Death by Hiking

Like I said a few days back, half of the blogs out here in the interwebs about Cappadocia are about hiking.  Now, I like to think I enjoy hiking, but when it actually comes down to it, what I really enjoy is walking along nice, flat trails, through beautiful scenery, while snapping lots of pictures.  I actually know my limits, and have a tendency to lose interest when there's not a shady bench to rest on relatively quickly, at regular intervals.

Engrish, on the other hand, lives for this shit.  Hell, she probably would have run through all the valleys if I hadn't been slowing her down.  I was happy for her to get some hikes in while we were on vacation, really I was!  And when she read about Baglidere - the so-called Love Valley - she knew she'd be able to drag me out on at least one hike.

Our final day in Cappadocia dawned crisp and clear.  That morning I took a break from my webnovel long enough to go to the bathroom, and when I realized it was light out, wondered if the balloons would have already passed.  I opened the door to our cave, and there they were, floating in the bright morning sunlight (which I was not actually happy to see...I had forgotten to bring sunscreen AND a hat, and none of the umbrellas I saw during the snowstorm were opaque - more on that later).  We went up to the rooftop to watch them for a bit - wondering if there wasn't much wind, since it looked like they were coming down in town, whereas we made it much further south - and then got ready for breakfast, while I tried to figure out if there was a shortcut to get from Goreme into Love Valley.  If there was, I couldn't find it.  However, I did stumble across an app that had incredibly detailed hiking trails - AllTrails - and this got us out of town and down to the trail head, with some pretty spectacular views along the way.

Sadly, the GPS tracking on it wasn't the best.  It got fixated on one street corner in Goreme, so I was guessing how far we'd gotten by how many "trails" we'd passed for most of the walk to the trail head.  It caught up to us for a short time before finally deciding we were irredeemably lost.  Fortunately, once you're in the valley, it's pretty obvious which way you're supposed to go.

As we moved into the valley, we both noticed a distinct lack of benches.  There also wasn't much shade.  It wasn't too hot, though, and while the trail wasn't flat, it wasn't too strenuous either.  At least at first.  And it didn't take long before we got to the main attraction...the...err......heavenly pillars.

If, a few moments ago, you thought to yourself, "Huh, she didn't explain why Engrish was so sure she'd be willing to go on this hike," well, I believe it should be obvious now.  Why is Baglidere known as Love Valley?  Because the fairy chimneys in this valley have been weathered into rather phallic shapes - like, shall we say, love plungers???  

Wondering what time it is?  Time for me to make as many penis jokes as I can come up with - in other words, it's dicks o'cock!

Have you heard about the phallic formations in Love Valley before now?  They're as expected...rock hard.  That said, it just seems like a waste to me that they didn't carve these in the valley with the red stone.*  

I do have a bone(r) to pick with Engrish though.  This hike was like a giant stone dick - hard and way too long!  (If your hike lasts more than four hours, please call a doctor.)  However, I would have felt bad if I'd cock blocked Engrish.  She made it up to me by loaning me protection.**

(About seven jokes...not bad.)

Seriously, though, I struggled with this hike.  A huge part of it is because I've been a sloth for two years, but on a good day it really shouldn't have posed a problem.  Considering three days before I exhausted myself on the LAST hike and then completed underground maneuvers in Kaymakli, I really should have known better.  My legs were really stiff and sore the day before, but I was convinced that hiking would loosen them up...more the idiot, I.

Thankfully, Engrish has the patience of a saint, reinforced by the fact that I didn't mind if she went off on her own into the hills.  No matter how much I whined, she never lost her cool, no matter how slow I went or how many times I stopped, she was chill, which is amazing because I'm pretty sure I was a huge pain in the ass (much like a huge stone...nevermind, I think I'm done).  Meanwhile, when I found this cool and shady spot, I very nearly gave up and carved out my own cave home - that little trickle of water had already done most of the work for me.  The fact that there was actually nothing to eat anywhere nearby, though, provided enough motivation for me to keep moving my feet.

That said, I just want to state that this hike is a lot longer than people make it out to be.  If you hike from Goreme to Uchisar it's 3.8 kilometers, and supposedly the hike from Love Valley to Uchisar is 4.4 kilometers.  The catch, though, is that you have to hike a ways north of Goreme to get to the trail head - a whole 4.7 kilometers.  And in case you're wondering why we were trying to get to Uchisar, it's a natural fortification that was used to watch over the surrounding valleys.  Unfortunately I can't tell you anything else about it because by the time we finally got there I had given up, choosing to sit on the big leather couch in the cafe we went to get Engrish coffee from.  Maybe if some enterprising soul had set up a restaurant right where we came out of the valley - or hell, was just selling water - I could have rallied, but no.  We had to keep going from there, and even after another 20 minutes of walking we hadn't hit a restaurant.  Eventually a man at the roadside souvenir stall offered to drive us into Uchisar, but by then my spirit was crushed.  After Engrish had a look around the town we cabbed it back to Goreme, killing time drinking coke and beer before dinner at a place called Soffy's Kitchen.  What was for dinner?  Eggplant, of course***

*In case you are gullible - the shape of the fairy chimneys is due to erosion NOT carving.  There IS a valley made out of red stone, though the red stone is apparently harder and doesn't erode OR carve as easily.

