Hanrahans in Yeosu!

After several months of anticipation to have my parents come visit I’m sad to say it has already come to an end. We sent Mom, Dad, and Tim home on an 8:45 am flight this morning and while the goodbye was short and sweet, the aftermath is really making me homesick.


It was a really busy but fun week with the family. After finally getting my hair highlighted up in Seoul Dave and I met my parents and brother at the airport. They were of course the last people to walk through the gate, but they made it nonetheless. We took the bus to the hotel, dropped off our stuff and then quickly went to eat subway (I don’t think my family knew exactly why their first meal of the week was subway, but by the end of the trip they figured it out, haha). My dad spotted a jazz club and we attempted to go there, and to much of Dave and my surprise, it was a legitimate live jazz club. We stayed for a couple of rounds and then headed back to the hotel. While I was in the cab I noticed I had lost my wallet. After crying a little, the cabby dropped us off where we needed to be and luckily didn’t kick us out on account of having no money. I lost the train tickets along with my wallet, so the next morning we had to purchase more train tickets. But we made it to Yeosu in the afternoon, everyone together with only a wallet lost in the shuffle. When we got into town we took the family to Kimbap Nara and they ate their first “Korean” meal. I could tell my brother has been practicing with the chopsticks, but NOT mom and dad, haha. We took them on a scenic drive of Yeosu, stopped at e-mart for some grocery shopping and got McDonald’s for dinner. Everyone was exhausted, including Dave and I so we made it a short night.


The next day while Dave and I worked, Hyegeong, Sara, and Won kindly took my family to Nagan, a traditional folk village. They stopped at a flower festival as well where my brother got hit on by a drag queen, haha. That night we relaxed, had some cake (it was my birthday) and had a couple of drinks. The next day we took advantage of the beautiful weather we have been having and went to Odongdo, Dolsan Park, Jinnamgwan, and the open market, all before we had to work. The weather all week long was amazing! No rain, and mid 60’s the entire time we were in Yeosu. My family was pretty impressed with the open market, it’s not every day you get to see fresh fish chilling in the alley, and a pig’s head dangling from the ceiling. Good thing we ate beforehand. After school, Dave and I took them out for a Korean style barbecue. I think they all liked the food very much, but the spices got to my dad the next morning. After dinner we drove through the industrial complex where I think everyone fell asleep in the car at one point in time (besides Dave). We came home and chilled the rest of the night.


On Wednesday we had a Korean style picnic lunch out at Shindock beach. We turned this into a candid photo shoot taking silly and fun pictures on the beach. It was a lot of fun, and got some great pics. My mom also successfully attempted a cartwheel on the beach (she does this every once in a while to make sure she can still complete it, haha). While we were driving back there were a couple of times we had to get out of the car while Dave drove over the speed bumps in order to not bottom out our car, but besides that the little Elantra survived the Hanrahan’s, haha. This was the day the fam came to school. Our boss and his wife gave them a warm greeting and they had tea and potatoes ready for them to eat. While Dave and I were preparing for class, my mom and dad talked with our boss and my Maric (our boss’s 2nd oldest son) took my brother to look at a comic book store. It was great having the family in school, all of the kids were amazed and excited to see them. Some of them were even nervous and scared. I made up some questionnaires that the kids used to interview my family, it turned out to be pretty fun. I think my mom, dad, and brother were really excited and happy they could get a chance to see the school and the kids. My boss also took my family aside and basically said “teach my son how to play jazz.” Well his son only plays violin, and my dad doesn’t play violin. My dad taught him a jazz scale and they listened to Max (boss’s oldest son) play violin. Exactly what my parents wanted to do, haha jk. They missed one of my classes that I actually had a special lesson prepared for my family because my boss wanted them to hear his son play the violin. I think this little lack of communication situation gave my family just a little taste of how this school and Kologic (Korean logic) can get very daunting and annoying. After having dinner at the Hagwon, my family took a cab home and waited for Dave and I to finish the rest of our teaching.



