Music to my Ears

You know it's getting warmer in Korea when the bunny-selling adjimas reappear. Squatting flat footed in subway stations, the tiny old women display large cardboard boxes filled with their days sale: baby animals. Puppies, kittens, bunnies and even ducklings (who would want a pet duck?) huddling together before being sold and taken away (in a carrier bag?). Not great for animal rights, but great for us......spring is on it's way!

This weekend was a musical one. Some people we knew were playing their last gig in Korea, and some other people we knew were playing their first gig in Korea... at the same venue and with the same drummer. The bands had very different styles, and both were really good, especially when the coolest of cool Korean saxophonist started effortlessly bluesing his way through the songs of Dodge n the Bullitz. Looking forward to more of where that came from. Alas, all good things come to an end, and a too-cheesy band took centre stage. It's amazing how loud music is incredible if it's good, and bleedin' terrible if it's bad. So with this shift from incredible to terrible I ran away, ate kebab, and then realised my phone had died and I didn't know where anyone was now. Schoolboy error Michelle!

But heyho, it was now Saturday and I was hangover free. Lexi and I were decided - we wanted to go for lunch, but not Korean food. We wanted home comforts. Unfortunatly, living away from Seoul makes that pretty difficult unless your willing to stoop to Mcdonalds or Greasy Pizza. Bah Humbug. Secretly, I was mentally licking my lips at a Big Mac, and about to start saying 'Dammit, I suppose we'll just have to go for a burger' until we passed an 'Italian' Restaurant. Ooo la la. Bueno, even. A lovely girly chat and a Koreanised version of Italian food later, and it was time to start getting muscial again.

We met Will and his wife Yungjong for drinks before heading to a Norabang to belt out some classics. Lee and Will screamed System of a Down whilst alternating between Yungjong's Korean ballads and my Soul Solos. We spent a long time harmonising on the kareoke machine before deciding we were amazing and the norabang wasn't cutting it anymore. We needed instruments. We headed back to our apartment (after a 7-11 booze stop of course) and impressed eachother with our guitar and singing talents. Actually, Will and Lee were too drunk to remember how to play, and I'm not even that good on the guitar, but our verions of Dylan, Dolly Parton, Stevie Nicks and Jonny Cash were incredible. At least..... they were at the time.

Somehow, by the love of God, I wasn't hungover the next day. Maybe last weekend's two day hangover had convinced alcohol karma to give me a break. Anyway, I was spritely.....and it's a good thing too....we were off to see Eric Clapton in Seoul. Clapton was incredible, of course. He didn't play a single song like any version I'd heard him do before. The only time I felt uncomfortable was remembering belting out my own version of Layla at the Norabang the night before, so Yungjong could 'know who he was'. Probably a good thing she wasn't here to hear the real version and realise the whole thing isn't done with a tambourine.

It all ended in cocaine. OK, Korea is a strictly drug-free country. You're not facing the death penalty if you're caught with drugs, but you are facing a long long time in imprisonment with even the smallest of evidence, and so I've not even come across a whiff of weed since being in Korea. A far cry from England. From my experience, Korean's have no want for drugs, there is no real market for it, and it's generally quite frowned upon, even by students (gasp). So when Clapton ended it all with his classic 'Cocaine' I didn't expect the whole audience to jump to their feet, storm the stage, and start hollering 'COCAINE' at the top of their voices. Maybe I'm wrong. There's a market for it afterall.

China - How Shiny Can Deck Shoes Get?

So there was Ollie, in Shanghai! Last time I'd seen him he'd been about to leave for India, and me for Korea...and now we were in China, shows how plans change eh. But Ollie hadn't changed at all...except for the brown deck shoes he was now sporting. So after catching up and knocking back some cheap beers we headed for bed....we had Qibao in the morning.

Qibao is a small canal town, over 1000 years old. And on this day, it was packed. Maybe it's because it was a National Holiday, maybe it's just because it was China. Even so, it was lovely.

What was odd, was that all these hundreds of people had come to visit the town, but 95% of them stayed within a few lanes in the centre....step outside of the crazy lanes and there was a whole town to discover. The surrounding town was all painted green, and in the backstreets were tables of people betting wads of cash on games and knocking back beer. This was the poorest area we visited, but the people were the friendliest. And of course, there was lots more meat on coat-hangers.

We dropped into another Taoist temple, ate some spicy noodle soup (which Lexi was sure was pigs blood, I chose to ignore, and then ate hers) and then headed home for a nap, a hotpot and more cheap beers. Aaaah the life.

