The Ramblings of Loren Christopher

So I just wanted to post a quick entry to say that I was offered a job and signed the contract. The school is called “JLS” and they’re a very reputable company that’s been around for 21 years. I am SO happy that all the immigration material has been squared away and that we finally got it all figured out. Now let’s just hope all goes as planned this first month and we don’t have any hold ups!

But really quick, about my job. I’m only scheduled 20 hours per week which is VERY good, and I don’t have any blocks in between classes, nor do I have office hours where I’m required to be at the school. I simply show up, teach back to back, and then leave. This is very rare in Korea so I feel lucky to have gotten such a great schedule.

My apartment is a lot bigger than I expected (I move in on Tuesday of next week, they’re furnishing and cleaning it this weekend), and it’s only two blocks from the school and a subway stop! Plus there is a huge E-Mart right across the street from me (like a classier version of Super Walmart, but built vertically). Indeed I am very lucky, and in speaking with the other foreign teachers there they’ve said that it’s a great school and branch to work for.

So…wish me luck on my first day today! I’m a little nervous, but just ready to get started and get the hang of it also. Tonight is my Birthday celebration and I’m bringing my camera. Sorry no pictures in this entry!

Much love!

Hey everyone! So it has been less than a week since I last posted….although it does feel like it’s been longer. I’ll try to be better about posting since I had a few remarks from people, haha. Ok let’s see if I can sum up what has happened in the past 5 days….

Well, I arrived in Koh Chang (the island) after another long bus ride. I had gone 12 hours from Chaing Mai to Bangkok, then 6 hours from Bangkok to Koh Chang, for a total of…..18 hours! Needless to say it felt wonderful to step onto the island finally and begin to search for a place to stay.

I lucked out and found a nice little place just across the street from the beach. So I checked in and hit the beach just in time to watch the sunset:

Pretty eh? The water wasn’t crystal clear, but it was clear enough….and it was so warm!! It felt amazing to just swim out a ways and then turn around and stare up at the island behind me.

So I didn’t spend too much time on Koh Chang, just a couple days because I was heading to Seoul pretty soon. Although I did take a snorkeling chater out the next day to a very small island…it was a great day! I brought some food and drinks and just sat around listening to music, picking up my snorkeling gear and going for another dip whenever I felt like it. Way to relax!! Here are a couple photos from the snorkeling island:

I met a really nice group of friends from Sweden after that….and we all met up for dinner at a (get this…) Korean restaurant. They were very excited for me and my adventure that I was just about to embark on, so they chose an appropriate restaurant, haha. It was so nice though. I had a wonderful time in Koh Chang, and as with the rest of Thailand, I wish I had had more time to spend there!

Alright, so fastforward to me arrival in Seoul. I was SO excited about getting here I cannot tell you. I took a bus into the center of the city and did some walking around, although it is below freezing here most of the time so I had to take breaks inside. I finally met up with my friend Ashley who is letting me stay with her until I get settled in.

So I am just now getting over my shock at how huge this city is. I mean it is simply the biggest city I’ve ever visited, definitely a few times bigger than New York City even. So that took some getting used to…on the first day when I met up with Ashley, we were walking to a Mexican restaurant and came out of the metro hub and I just looked around in awe of the huge buildings, streets, signs and crowds of people. I said to her, “Wow, so this must be like the Times Square of Seoul, yeah?” She laughed a little and said, “Not really, there are plenty of areas like this around the city.”

That about sums up the size of this city, with it’s 13+ million inhabitants.

I have found the Koreans to be EXTREMELY nice people. I had two instances where I needed help with directions and had to ask some of the locals. They did everything in their power to help set me in the right direction. This included stopping other strangers on the street and asking them, calling their friends who spoke English well and then handing the cell phone to me, waiting around to make sure I made it ok. They are just so courteous, I’m not sure if I’ve experience such kindness anywhere else….maybe with the exception of Turkey.

I’ve had many people comment on my blue eyes, and have had remarks like. “You’re handsome.” and “Are you a model?” Too funny.

I am very comforted by the amount of American restaurant chains and stores in Seoul, here are a few of the ones I’ve seen around the city: Quizno’s, Subway, TGIFriday’s, Bennigans, KFC, McDonalds, Burger King, Starbucks, Krispy Kreme, Dunkin Donuts, Outback Steakhouse, Pizza Hut, 7-11’s, Circle K….I’m sure I’m forgetting some, but the point is that it’s great to have those options available when I miss the states!

