There was a bit of concern that going in the winter would deprive us of a view of the terraces in their greenest- and most impressive- slate.  When we went, they did back the neon green of later in the year, when the new shoots are beginning to spring forth, but there was plenty of greenery to spare, and I can’t complain about the view we got.

The first day we spent hiking up to the several viewpoints of the Banaue terraces that line the road out of it.  Each successive view was more and more impressive as the panorama unfurled itself a little more each time.  Along the way we ran into some of the native tribesmen of the area, the Ifugao, dressed up in their traditional clothing.  They hang out at the viewpoints all day, charging for pictures, but they were full of interesting information and never pushy, which was rare for the tourist areas we visited in the country.

Once we reached the top of the road, we decided to go along with a guide and take the long way back to town- through the terraces themselves and a smattering of small villages scattered among them.  The hike actually reminded me quite a bit of Peru, especially trudging through the green fields and up the rocky paths of the town I lived in for two years- Madrigal.  Even the tiny hamlets we passed through had a similar smell to my host family’s house- a mixture of burnt wood, dirt, and day-old rice that was unmistakable and deeply nostalgic.

One difference- this hike involved a lot more teetering, particularly when width of the terraces thinned to an eighth of those pictured above.

The next day we set off for Batad, which boasts your more typical stone-walled terraces (as opposed to Banaue’s mud-walled ones, which being 2000 years old are flat-out amazing), but with a more spectacular setting.  The steep rise of the terraces against a backdrop of low, forested mountains reminded me of the area around Macchu Picchu.  While Batad doesn’t quite have the stunning dramatics of the Peruvian wonder, it’s beautiful in its own right.

After taking in the sight, we hiked down several hundred steps to a waterfall that was tucked away below the town.  Even in the ‘winter’ the hike was plenty hot and humid, and it was amazingly refreshing to take a dip in the cool waters below the cascade.

Enjoying a hot bowl of pork sinigang and a cold San Miguel and basking in the lingering chill of the swim and the tingling exhaustion of my well-worked muscles was one of the most restful experiences of my entire trip.

*My favorite by far: jeepneys.  Cobbled together from leftover World War II jeeps, most are pimped out enough to make Xzibit blush

Within all of this, there are genuinely pleasant pockets that give you a bit of a breather from the surrounding bedlam.  For two nights we stayed in the quite nice Makati district, couchsurfing with a Filipino travel writer named Edgar.  Fro those that are unfamiliar with couchsurfing, it’s a website that connect people willing to offer up their couches, spare beds, or what have you to travelers.  Edgar was a very pleasant, very interesting host, and a great source of info, in particular regarding the cuisine, which I’ll write about next time.

During our stay in Manila we balanced a bit of the Western lifestyle (I couldn’t resist when I spotted a Dairy Queen) with some tourism.  Unfortunately, most of the old Spanish city that had been characterized as the jewel of Asia was destroyed as Manila changed hands repeatedly during World War II.  The main surviving portion is located in Intramuros.

Literally translating to “within the walls” the small slice of the city features many Spanish-style buildings, churches, and ramparts, and is a pleasant enough way to spend an afternoon.  The highlight of the area is the focus on Filipino independence figure Jose Rizal, who was executed outside of the fort located on the far end of the complex.  I didn’t know much about him beforehand, and discovering the particulars of his story and reading his final words- a poem to his countrymen- was a stirring experience.

The other Manila landmark I’d freely recommend is the Ayala Museum.  The entry is about ten bucks, expensive for the area, but well worth it.  I particularly enjoyed the exhibit of three influential Filipino painters from different periods, and the series of dioramas depicting the history of the Philippines from the Stone Age to the dawn of its democracy were very interesting, although probably even more so with an audio guide to fill in the gaps.

Most impressive, though, was its newest collection- an array of pre-Spanish gold pieces from hundreds to thousands of years old.  The metalwork was intricate and often masterful, and after witnessing a slight like this it’s not difficult to see how the precious metal has put so many men in thrall.

This isn’t my pic, but this ridiculously intricate piece is the centerpiece of the collection

A few days in Manila is plenty, so we spent one of our final days there on a daytrip out to Tagaytay and Taal Volcano.  Taal is on an island in a lake a couple of hours away from Manila.  The volcano itself has a crater lake, and in that is another improbably placed island.  You can hire boats to go out to the volcano and climb and explore it from there, but you need to get there very early, as the lake of vegetation or cover turns it into a searing hellhole by noon.

