Bikes, kites and trippy delights. The best of times.

Shopping for fabrics at Seomun Market.

Farmland around Gyeong-ju.

Two of my middle schoolers striking a pose.

Preperations for Buddha’s Birthday at my local temple.

Modern Busan, much of the city is beginning to takes this shape and it’s difficult not to be impressed by the sleekness of it all.

Another chilled day on Hyundai Beach, Busan.

Whether it’s Busan, Beirut, Benghazi or Bridgwater, a mother is a mother.

Landing at World DJ Fest, Seoul!

Sarah and her smile, made in Sri Lanka, South American and London.

Womp womp! World DJ Festival 2011, Seoul!

Nae making friends with a real-life Goliath.

Taking it all in at World DJ Fest.

Despite the 10K Watt sound systems, tech strove lighting and thousands of smiling and dancing people, this sad mouse couldn’t be cheered up. Nae found it all too much and joined in the sorrow.

Going off! Saturday night, DJ Fest.

Friends from home, Trouble Makerz, on stage causing a riot.

Sharing a moment and bridging worlds on the Seoul metro.

Downtown Seoul, with Gyeongbokgung Palace in the far background.

Buddha enjoying his birthday.

Inside the magnificent Donghwasa Temple.

Mike and I sharing a moment. This is said to be the world’s tallest statue of Buddha.

‘Dorothy’ loosing her yellow brick road amid the many colours..

Shaddy blokes in shaddy events at Seonmun Market.

Me and the fellas enjoying some of the local fair on offer at Seomun Market.

Gwangalli Bridge, Busan.

With the clan on the sands of Busan.

Women lighting up in public was/is a taboo in Korea, this old lady was obviously well ahead of the times.

Daegu is recognised around much of Asia as being a centre for herbal medicine.

The mighty Samsung Lions, Daegu’s local baseball team.

A rare relic in downtown Daegu, I pass this some days on my way to school. It was the sight of large organised protests and social upheaval during the Japanese occupation.

A local man working those quads while waiting for the lights.

A warm ‘Bellingham greeting’.

Taking a pit stop on another sunny afternoon out on our bikes in Daegu.

The quieter streets of Daegu.

Anapji Pond, Gyeong-ju.

The crew. All brilliant people.

Getting my yoga on.

Mike, on a bike, with a kite. Phonics even at the weekend for those in the ESL world.

How high can we go?

Mo giving some love, Egyptian style.

Mo and I away with the kites.

Arriving to cheery blossom in Gyeong-ju.

Winding down after an amazing day playing in Gyeong-ju.

When the old meets the new in Gyeong-ju

Bikes, kites and trippy delights, now where to begin? The absence of my writing suggests a slowing down in this great adventure in the Far East, but of course as the story of this last year goes, silence merely masks a Niagara of incredible experiences that take some retelling. And when I say the period since my last post has been among the happiest in my life, it offers only the faintest illumination of the beautiful days I’ve enjoyed and the special people I’ve shared them with. If these are to be my final few months in Asia, they look set to be as colourful and lucid as any since I came here in the winter of 2009.

In a bid to share all my experiences with you, I now find myself facing something of a daunting task. Between the obvious shindigs and wanders, planned and otherwise, there are a hundred little encounters that sit on the periphery of my thoughts. While it seems natural to recount the big events that carry away the time we spend on the road, I’m conscious of the chance moments that weave the fabric of my weeks together.

From aged but ardent looking Korean men performing obscure gym workouts while waiting at pedestrian traffic crossings, to the feisty Korean women that define the local market spaces in the way they communicate in a deafening cacophony of shrill barking and snapping, there is so much that often slips away unnoticed.

Yesterday while riding around the rough and ready, though captivating, Chilseong Market, I found myself in a momentary toe to toe moment with a snarling looking local woman carrying a crate of greens. Through the monosyllabic clicks and grunts that pass for my broken Korean and what I imagined to be her usual pitch forked tenderness, it became quite clear that I wasn’t going to get the handful of broccoli I needed for dinner that evening. A short but stocky woman of about 55, complete with the classic perm in keeping with the hardiest of local elders and a flowery number that did nothing to disguise her spikiness, she was adamant that I could only buy a crate of broccoli weighing in at somewhere close to 3 tons. Despite calling on the most elaborate of hand gestures that I’ve steadily built up during a year of teaching in classrooms where the students speak a language other than my own, my efforts were in vain. My cupboards now have a stockpile that rivals the United Nations World Food Programme. I’m now also broke having spent a month’s wages on broccoli that will probably be rotten within a week.

