upcoming jaunts in 2014

Good morning, hangers-on! And ain't it a fine April day? The sun is shining, the kkachi (magpies) are screeching love songs, the yellow dust is nearly gone, one of my students told me I've lost weight and I'm almost over the 24-hour bug I caught. Time to plan some trips.



So I went through the Korean calendar and I found out that 2014 is the year of three-day weekends. Here's a list I compiled of holidays (and the potential trips which might accompany them). I might not be traveling overseas for every little break I've got here, but it's intoxicating to contemplate the possibilities. So here you go:

1. May 3-7 (Children’s Day, Buddha’s Birthday): nothing planned, as it's probably too late; though I might see if there's a last-minute deal for Taiwan or something, just for me. I have five days, but Miss H and Miss J have four. Ha-ha. [blows raspberry]

2. June 6-8 (Memorial Day): Miss H and I were thinking about Jeju Island. We need to jump on the web tonight and book tickets NOW, though.

3. July 12-August 10 (my summer vacation): my big trip. I've shelved Mongolia for the moment, as it seems all the good stuff there is really far apart and requires guides and prepaid tours to access. I'll have to save that for later. But I'm still going to do Vietnam, Cambodia, Thailand, Malaysia, Singapore, and whatever country Miss H and I decide to visit for...

4. August 2-10 (Miss H's summer vacation): she and I still need to work this out. And fast. Hong Kong might be too small to sustain a week-long trip, so we're thinking Japan—Kyushu and southern Honshu. We could see Miyajima (its sacred torii gate which seems to float upon the water at high tide); Kyoto; Nara (Japan's ancient capital); Hiroshima; Nagasaki; Kagoshima (known as "the Naples of Japan" for its smoking volcano, tropical climate and hot-tempered locals) and other stuff. Yeah, I like that idea. Maybe we could even visit a hot spring and Miss H could sample her first capsule hotel. It'll be my third trip to Japan, but there's still so much I haven't seen.

5. August 15-17 (Liberation Day): another three-day weekend. Might have to be used for a rest period, understandably. But if Miss J's summer vacation lines up with it...that's a different story. Hong Kong anyone?

6. September 6-9 (Chuseok): four days. Always tricky to travel over Chuseok, as that's precisely what the other umpteen million Koreans (and a lot of Chinese folks as well) are doing. But we'll figure it out. Someplace tropical, we're thinking.

7. October 3-5 (National Foundation Day): another three-day weekend.

8. February 18-22 (Seolnar): a full five days! We gotta do something! 

After February 2015, of course, Miss H and I will head back to the U.S.A. (most likely Las Vegas or Tuscon), settle down, and embark upon our careers and family lives. I won't hang up my travelin' boots, though. I hope to pull in enough money from my writing to take time off and globe-trot some more. Miss H and I still haven't seen Europe, and I've got some trekking in South America and some safariing in Africa to do yet. I still need to ride trains through Canada and Australia and Russia and India, too.

But this'll do for right now.

Gangnam, Mongolia, and the Grand Canyon

It's the witching hour here in Seoul, and it's time for some updates. This blog's been clogged (see what I did there?) with my Japan junket and The Art of Manliness challenge I took in January. Time to give you the skinny on the others facets of my life.

THE BIG MOVE TO GANGNAM
Miss H and I started packing tonight. The bookshelf is completely empty, the dresser (which we use for miscellaneous storage, cramming all of our clothes into our wardrobes) is 80% done, and the games drawer has been packed up. The entirety of the kitchen, the wardrobes, the veranda and the bathroom remain, however. Both of us are remembering how much we hate packing. 