Let’s see, what else….well the job hunt is coming along. Of course I HAD to move here right after they implemented new visa regulations which now require that you get a medical examination and a criminal background check with Apostille stamp. This is a big headache for me, but all the paperwork is underway at the moment. I was offered a job that would’ve started this week…but because of the hold-up they had to retract the offer and gave me something in the middle of February. I haven’t told them yes or no yet, as I have some other offers coming in right now. Plus with my experience, TEFL certificate, and the fact that I’m already here….I am really a hot commodity on the market, so I can certainly afford to be a little picky.

My concern is not about finding a job, it’s just about getting all of my documents squared away! So I will definitely keep you all updated on that. On the plus side, I have to make a visa run at the end of February, so whichever school I work at will pay for me to go to Tokyo for like 3 days! Pretty nice!

Alright, so all is well here in Seoul. I brought my camera out with me the other day to take pictures, but forgot to charge the battery ahead of time (duh), so pictures are coming soon!! It’s also REALLY cold here, so walking around and taking pictures is a daunting task right now, haha. I AM going out this weekend though for my Birthday and will definitely take pictures then and post them ASAP. In the meantime here are a few photos of Seoul that I googled for your enjoyment:

Alright….well I’m off to grab some “dol sot bibimbap” (a piping hot dish of veggies, rice, and red bean paste that I have developed a STRONG craving for over the past couple months) and then continue the job search. Hope you’re all doing well…and I will post again soon!

Much love!

Ok, this is going to be a long entry with lots of pictures. I wasn’t able to upload my pics over the past week, and didn’t have the time to sit down and right a proper blog entry, so here it goes…

So I finally left Bangkok (you really only need a few days there) and took the long bus ride up to Chaing Mai. I met the rest of my tour group…quite an eclectic group of people (click on the pictures to view the larger size):

Jeff (yellow shirt): an Irish guy my age who just spent 8 months on a fishing boat off the northern coast of Australia, he had some incredible stories of things he’d seen while on the water!
Mossimo (first on the right w/ the sweatshirt): an older Italian real estate agent from Milan who loves everything American, haha. Every time we spoke it was in respect to a trip he had taken to the states, or a question he had about my life there. Really nice guy.
Nishi (first on the left): a Japanese man who just retired and was moving to Chaing Mai. He’d been to Thailand 20 times already and loved it…he was waiting on his wife to move down too, which will take 6 more months.
Sean & Eva (Eva’s sitting next to me, Sean is just past Jeff): an Australian couple who were complete free spirits and just traveling around Southeast Asia, seeing where it took them.

So our first day began with elephant riding! This was definitely a great experience…it lasted about an hour. I was surprised at how high up we were, and it was kind of scary at first. Then Jeff (my co-passenger) offered to buy the driver a beer, so he returned the favor by offering to switch seats with us and let us each take turns ‘driving’ the elephant! There I was, sitting on the elephant’s neck without a saddle or anything to balance…I could feel her legs knocking up against my bare feet as she walked, so cool. I didn’t pay the $25 to buy the picture of us on the actual elephant, but Sean and Eva took a few pictures of us and will email them to me soon, so I’ll post them when they come in. In the meantime here are a couple pictures of me and an elephant….

Alright well the fun is over, and the trekking is on. Now, I consider myself to be in ‘reasonable’ shape, but this first day was SUCH hard work. Think steep hills, think little rest, think sweat coming out of every inch of my body. Yeah, not so pleasant. If it wasn’t for the amazing views of the mountains all around us, I would have wondered why I was doing this to myself. Just when I thought I was going to pass out, we stopped along the river:

It was so nice to take a break and cool off for a bit. Then we hit the path again for more hiking. After cursing myself for signing up for this journey and plotting ways to ‘pass out’ and be carried the rest of the way (by the way, the entire group was completely worn out and complaining…it wasn’t just me. So before you call me a wimp you should go to Chaing Mai and try it yourself, haha), we finally reached our stop for the night—Ka’ren village:

I’m not sure if it was the exhaustion, or just being out in the middle of nowhere at the mercy of my tour guide, but this instantly became my favorite place on earth! It was amazing to stumble through the forest onto this tiny tribal village…a place where they have everything they need. Totally self-sufficient. Completely out in nature. No electricity. Hours away from civilization. I looked around at the rest of my tour group and I could see it in their eyes. “This is the life.”

We had a REALLY good dinner that they cooked from the kitchen:

Then we helped a couple of the men from the village gather wood from the forest to start a fire. We all sat around the blaze and admired the night sky, told jokes, and exchanged travel stories. Next thing you know all the children from the village came around the campfire with their parents and started singing us some of their traditional songs.

I really wanted to stay in the Ka’ren village. I’d heard that in the past some travelers had decided to divert from the tour and live amongst the people for a week, sometimes even months. Honestly if I had had an open schedule, I would’ve stayed in Ka’ren for a while. There is something incredible about living off the earth, in paradise and without a care in the world about whether or not your shirt matches your pants. Ah well, I took away the lesson of living life simply, knowing again how futile materialism is.

