chopstick goes for a sail
01-13-2017
, 05:25 PM
When we last left our adventure, we were setting sail across the wild blue yonder with de captain from Honolulu, Hawaii to Seattle, Washington. But we skipped ahead when we did that. Prior to those couple of live Hawaii updates, we were actually still back in Indonesia, having just completed a two week stint in the island paradise of Palua Kri, situated in the Raja Ampat marine preserve.
After two weeks of doing nothing but swimming with sharks, turtles, and all kinds of awesome marine life, and eating pretty much nothing but fresh caught fish and rice, it was time to move on to electricity and hot running fresh water. Not that brushing your teeth every day with salt water doesn't have its own allure, but..
after a 45 minute speedboat ride to the nearest island with a ferry stop, and a ferry ride from there to Sorong, I was finally back in civilization:
that's the view outside of my Sorong hotel.
As sweet as that was, I figured I'd ignore pretty much all the advice that everyone gave me to avoid Jakarta and to go there anyway. It's the capital city, and I was in the mood for some real civilization for a while. How bad could it be, right?
Pretty bad. Definitely should have listened when literally everyone told me to avoid it. Jakarta is a super depressing megapolis that you can't really walk around in easily. It's dirty, dusty, hot, and overall meh. It has one of the highest densities of shopping malls of anywhere on earth, and that's what people do. They go to the mall. Not my thing.
Given the mall culture, I figured I'd at least try experiencing it, though. Nothing if not open minded. I booked a room in a hotel that was literally on top of a mall. Here's the view from my room:
How depressing is that.
At least it distracted me from the first thing I saw when I entered the room:
wtf is that
Some kind of towel gimp thing?! wat
The first 7 or so levels of the building were a mall, then the next 30 or whatever were a hotel. You took the elevator down from the hotel lobby, and it emptied directly into the mall. Right.
Like I said, not really my thing, but gotta give everything a shot at least once. The plus side was that it meant there were a ton of food options available 5 minutes from my room, including
flavored fried chickens, including plum flavor.
More importantly, the mall had a Genki sushi, which I'd seen in many places but never ate at, despite the sweet logo. Finally took care of that outstanding item:
although I can't say I ordered the beef hamburger nigiri.
Genki was sweet because you do all the ordering using a tablet:
and little trains show up at your table with the goods:
then disappear once you grab your items:
making human interaction almost non existent other then being shown to your table and paying. Those last two will also disappear soon enough.
After two weeks of doing nothing but swimming with sharks, turtles, and all kinds of awesome marine life, and eating pretty much nothing but fresh caught fish and rice, it was time to move on to electricity and hot running fresh water. Not that brushing your teeth every day with salt water doesn't have its own allure, but..
after a 45 minute speedboat ride to the nearest island with a ferry stop, and a ferry ride from there to Sorong, I was finally back in civilization:
that's the view outside of my Sorong hotel.
As sweet as that was, I figured I'd ignore pretty much all the advice that everyone gave me to avoid Jakarta and to go there anyway. It's the capital city, and I was in the mood for some real civilization for a while. How bad could it be, right?
Pretty bad. Definitely should have listened when literally everyone told me to avoid it. Jakarta is a super depressing megapolis that you can't really walk around in easily. It's dirty, dusty, hot, and overall meh. It has one of the highest densities of shopping malls of anywhere on earth, and that's what people do. They go to the mall. Not my thing.
Given the mall culture, I figured I'd at least try experiencing it, though. Nothing if not open minded. I booked a room in a hotel that was literally on top of a mall. Here's the view from my room:
How depressing is that.
At least it distracted me from the first thing I saw when I entered the room:
wtf is that
Some kind of towel gimp thing?! wat
The first 7 or so levels of the building were a mall, then the next 30 or whatever were a hotel. You took the elevator down from the hotel lobby, and it emptied directly into the mall. Right.
