I wrote this very long post yesterday morning while waiting to check in for my flight from Bangkok to Loei. I am at the temple now, sitting on Ning's balcony. She made lunch for me today, which was rather nice, and now she's having a nap while I use her internet connection. Such a change of pace from Korea - from almost constant activity to very little activity at all.

It is both good and bad to be back. I feel some of the tensions and tightness in my muscles relaxing already and there is an energy here that seems to clear the mind and quiet it down - or at least that's what's happening at the moment. It's way too hot and the ants are still around, but I wasn't sleeping with them last night so that's an improvement. I'm back in the same room I stayed in last year, and everyone here has welcomed me back very warmly. I went to visit Luang por last night and he seemed quite happy and jolly as well. So...  I don't know. I find myself both appreciating the calm, peace, and tranquility, and rejecting it as too slow and boring. 

This post is too long already though, as it is from my time at the airport yesterday too, so I'll save more thoughts until later...

Thailand, Oct. 15, 2012

Now it is 8:44 AM, Bangkok time and I am sitting at  coffee shop in Don Mueang airport. It’s a lot smaller than Swannibhummi (sp?) airport and there isn’t a great deal to do here. I thought it would take longer to get here and came too early. I can’t check in until 10:30.

I went for a short walk this morning, venturing out from the hotel. The first day is often a bit difficult I find, getting accustomed to the intensity of everything. The air is thick and heavy with humidity; my chest is tight and I find it a bit difficult to breath. The street is very busy with cars and motorcycles weaving in and around each other in a tightly unchoreographed dance. Crossing the street is exactly like playing the old video game of “frogger”. Advance two hops, let car go by, advance three hops, jump back one hop. I crossed twice, with no “splat”, so that was a good start I thought.

The spaces here are all so much more full and busy than in Canada. The Vancouver airport has a calm, quiet and spacious feel to me, in comparison at least. Both Bangkok airports are very full, teeming, and feel a bit compressed with so many people’s feelings, directions and intentions milling about in the air.

There are a few other western people here, mostly older men (and many of these with younger looking Thai women). There are a few western women though, and a family or two.

I got an email from Ning (the nun at the temple who helped me out a lot last time I was here) saying that I could book a flight with Nok air to Loei and she would come to pick me up. I was able to book the flight while waiting for the plane to leave from Korea, so that was kind of helpful and also led to leaving the airport last night, getting a hotel, and various other things that felt a bit like splurging. I would normally just find a place under the escalators at the airport with the rest of the overnight crowd and some tired airport workers, and stay there. I’m not sure that the hotel was a great deal more quiet or comfortable, but there was a shower and some privacy, so I suppose that counts for something.

I’m still feeling apprehensive about finally getting back to the temple. I feel fairly light and relatively calm inside at the moment, which is a big contrast from the last time I came. At that time, only a month after Joy died, I hunkered down in a stark hotel room in Khon Kaen feeling very alone, lost and bad in pretty much every way I can think of. This time it felt a bit lonely, and I definitely am still questioning why I’m doing this and why I’m here, but I actually feel fairly light and calm inside. So, I’ll just try to keep the objective self-observation going and see what happens…

Since I’ve got some time here, I might as well catch up with some of the Korea adventures as well.

The day after we went fishing, Elizabeth took me to see a historic village. 

My and my hairfish. OK, I didn't really catch it, but I got to take the credit.

It had a huge stone wall surrounding it and buildings built of stone mortared together with the red soil indigenous to the area. There were also some large wooden buildings where the rich and powerful people lived. It was really interesting to see the buildings and get an idea of the old lifestyle, and perhaps even more interesting to see all of the visitors. This is the season, Elizabeth tells me, when all of the school children go on field trips. There were probably more than forty big tour buses there and hundreds of kids of all ages. The little ones generally had uniforms of the same colour so their teachers could find them easily, and there were kids and backpacks everywhere. It was fun watching them doing their kid things – same as everywhere. A few of them tried out their English “Hello, how are you’s” with me, so I found myself saying “hello” a lot and smiling.

