The dried squid was my own fault. I was grocery shopping in Incheon, South Korea, in preparation for my overnight ferry to Jeju, South Korea, and got a little carried away with the weird foods. Having eaten all the "normal foods" of dried fish and noodle bowls for dinner as we left Incheon, I was left with a packet of dried squid staring at me for breakfast. I opted out. I'll keep it in my bag in case of an emergency.
Of course South Korea has weird food - I knew that coming into it. I have eaten some weird stuff on this trip: lamb heart in Urumchi, cow pancreas in Diyarbakir, shark in Iceland, etc., but South Korea, in the first 24 hours, put them all to shame. Food here is downright unidentifiable. In China, I was able to get away with just pointing at stuff and I always left satisfied. My first attempt at this in Incheon got me what I could only imagine to be pig ear soup with some other, totally mesmerizing intestinal wraps. I only wish that I had taken pictures. I ate about half of the soup and then was more than eager to turn my attention to the infamous (but at least known) kim-chi.
Weird food has had it's place on this trip, but I feel like that is all territory that has been covered before in other blogs, books and reality TV shows. I think what's more striking and, maybe less obvious, is how I somehow returned to western Europe by sailing east from China.
This may not have come out fully in my last blog, but China is chaos. Traffic is going in every direction, things are being sold, organisms eaten and lights flashing everywhere you look. People are also everywhere. A typical arrival to any train, bus or ferry station will require picking your way through crowds of hundreds of passengers sleeping on their luggage waiting in line for either a ticket, their train or who knows what. All this chaos and action certainly makes China a very energetic place, but it can be exhausting. I think it would take some time for a westerner to get accustomed to experiencing humanity as it is in China.
But just a few hundred miles across the Yellow Sea, humanity has taken a chill pill. All of a sudden, vehicles and people regard traffic signals. Food is cooked in actual kitchens in restaurants instead of in discarded wheels on the street. You sit in the ferry terminal and you notice that it's strangely quiet. There is adequate seating for the people there and the bathrooms are REAL bathrooms with doors and working plumbing and all. South Korea feels much more similar to Germany than China. As I was walking down the street for the first time in Incheon, i was overcome with relief when I realized that cars stayed in their lanes and respected pedestrians. I feel more at ease here - despite the fact that English is not as pervasive here and I speak zero Korean. (I had made an attempt to learn a few Chinese basics, which helped out a lot.)
But today, walking around Jeju, I noticed that I missed the Chinese chaos a little. Waiting at a crosswalk for the light to turn green felt absolutely ridiculous - there were no cars coming and it was clear that we could cross without getting killed or slowing down anyone else. Nobody else budged though, and I was not feeling inspired enough to upset Korea's more temperate mood by giving them a dose of the wild Chinese street.
I'm here in Jeju, South Korea for a swing dance weekend that starts tomorrow. It will be my fifth international swing dance experience. I had hoped to have had more by now, but I missed the dance in Beijing and Central Asians apparently prefer the salsa of their fellow Latin American socialists to the free-market swing of the USA.
Speaking of Koreans being more temperate and quiet, the girl next to me at the internet cafe is playing some kind of cheesy cartoon game that involves lots of loud cymbal crashes and techno music. She has the volume turned up all the way. I may need to reassess...
Of course South Korea has weird food - I knew that coming into it. I have eaten some weird stuff on this trip: lamb heart in Urumchi, cow pancreas in Diyarbakir, shark in Iceland, etc., but South Korea, in the first 24 hours, put them all to shame. Food here is downright unidentifiable. In China, I was able to get away with just pointing at stuff and I always left satisfied. My first attempt at this in Incheon got me what I could only imagine to be pig ear soup with some other, totally mesmerizing intestinal wraps. I only wish that I had taken pictures. I ate about half of the soup and then was more than eager to turn my attention to the infamous (but at least known) kim-chi.
Weird food has had it's place on this trip, but I feel like that is all territory that has been covered before in other blogs, books and reality TV shows. I think what's more striking and, maybe less obvious, is how I somehow returned to western Europe by sailing east from China.
This may not have come out fully in my last blog, but China is chaos. Traffic is going in every direction, things are being sold, organisms eaten and lights flashing everywhere you look. People are also everywhere. A typical arrival to any train, bus or ferry station will require picking your way through crowds of hundreds of passengers sleeping on their luggage waiting in line for either a ticket, their train or who knows what. All this chaos and action certainly makes China a very energetic place, but it can be exhausting. I think it would take some time for a westerner to get accustomed to experiencing humanity as it is in China.
But just a few hundred miles across the Yellow Sea, humanity has taken a chill pill. All of a sudden, vehicles and people regard traffic signals. Food is cooked in actual kitchens in restaurants instead of in discarded wheels on the street. You sit in the ferry terminal and you notice that it's strangely quiet. There is adequate seating for the people there and the bathrooms are REAL bathrooms with doors and working plumbing and all. South Korea feels much more similar to Germany than China. As I was walking down the street for the first time in Incheon, i was overcome with relief when I realized that cars stayed in their lanes and respected pedestrians. I feel more at ease here - despite the fact that English is not as pervasive here and I speak zero Korean. (I had made an attempt to learn a few Chinese basics, which helped out a lot.)
But today, walking around Jeju, I noticed that I missed the Chinese chaos a little. Waiting at a crosswalk for the light to turn green felt absolutely ridiculous - there were no cars coming and it was clear that we could cross without getting killed or slowing down anyone else. Nobody else budged though, and I was not feeling inspired enough to upset Korea's more temperate mood by giving them a dose of the wild Chinese street.
I'm here in Jeju, South Korea for a swing dance weekend that starts tomorrow. It will be my fifth international swing dance experience. I had hoped to have had more by now, but I missed the dance in Beijing and Central Asians apparently prefer the salsa of their fellow Latin American socialists to the free-market swing of the USA.
Speaking of Koreans being more temperate and quiet, the girl next to me at the internet cafe is playing some kind of cheesy cartoon game that involves lots of loud cymbal crashes and techno music. She has the volume turned up all the way. I may need to reassess...
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