We didn’t get an early enough start for that, so instead we headed for Tagaytay, a town on a ridge overlooking the lake and volcano.  We took it easy, lunching in one of the best restaurants in the Philippines for less than ten bucks apiece and enjoying the spectacular view.

As we left, I noticed a small hovel complete with free-ranging chickens and a scraggly guard dog located just below the restaurant patio.  That dichotomy between a posh, upscale world and the impoverished one that the majority of Filipinos inhabit, often on display right next to each other, would be one of the recurring themes of my trip.

Taiwan’s West Coast is its most populated one, and its beaches and cities draw the majority of its tourists.  The East Side is comparatively barren, outside of the Gorge I was going to, and you begin making your way down the coast you can see why.  The imposing mountains that run down the center of the island form a near-vertical wall along the its east side, separating the thin coastal lowlands from the rest of the nation.  They make for spectacular scenery, especially around Hualien, the nexus of my trip.

I wish I had had more time to explore Hualien, whose prime location makes it a good jumping off point for several outdoor adventures in the area.  Instead, I devoted my two days there to Taroko, a gash in the mountains with a thin road running up it and more trails and beautiful lookout points than you can shake a stick at.

Swallow Gorge in particular

I went at the end of the Chinese New Year festivities, which proved both good and bad.  As always, the crowds of people accounted for the latter, but ameliorating that was the copious free transportation.  I would have been hard pressed to see as much as I did of the Park as I did without it.

I closed out my day of hiking with the local favorite Shakadang Trail, which meanders next to a small river through some of the greener, less imposing, but no less beautiful parts of the park.  For me, the most interesting aspect of the trail were the brief glimpses of the indigenous population, who have a territorial claim to the park and still work and in some cases live within it.  Seeing them huddled around a small cooking fire further down the trail than most tourists venture was an interesting counterpoint to the brightly clad masses shooting up the paved road just a few miles away.

In lieu of trying to describe more of the towering bluffs and rock walls, the green mountains and achingly clear water, and the picturesque temples and bridges tucked away within it, I’ll let my pictures try and do Taroko Gorge a measure of justice…

Towards the end of my stay in Taipei, I took a day trip to the old mining town of Jiufen.  I met a tour guide, Peter, while looking for the bus, and tagged along with his small group.  It rained the entire day, but that just served to add to the mystique of the place.  The old town, perched on a hillside overlooking the sea, has been well preserved, and if you can look past the throngs of tourists, can convince you that you’ve traveled to another time, or even another world.  As Peter told me, it had that affect on Japanese anime director Hayao Miyazaki, who purportedly based a lot of the settings for his acclaimed Spirited Away on the town.

Which I can believe

Particularly in the case of the tea house

The other thing the town proved good for was eating, and I loved the cuisine of Taiwan in general.  The local delicacy in Jiufen was 1000 layer rice cake- a delicate concoction that melts in your mouth even if I do have to raise my eyebrow at the concept of a thousand tissue-thin layers.  Another favorite was a dessert consisting of several different types of bean and dumpling in a sugar water concoction and chilled by ice.  The kidney bean in particular has a lot of legs as a dessert ingredient in Asia, and I’ve eaten it now in a wide array of pastes, fillings, and even ice cream flavors.  It actually works pretty well, even if people here will raise their eyebrows at the concept of chili or burrito filling.

Now that we’re on the topic of food, I have to bring up my favorite part of the whole country, and one of my new favorite things, period: Night Markets.  Just like Korea, temples are scattered all over the place in Taiwan.  Besides being noticeably gaudier than their Korean counterparts, temples in Taiwan also often have something else attached- large street markets that come alive at night, selling everything from cheap clothes to an assortment of more “risque” items.  Their chief attraction, though, is their food.  You can find dirt cheap food to satisfy any part of your palate, and I ate at one every night.

Often fighting crowds to do so

My favorite dishes were the many varieties of pork and vegetable buns, which were greasy but oh, so delicious, and I also had an iced tamarind juice/lime gelatin more than once.  Peter and his group brought me to a huge market in Shilin, where I got to eat at a steak and egg hotplate stand that’s been in the same place for more than fifty years, serving the same grub as they did to G.I.’s half a century ago.