Thursday I didn’t have to work! Unfortunately Dave did, but I think it was nice for him to just get out of the house alone for a couple of hours, haha. I took this opportunity to hike the mountain with everyone. It’s the mountain Dave and I hike frequently, and even though it was foggy and rainy early in the day, it cleared up while we were hiking. The flowers have just started to bloom so it made for some beautiful scenery. After the hike my mom and I went to Lotte mart and then the open market closer to our house to pick up a few more things. That night we all had dinner at Hye-gyong’s sister’s apartment. Hye-gyong, Jeff, Sara, Hana, Jahn-oak (Hye-gyong’s sister), Won (Hye-gyong’s brother), Hye-oak (Won’s wife), Jay-yeong (Hyegyong’s neice), Hyun-sa (Hyge-gyong’s niece), and my family. It was incredibly nice of Hyegeong’s family to do since technically I am not a part of their family. They are such a generous and supportive family, thank you! We had a traditional pork dinner sitting on the floor, which I must admit my family did pretty well at. It was delicious and much appreciated; what a cool experience for my family. We visited awhile with them and then set off for home. We played scattegories at home while having a couple of drinks (luckily my dad brought some good whiskey from home). Then we hit the town and went to a soju room where my parents had their first and last taste of soju, haha. After that we were ready for the noribong! This was probably the most fun night of all, everyone was singing and having a great time. We didn’t get home till 3:30 am!



Friday both Dave and I had off of work! We were a little sick from the night before, but nothing that a little McDonald’s can’t soak up. We took everyone to Hyangiram (a temple on the south side of Dolsan island). It was very beautiful outside, and at the top of the mountain we took some great pictures. We also went to view the turtle ships and drove through the famous Marae tunnel that Koreans built by hand while enslaved by Japan. That night we went out to dinner with Jen and took the parents to Ellui, the bar where most foreigners hang out. There they got to see the fire show and meet a couple of our friends. I took my brother home early and we got some Mondu from the nicest foodstand lady in town. My parents stayed out for a bit longer with Dave and they also got Mondu (or according to Sue – Mongu) later that night.
The last day we got kimbap nara one more time and headed to Gwangyoung for a soccer game. It was really fun because it gave them a chance to just sit and watch Koreans, haha. They were able to experience the storm of “Hi, how are you?” and the other fun things that go along with this culture. We headed home and after a whole week of no rain, it started to rain. Mom and Dad walked and got a pizza (all on their own) for us and we just visited and watched a movie. The next morning we headed our early to say goodbye and put them on a plane home.


I don’t think I have been as homesick as I have been these past several hours after saying goodbye. It meant so much for me to have my family travel all the way out here to see me. Dave and I both had a great time visiting, and had a lot of fun sharing our Korean life with people from back home. It was the best birthday gift I could ever ask for. I am so lucky to have such a great family! Thank you so much Mom, Dad, and Tim, we love you!

p.s. Only three more weeks until the next set of visitors come! And only 4 more months left of Korea! Time is really going by too fast.

Here are the pictures part one!

Part Two!

Visiting Season Approaching...

Megan and I are getting really excited, because as the frigid Midwest winter continues, finally a few people are heading to the other side of the world to check out how we really live over here.



March 14 - 22
Megan's parents and brother Tim will come during the UW-Milwaukee spring break. They will have a quick, strenous trip, but we have planned the travel and got a few days off to maximize their experience here. This one has been in the cards for a while, so we almost have the plans to an hour by hour level!

April 17 - May 5
Breaking News! Erin and Brian, the Udells, have BOOKED their trip from April 17th - May 5th. They will take a week or so in there to hit up at least one other Asian country, to complete the experience, but they will have an extended stay in the 'Su.

We are SO excited for both these visits. The timing is perfect and has been driving us through this mid-contract stretch. Not to say time still isn't flying. We have now hit the 7 month point of being in Korea, and are rapidly approaching the 7 month point of our contract. I can almost not believe it, but then I think back about all of my experiences, and realize that, I have grown a lot, we have had a lot of fun, and these next 5 months will FLY by, especially with all these people visiting. It really makes Megan and I feel loved. I know that my family would be here just as fast, but health reasons and TWO new cute nephews have unfortunately prevented that. Instead we will enjoy the FULL Hanrahan clan.. Unbelievable!

I am also a little closer to that announcement, so keep checking the blog for updates.

Added the Twitter Widget

If you couldn't tell from the widget above and to the right of this blog post, I added the twitter widget. I might relocate it depending upon how much I actually use it, but I think it might be kind of nice...

This week we haven't been up to much. On the bad news side, the car is going to the shop straight away on Monday morning. Following a long line of events that probably should have led to me taking it it, the power steering went out on Saturday afternoon. The car has since been parked at Jeff's, waiting to be taken to a service station. Luckily the availablity of cabs here is great, along with buses, so getting around is not a problem, even if it takes a few days.

Hopefully the car isn't totaled, seeing as almost any repair puts it into that range!!

Valentine's Week Update

This month has not been nearly as busy as last month, but instead of battling weariness Megan and I were stuck battling apathy. After our virtual 12 hour shifts of January, we needed to rediscover what to do with our open mornings, and later nights in February. The first week of February resulted in a quite boring, and even slightly depressing result, in which we just wasted away the mornings and evenings, browsing the internet, or something similar. This week we remembered how to make things a bit more enjoyable...

The first thing was, adding a morning hike back into the plans. I think exercising always lifts one spirit, and nothing is more spiritual to Korean people than mountains. For those non wayguks who read this blog, Koreans mostly bury family members with plots on the side of a mountain, "for the view". If you look back at some of our earliest pictures, you can see an example of the mounds. The high temperatures didn't hurt last week, but we even made it up to the top today in 40 degree and rain (I wore shorts and a long sleeve-t to the shock of the locals). Regardless, adding this back to the morning routine definitely was a key to reducing cabin fever.

The other key thing has been socializing. We have both made some good friends here after six months, and we just need to get out of the house once and a while. Megan was lucky enough to have a girls only Valentine's party on Saturday afternoon, and we just had a few nights out with Gwang-he our co-worker, and our good friends Ed and Jen. This has kept us sane...

Other then that, I've been filing my time studying Korea, and doing a bit of side web development, for those who don't know, check out huminsight.com, for a tiny bit more about what I do, but expect a big announcement in a few weeks, I can't say exactly when just yet. I went out to Emart this week and bought a Hanja book (Korean via Chinese characters) made for little kids, to study the Hanja, and just improve my understand of Korean. I think I have become addicted to studying it, but it has slightly improved my quality of life, I must say. It's nice to tell someone something nice, or catch a kid using a swear word, haha!

This weekend, Megan had the valentine's party, like I said. At that time, I went over and toured the Yeosu Industrial Complex, for something to do. It is really INSANE. It is just about 8km straight of refineries, chemical plants, etc. It is really an awe striking place... I think I will go out, and get some pics. I might ask JS or another Yeosu-ite where I can hike to snap some good photos, it is almost unbelievable... And a bit scary, too!

We went out just for something to do each night, but didn't do anything to uniquely interesting. Today, we headed out to Suncheon, the next town over for our Valentine's dinner, Outback Steak House. It was GREAT... BLOOMIN' Onion mmmmmmm! The cost was.... reasonable, W70,000. My steak was quite mediocre, and really fatty, but apparently the Korean's like the fat. Megan has her first salad in ages, a Mango Chicken w/ Honey Mustard to be exact. After that we checked out Suncheon's various shopping outlets for a bit, and headed back.

Well, not too exciting as far as blog posts go. I'd love to get some nice social commentary pieces, or a bit more in depth, but that doesn't happen when you start a post at 2AM...! I hope to update a few more times during the week, I know I left some stuff out, especially objective piece as opposed to a summary...

Wrapping it up, some news, we hit 6 MONTHS at the end of January, and are now officially scrappy Korea vets. My sister Angie had ADORABLE son, named Adrian. He is incredibly cute. My sister Laura's 6+ month old, Noller skates, has been battling a fever, so we all wish him well. Megan's parents are coming in less than 4 weeks!!! We are SOOO excited. No pictures this time around, so I'll just leave you all with a video I enjoyed from Youtube! Bye, don't forget to email!



If you liked it, check out http://www.cloudcult.com . They are a veteran, indy band from MN which I've been listening to a lot lately. Alright, I must SLEEP!

Solnal Weekend in Fukuoka, Japan!

We have been insanely busy this month, working a morning shift (9:30AM-12:30) along with our regular teaching hours (2/3PM-8PM) at the hagwon. This has made our lives quite miserable, but the time has flown by. This was the reason you have likely not heard from us, and the blog has been barren. We have done nothing worthy of note, besides work, and sleep until this weekend. I have nothing else to say about it, other then that we are finished in the next three days, and we should get fat pay checks.

Last weekend was Solnal, or Lunar New Year, Chinese New Year, whatever, in Asia, so we had Monday and Tuesday off! This allowed us to final clean all of December and January's dust from our house today, but more importantly we made it to Fukuoka, Japan from Saturday-Monday. I will give a brief outline of the trip, plus we got about 40 pics and a video!



Friday night after work we headed over to Yeosu Bus Terminal to catch the 10:30PM bus to Busan. We arrived in Busan, and after an expensive (W20,000) taxi ride over to port, we found a cheap love motel and spent the night. The next morning at 9AM, we headed over to the domestic (lost in translation) ferry terminal, and then walked over to the international terminal. We got on the ferry, and had a great ride on the Kobee Beetle Hydrofoil. It was really cool, the boat uses a jet engine and rides mostly above the water besides a small fin. The ride was 115KM and took about 3 hours. We arrived in Fukuoka and found our way to the Central Hotel. Fukuoka was hit with an ultra rare snow storm (about 2 inches). So, we got many great pictures.



The first day in town we checked out the local shopping areas, andfound our way to this Canal City shopping mall. We bought nothing because any item would have literally busted our trip budget (Y30,000 ~ $300). Afterward we went back to nap so we could check out the Fukuoka night life. At about 10PM we meandered over to the downtown area, and searched and searched for a pub called Three Kings. We found it after about 1/2 hour and we rewarded with two pints of Old Speckled Hen for our troubles (for Y1,800). After that we went to another bar called Small Spaces. Like the name implies, it was a small, yet intimate and cool bar. There we had our first (and only) sake of the trip, and a few beers. We never found out the name of the beer because everything was in Japanese. We met a man from England who was the manager of a band named Keith who was touring in Fukuoka that night. He told us about how people in London were so excited about Obama, and the changing opinion of the world about America. It was much more rewarding then having to explain old Bush. They also played a video of a band called Special Others, who are part of the new Japanese Indie scene, that we really liked. I will post a video... On the way back I was devastated to find the famous Fukuoka food stands all closed, but was determined to get some the next day.

The next day we decided to try to see a few sights of Fukuoka, and decided to scrap our plans to visit Nagasaki (St Paul's sister city). It was raining, so we had to use umbrellas, but it was a little easier compared to heavy snow. First, we walked over to Subway to get our first subs since Itaewon... MMMMMMMMM! Then, we walked over to the Fukuoka castle ruins. The museum was closed, so we just enjoyed the beautiful moat surrounding it. After that, we took the subway out about 15 minutes to the other side of town. We were hoping to check out Fukuoka Tower and a temple, nearby. We tried to go to the temple first, but we were having a hard time finding it. We finally stopped and asked for directions, but the 7/11 employee didn't speak enough English to help us out. Luckily, a French guy who lived in the area was walking by, and he kindly pointed us in the right direction, on top of a large hill, and told us that it was the first time he had seen snow in town in a long time. On the way, we walked through a neat American style neighborhood, that happened to be having an open house. We decided to check it out, but unfortunately the interior design was modeled after an American home... it was gorgeous, but not too exciting! We finally got up to the temple, and admired the beautiful views it offered, which you can see in the pictures. We found the stairs on the other side of the hill down, which were only about a five minute walk from the subway station, although we walked for about 40 minutes to get around it the first time! We then went back for a nap.



That night we wanted to try a Japanese restaurant, so we went back to the same area we'd been in last night. We finally chose a cute looking place, but there were no pictures or English descriptions of the food. Luckily, a waiter there spoke excellent English, and helped us order... From the Italian style menu!! We order Fettucini with Oysters, which was great, but not what we'd hoped for. Later on we went to some of the many arcade rooms, and challenged ourselves with a bunch of the fun, crazy games. We managed to get a video of one of the Japanese gaming masters. The game's name was Pop'n Music... We headed home early so Dave could get his street food fix... Plus we only had Y1,000 left to spend!!



The final day we just slept in and took the now simple public transportation back to the ferry. We had a full day of travel: Ferry 2-5 -> taxi 5-6 -> bus 6-10, and made it safely back to Yeosu.

Overall, Japan was great. The people were incredibly kind, fashionable, and the culture is incredibly fun to observe. We say Sumo on TV, and the game nerds at the arcades, the most stereotypical things! The public transportation was intuitive, architecture reminding me of Minneapolis, and was great. We even discovered a new favorite band, Special Others, and Japanese indie rock scene. To any fellow Wayguk-ins reading this blog, I most definitely recommend a visit. I leave you with the music video that we saw in Small Spaces... Also, my sister is due to give birth to a son any day now, so wish her good health!

We miss everyone, please write!!! Anyoung Hasayeo! In the mean time, check out the pictures!

Vietnam Trip in Photos and Video

We got about 360 photos and 8 videos from the trip, but we removed many duplicated, and the ones that didn't turn out so good to some up with a grand total somewhere between 200-250. Facebook only allows 60 photos per album (well, there is a way around this, but I have yet to figure it out), so there are four separate links. The photos are well commented, so please take your time:


First day (Christmas Day), arriving in Ho Chi Mihn, photos of our all day walking tour (Revolutionary Museum, Notre Dame Cathedral, War Remnants Museum




Ho Chi Mihn Museum, Saigon Streetscape, Tourist Festival, Arrival and first day in Nha Trang, Boat Tour


Boat tour continued, Chom Tower, Hot Springs, New Years Eve, Monkey Island


Waterfall tour, Night Train, Co Chi Tunnels, Milwaukee Restaurant, Last day.

Now is the video part of our tour, I will embed them from youtube, they aren't the best quality, but I think they're pretty fun.


This first video is just us waiting at an intersection. This is seriously a standard intersection, with light to medium traffic. The congestion is a huge problem here.


This next one is us crossing the street. You just had to walk in a straight line at a steady pace, and traffic would flow around you. It was actually kind of fun! Especially at night, wearing black ;-)!


This next one was during our cab ride to the Ho Chi Mihn museum. No more comments needed.


This next one again hardly needs a comment, only set up. This happened during our rainy, miserable boat tour... Which turned it into our fun... Awesome boat tour:


Two extreme bad ass people PARASAILING...


The last three are all feeding the monkeys at Monkey Island:






I hope you enjoy all of the media, we enjoyed the vacation!

Vietnam Trip Summarized in Emails

Hello Blogosphere, I was going to write a full recap of our trip, but I thought I'd just write a short summary which we gathered on the way back to Yeosu, and then just put the emails I wrote to my family on the blog, since they captured my feelings at the times.

Here is the first email, recapping the first few days in Vietnam, and going to Nha Trang:

We made it safely into and out of Ho Chi Mihn City (HCM). We had few problems, which was really nice. Vietnam is much significantly, visibly, poorer then Korea, which leads to some interesting things, and some very sad things. For example, Mothers will use their children to try and sell cigarettes or gum to tourists who are out at night. We even saw one mother training her less then two year old child for this future job.

The weather has been in the 80's, or so, which was quite nice compared to around freezing. It is really humid, even more so then the weather in Minnesota Summer. The architecture really reflects the french colonial period of Vietnam. The buildings are tall, skinny and colorful. Some of them still visibly damaged from the war. We got to about 3 mueseums in HCM, one of which was a war memorial museum. It was really neat, but sad. There were hundreds of pictures of wounded or dead children, elderly, or other civilians.

We ran into a little trouble getting to and from Nha Trang. We had to take the 6AM flight this morning, which meant that we had to "wake up" at 4AM. More accurately this meant that Megan and I slept for about an hour combined. There were no flights coming back, period. We are going to have to take a night train, on January 1st (one day early), we will arrive back in HCM at about 7AM. The nice thing is this will allow us ample time to find all of the deals around our neighborhood (district one). The bad thing is we have to spend an extra day breathing in the fumes of 10000000000000000000 motorbikes.

The weather in Nha Trang was rainy when we arrived, and cloudy for most of the day. We are going to go on an all day boat tour of the islands of Nha Trang tomorrow, for some snorkling, sea food, etc. The next day we will (likely) go scuba diving. Nha trang air is much cleaner then HCM, but the markets are more expensive. I think the people in HCM might even be poorer then those in Nha Trang.

Here is the next email after we had completed the boat tour:

Today has been another rain filled day. We did nothing but walk around near the beach and do a little bit of shopping when the rain let up for about an hour or two. It has not been a good vacation, beach, sun, and relaxation wise... Korea was much more sunny, we have yet to see the sun in Nam, haha. We are making the best of what's available, but as far as it goes, Nha Trang doesn't have a lot to do in the rain. It is like being in Vallyfair in the winter... Not much going on. What now turns out to be a blessing, which we thought was a curse, is that we are going back to Ho Chi Mihn City one day early. This will enable us to find some kind of day time tour and get some more shopping in.

One good thing is Nha Trang has cheap beer (between $0.80-$2) that also tastes better then Korean beer, and cheap, good Western, Thai, Vietnamese, basically any kind of food you can ask for. I have been living it up with delicious burgers, and other things not available in Korea. Also, the people here speak much better English. I think it is due to two things. A cultural difference between Koreans and Vietnamese people, Vietnameses are more inclined to try to speak, and many Koreans just like speaking Korean, only. Also Vietnam is much more touristy, so all of the people speak English, so they can communicate with Korean, Japanese, Chinese, Russian, French, and other Western tourists who come here.

Yesterday we had an all day / all rain island tour of Nha Trang bay. It ended up being pretty fun, but a bit miserable at times too, when driving the boat in the cold, wet rain. I swam for a while but could not snorkel since the visibility is terrible from the rain. Megan and I also tried parasailing, which was pretty fun. We recorded a video, so look forward to that. THe tour guide also did some singing and dancing, with live music from the crew. The drummer had to be about 13 years old. There are much looser child labor laws here, like I'd mentioned in my earlier email.

Here is the final email I sent from Vietnam, it goes over our touring in Nha Trang, the traveling, shopping, and the rest of our time in Nam:

We are setting up for our final night here in Ho Chi Mihn. We took the night train back from Nha Trang, which actually went pretty well. We arrived in HCM at about 6:45AM, took a cab to our hotel, dropped off our things, ate breakfast and then caught a tour bus out to the Co Chi tunnels. The Co Chi tunnels were the tunnels that were instrumental in the VC beating the allied forces during the Vietnam war. We learned a lot about the history of Vietnam during this trip as well, and had a pretty good tour guide. We had a chance to walk through the tunnels, which were quite a bit wider then the original tunnels, and get some good photos. We are at about 300 total for the trip, so I'll try and find the best of those to show everyone. The other good thing was that the weather cooperated today, finally. We were able to stay dry during the tunnel tour. A fun thing of the tunnel tour is the diversity of the people on our trip. We had Americans (us), English, Irish, German, Chinese, Korean (us), Russian, French people on the tour. You really learn how English is truly the global language when you have a group like that.

We got back at about 4PM, then went out to dinner, and did a lot of shopping. The goods here are so cheap that Megan and I were able to buy new large backpacks (like the BWCA trip size ones), and a bunch of other tourist trap kind of decorations for ourselves and friends (and maybe family ;-) ) as well as a few food items we cannot find in Korea (popcorn). I think I said this already, but Vietnam is much more international then Korea. I have enjoyed food from about 6 different cultures and world regions. In no particular order: Vietnamese, Thai, Russian, Chinese, American, English, and maybe a few others.

Yesterday was a fun, but also slightly miserable day. We had a few hour long tour fit in right before our night train to HCM. We took a private van out to "monkey island". Basically many monkeys live on this island, and then they have this cruel show we see at the end, were the monkeys are forced to perform and look really unhappy. The good part was we got to feed them, and it didn't rain. Next, we were supposed to see a waterfall, by the name of Bo Hahn (or something). We took, about a 45 minute drive down a flooded country road to get to the cold, wet jungle path. After about a 1.5 KM walk through TREACHEROUS terrain (I was wearing $1.50 flip flops btw), we got to the waterfall, but it was so flooded we couldn't stay long. Then, about 100 meters into the return trip, my $1.50 flip flops BROKE!!! I had to walk 1.4KM through the Vietnamese jungle on this rocky path BAREFOOT! In the end it wasn't terrible, but I think I took some solid steps towards the pain threshold of a Buddhist monk.

New Years Eve was really cool. Though the weather was really bad, we had a dance party on the beach. The Sailing Club had a big DJ set up on the ocean front, and we got to go out there. The rain started down pouring, and we all got soaked, but it was all in good fun. During the day we say a cool old Buddhist temple called Chom Tower, and then went to a mud bath, and the guys of the trip got a 45 minutes massage. It was the first one of my life. It was pretty cool, and relaxing. The traditional Vietnamese way is for the masseuse to walk on your back, so that was interesting.

Tomorrow we may take a tour, or we may sleep in and just burn time bumming around HCM, finding interesting things to take some more photos of. Ho Chi Mihn and Vietnam has been a lot of fun, and a needed break from teaching. Although the weather hasn't been great (or even good for the most part) we made fun out of it. I was able to get closer to Jeff, and Hye Gyoung and have a lot of fun a lot the way.

Finally, the last night we took the night flight back from Saigon after basically sitting around all day. We decided that we were not interesting in a five hour train ride back to Yeosu, so we canceled out tickets (95% refund, 2 hours before time, pretty awesome) and then bought two tickets back for W180,000. We arrived back at noon, and basically slept and heated up the house for the rest of the day. Afterward, winter camp started, I was bit by a dog, we met our new co-worker, etc. This will all be in another blog.