**I stole her hat about halfway through.  I'm a redhead, 'nuff said.  

***PSYCH - I definitely wasn't done, I mean, it would have been a crime if I hadn't fit an eggplant joke in somewhere.

Going Under

My legs were pretty wobbly on the way down, and when we got back to the Hidden Cave my reading break quickly turned into a nap.  One that didn't end til midnight, sleeptalking and leg cramps notwithstanding (and leg cramps in your thigh are a whole new level of hell that I never realized I didn't want to experience).  When I finally came to at midnight-thirty I realized I'd missed dinner, which was okay since I'd probably eaten two meals' worth of food at lunch, and since Engrish was dead to the world, read for probably another five minutes before sleep claimed me again.

We were supposed to go hot air ballooning the next morning, but before I zonked out for the night, the company informed Engrish that it had been cancelled because of the weather, and that we'd been bumped onto Wednesday morning's flight.  Normal people would see this as a good excuse to sleep in, but I'd already been sleeping for twelve hours, and Engrish was jetlagged, so around six we decided it was a nice time to go for a walk around the hotel.

Just a short one.  Not too strenuous...just something to kill the time before King's Coffee opened up, in case the hotel breakfast only had Nescafe.  And if you believe that's how things actually turned out, you've clearly never been on vacation with Engrish.

As we were hoofing it up the closest 60° slope (because what's life without a little challenge?) the sky was spitting on us.  We had agreed that a little rain wasn't a problem, but before long I realized something was wrong with this rain, and told Engrish to look at my shirt.  At first she couldn't understand why I was sharing my dandruff problem, so I had to explain that it was snowing.  Now, apparently seven years ago people kept apologizing to us for the unseasonably cold weather.  Well, nobody did that this time, although based on the looks of horror on every fellow hotel guest's face as they came out for breakfast, an apology wouldn't have gone amiss.  Needless to say, coming from Mongolia, we weren't put out by a little snow in the slightest - just surprised.

That said, as breakfast progressed and the snow only got thicker, it DID beg the question of how to spend a snowy day in central Turkey.  Actually, one of the things we were hoping to do was to visit at least one of the underground cities.  There are a shit ton of them scattered across Anatolia, so we decided this was a perfect time to visit the two closest - Kaymakli and Derinkuyu.  The clerk at Hidden Cave suggested we just negotiate a price with a taxi driver, suggesting that it should cost us about 600 lira roundtrip.  We wandered down to a taxi stand, negotiated the price, and were on our way in a taxi with wifi, which seemed pretty awesome.

The cliffnotes version of these cities' history is that back in ye olde days, Christians weren't popular and they had to hide out or risk being martyred.  Central Turkey is an absolute warren - it is riddled with caves, and the pale stone is soft and easy to carve.  Although early Turkish Christians were probably not the first people to inhabit these caves, they definitely served their purpose (and not just as protection from their neighbors - apparently they sheltered here from Mongolian invaders in the 14th century), up until the early 1900s.  

I feel like it is important to note at this point that I have never had a reason to think that small, underground spaces would pose a problem for me.  This is evidenced by the fact that every time I have ever heard about an underground city, I have thought, "That is SO cool - someday I have to check that out."  I can solemnly attest that I have never suffered from claustrophobia (my only phobia, for those of you wondering, is apeirophobia - the fear of infinities).  But after leaving Kaymakli I had a whole helluva lot more understanding for people who DO.  At first, it was mere annoyance.  I'm not excessively tall, but I'm tall enough that many of the rooms and most of the passageways required me to stoop over.  At one point I underestimated the ceiling clearance and brained myself on the none-too-smooth ceiling, feeling like I'd left a part of my scalp behind.  

However, that was nothing compared to the last tunnel we passed through before leaving Kaymakli.  The top of it was so low that with my backpack, I couldn't walk through bent over - I had to duck walk.  It just kept going on and on.  The group ahead of us kept stopping to take photos.  And - worst of all - it was narrow!  Two years of pandemic have not been kind to my ass, and while I may not be bothered by enclosed spaces, the idea of getting my ass stuck in a tunnel approximately 65 feet underground is absolutely horrifying.

Luckily that didn't happen until very nearly the end.  Most of our time underground was very cool.  Engrish found me a very nice reading nook, and at first this seemed like a pretty cool way to live.  Unfortunately the guided tours that we happened to overhear provided some details that significantly altered the "coolness" of these habitats.  Basically, the inhabitants couldn't go outside.  Ever.  That means all the livestock lived in the caves with them, and you couldn't just empty the chamberpot out the window.  At the time I thought how isolating that must be, but I've just now read on Wikipedia that apparently some tunnels connected Kaymakli with its closest neighbor, Derinkuyu.  So.  You know.  I guess for a change of scenery you just had to walk 10 kilometers underground, which makes it MUCH more manageable.