Of course, I couldn’t resist some of the more adventurous cuisine as well.  Stingray turned out to be overly chewy, fish-flavored cartilage, although the sweet garlic sauce it came with was pretty good.  One place in the market served up an array of six shots made from various parts of a snake, including its venom and its blood.  Some were definitely better than others, and the snake blood itself was thinner than I expected, and not half bad.  Perhaps the sketchiest thing I ate was a fairground staple.  You choose from a variety of fried things on platters, which are then reheated by tossing them back in the fryer for another turn.  After a belly of that, I regretted not settling for snake venom again.

When in Rome…

I decided to go to Taiwan almost on a lark when a friend pointed out some cheap tickets and reminded me that a strategic use of Solnal- the lunar new year- would allow me to tack the trip onto my regular vacation.  The lunar new year is also the basis for Chinese New Year, so I found myself fighting crowds for much of my visit, but on the flip side some sites, especially the temples, took on a much more interesting aspect.

I’ll start with a bit of basic history.  Taiwan has an indigenous population that I wish I could have interacted with more, but far and away the most prevalent ethnic group in the country is Chinese.  The Chinese have been there for centuries, and most consider the island part of China.  They just believe that they have the rightful government for the whole of it, not the Communists.  The People’s Republic of China, of course, also prefers this view (except the reverse for the rightful government), and it has been the prevailing notion in the relations between the two sides.  Younger people in Taiwan, though, have begun to accept the de facto status quo- two separate nations- as permanent.  It will be interesting to see how this relationship evolves as the years march on.

Taipei, the capital of Taiwan, is a large city- 6.7 million people in its metropolitan area- and boasts just about any amenity that you’d like.  The main attraction is the culture, especially the glorious night markets, which I’ll tackle in the next post, but there are a few things to see besides.  The highlight, and a quite impressive sight in a city with few extremely tall buildings, is the towering Taipei 101, at one time the tallest building in the world until Dubai’s Burj Khalifa was finished.  It’s particularly beautiful at night, all lit up and presiding over a sea of neon and fluorescence against the dark sky.

Another part of the city I enjoyed was Beitou, a former spa and thermal baths area once outside the city but now swallowed up by it. I accompanied a small tour group that I had been lucky enough to encounter on the way to Jiufen, which I’ll cover in the next post.  This area had a distinct Japanese influence that I found fascinating.  The Japanese had occupied Taiwan from 1895 to the end of World War II, but the Taiwanese attitude towards them is vastly different than the one I’ve witnessed in Korea.  In Beitou, Japanese architecture and culture have been preserved, which I highly doubt would be possible in Korea, where even seventy years haven’t dulled the animosity between the two peoples.  As for the hot baths themselves, they amounted to little more than private rooms with stone tubs, although the outside hot springs were quite a sight.

The camera doesn’t quite do the swirling mists and clear water justice

Overall, my time in Taipei was very relaxing, and I met more truly nice people there than I have ever had in any other country that I’ve visited for so short a time, a feat especially impressive considering how “big city” it really is.  Now, if only they’d see the sun more than a quarter of the year…

I figured I would throw up my itinerary for the trip on this post, and we’ll see how everything goes with it when I return.  I start off by flying out of Busan tomorrow afternoon to Taipei, the capital of Taiwan.  This island nation was where the nationalists under Chiang Kai-Shek fled Mao Tse-Tung and his Red Army, and has been a bit of a contentious point in international relations ever since, with China claiming it as part of their patrimony and Taiwan insisting on its status as the true Republic of China.

Things are much quieter in the present day, but it will be fascinating to observe the culture there and compare and contrast with that of China whenever I get there.

After a week there hiking and soaking in the culture, I’ll fly to Manila in the Philippines and right into the thick of tropical summer by the sound of it.  Besides exploring the city, I’ll be going north to Banaue, where they have some ancient rice terraces that are supposed to be striking, then heading out to the island of Bohol to relax on a white sand beach for about a week.  After all this winter weather, I’m definitely ready for that.

Well, this was pretty cursory, but I’ll write again in a few weeks and give you my impression of everything.  Take care in the interim.

I probably should have done this article at some point in the last week or two, but now’s better than later, I guess. Christmas and New Years weren’t massively different here than the states, but they do have their own flavors, and I certainly enjoyed both.