Like I said, not really my thing, but gotta give everything a shot at least once. The plus side was that it meant there were a ton of food options available 5 minutes from my room, including
flavored fried chickens, including plum flavor.
More importantly, the mall had a Genki sushi, which I'd seen in many places but never ate at, despite the sweet logo. Finally took care of that outstanding item:
although I can't say I ordered the beef hamburger nigiri.
Genki was sweet because you do all the ordering using a tablet:
and little trains show up at your table with the goods:
then disappear once you grab your items:
making human interaction almost non existent other then being shown to your table and paying. Those last two will also disappear soon enough.
01-13-2017
, 05:30 PM
Despite the inability to really walk around and explore the city, I did luck into being there on the Indonesian version of independence day, and there was no way I was staying inside a mall for that.
Well, not that time. I'd definitely just stay inside if I ever happen to be in that spot again. Apart from some anemic fireworks, little to nothing went on. This was surprising, given that I was not only in Jakarta, but had made my way to the city center proper and went out into their big national central park, which is kinda like the equivalent of Washington, D.C.'s National Mall. Huge open grassy area with lots of national monuments and stuff.
There were a bunch of people, but everyone was mostly just sitting around being miserable in the heat.
I remedied that for myself by finding a coconut stall:
and getting my cold coconut on:
though I gotta say that getting rid of the coconut shell was a lot more depressing on land than it is when you just toss it over the side of the boat into the ocean:
Well, not that time. I'd definitely just stay inside if I ever happen to be in that spot again. Apart from some anemic fireworks, little to nothing went on. This was surprising, given that I was not only in Jakarta, but had made my way to the city center proper and went out into their big national central park, which is kinda like the equivalent of Washington, D.C.'s National Mall. Huge open grassy area with lots of national monuments and stuff.
There were a bunch of people, but everyone was mostly just sitting around being miserable in the heat.
I remedied that for myself by finding a coconut stall:
and getting my cold coconut on:
though I gotta say that getting rid of the coconut shell was a lot more depressing on land than it is when you just toss it over the side of the boat into the ocean:
01-13-2017
, 05:51 PM
As exciting and fun as it was to stay cooped up in hotels on top of shopping malls for a couple of weeks, I was ready to leave Jakarta pretty quick. While planning on where to head next, I got a note from de captain asking me if I wanted to help with a Honolulu -> Seattle sail in about a month. Hadn't been planning on heading back to the US that soon, but I'd been wanting to sail with de cap for a long time, so it was an easy yes.
That yes also suddenly reduced my remaining free time to about two weeks and change, so I needed to make a decision on a place to go for that length of time, and from which I could easily get to Hawaii.
There had been a bunch of different places I was considering including the Philippines, Palau, Korea, Japan, and Guam. Had been leaning toward the PI, but given a max two weeks, I decided it would be Korea, likely either just Seoul, or possibly Busan also.
So a few days later,
welcome to South Korea, you better not be trying to infect us with Zika.
Public health safety is a big thing in South Korea. You could never have things like this in the US subway systems:
because USA#1ers would break into them and steal everything. But they are in pretty much every Seoul subway station.
My favorite health/safety item was this:
which were introduced to hotel rooms after some people got trapped in a burning building. It's a personal rappelling system
Seoul above ground is also pretty sweet if you don't have an aversion to neon:
That yes also suddenly reduced my remaining free time to about two weeks and change, so I needed to make a decision on a place to go for that length of time, and from which I could easily get to Hawaii.
There had been a bunch of different places I was considering including the Philippines, Palau, Korea, Japan, and Guam. Had been leaning toward the PI, but given a max two weeks, I decided it would be Korea, likely either just Seoul, or possibly Busan also.
So a few days later,
welcome to South Korea, you better not be trying to infect us with Zika.
Public health safety is a big thing in South Korea. You could never have things like this in the US subway systems:
because USA#1ers would break into them and steal everything. But they are in pretty much every Seoul subway station.
