The Global Guy

I don’t know why I waited so long to get over here! This island is so much nicer than Samui…it’s back to the old backpack vibe that I said was missing in my last post. I’ve got an amazing bungalow on a cliff overlooking the sunset side of the island.

Meg showed up this morning…she’s a friend who I’d first met in Malaysia, and we’ve kept running into each other thru SE Asia. She’s been in Australia while I was in Mongolia, and she’ll be spending the next couple of months seeing the parts of Asia she missed earlier. We’re going to grab a motorcycle and explore the island this afternoon, and then go out tonight.

Tomorrow I’ve got my flight to Hong Kong, and then a 12 hour layover before Africa. Hopefully I’ll be able to see a little of the city.

Day three on Samui…so far it’s been very relaxing, but I’m a bit hungover from the full moon party last night. The mood of the island is different than the last time I was here. Last time it was mostly backpackers hanging out and being social. This time it seems to be mostly European holidaymakers out to get drunk and shag anything that moves. The "backpacker vibe" is missing, but it’s still an OK time.

Yesterday before the party I went sea kayaking at the marine park. I had done this previously, but I went with a different company this time. They used speedboats instead of large houseboat style craft. I think I prefer the other style, just because you’ve got more space to enjoy the journey out there and back.

Getting to the full moon party was wild. The promoters had sold about 10 times more tickets for transportation than there were spaces on the boats. Luckily for me, most of the people who were in line were British with their inherent need to stand in queues. With my Mongolian training, I just elbowed my way up to the front, and soon found myself waving at all the poor polite suckers who were going to have to argue with their travel agents tomorrow for refunds. The party itself was a lot of fun…hanging out with tons of new folks, watching the fire twirlers, and drinking lots of buckets of Samsung whiskey. It’s not something I’d go out of my way to check out again, but I’m glad I’ve done it once!

Korea’s been an interesting place, and it’s not just because there is no smell of mutton, and the pepperoni on the pizza is amazing! Of course I can’t really say that I’ve "seen" or "done" Korea. I’ve really just seen Seoul. And of that, I’ve really only seen the War Memorial, and the Itawon area where all the American GI’s go to pick up fat American women or Korean hookers.

The War memorial was amazing. I wasn’t intending to see it at all…I thought it would be something like the American memorial to the Korean war in DC. Just a simple statue with a plaque. Nope, this was huge. It’s more like the ANZAC memorial in Canberra. It’s got a list of all the people killed in the Korean war; Korean, American, and all the other allies. It’s got a museum tracing Korea’s military heritage from the Bronze age to the present. Of course a lot of it is dedicated to the Korean war. I think I learned more about the war yesterday than I did in all my American history classes in both High School and University combined. This was especially interesting since my Grandfather was involved in the war back in the day.

Today I went out to visit the DMZ. It was one of the best tours I’ve done, and was really the reason I even stopped here. First we visited a tunnel that the North Koreans had dug under the DMZ to try to infiltrate the south. Apparently there are 4 known tunnels discovered from 1978 all the way up to 1990. This one had the capability to move 10,000 troops an hour to within 30k of Seoul! After that we went to the DMZ proper. It’s a really beautiful area, and it’s a shame that it’s only so amazing because of an un-ended war The group visited the building where talks are held between the two Koreas. It’s actually bisected by the border, so I got to go into North Korea for a few minutes…granted, it was only about 5 feet, but it was interesting.

Tomorrow I’m flying to Bangkok, and on Tuesday I’m headed to Koh Samui. I’m really excited about the beach!