That said, they did have places to worship, and a winery if you were into that sort of thing, and you never know when you might delve too deeply and discover a Balrog, so hey...I guess life could be worse.  Nevertheless, by the time we reemerged into the snowy afternoon, I had a new appreciation for fresh air and the light of day.  We were planning to go to Derinkuyu from there, but visited the stalls selling tourist kitsch first, picking up a local folk doll, a smaller backpack, and bottles of water.  By the time we got back in the taxi, I was over my panic attack (mostly).  However, as fate would have it, we didn't visit Derinkuyu.  As we left the parking lot, I thought the driver had turned the wrong direction, but figured he knew something I didn't.  We were most of the way back to Goreme when we started thinking things looked familiar, and upon checking Google Maps discovered there was a very good reason for that.  And, on the whole, we were okay with that.

The rest of the day went by in a blur of shopping and eating.  The skies ended up clearing around sunset, as we climbed up the same hill we started the the day with, to eat at Seten, a restaurant our Turkish colleague had recommended.  After enjoying the tones of the city at night, we turned in early - the next morning would involve the (butt)crack of dawn.

Ups and Downs

It was a dark, and stormy, Monday afternoon...

After two LONG years, this spring break saw me finally, FINALLY on the road again.  It would have been nice if I could have gone to Japan - had that trip I planned two and a half years ago, sitting on a beach in Toyama watching the firefly squid roll in - but that hope was in vain.  Instead, I finally caved and went with the suggestion Engrish tentatively made, back in January or so: we could always do Turkey.

Now, if you have been patiently waiting the last 11 months (haha) for me to write words*, you will no doubt be aware that I've done Turkey before.  Seven years ago, I led an intrepid band of my rag-tag students there.  Seven years before that, I led an intrepid band of my ragtag self there.  Maybe in another seven years I'll go back, and finally see Pamukkale (I've been kicking myself for not going there since 2008.  True story).  I had a blast both times, but I did basically the same thing both times...just with kids the second go-round.  This time, though, Engrish was my wing-girl, so futzing around in the city for a week would NOT do.

I believe it was she who first suggested Cappadocia...I'm pretty sure she described it as, "That place with the interesting rock formations."  Fortunately, I speak engrish, and I know enough about Turkey to guess, with pinpoint accuracy, what the hell she was talking about.  We booked our flights - I got us overnight bus tickets to Goreme, she found hotels - and two weeks back, we found ourselves under warm skies, looking at green grass, and breathing mask free.**

After an early check-in the clerk called "lucky" (because our room was, in fact, actually ready at 7:30 am), we walked down the street to what is apparently Goreme's only coffee shop that opens before 9 - King's Coffee.  The owner didn't seem too appalled that I ordered a coke to go with my "toast" (grilled cheese)...maybe that was because Engrish ordered a Turkish coffee like a decent human being.  On the other hand, considering the number of times Engrish was offered Nescafe, as though that was remotely related to actual coffee, maybe he's just been around enough tourists over the years to become jaded.  Who knows?

At any rate, my first order of business was to get to Urgup and enjoy an art lesson - ebru, Turkish marbling.  (Good to know that the pandemic didn't change everything, eh?)  I left Engrish to her own devices (which I had no doubt would involve hiking up the biggest cliff she could access) and caught a taxi to Kappadokya Ebru Sanat Evi (or Ebru Art House).  

I had a brief run-in with marbling when I brought the kids seven years ago, but I didn't get the chance to really indulge in it.  This time I wanted to be able to understand it, so that I'd be able to do it again once I was home.  The owner, Guler Somturk, and her daughter were really patient about answering all of my questions as well as guiding me to learn the basic forms.  We were having so much fun that I didn't even realize when my two hours were up.  The only shame is that I had to go so early that Engrish missed out on sampling at the winery across the street.

I returned to the hotel to find her sitting in the sun reading (for approximately the last time...unlike some people she didn't work her way through 200 chapters of a webnovel during the week).  After taking a shower we went out looking for something tasty.  After I'd abandoned her that morning, some weird old broad in the cafe had suggested a restaurant for us to try...however, after we took a look at their menu we decided trusting weird old broads that randomly start conversations with you in cafes was a bad idea.  We wandered around Goreme's main drag, finally getting reeled in by a big place called Kebapzade.  Where we might have gone a little overboard.  I mean, this was our first REAL meal in Turkey.  After getting to the bus stop the night before we had iskander kebap at a nearby mall, but that was all they had on the menu.  Here, we took one look at the menu and ended up ordering what felt like one of everything.  And maybe I was just starving by that point, but I still think their pottery kebab was my favorite of the whole trip, because it was so juicy and flavorful.  More on those later, though.

At that point, I could no longer put off the inevitable.  Although at that point I was ready to be rolled back up the hill to the hotel, I had promised Engrish hiking.  It could have been worse - as mentioned in the first line of this post, it was stormy, which seemed to concern some of the passersby, but Engrish was not to be deterred and I actually like the rain.  Worse come to worst, I would get soaked and have an excuse to spend the evening reading snuggled up in our cave.  My plan was to delay us tackling anything too strenuous by going to the Goreme Open Air Museum.  Along the way, though, we got distracted by something shiny - the famous "fairy chimneys" (aka, interesting rock formations).  

We actually intended to end up at the museum, really.  It's just...the trail that should have taken us there didn't.  Possibly because we willfully wandered off it in a different direction.  And by we, I totally take the blame for that, because my internal GPS kept telling me we were moving back in the direction of the town, rather than away from it.  But the scenery was pretty nice and the trail wasn't terribly steep, so all was good.

Or, rather, it was...and then it wasn't.  In a very short amount of time we found ourselves getting higher and higher on the ridge that my internal GPS kept telling me separated us from the town, and I let us keep going, because I knew that this would actually turn into a shortcut.  And it did.  However, I made Engrish go up the last, steepest bit to make sure before I climbed it.  The moral of the story is, if you don't want to pay to access Goreme's sunset point, there's a back way in, but be prepared to work for it!  

*Joke's on you - I've written lots of words.  I just haven't published any of them because they were fucking depressing.  Nobody really wants to read about my nerd cave, or my (futile) attempts to kick my ass into a slightly less round shape.

**Mostly...I was a lot more hesitant to burn mine than Engrish was, but even I didn't wear mine that much.

Chasing Waterfalls

(Subtitle: That Time I Almost Rekt Myself Again )

If you're a longtime reader, you may remember that two years ago I tried to hike up to a waterfall.  Emphasis on tried, because some dumbass went up the wrong trail.  Originally I didn't plan to rectify that this go-round because I've become fairly lazy and also, I'm pink-blooded, which I'll probably explain some other time.  Then I started looking around the Arashiyama area, and realized I actually did want to hike that mother, particularly when I realized that I could take a single bus all the way to Kiyotaki.  That was my early roll-out I was trying to manage Tuesday - which probably I shouldn't have been quite so cloak-and-daggers about, I had a couple of worst-case scenario moments when I realized nobody would have a clue where to find my body - but believe it or not, I made it.

I had Google maps plot out the bus route and watched my phone as I got closer and closer.  Finally we pulled into the last bus stop and as I hopped off the bus I clicked on the x that marked the spot (or, you know, the star, because Google Maps doesn't have an x), and hit the directions button.  And waited.  AND waited.  And looked up at the mountains surrounding me on all sides.  This was when I realized that I didn't have service, and would have to rely on my wits.  Which admittedly are not what they used to be.

That said, I have a damn good memory, and I'd looked at the course relatively recently, so I figured I might actually be okay.  I'd just stick beside the river until I got to a trail that seemed to go toward the star that I could at least see on Maps.  It didn't take long, though, to realize my lack of directions might not be my only problem.  Remember the other day how I said the typhoon had done enough damage to call off the Kurama Hi Matsuri?  Well, they didn't make that shit up.  Trees were down all over the place.  The first time the trail split, there was caution tape (aka, keep out if you know what's good for you), and although I was afraid that was the trail I needed, I took my chances on the main trail, marveling at the amount of work it must have taken to clear it.  Of course, it was too good to last, and I eventually  came to a couple of trees leaning against power lines.

All those deeply ingrained childhood warnings about falling trees and power lines were yelling at me to turn around.  You'll be glad to know I ignored them.  Unless, of course, you're one of my parents, in which case, hell, you've had plenty of time to get used to my dumbassery.

I finally got to a turning I could take, and referred to Google Maps to see roughly which direction the star was.  It seemed pretty close and to the west.  If that hadn't been my clue, there was a stream trickling down from that direction, and a family of tanuki was watching me from the side of the trail.  I was pretty sure I was going to make my mark.

Up to this point the hike had been - as Shaggy and I (on separate occasions) had proclaimed to our sainted mother about other hikes - "not that bad."  It was vaguely uphill, but paved the whole way.  I hadn't stopped to rest at all, and I'm not really in good shape.  As I branched off from the main path...well, it still wasn't that bad, but it was definitely uphill.  And the further along I got, the more trees were fallen all over the place.  Probably they hadn't gotten around to putting the caution tape up.  Maybe they didn't think they needed to, that nobody would be dumb enough to go trekking up to the waterfall given the condition of the rest of the forest.  Isn't it nice to surpass people's expectations???

Eventually I came to a stone torii and a couple of buildings that looked like they'd been abandoned long before the typhoon hit.  A bit beyond that I crested the top of the final staircase and found what I'd come looking for - Kuuya-no-taki, a mystical place where a waterfall rushes over the edge of a cliff behind a little shrine.  Standing in front of the gate, I felt a breeze coming from the force of the water, cooling me off from my hike.  It seemed like the kind of waterfall my  master would tell me to stand under as I trained to awaken my yokai powers.  (No, I didn't try it.  There was a rope at the bottom of the torii barring the way, and since I hadn't mentioned to anyone that I was planning to go there I figured I'd pushed my luck enough).

I did, on the other hand, drag Yato out of my backpack for a quick photoshoot.  I'm not 100% happy with him - the clothes are fine but the fleece I had when I started him wasn't very good and I didn't really like the way his hair turned out.  That said, the damage he and Yukine did in some of their battles provided a much more satisfying explanation for all the downed trees.

I made my way back down the hill, which is scarier than going up, by the way.  The trees are a lot closer to you and you're not working as hard to breathe.  Also, I stopped to dip my hand in the stream at one point and got the shit scared out of my by a crab.  Admittedly it was a very small one, but what the hell was a crab doing up beside a mountain stream?   I got back to the bus stop with plenty of time to massage my feet while waiting for the hourly bus back to Arashiyama.  I got off early so I could revisit the bamboo grove, which was sadly annihilated compared to two years ago.  Life lesson of the week: typhoons suck.  Luckily bamboo grows quickly and I had a different forest I wanted to check out: the kimono forest, a series of illuminated pillars set up in the train station.

Why is there a kimono forest at the train station?  Damned if I know.  I may have read somewhere that silk for kimonos was once dyed in Arashiyama, but my mind may also be making that up.  What I can tell you is that I would totally buy a kimono made in that skeleton fabric.  It was totally lit (pun totally intended.  Because.  You know.  The pillars are lit up from inside.)

Hitting a Wall

Just three more days til I return to Korea and my one true love...dalkgalbi!

There comes a time in every expat adventure when you feel like you've seen it all.  (This is not to say that it's true...there is still lots more to experience, but the feeling remains.)  When that happens, the time has come to wander a little further afield.  It's been ten years since some of my homegirls and I decided we would hike the walls of Hwaseong, the fortress in Suwon, but I'm pretty sure that was our thought process.  Seoul was played out like snap bracelets, but Suwon had exciting possibilities.  Or at least one exciting possibility.

However, I think it took us two tries to actually do it.  The first time, the three of us came from different directions, and since none of us had been to Suwon before, I set the meeting place at Suwon Station, exit one.  If you're not sure what exit to meet at, I say go for exit 1.  If there are multiple exits, there will definitely be an exit 1, and if not, you'll find each other regardless.  The problem was that Suwon Station had both metro exits and KTX exits, and way back in 2005 the three of us were wandering Korea without cell phones.  People used to do that back then.  I promise.

Anyway, in this case, the second time proved to be the charm, and we met up and found our way to the walls.  Hwaseong is fantastic.  It's historic, but like I give much of a crap about that.  Ringing gigantic bells, on the other hand...  The hike itself is gorgeous, and the company - Heather and Jen - were the kind of friends that I could be myself with and not worry about them thinking that I was going to hell for every other thing that came out of my mouth.

Expat living: it attracts the black sheep.

This is true even amongst Mormons.  Jen and Heather were both church friends (as opposed to my degenerate GDA friends, who were also black sheep, just the kind that needed a few grown-up drinks to hit the noraebang...)  Well, here is a little bit of Mormon trivia for you - we are cheesy as...well, something that's extraordinarily cheesy.  As we passed one of the towers on the wall, one of us noted the similarity to this tower in the Book of Mormon called the rameumpton.  Basically the function of this tower was people would go up on it to pray about how much better they were than everyone else (FYI: these weren't the good guys).  So we decided that this would make an excellent photo op, and being the person who doesn't mind being slightly (or more) blasphemous for the sake of a good picture, I got tapped to climb up the tower and pretend to be a Zoramite.

It was a fairly clear day.  I was pretty sure I wasn't going to get struck by lightning...

On the way to the wall, we passed a variety of vendors and I was happy to find one that had these really cool, fold-up hats.  I bought two of them.  When we met up, it had actually been really sunny, so I was happy when the clouds gathered - I was pretty much as paranoid about skin cancer then as I am now.  I'm pretty sure my friends thought I looked like an idiot (or an ajjumma...possibly both), but they were good sports and had a high tolerance for dorkiness.

We didn't make it all the way around the walls...at some point - I believe around the time we decided to go wading in the stream - we decided we were hot and thirsty and needed melon bars.  We veered away from the wall into a market area, where old men were paying paduk or something, and wandered in and out of shops until we made our way back to the station.

People always ask if I'd go back to Seoul to work.  It's a complicated question.  I was a lot healthier then, and I love the fact that there's always something to do.  I really consider Seoul to be my second home...but like my first home, that life's moved on without me.  Most of the people I loved there are gone, and I don't know if I have the guts to go back to an empty house and build the thing up again.  That didn't stop me from applying to a job there when Belynda told me about an IB school that was advertising for an art teacher - although it did cut the disappointment when they wrote to tell me they'd just offered the job to someone else.  Thus, the search continues.

Take a Hike

Here is a lesson for you all, in a "Give a cat a cupcake" sort of way.  If you give an art teacher a primary lesson to teach on her so-called day of rest, she'll feel a little bitter.  If she feels a little bitter, she'll probably procrastinate actually preparing it.  If she procrastinates, she'll need something to do instead.  She might think about putting her laundry away.  If she looks in her closet, she will probably realize that she HASN'T EVEN STARTED PACKING TO GO TO SEOUL ON FRIDAY!!!*  That, of course, will make her realize she hasn't really thought too much about what she's going to do there (besides catching up with Belynda, her Dark Lord and Master, and shopping at the Dongdaemun Fabric Market).  She'll need to check out Atlas Obscura, since she lived in Seoul for three years already.  This will get her thinking about all the things she did when she lived in Seoul, that she didn't blog about because she didn't have a computer back then.  Knowing she didn't have a computer back then will make her feel lucky to have one now.  And if an art teacher feels lucky, she will probably sit down at her computer and procrastinate planning the primary lesson she's supposed to be teaching.

So a couple of weeks ago, when I, you know, had job prospects, I felt like there was a very real chance that I might be out of Asia next year.  (Now?  Who knows.)  This prompted me to crunch some numbers and decide that I should spend my last Tsagaan Sar not in Mongolia, but in Seoul, so I booked a flight for Friday.  I have waxed poetic on numerous occasions about how much I love Korea, but not actually written about most of the things I enjoyed there.  To get me in shape for the upcoming blog-a-thon, I'm writing about a few of those things this week.

Korea has some great hiking.  I was just about as lazy then as I am now, but the weather was nicer for more of the year, so I actually went on a few more hikes.  Smack dab in the middle of Seoul is a hill called Namsan, and one weekend my friend Anika and I decided we'd meet in Myeongdong and hike it.  Neither of us actually knew what the route was, but we figured if we kept heading uphill we'd get there by and by, and we did. 

It was a bright spring day, and we enjoyed the view at the top of the city.  After some cotton candy in the park around Seoul Tower, we decided to start hiking down the other side.  I loved being able to rely on chance like that when I lived there...just choosing a path and wandering along.  On this particular auspicious day, we ended up at the bottom of the hill where Noksapyeong Station sits, walking past a place called Chili Chili Taco, which stopped us in our tracks.  After our hike, we decided it was a perfect time for some food, and since neither of us had had Mexican in a long time, we stopped in and discovered their burritos, which I still consider to be one of my top five finds during all my years in Korea.

I loved this experience so much that when my mom came to visit me, right before I left Korea for the last time, I decided I would take her up Namsan.  Gracie is NOT much of a hiker, but when Anika and I hiked Namsan, I noticed the cable car, and decided it would be just fine. 

My mom did not agree with my assessment.  See, first you have to walk uphill a little ways to get to the cable car.  Then, of course, you have to ride the cable car up the hill.  Maybe this probably shows the self-centeredness of youth, but I wasn't actually aware that my mom was afraid of heights until she got panicky on the ride.  Oops.  But eventually we made it...to the exit.  Which was not, apparently, on the peak of the hill, so I heard a lot of complaining as we huffed and puffed our way up the last of the steps.  But we finally made it, and Gracie agreed that the view was very nice.

She hasn't visited me overseas since.  I wonder why...

*I've actually given more thought to the perfect wardrobe for me and Five's nerdy-nerdy Japan holiday than packing for Seoul.  It's how I roll.

Shrine Maiden, Part 2

(Alternate title: I'm Too Tired to Come Up With a New Witty Title Tonight)

When I went to Kyoto the first time, everything I did was secondary to Gion and its geiko.  Back then, I was a relatively simplistic traveler; I went to interesting sites and took pictures.   These days I try to be more diverse in my interests (in spite of what I said yesterday about having a theme).  If you'd held a gun to my head before this trip and asked me what I was most looking forward to, I'm not sure I could have told you*.   While I was planning it out, I sat down and wrote up a list of the things I saw, eleven years ago: Gion Corner, Yasaka Jinja, Kiyomizu Dera, Fushimi-Inari-Taisha, Ryoan-Ji, Nijo Castle.  Only one of those places - the Inari shrine in Fushimi - was potentially on my list this time.  It wasn't that I didn't love the things I did before...it's just that there is so much more to see.  I remember thinking, in the wayback, that three days was not enough.  Now I have a week, and I find it's still not enough.

"Self-Portrait with Bamboo"

One thing I didn't realize I was missing out on before was all the good stuff around Arashiyama.  I had since learned, thanks to the very visual nature of the internet.  Monkeys, bamboo, a kimono forest, and moss-covered statues were promised by my research...and then I found out that there's a...ritual?  Historical reenactment?  Little bit of both???  Whatever you call it - there's a thing that happens there every year, memorializing the days when noble families would send their daughters to become shrine maidens.  So I was down for the 16th.

And then I found this really cool waterfall shrine that is supposedly in the hills northwest of Arashiyama, and I decided that I had to go, even IF IT KILLS ME.  So I got up at the buttcrack of dawn, hightailed it out of my airBnB, and caught the very conveniently located bus to Arashiyama.  The 93 bus let me off very close to the Nonomiya shrine, which was awesome, because it was the starting point of the Saigu Procession as well as the starting point I gave Google Maps for my route to Kuya no-Taki.  Google told me it would take me one hour and ten minutes on foot, which meant that I would have plenty of time to get back before the procession started at noon.  I hopped off the bus and was ready to start hoofing it when the bus driver honked at me...I'd forgotten to put my wallet back in my backpack, and the couple getting off the bus behind me had turned it in.

Oops.  Well, at least I found out firsthand that this experiment really is indicative of Japanese honesty, and had a chance to practice my "Arigato!"

Anyways, I walked uphill.  And walked some more.  I "found" Otagi Nenbutsu-Ji, which was one of the places I wanted to visit, halfway along my route, and decided I'd better see it after the waterfall, just in case I ran out of time.  And then I started walking DOWNhill, and through a tunnel.  This was not the most welcome change of pace, because I was really looking forward to having the return trip be easy.  I don't do well with uphills at the end, and my cousin wasn't here to rescue me again.  Fortunately, at the end of the tunnel I found the Kiyotaki bus stop, so I planned that I would take that back.  Which was good, because I'd already been hiking for an hour, and Google said there was still a long ways to go.

Two things Google may not have fully taken into account.  First, I'm fat.  When I hiked the Tiger's Nest in Bhutan, I trained for it.  And by trained for it, I mean that I hiked like twice in the months before I went.  This time, I hadn't hiked since the family reunion, and although I have been walking every morning, it's not exactly strenuous.  Secondly, the route is all uphill from Kiyotaki.  Now, in theory, Google knew this, because there are topo lines on the map, but I don't think he really took it into account.  At least, that's what I want to believe, because the alternative is that I'm even lazier than I think.

Either way, when I should have been at the waterfall 30 minutes ago, I began to wonder if maybe, maybeee I should head back.  But what if it was just around the corner?  That would haunt me forever.  So I asked one of the many, many hikers who was passing me if we were close to the waterfall.  "Waterfall?" he asked, puzzled.  I showed him the spot I had marked on Google maps - which was in Japanese, so the language barrier can suck it - and he consulted with his son.  And his phone.  As his consternation got worse, undoubtedly because he really, really wanted to help this stupid gaijin but had no idea what to say, I realized I must have made a horrible mistake.  Finally he said, very apologetically, that there wasn't a waterfall this way.  Maybe it was another trail.

"Umm.  Yeah.  I should be getting back to town anyway, I don't want to miss the procession.  Arigato!" says one of the bigger idiots in the world.  And sure enough, at the base of the trail, I realized where I'd made my mistake.  If I had followed Google's directions exactly, I probably wouldn't have missed my actual turn off, but someone just had to walk across the pretty bridge and see the river flowing underneath.  To be entirely fair to myself, it was a pretty spectacular view, even if I haven't done it justice (it has been an awkward week.  I have come to the realization that I am not contributing equally to my relationship...with my camera.  It does all the work and I never push its buttons).

I made it back to Kiyotaki bus stop just in time for the 10 am bus to Arashiyama.  I looked at the route and thought it might stop by Otagi Nenbutsu-Ji, but I wasn't entirely sure - the names didn't quite match.  What the hell, I thought, I'd see if it was the same, and if not, I'd chill out in Arashiyama until the procession started.  The bus pulled up to a very narrow tunnel through the mountain, which it turns out would have cut at least a half hour off my walk, but luckily I didn't know that so I got to save up my stupid decision making for last night's burst of idiocy.  On the other side...voila!  Nenbutsu-Ji and it's thousand (not exaggerating - it's actually 1,200), moss-covered Rakan statues.  This is a temple that was built and rebuilt and rebuilt again, most recently between 1981 and 1991.  Rakan are Buddha's disciples, and all of these were carved by worshippers who supported the restoration (if that little string of factoids sounds uncharacteristically factual, it's because I'm paraphrasing the pamphlet that they gave me when I paid my admission fee).  The thing that I really loved was how each Rakan had a very different, unique personality.  The amount of expression carved into each statue was brilliant - take these three, for example.  You can totally tell they are sleepy, happy, and dopey.

After leaving there, I tried to make it back to the Nonomiya Shrine relatively quickly.  It was hard, because there were a lot of little shops along the way selling stuff that was really cute and it's hard to say no to cute in Japan...they do it really well.  However, I didn't want to be that poor, unfortunate soul who can't see anything or even move because they got to the party too late.  The procession thing was supposed to start at 12, and it was around 11:30  by then.  I started down the path between the bamboo groves, and figured out pretty quickly that I was almost at the shrine by all the participants in their very cool costumes.

With all the anime I have watched in the last two years, I have seen a lot of the different kinds of clothing, but it was very cool to see it in real life.  There was a ritual portion of the program happening inside the shrine, but thanks to the moron in front of me (who has yet to realize that your camera is steadier when you tuck in your elbows...I can at least do that for my Big Gun) I couldn't really see, so I moved a little forward so that I'd at least be able to see people as they walked past.  The two ladies in front of me were both quite short, so that worked out well, and I enjoyed watching everybody making last-minute fixes as they prepared for the procession.

Finally, all the chanting and bowing and everything else inside the shrine finished up, and the princess came out in her fancy pants kimono to get inside the palanquin.  The carriers hoisted her up and pointed her in different directions, I'm guessing so that everyone could get a good look.  And then everyone set off, parade style.  They walked through the bamboo groves and along the street I arrived on, til they got to the river, where she was scheduled to perform a cleansing ritual.  I, however, was dead tired, and the bus was coming up the street.  I figured the monkeys and kimono forest and the onsen and anything else appealing about Arashiyama could wait for another day...or another trip.

*Lies!  All lies!  I was most looking forward to a shopping trip in Osaka with my favorite former student.  It is NOT a good thing that we are getting paid tomorrow.

Monkey-See, Monkey-Do

My phone has been acting weirder and weirder, and the weird thing it did yesterday was not save the photos it took, the result of which is a post without pics.  Totally old school.  I'm kind of okay with this, since yesterday was the kind of day that photos can't really show you about.  UPDATE:  I figured out what happened.  My phone - which I named Kyu-Jun because it's as big a pain in the ass as the other Korean I know with that name - decided that day that it was the first of January, 2000, so the photos were not where I expected them to be.  I'm adding them now, at the beginning of February.

I got into the Mandalay airport at around 9 a.m.  It struck me on my way through to Bagan as about 20 years behind the times - I got a hand-written ticket and boarding pass, for crying out loud.  Since I hadn't made prior arrangements to be picked up I marched past the touts looking for the taxi queue...only to find there was no taxi queue.  So I turned to ask the one who'd followed me how much a ride to my hotel in the city center would cost.  All the other touts descended on me to tell me how much their services cost, which basically got them yelled at for their trouble, since I couldn't hear the one I was actually asking.  It wasn't exactly a great start.

The drive into the city was nice - between fields being threshed by hand - and then we got to the city proper.  I don't know what I was expecting Mandalay to be like.  Quaint old buildings, perhaps, maybe kind of like Kathmandu?  Whatever it was, it was wrong.  Mandalay is teeming, crazy traffic, a million motorbikes, loud noise, a feeling of decay in some buildings while others are shiny and new.  Brand new streets that have been covered with sand that shop owners have to wet down each morning to keep the dust from blowing onto their wares.  It was kind of an overload.

As I mentioned a few days ago, my friend Kristen was back in Mandalay, and I called her after I got settled at the hotel.  She made arrangements with some friends to come pick me up and go on an adventure.  I'm pretty sure without her I would have had a dismal opinion of Mandalay, because I really didn't want to go back out into that.  I probably would have anyway, since the internet was so slow in the hotel (in all of Mandalay, it turns out - it takes a lot to make me think Shanghai internet is fast, but you've managed it, Mandalay!), but I wouldn't have been in the proper mental state to enjoy it.

She introduced me to Wayan, Jess, and Robin, with whom I'd be riding, and then we set off for lunch.  I was a little nervous about being a passenger on a motorbike.  I haven't done it since I was probably 8 years old, and then it was either Shaggy or my Dad driving.  I kept an eye on Kristen to see what she was doing, and as a result I neither fell off nor gave Robin the impression that he was carting around a Burmese python.  We drove a short distance and had a ton of food.  Burmese food shares a lot in common with cuisine throughout the region - spicy and saucy, but with more oil than maybe other places.  We all had a good laugh when Robin ordered us mutton, since I'd just mentioned that Mongolian food was basically mutton, mutton and noodles, or mutton in dumplings, but this mutton was tender and hardly muttony at all.

Then we rolled out of Mandalay proper for a little hike.  We drove past a lot of construction - the Chinese on the move - and through small villages.  We even got to see the parade of offerings - including young boys and girls, cleaned and dressed in new finery - going out for a donation ceremony.  Kristen later explained that families give everything to the monasteries - there is gold everywhere while the people starve - and this means that when there's no food for one of the kids, they may enter the monastery or nunnery, which will at least guarantee them two meals a day.  It's kind of strange, seeing so many monks.  I've seen them in Mongolia and other countries, of course, but never so many.  Never so many young.

Eventually we made our way past small pagodas and a series of statues of monks trailing down the mountainside to the "monkey temple."  The place was absolutely infested with monkeys.  My new buddies had told me we were going to see monkeys, and I thought, "Oh goody."  Except not really, because I'm always afraid I'll end up with one of the vermin on my head.  They're essentially small children, but with fewer manners and more fleas.  However, they are photogenic little bastards, and I took photos and even a video, which my phone ate in its sleep.  We biked up the mountain a little further before turning back to do the essential Mandalay afternoon thing - hit a tea shop.

Tea shops actually have a plethora of refreshing beverages.  Jess started talking about avocado juice long before we got there (which made me think, "Avocado juice???")  I followed Kristen in getting a strawberry juice, and the five of us sat talking across from the palace moat, sipping on some delicious drinks as the afternoon wore down.

On the way up: a spread-eagled eagle.  Kristen is the kind you can take outrageous pictures with.

Finally, seeing the sun start to change color, Kristen asked her friends to drive us to Mandalay Hill, which she had informed me we were GOING to hike to see the sunset.  She forgot to mention until we were actually taking off our shoes that we were going to be doing it barefoot.  Along the way to the top pagodas are scattered, and since you can't walk in a pagoda with shoes, you go without.  Luckily it was not a terribly strenuous hike, although I did huff and puff along the way (which is not enough to put off the locals who had been told to go there and practice their English).  You could tell when you got closer to the top, because the architecture got more opulent and the souvenir stands more frequent.  My favorite purchase was three ink paintings by a local artist, for which I paid a grand total of five dollars.  In fact, the entire Myanmar portion of my trip has been ridiculously cheap.  I spent $350 during the seven days I was there.  I'm a pretty high-roller when I'm on vacation, so that's kind of crazy.

Finally...FINALLY...we got to the top of the hill, just in time for the sun to go down and the concentration of tourists to hit its peak.  The monks and other English students that we'd managed to politely put off had found other, juicier prey - older men and women from other parts of the globe, who must have been thrilled to be chatting with a monk.  The sun was blood red and the whole city was on fire.  We could see everything, and Kristen explained parts of the city to me as we walked around the top of the hill.  Once the sun had disappeared and some of the tourists had left, we joined the throng trickling down the hill.  We made lots of stops for souvenirs, and eventually found ourselves wondering why we were the only people walking down through the dark in our dirty, bare feet.  The answer, of course, was that we were travelers, not tourists, and travelers take the long hike, while tourists drive to the top.