Yay for Taipei!

Winter is pretty much officially here in Korea and although the single digit temperatures have only just kicked in, I am not too overjoyed by it already. So because the cold is making me long for summer again and because I have a ton of catching up to do with you, it seems about time to reminisce about some lovely, warmer times and what better way to do this by going back to my summer holiday in Taiwan!

At the end of July this year most of the hagwon teachers in Korea were given a 5 day weekend as a bit of a break for our summer holidays. As we work all year round and don't follow the public school schedule too closely, these breaks are pretty rare. A couple of friends and I decided to make the most of it and explore Taiwan!

Emma, Arazue and I flew to Taipei and caught a train and a bus to Kenting town down along the South of Taiwan. After arriving to an amazing sunset over this little beach town, where we met up with Jaylene and Hayley, we settled down and went to grab some food and explore the night markets in town. Unfortunately because of our tight schedule we only managed to squeeze in one night and one beach day in Kenting. We left our hostel in the morning with the hopes of having a beautiful beach day and getting fried in the sun but instead got drenched in the torrential downpour that decided to make its way to us. We bought some rain ponchos and got some plastic bags for our heads and headed to the beach anyway. When we arrived we were greeted by a bunch of Taiwanese ajumas and ajeossi's who 'forbid' us to go swimming and instead insisted we sit with them while they pour drinks for us and bring out a spread of local foods for us to try. We ended up eating, drinking and being merry with them for a couple of hours until the rain died down. The beach we were at was the same beach that they filmed some of the scenes in Life of Pi. They even had a big statue of a boat with Richard Parker sitting on it to commemorate it.

After a fun day at the beach, lots of swimming, very little frying (thanks rain) we headed back up to Taipei. Taipei is a really great city. It has a real laid back feel but it still feels like a big city at the same time. We stayed in Taipei for the rest of the holiday and did a couple of touristy things while experiencing everyday Taiwan too. One of the highlights was going up the Maokong Gondola which was definitely one of the best ways to see the whole of Taipei up high. We also explored the Shilin and Raohe Street night markets and tried some amazing food (mmmm the dumplings). It may have been because we only had a couple of days to find anything but it felt like nightlife wasn't so huge in Taipei. There are a lot of clubs but its a little difficult to find a bar or two. We did make our way to a club called Spark which was right underneath Taipei 101, a lot of fun. Other touristy things we squeezed in were the Chiang Kai-shek memorial and the Longshan Temple. Its always so cool to see these beautiful big structures still in tact in the middle of a bustling city, they both made for great photos too. On the last day after exploring Longshan Temple, Emma and I decided to go get a relaxing Taiwanese foot massage. We were horribly mistaken by thinking it would be relaxing. It was one of the most painful things my feet have experienced! The masseuses didn't quite understand our nervous laugh crying either haha. The last thing on our wishlist was drinking one/many many bottles of Taiwan's famous litchi beer. After searching for it the entire trip, Emma and I finally found it at the airport... on our way out of the country :| Naturally we indulged :)

Most of our Taiwan crew has left Korea already which is a bummer because we aren't able to hang out altogether anymore but I'm so glad we got to fit this trip in while they were still here :) The entire trip was fantastic, even the days where we had a ton of rain we still had so much fun and explored as much as possible. Taiwan really is a bit of a hidden travel gem, one that I'm very happy I got to marvel at.

After a bunch of fruit beer at the markets this is what we did to entertain ourselves on the subway lol
Brown to blonde in 15 seconds!

Longshan temple

So much pain selfie..

4th of July fun & Boryeong Mud festival!

The 4th of July is usually just another day in July for me but for my American friends in Korea its something totally different. A bunch of us got together at a beach just off of Incheon called Muuido. It was a great little beach with wooden huts along it that you could stay in overnight. I decided to go along and try be as American as possible. We had an awesome time barbecuing, playing beach games, setting off fireworks, singing campfire songs and all the other fun stuff that went along with it.