I awake and it’s early morning in Ka’ren. I’ve had my coffee and it’s time to say goodbye:

The second day of trekking wasn’t nearly as bad as the first! At least half of it was downhill or steady at this point…we’d already made our way high up into the mountains:

I was standing on a termite hill in this picture. Burma is just behind me! So the trekking ended with our final stop for the day at the waterfall village. This place was astonishing. It was one man, living all by himself right next to a gorgeous waterfall and pond. He went fishing along the river each morning, and hunting with his self-made gun every afternoon. The scenery was fantastic, but I was more intrigued by this “wild man” who truly defined the term.

That last picture is of my hut where I slept. It got extremely cold in the night so I had to curl up in two sleeping bags with blankets over me, under a mosquito net, on a flat wooden surface. It was great though!

The next day was a short trek downhill to go bamboo rafting, which I don’t have any pictures of either…mostly because we weren’t allowed to bring anything on the raft with us since it would get wet. And again, I thought the price for the photo they took of us was highly unreasonable. You’ll just have to take my word for it. It was an excellent experience.

Alright, well I went to the island of Koh Chang afterwards and had a great time there, but I’ll post that info and pictures soon…I’m a bit blogged out at the moment, haha. I’m headed to Seoul tonight, I could not be more excited!! Can’t wait to discover my new home! Will post again soon.

Much love!

Yesterday began with a taxi ride from a man who apparently had epilepsy, (his hands kept jerking the steering wheel in each direction as we’re going 70mph through the city) to the big famous market in Bangkok which is only open on Saturdays.  The name sounds like Jay-to-Jay, but I won’t attempt to spell it.  It was loads of fun, and MUCH to my surprise I was not hassled once!!  I was there about three hours, and not one single “Hello my friend”, or “What you need sir?  I give good price.”  I’m still amazed by this because I hear it at least every minute walking around where my hotel is.

I bought a few cool things, didn’t take any pictures of the place since I was distracted by all the chaos and it was mostly long winding passages under a roof.  People were selling clothing (some good clothing too I might add), jewelry, bags, artwork, candles, wood carvings, chopsticks, food, drinks, shoes, kitchenware, you name it…it was probably being sold.  I couldn’t believe how big that place was!  I walked around forever and probably didn’t even see half of it.  The good this is that it’s surrounded by streets with taxis, so it doesn’t really matter which way you end up coming out of the market…it would be impossible to find your way back I think.

It got hot pretty quickly though, and there were these carts selling some kind of food shaped like a ball, they smelled horrible!  Absolutely the worst smell I’ve ever encountered…after a while I honestly thought I was going to throw up, so I taxied back to my hotel and scrubbed myself down in the shower to get the smell off!  If I had to guess, I’d say they were sewer rat stomachs, or something to that effect.

I did some more walking around and visited a few temples…

They’re all extremely beautiful of course, but similar to cathedrals in that you soon get the feeling of “when you’ve seen one, you’ve seen ‘em all”.  Of course I’ll still walk inside and have a look around, but they do begin to lose their awe-factor after a while.

Just after sunset, I took a stroll along the streets near my hotel to take pictures at night, I really enjoyed it!

Today has been a sort of chill day.  I got up super early and had breakfast with a couple backpackers I met last night, we just sat along Khaosan Road and chatted for a while.  Then I went to the snake farm (circa my friend I met in Mykonos who works for Lonely Planet, Matt Gibbs…thanks Matt, going to Wat Pho massage place tomorrow!).  I was the first one there at 8:30am…didn’t really know what to expect, but there were these big wire cages planted around a big open/tropical area. 

I walked around and soon found my way to the king cobra cage, the biggest of them all.  So the sun was shining on the wires, making it really difficult to see inside amidst the foliage to try and spot the snakes.  I lean in a bit closer.  Closer still…until I notice that this branch-like thing hanging down right in front of my face is actually an enormous king cobra staring my directly in the eye!  I jumped back probably about 5 feet behind me, haha.

Anyway, we all watched the “snake show” which was pretty cool, they brought out all the different kinds and talked about them.  I really had to strain to understand the lady who was speaking…it is SO difficult for me to understand Thai people when they speak English (not that it’d be any better if they spoke Thai), and they have the same problem when I try to communicate with them.  Seriously, I was at the front desk for what seemed like forever, just trying to communicate the words “What. Is. Name. Of. Big. Market. Today?”  (Complete with hand gestures and pantomiming I might add!)

No luck?  Ok how about “What. Is. It. Called. Big. Market. Today?”

Blank stare.

