at the latenight.. double feature.. picture show..

(this is the second post for my Chuseok adventure)

Worn out from a day of chasing (wooden) penis, I’d spend the last night of Chuseok watching men on stage chasing (literal) penis. Before you seriously start to question my sexuality let me explain, The Rocky Horror Show was in town. I decided to go after being coerced by cheap tickets. Wait, who am I kidding I was planning on going ever since I heard about it. What better way to end a Korean family holiday than with a lewd non family friendly musical.

I did a lot of research before the show. I’m well aware that Rocky Horror is rife with audience participation, and I wanted to be able to throw my toast, and rice on cue. I found out that the stage shows mostly dealt with heckling, and not actual throwing, I was a little sad.

The performance itself was anything but disappointing. I was thrilled, chilled and fulfilled. I found it quite interesting that an extremely conservative country like Korea would play host to such tomfoolery. Although I’ve seen the funky g string this country is hiding under its playfully conservative garb. Loveland and Haeshindang Park (the penis park) play great testament to the risqué undergarments this country hides.

I felt bad for Rocky, as he was supposed to be the muscle on display. His airbrushed abs had nothing on Juan Jackson, the man playing Dr. Frank N Furter. I’m fairly sure I heard a few Korean jaws hit the floor upon Frank N Furter’s arrival (see picture). I’m not embarrassed at all to say that he was the most muscular man I’ve ever seen. It also didn’t take long to learn that Juan was not cast because of his looks; he had one hell of a voice. The rest of a the cast didn’t falter either, even when executing dance numbers on 4 inch heels. It was enough to make more than one Korean woman blush, and believe me that is no easy feat, as Korean women will hike up mountains in heels.

The spectacle I was expecting from the crowd was a little tame, not one person (including me) stood up and participated. No one even heckled! I figure the shy Korean crowd had a lot to do with that, yet I sat down the whole time as well. That was until the show was over; the cast wouldn’t let us leave without getting us to do something. So they demonstrated the dance moves to ‘The Time Warp’ and broke out into song again, this time encouraging the timid crowd to dance along. I took full advantage of this, I couldn’t jump to the left (knee), or step to the right (Korean standing there), but the pelvic thrust really did drive me insane.

I've got a hole in my bucket...

I’ve known for a while that I like to plan out tiny little adventures, I don't plan every detail. I do like to leave room for some random happenstance. The last couple of weeks i've become a zombie to the world. You will probably notice that this is my first post in over a week and I know some of you are anxiously waiting for the stunning conclusion to my Chuseok adventure, don’t worry it will come. I've spent my time sifting through dozens of websites attempting to plan my christmas vacation. I've laughed, I've cried, I've wanted to hurl, and in the end all I'm left with is that wretched taste of vomit.

I first had my sights set on China. You might wonder why I decided on China first, and not some remote beach. The answer was simple, I was being frugal, and the flights into China are among the cheapest possible from Korea. After four days of research I mastered an itinerary. I presented my thoughts and plans to Corwin proudly, like I was displaying some animal carcass we could both share. The plan was aerodynamic, a flight to Beijing, a train to the great wall, and another day or so for tombs and temples. After a night train we would awake in Shanghai, where we would check out buildings that look like tennis balls and eat some more food that was not so delicately fried.

the streamlined train, that was my itinerary, was derailed by a single statement. I can't just tell you the statement though, I have to forward it with the question I was asked "Won't it be too cold in China in December?" (I'm from Canada, the girl who posed the question is from Arizona) The statement: "Did you hear that you have to have six months remaing on your  Korean visa to get a tourist visa for China."  The question coupled with the statement delivered a stinging blow, I was so offguard because of the question. It turned out to be all correct, and with 2 months remaining on my Korean Visa, China was done for.

Plan B would have been most people's plan A. The Philippines is a little slice of heaven tucked neatly away in the Pacific Ocean. There were many teachers planning on venturing there during the break. It made all my attempts to complain about China mute, how can you bitch when tropical paradise is plan B? The Philippines became my rebound, I was now scouring the internet in search of revealing pictures, and steamy video of this paradise.

