Boryeong Mud Festival - July 13-15, 2007

This year’s mud festival was terrific. We arrived Friday night on the train in Daechon city, 3 hours away from Seoul. The beach was packed with hundreds of muddy Koreans and foreigners. Essentially we filled our days with swimming, getting muddy and relaxing on the beach. Everyone was in good spirits and the mood was light.

Korea Queer Culture Festival – June 10, 2007

The 7^th Annual Korea Queer Culture Festival was held this year in June. We missed most of it but participated during the parade day. As modern as Korea is in terms of economy and technology, it’s still a pretty conservative place. That being said the parade itself was small compared to the pride parades of other cities like Toronto. Floats were fairly simple with balloons and people with face paint.

It was held on the Cheonggyecheon, which is an artificially built stream in downtown Seoul, a block behind City Hall. The most fun thing to see was the surprised look on the faces of some onlookers. Hopefully this event will just continue to get bigger and better.

Sokcho – May 24-27, 2007

To mark Thom’s 6^th month in Seoul as well as our 6^th month together, we both took a sick/personal day to give us a 4-day weekend. We went to Sokcho which is a few hours away from Seoul. We had a great time.

Sokcho is close to North Korea and you can even see fake soldiers with machine guns and barbed wire on the public beach. We went to Seoraksan National Park and hiked for a few hours. We went to the beach, visited the 1999 World Tourism Expo Tower and watched a couple movies. It was a relaxing break from the busyness of Seoul.

Lotus Lantern Festival - May 20, 2007

The Lantern Festival was interesting this year. As usual there were many lanterns everywhere. I missed the day time activities which included making lanterns and other paper crafts. At night the parade was fun to watch. There were huge Buddha floats and hundreds of people carrying lanterns in traditional Korean dress. There was even a robot Transformers-like float. After the parade there was music and dancing by a stage. People were making trains, running about, cheering and just having a good time.

Donghae – May, 2007

One weekend we decided to go to a city that’s a few hours away from Seoul. Donghae was a nice place to visit. The beach was good, but it was too early so the water was freezing. Needless to say, I stayed out of it. We relaxed and played soccer in the day and went noraebangin’ (karaoke) at night. We also went to an underground cave there.

Cherry Blossom Festival – April, 2007

The Cherry Blossom Festival was held this year in April. I went with a group of friends to a park in Yeouido, by the Han River. At night the blossoms are lit up by multicolored lights. We rented bicycles and rode through the streets. It was a pleasant and beautiful evening.

Taipei - February 16-19, 2007

In February we had a long weekend, so Mike, Rachel, Pete, Thom and I decided to got to Taipei. Overall the trip was fun. However, it was over the Lunar New Year (Chinese New Year) holiday and apparently that’s a time when people in the city go back to their home towns. So the city was pretty dead. Lots of stores were closed and there wasn’t that much to do late at night.

Some highlights include going to Taipei 101, the world’s current tallest completed building. We went down a street called Snake Alley. There were restaurants that served snakes. We had snake soup, snake blood, snake venom, some green snake juice thingy and a pill. We also went to a temple that was pretty neat.

Singapore & Malaysia 2006-2007 - Singapore New Year's Eve

We spent New Year’s Eve at Clark Quay in Singapore. They had an area where they were pumping the tunes and had dancers grooving about. That’s here we stayed for the countdown. We tried to get into Ministry of Sound but we had sandals and shorts on (grrr….dress codes…). Instead we went into adjacent Hed Kandi which was nice since I have most of the music released under that label.

All in all, this was an awesome trip that ended too soon.

Happy New Year everyone!!!!

Singapore & Malaysia 2006-2007 – Random Cool Shots

Here are a few shots that I found interesting on our trip.

There were a few shakes/smoothies that we tried. Some were good like mango, guava or pineapple. Some were ok like avocado (too creamy). But some were downright wrong like durian (which literally tasted like someone blended spring rolls and onions), cactus or bitter gourd (we should have known better since the vendor gave us a weird look and asked us if we were really sure when we order).

On the boat tour around Pangkor Island, we skipped over to the island resort of Pangkor Laut. This is a really expensive place. Since I don’t have hundreds of dollars to spend a night there, I just took in the view of the shore.

In Singapore there were always random signs everywhere prohibiting various things. ‘No spitting in the elevator’…..D’uh!! The picture with the ‘no durian’ sign was especially funny following our ingestion of a horrid durian smoothie.

Singapore & Malaysia 2006-2007 – Malaysia – Pangkor Island – Maxin’ & Relaxin’

These are just a few shots of us relaxing or doing some chill things. I went snorkeling for the first time on this trip. It took me a while to get used to breathing through a tube.

One of the activities that I enjoyed the most was the boat trip we took around Pangkor. We got to see all the beaches and a few rocks that looked like various things (turtle, crocodile, feet…..).