That's All, Folks

That's the end of our winter break travels across Asia. Now that Josh is back in the States, you can expect a little peace and quiet on this blog... until Mackenzie finally gets around to writing those nine posts she keeps talking about.

As a final bit of fun, here's a Picasa album with all the pictures from our time in Korea and Thailand: http://picasaweb.google.com/mbushy/KoreaAndThailandDec25Jan220102011?authkey=Gv1sRgCNyUkurnuvXDkgE#

Christmas in Jeju

Mishi told us we ought to go on an adventure tour in South Korea. She told us about an island called Jeju-do, known as "Korea's Hawaii", a wonderful vacation destination where the weather was always warm and pleasant.

Not quite always, evidently.

But we had a good time with our little tour of Jeju. For three days, we traveled around with a whole bunch of other English speakers from around the world (generally English teachers, like Mishi) and had a bunch of wacky adventures. I mean, like, a LOT of wacky adventures. This trip was nonstop wacky adventures. I didn't know it was possible to cram so much wacky adventure into three days, or onto a relatively small island in the East China Sea.

DAY ONE: We visited the Trick Art Museum, a museum full of wall paintings designed for us to insert ourselves into the middle of them for funny photo-ops (pictures here.) We went horseback riding, and we hiked Sunrise Mountain, a small peak on the east side of the island (pictures here.) In the evening we had a nice Christmas dinner (though it was Korean food so not quite the Christmas dinner you might expect) along with a white elephant gift exchange and a bunch of karaoke (pictures here.) Thanks Mishi for putting up all these pictures!

DAY TWO: We visited a Chinese circus, which featured a lot of people balancing carefully on top of other people, and also people driving motorcycles around inside a metal sphere. We visited a green tea farm and museum, which was kind of less than ideal because snow was falling on all the green tea plants, but whatever. We went on another short hike, and we walked through a botanical garden.

Josh carrying green tea, green tea lattes, green tea ice cream, green tea cake, and wearing a green shirt.

















They do this every time they get to the top of a mountain. I don't know why.










Merry Christmas!













DAY THREE: We walked along the cliffs on the southern side of Jeju island and saw some cool rock formations. Check it out:
































Lastly, we went to LoveLand, a very strange and amusing tourist site dedicated to human sexuality in all its forms. It consists mostly of a bunch of erotic outdoor sculptures. None of our pictures from here are G-rated, but if you do an image search for "Jeju LoveLand" you'll get the idea.

I'm a Seoul Man

Our friend Mishi is currently spending a year teaching English in South Korea. Her family couldn't visit her, so she had no choice but to spend Christmas alone. Until Mackenzie had the idea that we could go visit her in South Korea! We were already nearby in India, so why not?

It was a grand idea, but we discovered two small problems. First of all, India isn't actually right next to South Korea (it turns out Asia is a big continent.) Our plan to ride elephants all the way from Kerala to Seoul had to be scrapped. Second of all: Seoul is COLD. Its latitude and climate is about the same as New York - not the most wonderful place to be for Christmas, and quite a shock after Kerala. On top of that, South Korea was in the midst of a cold snap when we arrived. So our trip looked like this:



Nevertheless, we vowed to fight through the snow and the freezing wind and do some touristy stuff in Seoul.



Here, from Mishi's blog, are a bunch more pictures of our exploits in Seoul (as well as some from our ensuing trip to Jeju Island... but more of that in the next post!)
http://www.therestofmylifesofar.net/2011/01/very-jeju-christmas-first-day.html