Coming Soon: Dispatches of an Intrepid Globetrotter...uh, some stories from my upcoming travels

Just five more weeks to go and this whole Korea experience - eating strange foods, titanic drinking sessions, teaching and re-teaching challenging concepts such as the difference between "he" and "she" and the pronounciation of words with "qu-", trying to block out the din of the neighbours beating the shit out of one another - will draw to a close - or be put on hold - so I may take a break from all this ennui.

The current plan is for Kristina and me to fly from Incheon to Bali on May 1st, spend about three weeks in Indonesia and then head up to Singapore for a six week overland journey up to Vietnam. We head back to Korea on July 5th and then ought to be back in Calgary a couple days later in order to celebrate Bastille Day and my niece's first birthday in my hometown where I belong.

Very little else has been planned but I'm looking at filling up this blog with about as many travel pieces as possible. Any suggestions as to what we should see or what I should write about would be appreciated. Let the planning commence!

Find a city, find myself a city to live in

With one of my former adopted homes currently in a state that makes it even more unliveable than normal, another still under the jackboot of martial law and Basildon being, well, Basildon, you'd think I'd feel a little more well disposed towards both my hometown and Bucheon, my city of residence over the last eleven months. But I have my reasons for not being all that crazy about either of them.

I'm set to return to Calgary within the next four or five months and, beyond the excitement of seeing my niece in person for the first time and spending plenty of quality time with both my family and friends, the pervading feeling is one of dread (not an all-encompassing feeling, mind you, more the kind that knaws on you at the back of your mind). The two previous times I came back home from Asia I found myself lost, not short on things I wanted to do, just at a complete loss on how to do them. It's made me resentful of Calgary and all its money and the feeling that I was being shut out. Only recently did I begin to think that maybe I wasn't entirely blameless for my problems.

As much as I want to redeem myself for my mistakes, I can't seem to get past the fact that I'm from a scary place. Paul Heaton was probably singing about London in his song "Bow Down" but I only hear Calgary in it:

Mother, Father, I think that I would rather,
Stay at home with you for another year,
That building's so tall and it makes me feel so small,
That I might get lost and simply disappear.

As for Bucheon, the overall feeling is one of ennui. Kristina often remarks on how much she'll miss it here but I can't ever imagine missing a city. I'll miss certain things about it, particularly the people, but it's just a city. Maybe this is the Buddhist (or the Jedi) in me but I no longer feel attached to one place. That what all this travel does. And that's definitely what living in Basildon does.

So, then, where do I go next?

It's good for stamina, you know

(nb: there was supposed to be a YouTube video of some strange Korean foods in this spot but it seems to have been deleted when I tried editing it on my Blogspot account. I'll try to get another one up as soon as possible. A more technically adept individual could probably work it out but computers still are for me - to possibly misquote my old roommate Sean - just glorified typewriters)

The food here in Korea isn't quite up to the standards I enjoyed back in Thailand. Sometimes I wonder if it even manages to match Indonesia's modest, deep-fried fare. But it's certainly memorable. The above are but a fraction of the unique culinary treats I've indulged in.

- the utterly appalling beondegi - silkworm - with its foul flavour and gritty texture

- dried squid (the Korean name currently escapes me) which apparently most Westerners deplore because of the smell. Much like durian, I guess I'm not as sensitive towards its noxious funk

- sundae, a less sophisticated cousin of blood sausage

- jeon, a flat, sweet fish that Koreans often consume for dessert. Kristina actually likes it which must be down to all the herring she had to eat as a girl

But none of these comes close to what I'll be having next week if the plans I made last night come to fruition. My student Bruce has promised that he'll take me out for bosintang, better known in English as dog soup. Before you judge me, please let me state that I've come this far and I'll always regret it if I don't. Besides, I've heard enough comments about the Asian propensity for canine dining and now that I'm living in a country where it actually is practised (unlike, say, Indonesia where they supposedly eat catfish harvested from Jakarta's sewers and make grow Civet coffee but don't eat dog meat) it must be done. Plus, it's said to be good for "stamina" - a quality it shares with all of Korea's eccentric foodstuffs.

7% and counting

I know it doesn't look like much but I'm still proud enough of my visited world to boast of it and paste the results here. Just imagine what it'll look like after I've been to Russia, the USA, China, Brazil and Australia - take that Cape Verde!

Try to live out Stalin's fantasies by painting the world as red as possible at the Visited Countires site. Be sure to check the comments section while you're at it and guffaw as people debate the status of Greenland as a country.