Rich person's house

Me and the guard (or is it The guard and I?)
 :-)

Kids at the historic village

Dry stacked stone wall and historic building

Village wall and carved tree face

Typical Korean meal: at least 1 main dish and lots of side dishes

Another tree face, and mountains behind the village

After the village we visited an ecological park where a quite beautiful grass, or maybe reed, grows. It has a tall strong stalk and a feathery silver seed head on top. Boardwalks go for several kms through the swampy ground and again there were hundreds of school kids trapesing about.

Rushes from the marsh

Marsh walkways

 We returned home and met Michael and Daniel for supper at a tiny little sushi restaurant run by some friends. It is located in a small fish market and consists of some tanks for the fish that are going to be eaten, one downstairs table, and four tables located up a steep set of stairs in a small room with a very low ceiling so that everyone has to stoop to walk around. The tables are Korean style, about 8 inches off the floor, and everyone sits cross legged to eat. We had a big plate of raw fish cut in strips, with the skin still on. I had a bit of trouble to start with as the skin is a bit tough and chewy and sometimes felt like trying to swallow string. However, the fish was good and there was hot sauce and wasabi to dip it in, then sesame and lettuce leaves and thickly sliced raw garlic cloves to wrap it up with for some quite tasty mouthfuls. There was also a small bowl of jellyfish cut into strips. I thought it was some kind of gelatin, and it did taste and look like that. It wasn’t bad actually. We also had some of the fish fried. I liked them a bit better cooked actually. They were whole though, and Michael said it was good to eat the whole fish – head and all. He did, and I tried it with one, but wasn’t very fond of the head. Elizabeth and Daniel declined…    The restaurant was really busy and Elizabeth helped her friend with the serving for a little while. It was kind of homey actually, and fun to be in a place that one would certainly never find without knowing people from the area!

After supper Michael and Daniel and I went out to play screen golf. This was a bit of an embarrassing experience, as I am a completely lousy golfer. However, Michael was a patient teacher and we managed to make it through the 18 holes. Screen golf is a kind of video game/real golf fusion where you use real balls and clubs in a small karaoke style room with a big screen depicting your chosen golf course. The ball hits the screen and the screen determines its speed and direction, then extrapolates this into the computer generated course. There is also a platform to stand on that tilts with the slope of the place the ball lands, to make it feel a bit more real. It’s actually kind of cool. If I could learn to hit the ball I might even learn to like it.

Screen Golf

Friday, Michael and I went to a Buddhist temple in the mountains about an hour’s drive from Mokpo. It was very calm and beautiful, with a tree lined road running beside a stream that burbled over rocks placed to help it with its singing. The buildings looked like they would be cold in the winter, but there was a peaceful feel to the place and we stopped for tea at a little tea-house for visitors. We also watched one monk doing some chanting, bowing and praying. I was interested to find myself not being very impressed or interested in the chanting, bowing and praying. It all seems a bit futile or unnecessary at the moment. I thought it was interesting that I would feel that way. I guess the whole monk thing has lost a lot of its mystique since I’ve been one and lived with them for a while. I did appreciate the peaceful feel of the temple though, and the calm beauty of the constructions, gardens and stream there.

Michael on the walking road to the temple

Temple guest house

Urns for Kimchi and other fermented foods

Some temple buildings

Room of buddhas

After the temple we went up a cable car to a nearby mountain top for a great view of the ocean to the south, mountains, cities and rice fields to the West, North, and East. Finally, some lunch and then back to Mokpo where we met Elizabeth. Michael went to work for a while and Elizabeth took me to a lotus swamp. It would be really pretty in season I think. At this time the flowers are gone and the plants look a bit scraggly. There are lots of wide boardwalks through the swamp though, and two beautiful glass greenhouses with ponds, gardens and tropical plants inside.

Views from the mountain top

In the lily marsh with frogs

As you can see from all of this, my week was very busy. Through all of this Michael and Elizabeth stoutly refused to let me pay for anything and treated me like visiting royalty or something. I was pretty fortunate!