Also, a bit of a disclaimer- neither of the below photos are mine, so any compliments or comments are due Google Imagesearch…

Christmas is traditionally a much more low-key affair in Korea, celebrated by its substantial but still minority Christian population much like it would be in the United States, but without quite the ostentatious displays and commercialism that mark the worst of the season.  That being said, commercialism is starting to rear its head a bit more these days, and Christmas sales and advertising are becoming the norm.

Also fierce Road Warrior-style armies of outlaw Asian Santas

One interesting aspect of the holiday as it’s celebrated here is that it seems to be more geared towards couples than families and children, and bars and restaurants do brisk business on Christmas Eve.  After eating a large meal full of rare Western delicacies like pumpkin pie and loaded mashed potatoes, that’s exactly where I went with the 20-odd strong English Teacher population in Tongyeong.  It was a great party, if a bit on the eccentric side, and I was glad to celebrate the holiday in a bit more fulfilling fashion than in Peru, where my first year I sat in my room playing Christmas music and drinking hot chocolate after the rest of the town’d already gone to bed.

New Year’s is not quite as celebrated in Korea, and when it is the usual customs seem to apply.  I also spent it in a bar, perhaps more appropriately this time, with English-speaking friends, and anyone who celebrated it in the customary fashion in the States or elsewhere probably has fairly similar stories as to how the night went, although my 8:30 a.m. bedtime was a bit of a stretch even for myself.

The reason why the excitement level isn’t quite so high for the Gregorian New Year is that Koreans have their own Lunar New Year, Solnal, with a much richer tradition built up around it.  This year finds it celebrated towards the end of January, and it runs for three days.  It’s a family holiday- a time to return to the family home, give respect and food and drink offerings to the ancestors, and celebrate the traditional family structure by paying respect to its elders.  The children receive small gifts of money and wisdom, and everyone settles down for a meal heavy on variations of rice-cake.

I unfortunately won’t be around for this holiday, not that I would do much with it anyway, but I should get one more post in before I go on my trip, and should have a brief flurry of blogging after that.  I’ll sign off with a very belated Merry Christmas and Happy New Year, which  you can go on and pay forward to next year’s if you feel like it…

As with all conflicts, an understanding of history is essential here.

- The Korean War unofficially ended in 1953 with an Armistice maintaining the split of the Korean Peninsula into two nations, popularly referred to as North and South Korea.  The war never officially ended, and is technically an ongoing concern.

- Both nations have have seen their share of military dictatorships and autocratic rule.

- South Korea stabilized after it’s first relatively legitimate democratic elections in 1987, eventually becoming the thriving democracy it is today.

- North Korea was ruled from its formation after World War II in 1948 until 1994 by dictator Kim Il Sung.  After he died that year, power passed to his son, Kim Jong Il, who had been preparing for rule for at least a decade.

- Under Kim Jong Il’s rule, a new wrinkle was added to the hostility between the two nations- nuclear weapons.

- On December 19th, Kim Jong Il passed away after 14 years of rule, according to the North Korean media due to “overwork”, which most medical professionals have another term for: “cancer.”

- His youngest son, Kim Jong Un, will succeed him at the tender age of 28, after only a couple of years at best of preparation.

What I find strangest about all of this is that neither Kim Jong Un’s picture or even his name have apparently ever been published in the North Korean media up until now, according to CNN, a curious practice for a country that is as packed with pictures of its leaders as a Catholic church is with saints and Madonnas.

The only picture anyone has of him is from a private school, which he purportedly attended in Switzerland in 1998 under an assumed name.  Analysts seem fairly sure that kid is the new dictator, but no actual proof exists that that is the case.  Maybe Kim Jong Un is fairly quiet, mildly cheeky fan of Toni Kukoc, and maybe that’s some other random Korean kid who’s roughly the same age.  Nobody’s sure.***

Regardless, the common people here in South Korea don’t appear to be all that worried about it.  When Kim Il Sung died in ’94, a panic set in and many South Koreans hoarded food and prepared for the worst.  The mood couldn’t be more different now, and while the country and her allies are certainly keeping a wary eye on the developments up North, nobody expects anything drastic to happen any time soon.

The upshot of it all is that while it’s an undeniably interesting time to be in this part of the world, there’s no reason to be overly concerned. I’ll make sure to touch back on the subject again as/if interesting new developments emerge, and on an entirely different, completely unrelated note, Merry Christmas all, and to all a Happy New Year!

