Month: October 2016

Photos: Korea Trip 2016, batch 2

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[2020 note] These are unposted photos from 2016, the second of four galleries of my first-ever trip to the Motherland, that I took with my mother.

After several days in Seoul, my mother and I embarked within the country on a tour that she had arranged, where we would take a whirlwind throughout the rest of the country, starting with the “Hawaii of Korea,” Jeju Island… where we were promptly greeted with a seasonal typhoon that blew through the entire island and into the rest of the Motherland.

But afterward, the weather was nothing short of beautiful, and the rest of our time on Jeju was filled with gorgeous sights and naturally, more night shopping.

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The Blue Jays are kind of bitches

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When you can’t beat them on the field, try and fuck with them off of it and hope it screws them up on it: Ontario judge hears arguments basically questioning the legality of the name of the Cleveland Indians in Canada, conveniently in the midst of the ALCS where the Blue Jays are down 0-2 in the best of seven.

I can’t really say that I’m much of a fan of the Toronto Blue Jays.  I don’t know why, I just don’t care about them.  Probably because I think Jose Bautista is kind of a bitch, and for whatever reason, anyone who ends up getting shipped to Toronto always buys into their swagger, and this unjustified arrogance of being good.  I mean, win something other than an ALDS against anyone other than the Texas Rangers, before talking like a contender.

Or maybe it’s just Blue Jays fans in general, who have conveniently been emerging from the woodwork over the last three years, as the Jays have gone from perennial third-place team to a team that manages to get into an expanded playoff field; I’m obviously highly critical towards fans that I deem fair-weathered and bandwagon, because they’re also usually the most obnoxious about their fake instant fandom of a mediocre team.

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Korea Stories: The Tour 😐

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When I brought up the idea of going to Korea with my mom, to my mom, initially, the thought was to go see the Korea that my mom grew up in, see the place she called home, any sights and streets that she remembered from her childhood/upbringing, and maybe any restaurants that she might have remembered liking growing up.

It didn’t take long for my mom to dismiss all of that, stating that it had been 38 years, and there was little chance that pretty much anything of her past was still actually in existence.  I had a very 😐 face at this thought, but I understood.

Alternatively, my mom stated that she would, through a travel agent friend of hers, book us a tour package.  I expressed my concern and general disagreement with a tour package, because I typically prefer to not operate on itineraries and schedules, unless like, I’m getting paid to do so.  The freedom to explore and plan my own course is always preferable, but for whatever reason, my mom was insistent on a tour package.  The compromise was that we would have a few days before and after the tour itself to where we could explore Seoul on our own, which satiated my own want and need to explore and wander, so I agreed to do the tour group in the end.

So after four days in Seoul, we flew out to Jeju Island, the first stop on the tour.  I’ll be honest, I didn’t know much anything about Jeju; mythical gf was more knowledgeable about the place, based on the metric butt-ton of Korean dramas she watches, and it’s apparently the de facto romantic destination for Korean couples in them, but otherwise a tropical island getaway destination, often called “the Hawaii of Asia.”

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Photos: Korea Trip 2016, batch 1

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

[2020 note] These are unposted photos from 2016, the first of four galleries of my first-ever trip to the Motherland, that I took with my mother.

As soon as we landed, we had guidance from some of my mom’s friends from over 38 years ago that they’d been keeping in touch over the internet, and they were lovely people who helped us settle in upon arrival.

Pretty quickly, I learned that Seoul is very much a city actively primarily at night, and it was a wonderful time soaking in and absorbing the culture of my parents, and it was tremendous fun wandering around taking in all the sights and indulging in all sorts of Korean food all over the place.

One of the most satisfying feelings however, was when I decided to branch off and go off on my own, and realized very quickly that even in spite of my elementary proficiency in Korean, I was more than capable of holding my own in Korea, and the apprehension of being on my own in Seoul vanished really fast.

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Korean Stories: Shopping in the Motherland

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Prior to visiting Korea, I did a lot of cursory research on sights to see and things to do.  I found plenty of sights to see throughout Seoul and some of the other places I visited, but the things to do spectrum proved to be a very shallow well to dip into, with the most frequent suggestions revolving around drinking, eating or shopping.

I didn’t really want to drink too much around my mother, and the human stomach does have a finite amount of space in which meals and extra meals can go into at any one time, so that really meant that if I really wanted to do what the Romans Koreans did, there was a whole lot of shopping (and browsing) that was going to happen.

If anything at all, because I don’t really know how to buy things for myself that aren’t food, occasional clothing or other consumable goods, I was going to be wandering around a whole lot of shopping centers.  I had a moderate list of things that I wanted to purchase for others, but my money was about as finite as room for food in the gullet.

To cut to the chase, shopping in Korea is unlike shopping anywhere else in the world, in my opinion.  Shopping isn’t just a recreational activity done in Korea, it’s pretty much a completely essential thing done by anyone who lives and visits the Motherland.

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Visiting the Motherland, with my Mother

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If I didn’t mention it before, the trip to Korea was one that I took with my mother.  The idea was that way back when, my dad and sister went together, so it seemed like a suitable idea that this would be a mother and son trip.  My mom had recently retired, so she had nothing but time on her hands, and from my perspective, this was a trip that had to be done sooner rather than later, because I didn’t want to live my life with the regret of never going to Korea with my mom while she was still physically able to.  Not to mention, my mom had never been back since I’d been alive, so it was literally 38 years since she’d last been in Korea.

This is without question one of the best ideas I’d had in my life, and although I’m not going to sugar-coat and say it was a perfect trip, I don’t have any regrets about going to Korea with my mom one bit.  It was meaningful and memorable, and I’m glad to be able to say that my mom was there the first time I visited the Motherland.

I let my mom drive when it came to planning for the trip, since my initial idea of planning a trip to see the places of her childhood and upbringing seemed to fall on deaf ears, so it ended up with us having a few days in Seoul on our own, but then ultimately going on a multi-city tour group through the rest of Korea, back-ended with two more days in Seoul before coming home.  I’m not going to pretend like I was pleased with the idea of being on a guided tour, since typically I prefer to be in control of my own destiny, but it was what my mother had wanted, and she didn’t seem to understand that I was quite the competent planner on my own.

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Visiting the Motherland, 2016

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One of the greatest travesties in my life is that it took me this long to visit Korea.  Frankly, there’s an overarching travesty that it took me about as long to even cross an ocean in the first place, but the point remains as someone of Korean heritage and to some degree, upbringing, it does seem a little not right that I didn’t once visit Korea once until I was 34 and well into my own as an adult.

Admittedly, the idea of visiting Korea didn’t intrigue me that much growing up.  Being born in the United States as pretty much as American as American can be, this was always home to me.  Neither of my parents really talked much about Korea growing up, nor did they ever really put any ideas in my head of wanting to go.  Maybe we were just so dirt-poor when I was growing up that they didn’t want to make any difficult promises to fulfill.

A long time ago, there was an opportunity to go to Korea on some sort of church group; not that my entire family’s been tremendously religious, but it was an economical means to get there.  I’ve always been kind of nihilistic about religion in the first place, so it didn’t really interest me that much, and at that age, my priorities were vastly more interested in indulging in my no-school summer vacation, playing video games and being a slug at home.  Ultimately, my dad and my sister went, and I’ll always remember just how tan they were when they got home, and there’s a photo of the two of them riding a horse that always stuck with me as symbolic of an opportunity that I probably missed out on because of my youthful stupidity.

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