Saturday was a bit quieter to start with. I got my things together and ready to go and answered email for a while, and then discovered I was going to a wedding. Michael and Daniel and I drove about an hour to a large nearby city (of which I don’t remember the name) and went to a "wedding palace" to see a friend of Michael’s get married. Korean weddings, or at least the two that I saw parts of, are a study in organized chaos and assembly line efficiency. The building was completely packed with people from many different wedding parties. We arrived at the end of one wedding in time to see the groom kiss the bride, pictures taken of the bridal party at the front of the room, the bouquet tossed, and then everyone hurry out so the next group could come in. People milled about, chairs emptied, chairs filled up again, the two mothers quick marched up the center isle in their traditional Korean dresses, the two blue clad usher girls trotted quickly back to fetch the groom and led him up the aisle, each carrying a sword in front of her, pointing up in salute. The music (very loud to cover the talking) changed and the bride came in a bit more sedately with her father. A master of ceremonies said a bunch of things and at this point we left because Michael had to get back to work. We did go down for lunch though – which Michael paid for. There were several floors of buffets and wedding attendees all mixed together for the buffet lunch which was eaten in typical Korean speed and efficiency. It was quite good food, and there was lots of it, but it was pretty fast.

After lunch we returned to Mokpo and Michael went back to work. Daniel and I spent the afternoon building a model airplane that I brought for him. I think he liked it at first and then it drug on a bit long and he was too polite to say he’d rather do something else for a while. We managed to finish it though and it turned out pretty well.

Sunday we left for Incheon around 8:30 and arrived at Joy’s Dad’s at around 1:00. We had a quick lunch of noodles in some kind of black bean (I think) sauce, and then headed for the airport. This took until nearly three as there was a lot of traffic on one of the bridges. The big bridge out to the Incheon airport island was flowing well though. It’s an amazing bridge – over 20 kms long with one high section held up by huge suspension cables so that ships can go underneath. At the airport all of Elizabeth’s family met us, so I was able to meet her mother, father, sister, brother-in-law and nephew. Joy’s older brother was also there, so we were quite a group. It was kind of hard to say goodbye, but I finally was ushered to the security gate, and my Korean adventure was over.

Joy’s family are really wonderful people. Her father and I can’t talk to each other, but we sat in the car together and he just quietly held my hand and we felt each other’s hearts. It was good to be able to spend some time with him.

Korea is a really wonderful place in many ways. The people work terribly hard and there is a rush about everything that can get wearing. They have transformed a war-torn and broken nation into a bustling, modern, first-world country in a bit more than one generation, and they have been able to make the most of the small amount of space available to them. Their road system is exceptional, huge bridges and tunnels make the mountainous and island studded spaces easily traversable and their huge apartment blocks provide compact vertical living in order to leave land available for growing food. Every useable space is intensely farmed and there are thousands of acres of ground covered in greenhouses. They’ve done amazingly well with what they have.

On the downside, they work twelve to sixteen hours a day and there is a high suicide rate among middle and highschool children because of the pressures of the education system. Daniel goes to school at 8, gets home at three, goes to academy from 3 to 6, and then sometimes has evening academy learning as well. He also goes on Saturdays. Next year he will start middle school, which goes until 5:00 – then academy starts. High school students eat lunch and supper at school and often don’t come home until 10 or 11:00. They are well trained to handle the pressures expected of them by Korean employers. Also, things are all fast paced. People drive quickly, work quickly, eat quickly, and expect fast responses. Restaurants that aren’t able to deliver food within minutes lose their customers, what we would think of as good service in Canada would be considered to be slow and inefficient. People can get impatient quickly.  Despite this, I have found everyone I have met to be very polite, kind, and caring. It has been really wonderful to have an opportunity to learn more about Joy’s home, and to be with her family for this time.

OK – now it’s 10 past 10, this has gotten very very long, and I think I can go and check in. Hopefully I will be able to post it from the temple…