We got up super early to get a bus to Zhujiajao, left late, misjudged the distance, ran a long way, missed the bus, sweated a lot, stressed out, then realised we could just jump on the next bus. Excellent. Zhujiajao is a water town outside of Shanghai, which has canals instead of roads. Kind of like a small Venice. And it was stunning.

So we did the best thing to do when wanting to enjoy the scenery - find some tables in the sun, drink beer and play cards....and, um....get your deck shoes polished.

That night was more cheap beers, more hotpot, more cards games.....I could spend more time here! But alas, tomorrow was our last day. My friend had suggested a local Bird, Fish, Insect & Flower Market and I thought that sounded intruiging. Might be able to smuggle back a beetle or two. Trouble is, no-one knew where it was. The hostel had a vague idea it was down a main road, but we shouldn't have worried.....we heard the birds tweeting a mile off.

I'm not sure if these animals were for pets or for food (I suspect a bit of both), and the cages were definatly too small for some of these animals (especially the cats and dogs)....so we found ourselves walking from cage to cage giving water to the animals and even trying to buy pet food for some of the skinnier felines. Even so, the market was fascinating. The animals were in pretty good spirits, which suggested they weren't mistreated, so we wandered around trying to talk above the squeeks and squawks, and buying whatever dusty gems we could find. I bought a bone for some reason.

Our Shanghai time was running out so we headed down to the meeting place of the first ever Communist Party of China. You weren't allowed to take photos. I didn't notice. I got screamed at in Chinese and thought the guard was either going to explode or break my camera.....but I got this pitcure....mwoahaha.

It shows the original plan for the Communist Party....which is such a good plan. But we later saw that most of the delegates at this meeting were later expelled from the Party, sent to prison, or murdered. A flaw in the plan I think when the founders are killed by the followers.

So time was up! Only one thing left to do. Knock back cocktails in the French Concession, head home, don't eat dinner, drink more, and more, get a stupidly small amount of sleep, get up at 5am to go to the airport and then sit clutching a sick bag for the whole of the flight home. Seems strangely familiar.....

So goodbye China! Until next time. And goodbye Ollie. Until we meet again...who knows where that will be, but that's the exciting part ;-)

China - They Are Some Big Knickers

So we were in Shanghai for the first day of the Year of the Rabbit. The white metal rabbit apparently. And in this year 'you may not express your feelings in words, but make up it by deeds'...... So, actions speak louder than words this year. Superb. I can do that.




So we started our year of actions with a visit to a Taoist Temple. Taoists believe that the universe sprang from the Tao, and the Tao guides people on their way. But Tao is not a god....it is a natural force of the earth. Neverthless, there are many dieties, all holding a particular role, which are themselves subject to the Tao. And according to the statues inside, quite a few of them have purple hair.



Stepping outside this Temple and you were lost in backstreets, all hosting stalls selling candyfloss or fruit, and once further into the labryinth, row upon row of washing hung out to dry, on rails, on lines, on coat-hangers.....undies and all. And there were some impressively big knickers hanging around.

Even stranger, everywhere we went there was meat and fish hung out to dry on coat-hangers. Almost every house had them swinging from their doorways and windows, and we couldn't figure out if it's a New Year ritual or if they're just preparing lunch. Either way, if Shanghai's landscape is dominated by skyscrapers, then Shanghai's backstreets are definatley dominated by coat-hangers of meat and knickers.

So we left the coat-hanger district and ventured into Old Town. Old Town by name, not really by nature. Although the markets date back to the 1800's, they were rennovated in 1999 and now resemble more of an Old Town Theme Street than an actual old town. The Pepsi logos everywhere somehow gave it away. Even so, all the buildings were traditional Chinese architecture, there were lanterns & decorations gallore, gardens & pagodas inside, and with the hoardes of Chinese people shuffling through the lanes it was very atmospheric.

The only thing left to do that day was to reunite with Mr Cole! Hurrah! Ollie has just started teaching in China so a vendez-vous was in order..... and with everyone's travels you've got to grab any opportunity to meet up, for who knows when they will spring up again.....

China - Six in the City

I've just spent six days in the city of Shanghai, over the Chinese New Year, and what a city it is! Shanghai is like a country within a country....with a backdrop to rival New York, consumerism at it's beating heart and Capitalism rivaling Communism, it's almost hard to believe you're in China. But head down a back alley and find rows of washing hung out to dry and meat strung up on coat-hangers and birds tweeting in cages and you remember.....this is the city where old meets new.

