Ansan Valley Rock Festival!

The annual Valley Rock festival was held right outside the city I live in here in Korea. Usually held at the Jisan Forest Resort and called the Jisan Valley Rock festival, this year the venue moved and the festival was held on Daebu island which is about a 30 minute drive from Ansan. The lineup was pretty great and although I missed Vampire Weekend and The XX.. I know :( it was still a really great festival. I did however get to see the Stereophonics, Skrillex, Yellowcard, Steve Vai, Fun, a bunch of other super cool Korean acts and... Foals!!! It rained for a lot of the festival which made the already swampy land on Daebu pretty much a mud bath but we threw on a couple of plastic ponchos and kept going.

I find that it always brings a certain feeling of pride when an international act plays in your country. Its kind of a big deal when any international bands or acts come play in SA and they usually only come one at a time and do individual shows. Being able to see a bunch of big acts from all over the world at one festival was pretty great and they were playing in my home away from home which made it even better.

                     

Bus hangovers from Noreabanging till 8am the night before.

Some videos of the festival:

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!

A braai in Korea!

I've been slacking a bit on blog updates lately, sorry family and friends and whoever else is reading about my Korean adventures.

I have gotten my ducks in a row and had to write a whole post on this because it was one glorious day where I felt a tiny bit like I was back in South Africa, or at least something that's vaguely familiar to the land of boerewors, beer and babalas.

The guys over at SAKorNet hosted the annual Nanji Braai at Nanji park in Seoul. I roped in a bunch or friends to come with and experience a real South African braai, or at least the closest we are gonna get to it in Korea. We had to order our meat before from The Biltong Guy and then picked it up at the park to braai. They even had some SA drinks available: Hunters, Klipdrift and some different wines. I had to have a bit of everything... hence the babalas later on :p

It was a lot of fun, we braaied, danced, drank, spoke rubbish and even played a round of South African 30 seconds! All the components of a good bleddy braai! :)

Like Jan braai but American

My friend Jason took the ropes as the 'braaimaster' for the day, He made this video too:

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..