But I'm getting ahead of myself. Why are we moving to Gangnam? Well, Miss H was justifiably discontent with her job here in Gwangnaru, so she elected to switch jobs at the completion of her contract in late February. The new job she found was with Gangnam SLP, in Gangnam-gu. Gu, if you'll recall, is a word roughly analogous to "borough" or "district" or "ward" in English. Seoul has 25 of these gu. We live in Gwangnaru, which is located in Gwangjang-dong, a neighborhood of Gwangjin-gu, widely regarded to be the city's most multifarious ward. Now, however, we'll be moving to Gangnam-gu, which is noticeably larger and more oblong than Gwangjin-gu. As far as I can tell, Miss H's school and our apartment are located at the extreme southern edge, in the neighborhood of Irwon-dong near Daecheong Station on Seoul Metro Line 3. The boonies, as it were. Go any farther south and you're not in Seoul anymore, Toto. We will, however, be deliciously close to the glitzy Gangnam Boulevard, and the attractive neighborhood of Sinnonhyeon beyond—the same place I bought a copy of Kafka's Metamorphosis and read it in one go while sitting in a coffee shop in the Urban Hive, remember? There's also Yangjae Citizen's Forest, which I already know and love (and am planning some kick-ass summer barbecues around). We're right next door to Jamsil, with its humongous (albeit undergoing renovations) COEX Mall, and the Jamsil Sports Complex where all the best baseball games are played. It'll be a cinch to slide over to ritzy Apgujeong or across the river to Ttukseom Resort, too. Location, location, location. 

But first we gotta move there. So we're packing. We move in on the 1st of March. We're not using a moving service with a Kia Bongo like we did last time. He showed up at our old place in Bucheon at 8:00 at night and by the time we were all moved in to the new place in Gwangnaru it was midnight. We want to make it quick and easy this time. So I'll be obtaining a temporary international driver's license and renting a car. Preferably an SUV or at least a crossover—something with some cargo space. Then I'll drive our stuff to the new apartment in Irwon-dong myself. It'll be the first time I've ever driven Korea, or any foreign country for that matter. I'm heading to the DLA (Driver's License Authority) in Mapo-gu tomorrow to obtain a temporary license. I may have to take a test. Wish me luck. 

SPRING SEMESTER AT SEJONG UNIVERSITY
The pre-semester staff meeting is February 24th. I like my new schedule: on Mondays and Fridays I start at 11 and have two classes, finishing up at one o'clock. Tuesdays and Thursdays are the heavy days: 9:00 a.m. - 5:20 p.m., with a few breaks here and there. On Wednesdays, like usual, I have no class at all. I have a new type of class this time around: a combined reading/listening class that affords me some degree of freedom with resources and materials. I'm very much looking forward to selecting the best passages and audio clips to give the students the most effective (and fun) time possible. My commute will be longer, of course, but finding out the quickest way from Irwon-dong to the university (which is in the Neung-dong neighborhood of Gwangjin-gu) is going to be an adventure. 

What I'm not looking forward to, though, is getting my visa extended. This is always a hassle. It requires an entire day, a ton of paperwork, and a great honking trip into Yangcheon-gu in West Seoul to the main immigration office—and that's if everything goes smoothly. If the immigration officer decides that he needs to see some extraneous document that wasn't included on the official list, he can do so—and send you away until you acquire it. Sometimes one must make two or three trips to immigration to get everything sorted. That's the other thing I'm doing tomorrow besides hitting the DLA: renewing my visa. I called immigration twice and asked them the same question: what documents do I need? The answers tally, and I think I've got everything prepared. Let's hope I only need to make one trip. 

FLYING
Nothing doing. I'm in Korea, remember? Though I have figured out what I'll do about flight training when I return to the States. It looks like Miss H and I might wind up in Las Vegas, Nevada, when all is said and done. That's assuming we find jobs and cheap housing, but this locale is the most likely spot we've run across. Imagining that all goes as planned, we'll be living in Vegas, Miss H will be doing social work, and I'll be doing radio and bartending. On the side, I'll be working toward my commercial pilot's license. Once I get that (plus a few other ratings like high-performance and multi-engine and perhaps even instrument) I'll start applying to the companies that do flight-seeing tours over the Grand Canyon. I'd kill to fly a de Havilland Canada DHC-6 Twin Otter over that humongous scar in the earth. 

BOOZE
When was the last cocktail review I did? Halloween, probably. Things went nuts toward the end of the fall semester last year, and then the holidays hit, and then January was taken up with that challenge, and early February was my trip to Hokkaido. So...yeah. No booze. I'll probably restart my review schedule sometime in late March. Gotta wait for the dust to settle from the Big Move and the Spring Semester. 