If I couldn't be surrounded by millions of 3/4 tall people, I didn't want to be around people at all. It was with that in mind that I planned an adventure to Palawan Island. It is described as the final frontier of the Philippines (aka tourists haven't fully exploited it yet). As it turns out getting to the frontier isn't cheap, (well if you want to get there quickly). My itinerary for Palawan looked like a frankenstein monster. I had four flights, on four different airlines, and shoddy information about transport on the island itself. I spent an entire day working out possible itineraries to get me into the Philippines, and onto Palawan, the cheapest way possible. A pricetag of 1,200 bucks for 6 days seemed inevitable, and too expensive.The logistics of the problem dumbfounded me, it was like I was planning a small scale invasion of the region. In fact I can probably tell you the best way to get a light armoured divison in and out of Palawan.

Trials, tribulations, investment and heartbreak, is planning 9 days of vacation really worth that? My mother tells me that the best part of a trip is planning it. Mom loves spending weeks to plan every detail of her trips. It's great a way of extending a vacation. An activity that may only take you a couple of hours to do, bound with days of analytical planning, allow that single event to become so much more. While it has brought my mother so much glee, it has created sleepless nights and stress for me. I've not had the same gumption as I once did when it comes to a planning trip this christmas. As is stands now, I... I...

(breaks into song)

..I (might) be on a boat, I (might) be on a boat
not a real boat, just look and see
cause that boats on a cliff, a cliff!
I (might) be on a boat, on a cliff
take a good hard look,
thats a motherfucking boat (on a cliff)..

Plan C might not be such a bad thing, when I get around to planning it...

spaced out on sensation...

The chuseok holiday was filled with narrowly missed busses, missed busses, a bus with shattered glass,and passengers that required a new bus to pick them up because of the bus with shattered glass. There was also expensive cab rides, giant wooden penis’, people puking, 56 years worth of birthdays, and a chorus line of men in corsets and stiletto high heels.

Believe it or not my holiday was not a chaotic mess, although it did get messy for some teachers at my hagwan. My holiday went along swimmingly. I actually kind of wish that my holiday had a little bit more grime. Yet I can't complain about the cleanliness, my only legitimate complaint is that I don't have much to write about.

My semi vacation was started off with a bang, well actually it started off with the lack of a bang, buzz, or annoying musical tone that you would associate with an alarm. It wasn’t that there wasn’t an alarm, there was, there wasn’t however any volume on the IPod used to as the alarm. Only the IPod woke up ontime, and that was because it was programmed to. With a late start we narrowly avoided missing the bus to Sokcho. 'We' comprised of Corwin, her best friend Brittany, Brittany’s Boyfriend Cory and I.

For those of you who have kept up with my blog, YAY (I love subscribers!), you may remember that I’ve been to Sokcho before. I first ventured to the city in May for Buddha’s Birthday. If you didn’t have any clue what I'm talking about, you may read about it here. During Buddha's Birthday we were unable to go hiking, so we returned 4 months with all intention to hike.

Believe it or not, we didn’t get to hike, yet again the weather prevented us. In the four days we were in Sokcho it was only nice for one of them. We used that beautiful afternoon to bike around a lake near the city (although it is not actually a lake, it attached to the ocean, so I have no why they call it a lake), and to take pictures of myself acting as a demented ninja on the beach (see photo above). We felt that because the weather report was wrong for that one day, it would be wrong for the whole trip. That kind of logic built the Maginot line (yes, I did just incorporate WWII into my entry). There is another hiking expedition headed out to Sokcho at the end October, you won’t however hear about that, because I’m not going.

Tired of the rain we were faced with a choice on our final day in Sokcho. We had two choices,go straight to Seoul or go out of our way to Samcheok to visit a fertility park before we went back home. Seemingly overwhelmed with sexual curiosity we chose Samcheok. 2.5 hours later we arrived only to find out that we had 2 hours to explore, and that the fertility park was 25km outside of town. Sexually frustrated we divvied up the cash and bought a whore for 50,000 \, and by whore I mean cab.The park was beautiful for all the wrong reasons. We spent more time gawking at the rugged coastline than we did the smoothly sanded wood. 

Although we arrived in Seoul late on Wednesday evening, the semi vacation was not over. We had a date with some transsexual transvestites on Thursday night. It was like a second act, a curtain call for the holiday and like like all great encores the trick is not to keep people waiting too long. I wouldn't want madness to take it's toll, but listen closely, you won't have to wait very much longer. With a bit of a mind flip... you're into a time slip. 

(hint)