No offense to Thai people at all of course, I’ve met some really nice ones here, it’s strictly a linguistics issue.  Anyway, so yeah, great snake show.  I caught the main points like, “This snake venom.  This snake no venom.”  Then I got to hold one afterwards.

Pretty nifty indeed.  Well tomorrow I’m visiting the “Home of the Reclining Buddha”, featuring the famous golden statue of him…then trying my luck at another massage before I’m off to Chiang Mai up north!  It’s a 12-hour bus ride to get there (6pm-6am); fortunately I’m a pro at those long trips and they don’t bother me that much.  I’m looking forward to getting out of Bangkok for some cleaner air, steep green hills, cooler weather, and well I’ll soon find out what else.

Much love!

Wow, just a couple of days into my stay in Bangkok and I am still amazed at what diverse and exciting things this place has to offer.  My hotel is conveniently located a block away from Khaosan Road, the Bourbon Street of Bangkok if you will.  My flight got in around one o’clock in the morning, so needless to say I was a bit tired.  I walked around and hung out with some backpackers for a bit, I couldn’t sleep cause of the crazy flight schedules…but I finally hit the hay.

The next day was all about rest, I got a Thai massage for an hour…something I was looking forward to a great deal, although I think I walked away feeling more sore than I did going in.  I got measured for a tailored suit, which I just had my first fitting for and it looks incredible so far!!  That was pretty much it for the first day.

Today, however, I went on a tour.  It included the Floating River Market, Kwai Bridge, and the Tiger Temple.  One thing I’ve learned about Thailand is that the people want your money, and will take every opportunity they can to sell you some souvenirs, most of which are completely useless and could not possibly blend in with your décor back home.  So where does our tour stop first, the Floating Market?  No…the coconut factory.  I’d already made friends with a nice British couple by this point so we just made light of the situation.

After learning EVERY single use a person can get out of a coconut tree, we were off to the Floating River Market!

I didn’t end up buying anything, but then again I didn’t do it to actually buy stuff, it’s more about the experience…which was great.  We had a few close calls where I could’ve sworn we were going to capsize into the murky, god-only-knows-what’s-in-there water…but we survived, and had a good time doing it.  In all honesty the food did smell pretty good, just something about those women touching their river-water-soaked paddles and then handling the food, I figured I’d better pass.  We also saw a few enormous iguanas, or what looked like iguanas, along the side of the river!

Then to the Tiger Temple.  No wait, first we had to ride up river to a place where we could purchase fish food to throw out for the minnow sized recipients (another forced stop to try and get more money from us…I didn’t budge!).  Then we stopped to see the Kwai River Bridge, for an hour (remember it’s really hot here).  So was it worth it?  You be the judge:

Yup, that’s the bridge behind me.  Wait…take a deep breathe.  I know, I know it’s stunning, but we must move on!

Alas the Tiger Temple.  Now, I had heard about this place a couple months before I came to Bangkok, and ever since then it has been at the top of my list of things to do while I’m here.  It definitely lived up to my expectations.  The whole place was like a wildlife reserve.  I just loved the waiver we had to sign before we could enter beyond the HUGE 15 ft iron gate.  It went something like, “By signing below, you understand that you are about to enter a large open area with many wild animals that are uncaged and could harm you.”

Seriously, I wish they would’ve let me keep a copy of it.  Our group had gotten a bit split up, so when I DID enter the big iron gate, the man who took my release form told me that a few members of my group had already entered, and “they went that way” (pointing down a long dirt road).  I power-walked my way up to them, relieved that none of the uncaged and wild animals had decided to take me out as an easy solo target.  We finally entered the Tiger Canyon and got to hang out with the big cats up close.

Uhmm, majestic is one word that comes to mind?  I don’t know how I would describe it.  I mean, I always gave much respect to tigers…but when you’re actually sitting next to a full grown one, petting it, feeling it inhale and exhale beneath your hand, that’s when you come to truly respect these creatures.  Don’t get me wrong, knowing that at any moment one of them could reach around and rip my head off…well, that was a bit nerve-racking, but it was an awesome experience that I will NEVER forget.  I also got to hang out with a couple of the cubs:

They were too big to snuggle with, but still young enough for me to pet them without wanting to pee my pants at the same time.  If you’re ever in Bangkok…definitely take the two and a half hour ride out to Tiger Temple!

Alright, well tomorrow I plan on exploring the city itself, something I’ve neglected to do thus far.  In a couple days I head further north to Chiang Mai for elephant riding, bamboo rafting, jungle trekking, and eating “tradition Thai village food” while staying out in a far away village and sleeping in a hut under a mosquito net.  I can only imagine the stories I’ll have to tell about that one.  Will post more pictures and entries soon…much love from Thailand!!