On the home-brew front, the boys and I just bought a huge bulk order of malt extracts and yeasts and hops which we can play around with. But we'll get to that in a few weeks. For now we're just enjoying the amazing American pale ale we brewed up in December. We've discovered that adding an extra little bit of priming sugar to the brew just before bottling creates the perfect amount of carbonation. There's no fixing the sediment problem (not without secondary fermentation, which none of us have been brave/industrious enough to try yet), so all we have to fix now is the color and clarity. Oh, and the flavor. The last two batches have been spot-on, though, so I have high hopes for our next brew: a maple porter, my pick. I'm scanning the Interwebs for a suitable partial extract recipe. Let me know if you have any suggestions, dear readers. 

And speaking of reading...

READING
I hung up The Great Shark Hunt (Hunter S. Thompson). I'll keep it and read it later and put it up on the shelf and it'll look all groovy and sophisticated to passersby. I have other fish to fry, though. During the long train journey down through Japan I finished reading Paul Theroux's Ghost Train to the Eastern Star and The Terror by Dan Simmons. Good reads both, though I found Simmons's work a bit more stimulating (probably for this reason). I'm almost to Part Four of Anna Karenina, and have finally begun to enjoy it. Tolstoy knows a lot about human beings and can describe what he knows simply and clearly. After I finish this weighty volume I reckon it's either Robinson Crusoe or The Catcher in the Rye next. I need to get back into fiction badly.

And speaking of getting back into fiction...

WRITING
Still no word from Ace & Roc Science Fiction and Fantasy about my novel manuscript. I sent it to them, did I tell you? (I told Facebook, but I don't know if I've told you.) I sent them a query e-mail with the first ten pages of my manuscript copied-and-pasted into the body, as per their submission guidelines. Ace & Roc are imprints of Penguin Books, in case you were wondering. I chose them because I read somewhere that Cormac McCarthy sent his first novel (The Orchard Keeper) to Random House because it was the only publisher he had heard of. And they published it. Miracles do happen. I'm holding out for mine. I submitted the e-mail on January 29th, and Penguin's website warned me that manuscript queries can take up to five months to garner a response. So I'm waiting and praying and shopping for agents, just to be on the safe side.

On the writing front, Novel #3 is a chapter and a half from being done. There's a lot of edits to do but I'll mow 'em down fast. Novel #4 is still where I left it when my computer died last November. I must revisit it soon. I'm also going to crank out some more short fiction just as soon as the heat from the Big Move and the Spring Semester blows over. I'm slogging through Mugunghwa (my old NaNoWriMo project from two years ago) and making adjustments, corrections and clarifications to that as well. It should be ready to go by spring. I'm not sure whether to e-publish it or send it to an agent, but I'm mulling the question over. 

I really need to get some more pipe tobacco. I should do the whole mulling thing properly.

TRAVEL PLANS
Well, I've done Japan, Korea and China. That's the extent of my Asian travels. Bit paltry for almost three years, right? So it's time to up the ante. Miss J, Miss H and I have been talking about Mongolia. Buddha's Birthday and Children's Day are right next to each other on the first weekend of May this year. That means there's a four-day weekend coming up in mid-spring. Flights are cheap. Perfect time to hit the steppes, we reckon. We're thinking a nice hotel in Ulaanbaatar, a ride on a Bactrian camel, a traditional meal with a Mongolian family in their private yurt, watching the Kazakh falconers do their thing, a pony roundup on the open steppes and a bite of the finest Mongolian cuisine. I'll let you know as events develop. I'm still planning on Alaska this summer, and would love to do a train trip through Argentina and Chile if finances allow. Stay tuned. 

LIFE IN GENERAL 
I haven't been to the gym in weeks. In fact, I'm about to head down there and cancel our membership, and see if there's any sort of refund possible. Miss H and I didn't realize when we signed up in October that we'd miss a full third of our six-month subscription to Art Gym when her contract expired. If they won't give us a refund, then we've forfeited ₩80,000 apiece. Darn. At least we know now how much of a time commitment we're making when we sign up with a gym. 

The winter weather in Seoul remains pleasantly mild, with temperatures hovering around the low 40s and nary a snowball or an icicle in sight. The yellow dust from China, however, is kicking into gear. I'd love to be walking around in the open air and taking in my last views of scenic Gwangjin-gu, but there's a jaundiced scum in the air and it irritates my lungs and throat something fierce. I can't be bothered to wear a mask, either. So screw it. I'll stay inside and play the Facebook version of Deer Hunter 2014. 

SCI-FI ART
I haven't given you any of that in a while, either. And since every blog post (no matter how small) needs a picture, I give you this doozy. Make of it what you will: 

Paul Theroux kicks through again

Wow, that post about territoriality sure was pretentious, wasn't it? Well, there's a reason I christened this blog "sententious" from the get-go. I know what I am and I know most people won't have the patience for me—least of all me, when I've grow up and matured a bit.
 
That's partly why I like traveling, you know. It's a growing experience. A revolution. The world gets thrown on its ear, and without even knowing it you've ridden an elevator up through the clouds and can finally see all 'round. Your own little world looks smaller than it was, and everyone else's problems are thrown into sharp relief, and life seems just a little bit better.

But enough of me talking like I know anything. I just got kicked in the head again. And you-know-who was behind it all.

That's right, Paul Theroux has kicked through again.

I was talking to one of my coworkers a few months back. He also happens to be a fan of Theroux, and naturally we discussed his most famous work, The Great Railway Bazaar. Then the talk turned to the book Theroux wrote as a follow-up to that beast of a book: Ghost Train to the Eastern Star. My colleague had read it; I hadn't. I came in to work this morning to find the book on my desk, deposited there by my saintly benefactor. Unable to resist temptation, I opened it up and thumbed through the first few pages.

The first thing that greeted my eyes was this:

Most writing about travel takes the form of jumping to conclusions, and so most travel books are superfluous, the thinnest, most transparent monologuing. Little better than a license to bore, travel writing is the lowest form of literary self-indulgence: dishonest complaining, creative mendacity, pointless heroics, and chronic posturing, much of it distorted with Munchausen syndrome. 

Well, that was a hell of a thing to crack a book and read. I should have known if I touched anything by Theroux that the old bugger would strike at the heart of the matter and unload a pithy magazine of weaponized wisdom at me. The words were simultaneously enlightening and humiliating. There was no denying that I'd indulged in every one of those cardinal sins in my own travel writing. I realized just how pretentious I've been. Even my mere intention to become a travel writer was the lowest form of conceit. And let's not get started on the prose itself: it dips toward the "mendacious, pointless posturing" end of the spectrum.

After about two minutes of genuine, unfiltered chagrin, I made myself a promise: no more. I'm not going to jump to conclusions. I'm not going to maunder, I'm not going to complain, I'm not going to criticize unduly. Heck, you'll say. You're only 27, kid. This is the time to be a stupid young dreamer with a lot of high-flown ideals based on stuff you've heard and seen and not experienced.

Well, yes. But for that same reason (that I'm 27 years old) I'm starting to get the idea that there's more to life than high-flown ideals and attainable perfection and lasting legacies. Case in point: I had an odd feeling the other day. I had the feeling that my life wasn't infinite, and that I wasn't invincible, and that the mark I'd planned to make on the world might not be as grandiose as I'd envisioned. I started to get an idea of just how fleeting and transient a single human existence (mine especially) really is, and the thought was humbling. I felt like I'd had a moment of real wisdom for the first time in my short life. I've known for a while now that all that posturing that I and others had done in high school hadn't been worth a squat, and hanging out with friends in their lower twenties has long been insufferable. But this was the first time I'd come close to feeling...well, old. It wasn't just the inchoate, vague fear of being old that all young people experience. The thing itself.

Crazy.

Anyway, I'm serious about this. As serious as I've ever been about anything. As serious as anybody who pretends to be wise can be. As serious as any former twenty-something who smoked and drank and partied and passed out in unmentionable places can portray himself to be. No more sanctimonious conclusions. No more unjust, inflammatory complaints. Let's just see what happens to my writing when I try to go for pure, unadulterated description. A little experiment, we'll call it.