I can’t deny that Mrs.Broccoli was a tough old chestnut, but in actual fact the market places in Korea are nothing but fascinating, warm spirited and lively places where a white face and a wide smile will draw endearing curiosity and new friends. Korea, with all its idiosyncratic quirks and oddities, is a place that never ceases to prise, at the very least, a wry smile.

This post could easily have just retold the events of a trip five friends and I took to the ancient city of Gyeong-ju back in the early days of April, a city once at the centre of the Korean Empire and a lasting monument to a way of life here that has long since crept into the shadows of the modern day boom peninsula. Although I’d made two previous trips, this was a particularly special one as it was my first time to see the historical city in spring, a time when Gyeong-ju shines with the annual arrival of cherry blossom. There are few things more enchanting than a metropolis, with over a thousand years of rich history, under a thick blanket of blushing pinks and snowy whites. Gyeong-ju enjoys a reputation as being among the most very beautiful of spots anywhere to enjoy this natural spectacle and it’s not difficult to see why.

So off the six of us set one early Saturday morning in search of all things old and rose tinted, a short bus ride away from our resident city of Daegu, the capital of Gyeongsangbuk-do province. With rented bikes, a bright cloudless sky and warm spring air, we succumbed to our wanderlust as we playfully meandered through beautiful parks dotted with historical relics, lines of snowy pink trees and the mound tombs of great Korean figures from down the ages. Stopping regularly, it was easy to be drawn into a world that often felt utterly surreal. We marvelled at the colour that is so often absent from life here and felt compelled to dance in its presence, everything appeared alive and invited a dreamy curiosity. It was a fairy-tale.

The day ended with the same childlike enthusiasm as the six of us scampered to return our rented bicycles before the cloak of evening. Weaving our way along the busy pavements, dodging old market sellers and kneeling elderly Korean women tending to their piles of peeled garlic cloves and bowls of assorted vegetables, we invited the beeping of horns from fast moving traffic as we flirted with the road when the hive like sidewalks became too much. As we rode on under what was now a thick night sky, but for the glow of neon that lights every urban space in Korea regardless of whether it’s a thousand year old city, we began to wonder whether we’d ever find our way. But sure enough as the clock struck 7pm, the time our bikes were expected back, we emerged from downtown Gyeong-ju and wearily gathered at the modest roadside bike rental store that we had set out from that morning.

For many reasons it was a beautiful day, and one that will define the heights of my happiest memories of the time I spent in Korea. Trippy traversing around ancient palaces, freewheeling down narrow crowded alleyways and flying kites high above the city’s cherry blossom trees, there can be few better ways to spend time. Now more than ever I find myself around a group of friends who offer so much to each other’s enjoyment in these intrepid adventures. The profound and lasting connections that are being fostered continue to animate and brighten every moment.

From one effervescent day to another, albeit one with more strobe lighting and very large sound systems, Seoul World DJ Festival 2011 came around shortly after the frolicking in Gyeong-ju. Having missed this event the previous year I was keen to make amends, so along with a small army of pals from Daegu we took the two hour bullet train ride up the spine of the country to the mega-tropolis of Seoul. From the sprawling and never sleeping capital we headed east along the city’s metro line, where after an hour we arrived at a decidedly softer and more serene location than the one we had left behind at Seoul Station. Fields, rivers, trees and slow paced traffic created the feeling that we had just entered suburbia, and but for the hordes of ravers, hipsters and party goers dancing to the fast paced beats of some of the world’s best DJs, it might well have been.

Throughout the day and into the night, we played, danced and smiled hard, moving from tent to tent and stage to stage, soaking up the vibes and shaking to the fast paced rhythms. Living in Gyeongsangbuk-do province, one of the more conservative and homogenous regions in Korea, it’s easy to feel as though there is little in the way of a counter culture movement or anything that moves against the grain of the country’s more polished and commercialised image. But events such as this show in volumes that Korea does have the appetite for a party, and the knowhow to pull it off with a stellar touch. With the most creative DJs and turntablists from all corners including one Mr.Oli Fenn and his new band Trouble Makerz, a friend from south-west England doing big things in the music world, the atmosphere was electric. Everyone was in on the fun, and in that number and in that environment, it was spiriting to see a Korea reaching high on the good times stakes.

There is so much more I have to say, but I’ll leave the rest of my adventure in the form of pictures so your imagination can finish the story. As Korea sears towards summer, leaving behind a beautiful spring that tempted even the most unlikely of people onto its many low lying mountains and hiking paths, the beach beckons and all that comes with long days spent under blue skies and a warm sun. My browning face tells a tale of weekends already spent on the sandy shores of Busan, and as the high-rising sun continues to define each day, these will continue to be what I can only describe as the very best of times. X

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~ by Jon Tamlyn on May 31, 2011.