Photos courtesy of Alex's epic instagram

Two weekends after that we headed out to the Boryeong Mud festival which is held every year on Daecheon beach, about a two hour bus trip from Seoul. Mud fest has been known to bring in a huge crowd of foreigners every year and this year it wasn't any different. It really didn't feel like I was in Korea for a while.

The festival was full of all things muddy with a few surprises scattered throughout the day. We covered ourselves with mud as soon as we got there and hit the mud slides and obstacle course. After washing off in the sea, where my one week old sunglasses decided they had had enough of being on my face and decided to stay in the water, we were surprised by a pretty cool air show with jets, smoke and planes flying over our heads and all the other neat stuff and air show has. 

The evening turned out to be pretty epic too when they set out a big boat in the middle of the ocean and shot fireworks off of it for everyone sitting on the beach. We ended the night with beach singalongs, slip slop losses and dance parties, perfect weekend Id say :)

Our bus on the way there was serious about the jiving

More of  Alex's photies

Sunday Funday: Paintball, Water rafting and Bungee trip

Working till 10pm every day of the week has really made me cherish my weekends. Back home I used to use my Sundays to recover from horrible hangovers until the Sunday braai started in the evening. I used up most of the Sundays when I first came to Korea doing the same (minus the braai). I justified it by blaming everything on the snow but now that snow longer exists here I've realised that my Sundays should really be used as fundays every weekend.

A million Sundays ago (lack of posting, sorry) was a really good one. A bunch of us went on a river rafting, paintball, ATV, zipline and bungee trip at a place called Inje in Gangwondo. We couldn't do all of those things but we all got to do the rafting and had the option of changing the paintball to atv or ziplining and then adding on the bungee jump as an extra. I chose the paintball and the bungee jump (cray!)

I only got shot once during paintball in the side of the head. I congratulated the girl who shot me afterwards, it was really quite impressive. The water rafting was a lot of fun. We had a bit of a Nazi Korean boat captain who pretty much shat on us the entire way down the river. We also had some crew falling overboard along the way, hilarious though and made the annoying Nazi captain less of a downer.

After a quick swim in the river we headed to the bungee site. The bungee jump looked less impressive than any I have ever seen but when people started jumping it became less of a 'meh' bungee and more of a 'ah hell no, no ways you guys I'm out' kind of thing. I also thought I would try be a big shot and do the ankle jump instead of the waist one that you could also choose. I waited a while to finally go ahead and take the plunge. A thousand what ifs went through my head. I finally got to the top of the platform and realised that I'm terrified of heights and was almost in tears before jumping off. I made it out though, alive and well :)

having a little cry before the jump

My jump!

We hiked up a mountain! A really really high mountain..

Its officially hot as hell in Korea which means more outdoor activities! I would by no means call myself an outdoorsy kind of girl, I mean I've been on the occasional hike (walk) back home and have gone camping maybe a grand total of 5 times in my life, okay excluding the Oppikoppi, non sleeping, too drunk to function, once a year music festival camping, but that's always an exception :P

I've definitely been more outdoorsy here in Korea than I have ever been in my life. Hikes, sea kayaking and fishing are not things I would have expected to do here let alone do them willingly as leisurely activities on my weekends off.  but I like to think I came to Korea with an open mind and I've got to say I'm really enjoying this new outdoorsyness I've got going on:)

A couple of weeks ago I went with Britny, Jacquelynn and Angel on an 8 hour hike in Seoraksan National Park. We hiked up the Daechongbong Peak which is the highest peak in the park at 1708 meters! Id be lying if I said I loved every minute of it.. I didn't. So far I've only done small hikes and this was definitely a biggie! It was great to get to the top though and it made it worth every painful second up the mountain. It was a challenge going down too but jeepers I felt like I had really done something great by the end of it. Plus it made for a great Sunday funday! :)

We climbed trees as well

I made a little video at the peak so you can see the view..