I'll have lots to write about, trust me. I solved my dilemma: the final results of the V.D.Q. are in.

Remember the V.D.Q.? The Vacation Destination Quandary? It bedeviled me for the longest time. I couldn't figure out where I was going to go during my two months of vacation. I scratched Malaysia, as the only things you can do there, it seems, are eat delicious food and sprawl out on a beach. Not my cup of tea, not during the height of winter. I scratched Mongolia, too, as the only thing you can do there in the winter is freeze your man-marbles off. With much reluctance, I also scratched Australia, since the $1400 round-trip airline ticket was just too much. I waited too long, dang my hide.

So...Hokkaido it is. I'm making the reservations as I type this. And I had an epiphany in the shower this evening. Instead of taking the old Trans-Siberian Express back through Russia when I'm done in Korea, the way every expatriate under the sun, why don't I take the bull by the horns and go back via Central Asia? Go by train through Mongolia, China, Vietnam, Cambodia, Thailand, Bangladesh, India, Kyrgyzstan, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Azerbaijan, Armenia, Turkey, Bulgaria, Romania, Hungary, Slovakia, Poland, the Czech Republic, Germany, the Netherlands, Belgium, France, England, Scotland and Ireland? That's, what—26 countries? The Great Railway Bazaar in reverse, almost.

That would make me feel a lot more like a world traveler. 

my first V.D.Q.

Have you ever been in the position of not knowing, or not being able to decide, where to go on vacation?

That's what the title stands for: Vacation Destination Quandary. It's never happened to me before. This is all new to me. And not entirely unpleasant, let me assure you.

A dilemma has leapt from the bushes of circumstance and rent me in the gobberwarts. I can't make up my mind where I want to go for my two-month winter break in January and February. I have so many items on my bucket list and my master to-do list (see the bottom right of this page, or the link above). Now that I actually have a stable source of income and money to blow on frivolities like globe-trotting, I can't make a decision to save my soul. Where should I go?

Australia? Japan? Mongolia? Malaysia? Each has its allure.

I've never been to Australia, and I yearn to tread its rugged interior—and sample a few beach cocktails in Brisbane or the Gold Coast. It'll be summer down there when it's butt-cold up in Seoul, you see. That's definitely a mark in the country's favor. And then there's the numerous long-haul railway lines that run around the country's edges and occasionally shoot through its interior. My butt's itching to plant itself on the Ghan or the Indian Pacific and while away three days in style.

Yeah, I know. I've already been to Japan. But I didn't see half of what I wanted to. Or rather, I saw exactly half: the southern half of the country 'twixt Tokyo and Kumamoto. Winter would be the perfect time to get up to the third Japanese home island, Hokkaido, and peruse the wintry scenes there. They have a killer snow-sculpting festival up in Sapporo, I hear. And I wouldn't mind seeing the birthplace of Sapporo beer, either. Or catching a glimpse of Russia from Hokkaido's northernmost city. Or trying my hand at snowboarding for the first time.

Mongolia! Heck yeah, Mongolia! How many people do you know who've been to Mongolia? That's what I thought. Well, buster, you could sure stand to know someone. I'll get that taken care of for ya. I wanna get a load of the Khangai and Altai mountain ranges, see the Genghis Khan Equestrian Statue, and breathe in some of that fresh steppe air. (My secret ambition is to see/climb some of the world's little-known mountain ranges, remember?) I wouldn't mind having tea in a yurt with a yak-herder, either. 'Course, winter might not be the best time of year to head to Mongolia, but that's probably why I should do it: it won't be crowded. Wouldn't hurt to know my way around the Ulaanbaatar railway station, either, for when I go through there on the Trans-Mongolian Express.

Malaysia? Come on. The beaches, man. The beaches. (I hear the grub's to die for, too...I want to try some nasi lemak.) I promised myself that if I ever lived anywhere near Asia I'd find myself in a shack somewhere on a beach with a sweating beer in my hand and fresh seafood boiling on the stove and a wannabe Rastafarian playing acoustic guitar within earshot.

So...you've seen the pictures and heard my spiel for each country.

See why I'm having such a hard time deciding?