxing down time which means lots of time to write posts.

Talk to you soon!

Scenes from Gyeongju

Posted by Amy on Nov 3rd, 2010 in Asia, On the Road, South Korea | 1 comment

While in Changwon, Sean, Kevin and I braved the Chuseok traffic to check out Gyeongju, a former Korean capital with lots of temples and shrines and the like. Here’s some scenes from Gyeongju:

Family portrait

Anyong-haseo, Asia

Posted by Amy on Nov 2nd, 2010 in Asia, On the Road, South Korea | Comments Off

So I suppose we technically were already in Asia on this trip when we visited Jordan, but it was immediately apparent upon landing in Seoul that now we were REALLY in Asia. But we managed to find the proper bus from the airport to the neighborhood where we had booked a hostel, thanks to the South Koreans’ willingness to add English in important situations. We also managed to get off at the proper stop, but that’s when things quickly went downhill and fast.

Standing on a busy, crowded Seoul street, we realized that the hostel’s directions were less than helpful. Walk towards the KT building. Um, okay, will do, but where in the heck is the KT building? I inquired about the whereabouts of this mysterious KT Building with a girl on the street. She spoke fledgling English, but it was obviously lots better than our Korean vocabulary, which at that point consisted of zero words. (Our vocabulary now consists of one word – anyong-haseo (hello) – which took us the enter two weeks to learn). She said she wasn’t sure and we were prepared to continue wandering aimlessly. But much to our surprise, she whipped out her cell phone and called someone to ask if they knew where the KT Building was. She told us to follow her, so we did.

Several blocks later, she asked someone else on the street if THEY knew where the KT Building was. They didn’t. But out came the cell phones again, this time armed with GPS. Others joined in the quest to find the building digitally. At one point, three people were using digital devices to find the mysterious KT Building, despite our assurances that really, it was okay if they didn’t know, we would find it on our own.

Just about the point when I was feeling really bad that we were wasting so much of everyone’s time, a man came by who happened to work at the KT Building. Phew, everyone could go on their merry way. He pointed out the direction where we should walk. We thanked him, and as the light turned, we prepared to depart on our own. To our surprise, he insisted upon walking with us the whole way there to make sure we didn’t get lost, even after it was obvious we were on the right path. When he deposited us on the front step of the hostel, he gave us his business card and told us to call him if we needed anything while we were in Seoul. What do you think that guy wanted? Sean asked. Was he trying to sell us something? No, I said. I think he was just being…helpful. We looked at each other in confusion. Sure, people had given us directions or helpful information just out of the kindness of their hearts before, but we had never encountered so many people going above and beyond helpful without trying to get us to pay them or buy something from them.

I think this situation sums up our initial impressions of the people of South Korea: (1) People are really, really into digital gadgets, more so than any country we’ve visited (even Japan). (2) People will go way out of their way to help you. They do this, depending on who you ask, because of kindness or because they assume Americans are completely stupid. Either way works for me, because we usually were thoroughly confused in our inaugural visit to Asia.

We didn’t stay long in Seoul, and a lot of that time was spent dealing with unexpected jet lag and trying to secure train or bus tickets to Changwon in the middle of the holiday season. The rest of the time we spent trying to sleep on hard beds, surfing the fastest internet we’ve encountered yet, figure out what in the heck to eat and constantly taking our shoes on and off over and over again practically everywhere we went (no exaggeration, of course). Here are some pictures of what we did get to see in Seoul for your viewing pleasure: