Deprived No More!

Well, it has been a long time since this little Newfie boy arrived in Korea, and you would think I would be done with missing all those little conveniences and comforts I had to trade in for this worldwind life of fame and adventure in Asia. After all, this is a modern, technologically -advanced country with a great range of consumer goods, restaurants, and cultural offerings - much much much much much more so than when I first came here.Yet there are still those little yearnings that refuse to go away, even as I have come to love and appreciate this country in a way all those sub-decade neophytes cannot understand. I still pray for the day when I will have just a few more simple comforts available here in my own neighborhood: dill pickles, long-handled brooms, a real clothes dryer in my place, pay-per-view porn (joke), oxygenated air (no joke), and a BATHTUB!

But wait! Today, I just to a step back into the warm womb of comfortable North American life without having to leave good 'old Daechi-dong. Yes, they now have portable bathtubs available on home shopping for only 71,000 won, delivered right to your door. Simply take off the plastic wrap and plop 'er right down in your water closet squeezed in between the toilet and the kimchi pots.

Take heart therefore, all those of you who like, as did Napoleon once, to plot your next battle ensconced in the liquidy warmth of a nice hot bath. No need to show your fat white butt to the ajumas and ajashis at the sauna any more. Bathtime is bere.

Kimchi Pots

Neatly arranged rows of the famous Korean clay kimchi pot, used to ferment or pickle kimchi. The pots are a common site, especially in rural Korea where, in addition to being used for kimchi, they can also be employed to ferment soy, fish, and soybean sauces and pastes.

According to Wikipedia's entry for "kimchi", this most important of Korean side dishes is often left to ferment underground in these large jars .

Ao Phang-nga National Park (Phang-nga Bay) Thailand

In Phang-nga province, sandwiched in between the two tourist giants of Phuket and Krabi, lies this awe-inspiring bay of a thousand jagged limestone islands. At the Tha Dan pier, ear Phang nga town you can hire a fisherman and his long-tailed boat for a three hour excursion around the bay at a price of about 1,500 baht - or about $US 45.oo, well worth it, especially if you have a at least a couple of people - you can stop wherever - go whenever - lay back and sleep - enjoy a few hours of life Southern Thai style.

Spiders - Hilarious

A recent (and much funnier) addition to the classic 1970s-80s Canadian made-for-tv short film series about Canadian animal species, "Hinterland Who's Who's". The voice is the original guy from the series - if you watched the series on the CBC during commercial breaks almost every day growing up as I did, you'll love this.

An Evening by the Beach 1

New Year's Eve night at the Ao Saen bungalows (basic shack with private bath for 600 baht a night ($18.00?). One of the least crowded and most private beaches left in Phuket, the cove it is situated on is the main yacht harbor in this part of Phuket - most of the people staying there are boat owners sailing up and down the Andaman and Indian Ocean coasts.

Silhouettes

At Batu Feringghi Beach in Penang, Northwest Malaysia, two days before Christmas. All in all there are much better beaches in Thailand I think, and a much better beach scene, but in a pinch, it'll do.

A Day on the Scooter in Phuket

Quick snaps of a couple of the things you will see right on the roadside driving around in the less-crowded countryside in the northeast corner of Phuket Island- a fruit shake stand and some marsh grasses.

Another First!

I have slept through several mild earthquakes in the past (including, from a great distance, the one that caused the 2004 Boxing Day Tsunami). Tonight, I can finally say I FELT a quake - which turned out to be a magnitude 4.8 -centered west of Kangneung in Kangwon province, maybe 200 km east of Seoul. Lasted a couple of seconds and felt like a soft yet deep shudder, like you sometimes feel on an aircraft just after takeoff. Hopefully there was no damage to report out on the beautiful East Coast.

Paradise Recovering

Two years and three days after the tsunami that swept away most of the structures and people on the densely packed, tiny tourist island of Phi Phi in Southern Thailand (made controversial by the filming of Leonardo DiCaprio's "The Beach" a few years earlier), I visited there this past holiday season, staying only a few hours on my way from Krabi to Phuket by boat. Having been there three times before, I was a little afraid of what I might find . I have friends who spent time in Phi Phi within months of the disaster and returned with depressing stories of giant piles of debris lining beaches, children left parentless and without schools, and corpses still being found both on land and at sea. Most of the island has now been cleaned up and the tourist hordes and uncontrolled cheap tourist-trap development that, in my opinion, always had largely ruined the place's picture-perfect-south seas tropical beauty, are returning. It is a little sad to see that some lessons don't seem to have been learned very well, and that the government there don't seem to have dedicated themselves any more than before to sustainable development. The hardest-hit end of the village, which was wiped out, is still eerily empty. Where once there were dozens of bungalows (in which I remember staying) there is now nothing but sand dunes interspersed with bits of broken floor tile, pipe, cement from broken foundations, and this longtail boat washed up on land a couple of hundred feet from the shoreline. Having seen the photos of the carnage after 7 meters of water tore ashore with no warning, and remembering people I had met who had worked in the now ruined, empty shell of a dive shop and restaurant, I found it a little hard to get into the spirit of the merry beer drinking European tourist hordes who once again throng the streets of the place. It may be a while before I return to Phi Phi.

Happy New Year

This is the first opportunity I have had to post since coming on vacation - I've been in Southeast Asia since December 15th, first in Bangkok, then Malaysia, and then back to Southern Thailand again. I spent last night (New Year's Eve) on the beach here in Phuket where revellers were celebrating by firing off anything they could get their hands on - which makes for a great show. At the appointed time, all the yachts out on the Andaman sea blasted their horns and everyone grabbed their cans of Singha and whoever they brung and toasted in 2007. A much happier scene than two years before when this very beach was still reeling from the effects of the great Tsunami. Happier days are back again, it seems. May 2007 be a happy one for you too.