We left for China at 5am after 2 hours sleep and drinking 3 bottles of wine. We regretted that. But it's amazing how quickly you can shake off a hangover when you've got a new country to explore (how else would backpackers survive)...so after a quick nap in our new hostel we were off!

We bumbled down to the Bund....the river front hosting Shanghai's tallest, most modern and most impressive architecture. On the other side of the road, the street lined buildings almost perfectly resembled London. Ooooooh. Aaaaaah.

The only problem was that there was no-where to eat, and true to form, I felt starving as soon as I knew there was no food around. After desperation caught hold, I ate the first thing I came across....a somewhat slimy suspicious meat...I'm not going to question what that could have been. Didn't help that it was ball shaped.

After finding some actual food we wandered down the famous East Nanjing Road......only to realise it was desserted. Actually, everywhere was desserted. I thought China was meant to be packed? But of course, today was New Years Eve - the biggest holiday in China - and everyone had left the city to visit their family back home, or were in their houses eating the traditional feasts. So we took advantage of the one day's grace of space and headed to the most obvious tourist points - the Jinmao Tower for views of the city, the Bund Tunnel & the Curious Aquatic Collection. And it was a curious collection.....a mix of live fish, embalmed fish and pickled fish in jars. This one must have been pickled on a sad day.....

It was still early but the city was becoming alive. After feasting, the Chinese people traditonally let off firecrackers outside their home to bring on good luck. And they don't just let off a mere one or two...oh no!...every household lets off hundreds of firecrackers, starting at around 5pm New Years Eve and ending....well, they were still going off 6 days later when we came to leave...so who knows. Every direction had fireworks bursting and bits of red paper falling from the sky. These crazy people were letting off rockets from their hands and throwing firecrackers at our feet, and at midnight, it was hard to know which direction to look in for fear of missing the best displays.

We rounded off the amazing day by going to a terrible nightclub and then headed home. On to tomorrow and the first day of the Year of the Rabbit! A lucky year apparently. I bet they say that every time......

Bit 'o this, Bit 'o that

This weekend was the last in January, marking the beginning of the end of our long, hard, cold - did I mention bitter - winter. And it's hard to motivate yourself to do much outdoorsy stuff when you have to layer even your underwear. So instead of coming up with some super plan for exploring Korea I went with the 'bit 'o this, bit 'o that' approach, and focused on the more important thing in life.....friends.  Ahhhhh!

So I jumped on a subway to Seoul to see Kiki, my most outrageous  and creative of Korean friends. Our first stop was to give blood. Kiki does it all the time apparently. So before I knew it he was hooked up and draining away which I sat there chewing my thumbs thinking that I should really give blood but really didn't like needles.

It turns out that I couldn't give blood anyway. A foreigner must have lived in Korea for more than one year (tick) and be fluent in Korean (oh dear....).... so that was me out. Dammit! (cough cough). I wonder why speaking fluent Korean makes your blood more worthy.....

After shouldering our way through some political protests in Hongdae, next stop was walking on water. The Han River flows through Seoul just like the Thames through London.....but much, much larger. So it says a lot about the temperature here to say that the Han has been largely frozen over for the past few weeks....so of course, I wanted to go throw stones and jump on it. There's something wierdly satisfying about standing on a frozen river, just like dipping your fingers in hot wax, it's pointless, it's kind of painful, but is wierdly exhilarating. Woohoo! Good job we didn't stand on some of the non frozen bits..... 

That evening, we had a dinner date at an old friend's house from home, Mr Chris Brady. I don't know whether it's because we were three Brits together, but it turned into a very British evening. Wine, pasta, Planet Earth, discussing what a tragedy it will be when David Attenborough dies, more wine, guitar, singing, more wine, making up songs.....it was very nice evening. 

The next day, Lee and I headed into Bucheon and munched down some Kimchee Jeegay and all it's wondeful sidedishes in the underground food court. No meal is over 6,000 won (£3) and with all the open fires and frying pans it's pretty toasty.

After eating some and shopping some, we met Will & Yungjong for the cinema, and then some quintessential Korean activities....arcade games and shooting ranges! Korea has a great love for arcade games of every kind imaginable, so we took full advantage, before heading home in the evening to have potatoe and shrimp pizza..... yes, Korean food gets even wierder..