***Special super-quick update.  As you all probably know, pictures of Kim Jong Un are now available.  It’s still curious that there were none available before this week, and if he and the kid they were touting as him are the same person, I’m willing to bet his basketball skills have deteriorated a bit…

Now, I’m not going to use this rather obvious imagery to illustrate any points about my current mood or the different between my mindset then and now, but I will scatter more pictures from that visit throughout this post, although they will lose more and more context as I progress.

Here, this might be the last one that has anything to do with what I’m writing

I’m actually feeling pretty good right now.  This may have something to do with the fact the school year is drawing to a close and a long, blissfully free winter vacation looms.  Still, I think there’s more to it than that.

Peace Corps had two big three-month anniversaries.  The first was the end of training, which if you made it that far (everybody did in our group) you were feeling pretty comfortable about the country you were in and your ability to survive away from home so long.  There were plenty of support systems in place in training-though a set schedule, host families, and tons of your peers nearby that you saw every day.

These support systems largely (and if you drew a site without cell service as I did- just about completely) disappeared once you got to the town you’d spend the next two years in.  This effectively reset your adjustment cycle, and reflecting that Peace Corps had another meeting three months later where the whole training class got together and discussed what they had been up to until then.  Once you got past this hurdle, you were nigh on certain to make it to the completion of service, barring anything drastic.

See, told you the pictures wouldn’t make any sense later

So, the whole point I’ve been working up to is that I just passed my three month mark in Korea, and I’m starting to feel more comfortable.  Now, to some extent this is peak post as opposed to the valley of the last one.  Still, I feel comfortable navigating the city and country, I’m picking up important bits of the language slowly but surely, and I’m finally starting to keep my head above the waterline of all of the work (mostly self-imposed) that I’ve been doing.

Now this post doesn’t bring a whole lot of news with it.  I have a bit less than a month left of classes and then a long winter vacation with only one week of winter camp to contend with.  At the end of January, I intend on going to the Philippines for a week and a half and relax on a beach before starting a new year.  If I’ve completed prep for the new year and finished and edited by first (only?) novel by then, all the better (as for that latter part- sounds like a joke but it isn’t.  It’s half-written but a long way from readable, though, so cross your fingers).

Hopefully I’ll have more to offer everybody for the next post, but I’ll sign off with my favorite photo from last weekend, and hopefully that makes up for all the meandering:

One pleasant thing that we (the other native English speakers of the area with a few Korean co-teachers sprinkled in) did do was have an early Thanksgiving meal of sorts.  I helped whip up some mashed sweet potatoes, cranberry sauce, and stuffing, and everyone chipped in something, which made for a pretty good substitute for the real thing.  There are a lot of folks in the area, which has helped the transition to life in Korea much easier.

Speaking of that transition, I’m definitely in a valley part of the whole culture shock cycle.  When I joined Peace Corps, one of the first things they talked about was how ‘culture shock’ (the inevitable emotions produced by immersing yourself in a culture foreign to your own) was like a classic graph of a wave- peaks (elation) would be followed by valleys (depression) and the process continues with the peaks and valleys starting to flatten out the more that time passes.

I definitely found this to be an apt metaphor when I went through my service, and especially at first I would go through phases of being excited just to wake up and experience all the new things the day would bring followed by ones where I was convinced that almost every Peruvian resented my presence and was out to obstruct me at every turn.  This was obviously not the case, but whenever I had a setback during one of these periods, it was hard not to paint the whole culture and all it’s stupidity (as I perceived it) with a broad brush.

Well, long story even longer, I’m definitely in a down period right now, which is why I’ve been resisting writing about my experience here (particularly working) as I just don’t see any way it won’t come out colored with anger and cynicism.  So, I just keep telling myself over and over that:

1.  Not all the teens in your class are awful human beings, just a select few.

2.  Disrespect or lack of results just means you need to be stronger at discipline and work harder preparing classes

3.  The language barrier is making your job at least ten times harder, so just study some more Korean already

4.  The phenomenon of teens being truly, truly terrible little people is not solely a Korean problem: a cocktail of rampant hormones and poor parental discipline only comes out tasting one way, no matter where you come from

5.  At least these aren’t your kids, and you’ll always have this powerful disincentive to forgo using protection

See, I told you that would come out cynical.  On the plus side, in a couple weeks I’ll probably be waxing ecstatic about all the beauty and  culture here.  ’Cause that’s how the culture shock cycle goes.