My favorite health/safety item was this:
which were introduced to hotel rooms after some people got trapped in a burning building. It's a personal rappelling system
Seoul above ground is also pretty sweet if you don't have an aversion to neon:
01-13-2017
, 06:11 PM
Seoul was a minor culture shock for me because it is a cosmopolitan city with a fair amount of ethnic diversity, a total contrast to my Indonesian experience of the last few months. The places I had been in Indonesia were much more homogeneous than I had expected. During the 3 weeks or so that I was in Jakarta, I don't think I saw a single non-Indonesian other than a few Chinese businessmen. Seoul was much different. Not as much of a variety as somewhere like Hong Kong, but certainly a major contrast to anywhere in Indonesia.
While I've seen English lessons and classes promoted in a lot of different places, Seoul was probably the first time I can remember seeing people focused specifically on American accent training:
definitely had seen cat cafes before (mostly in Singapore), but Seoul had the best signs for them:
Knowing that I only had two weeks made it easier to focus on doing stuff that I wanted to do. Most of that involved eating as much Korean food as possible, along with some contemporary cultural activities. I had kimchi every single day I was there, no jokes. My preferred MO was to find a restaurant with no English writing, walk inside, and figure it out from there. I was the only one in this tiny place, that guy is the owner/cook:
center plate is spicy octopus, surrounded by various banchan side items.
Also made sure to go to a PC bang, which is a huge room full of computer terminals that people come and play games on. Imagine a huge office cubicle farm, except instead of working, everyone is showing up to hang out and play video games. I'm not a gamer, but when in Korea..
that screen is a pause screen where you can order food from, and people will bring it right to your cubicle. I haven't really played any computer games in forever and everything was in Korean, but I found the original Starcraft game from the late 90s and rocked that for a bit.
Lucky for me, I went to the PC bang with some hardcore gamers who I met while attending another Korean cultural thing I've always wanted to see in person - a Starcraft tournament:
just happened to luck into being in Seoul during the biggest tournament of the year, so obv I went. It was in an outdoor amphitheater, and there were a ton of spectators:
who were very excited and motivated. This was the finals of some major league event, and it was a 5v5 match with individuals squaring off against their opponents one at a time in soundproof booths on either end of the stage. The center of the stage had giant screens where you could see the views of both competitors, as well as a view from the commentators. That first photo is right after the victorious team emerged from their area. Lots of streamers, confetti, loud music, etc.
While I've seen English lessons and classes promoted in a lot of different places, Seoul was probably the first time I can remember seeing people focused specifically on American accent training:
definitely had seen cat cafes before (mostly in Singapore), but Seoul had the best signs for them:
Knowing that I only had two weeks made it easier to focus on doing stuff that I wanted to do. Most of that involved eating as much Korean food as possible, along with some contemporary cultural activities. I had kimchi every single day I was there, no jokes. My preferred MO was to find a restaurant with no English writing, walk inside, and figure it out from there. I was the only one in this tiny place, that guy is the owner/cook:
center plate is spicy octopus, surrounded by various banchan side items.
Also made sure to go to a PC bang, which is a huge room full of computer terminals that people come and play games on. Imagine a huge office cubicle farm, except instead of working, everyone is showing up to hang out and play video games. I'm not a gamer, but when in Korea..
that screen is a pause screen where you can order food from, and people will bring it right to your cubicle. I haven't really played any computer games in forever and everything was in Korean, but I found the original Starcraft game from the late 90s and rocked that for a bit.
Lucky for me, I went to the PC bang with some hardcore gamers who I met while attending another Korean cultural thing I've always wanted to see in person - a Starcraft tournament:
just happened to luck into being in Seoul during the biggest tournament of the year, so obv I went. It was in an outdoor amphitheater, and there were a ton of spectators:
who were very excited and motivated. This was the finals of some major league event, and it was a 5v5 match with individuals squaring off against their opponents one at a time in soundproof booths on either end of the stage. The center of the stage had giant screens where you could see the views of both competitors, as well as a view from the commentators. That first photo is right after the victorious team emerged from their area. Lots of streamers, confetti, loud music, etc.
01-13-2017
, 07:45 PM
Lest anyone fear I did not absorb any traditional culture, worry not:
there were a few temple visits. Well, one temple visit. Don't really have much interest in those kind of things, but those outfits are happening! Some kind of temple performance in the primary royal temple where people marched around, waved their flags, wore traditional dress, and whatever.
Much more interesting was this place across the street:
It's a little market area on the border of a residential/business district with a bunch of street vendors who sell their specialty foods for set amounts. You can read the rules, but basically you hand over some money and get some cool looking trading coins. You then walk up and down a covered alley full of food vendors and trade your coins for whatever foods that vendor specializes in. When you fill up your plate, you head back to a cafeteria area and chow down.
One of the vendors taking care of business:
the covered alley full of the food stalls:
this one had a lot of choices:
my plate:
the eating area, mostly business people on their lunch break:
before they all showed up, it was a group of high school students from a different part of Korea who were visiting the capital as part of a school trip. One of them had lived in USA#1 for a little while and we chatted a bit about Korea/USA differences when he noticed me (easy, given I was the only non-Korean in the place), which of course led to a massive selfie with me and like 30+ random Korean high school students.
One vendor had nothing but kimchi, probably 8 different types. Was in pure heaven there.
And yes, I made sure not to spend all the coins and kept one as a sweet souvenir.
there were a few temple visits. Well, one temple visit. Don't really have much interest in those kind of things, but those outfits are happening! Some kind of temple performance in the primary royal temple where people marched around, waved their flags, wore traditional dress, and whatever.
Much more interesting was this place across the street:
It's a little market area on the border of a residential/business district with a bunch of street vendors who sell their specialty foods for set amounts. You can read the rules, but basically you hand over some money and get some cool looking trading coins. You then walk up and down a covered alley full of food vendors and trade your coins for whatever foods that vendor specializes in. When you fill up your plate, you head back to a cafeteria area and chow down.
One of the vendors taking care of business:
the covered alley full of the food stalls:
this one had a lot of choices:
my plate:
the eating area, mostly business people on their lunch break:
before they all showed up, it was a group of high school students from a different part of Korea who were visiting the capital as part of a school trip. One of them had lived in USA#1 for a little while and we chatted a bit about Korea/USA differences when he noticed me (easy, given I was the only non-Korean in the place), which of course led to a massive selfie with me and like 30+ random Korean high school students.
One vendor had nothing but kimchi, probably 8 different types. Was in pure heaven there.
And yes, I made sure not to spend all the coins and kept one as a sweet souvenir.
01-13-2017
, 08:00 PM
Even with all that kimchi, I still needed more, so I headed over to the kimchi museum. Yes, Seoul has a kimchi museum. Dedicated to everything related to kimchi, including the history, preparation, variations, methods, you name it. They even have an area where you can learn how to make it, coming in for classes. What I was most interested in was:
that's right, a tasting room! There were about a half dozen variety in there, just a bite or two of each in a small plastic cup. I think you are only allowed to try two, but she let me try them all.
Definitely lucked out with my visit, because I showed up at like 14:00 on a Tuesday, so the place was mostly empty. I think they don't get too many Westerners there, either, given how I was pounced on by the staff. Ended up getting a personalized tour of the museum by a Korean woman who had lived in USA#1 for a while and spoke excellent English.
My favorite spot other than the tasting room was probably this frankenstein looking room:
where various kimchis and related items were biding their time, just waiting. They also had an area where you could make your own kimchi postcard, so yeah obv I did that.
If you think the Kimchi Museum was the best place in Seoul, that's only because I haven't gotten to the Poop Museum yet. Let's do that now:
yeah, that's a poop museum.
Koreans are pretty obsessed with cute looking poop. No, I don't know why.
The museum has all kinds of facts and information about poop, anything the average 4 year old would want to know and be fascinated with. They also have various poop exhibits, of varying disgustingness and entertainingness. This includes a massive poop slide, which is a slide that allows one to replicate the journey of a poop, starting off as food entering the mouth, and ending as... well, you know. Here's the explanatory graphic:
and the entrance to the slide:
you have to hold onto those rings until you are inside the slide and ready to fall, then you let go, and awaaaaay you go. The initial drop is pretty sudden, they wanted to correctly replicate all the expected angles, so it is effectively a sheer drop to start. Not ashamed to admit I was starting to have second thoughts while hanging there until the 16 year old Korean girl in charge of the station gave me an exasperated look. Then I let go and away I went, to become a poop.
My efforts were rewarded outside of the museum, where I bought myself a poop pancake:
to celebrate my bravery and remarkable journey. They had both red bean and chocolate, and were actually pretty tasty, if you can ignore the fact that you are eating a giant piece of cartoon poop.
that's right, a tasting room! There were about a half dozen variety in there, just a bite or two of each in a small plastic cup. I think you are only allowed to try two, but she let me try them all.
Definitely lucked out with my visit, because I showed up at like 14:00 on a Tuesday, so the place was mostly empty. I think they don't get too many Westerners there, either, given how I was pounced on by the staff. Ended up getting a personalized tour of the museum by a Korean woman who had lived in USA#1 for a while and spoke excellent English.
My favorite spot other than the tasting room was probably this frankenstein looking room:
where various kimchis and related items were biding their time, just waiting. They also had an area where you could make your own kimchi postcard, so yeah obv I did that.
If you think the Kimchi Museum was the best place in Seoul, that's only because I haven't gotten to the Poop Museum yet. Let's do that now:
yeah, that's a poop museum.
Koreans are pretty obsessed with cute looking poop. No, I don't know why.
The museum has all kinds of facts and information about poop, anything the average 4 year old would want to know and be fascinated with. They also have various poop exhibits, of varying disgustingness and entertainingness. This includes a massive poop slide, which is a slide that allows one to replicate the journey of a poop, starting off as food entering the mouth, and ending as... well, you know. Here's the explanatory graphic:
and the entrance to the slide:
you have to hold onto those rings until you are inside the slide and ready to fall, then you let go, and awaaaaay you go. The initial drop is pretty sudden, they wanted to correctly replicate all the expected angles, so it is effectively a sheer drop to start. Not ashamed to admit I was starting to have second thoughts while hanging there until the 16 year old Korean girl in charge of the station gave me an exasperated look. Then I let go and away I went, to become a poop.
My efforts were rewarded outside of the museum, where I bought myself a poop pancake:
to celebrate my bravery and remarkable journey. They had both red bean and chocolate, and were actually pretty tasty, if you can ignore the fact that you are eating a giant piece of cartoon poop.
01-13-2017
, 08:27 PM
Yay thread is back, I was just thinking the other day how much I missed this! How tempted were you to test drive the descending life line? That looks kinda awesome.
I once had a similar towel surprise waiting in my room. The sunglasses are mine and were also on it when I entered the room (this was somewhere in Mexico, low-budget hotel)
I saw you did the poop museum, but did you go to the torture museum? It was somewhere nearish that biggest temple you posted a picture from. Seoul was definitely really cool, I hope to go back one day. Their nightlife culture is insane and weird too.
I once had a similar towel surprise waiting in my room. The sunglasses are mine and were also on it when I entered the room (this was somewhere in Mexico, low-budget hotel)
I saw you did the poop museum, but did you go to the torture museum? It was somewhere nearish that biggest temple you posted a picture from. Seoul was definitely really cool, I hope to go back one day. Their nightlife culture is insane and weird too.
01-13-2017
, 08:50 PM
01-13-2017
, 10:16 PM
01-15-2017
, 10:57 AM
