thoughts from a balcony in bali.

Journal entry from July 29,2008- 9 am

A beautiful start to a new day. I'm sitting out on the balcony of my hotel room now. I just finished eating a banana pancake and fresh papaya and mangoes.I still have half a pot of thick, dark coffee beside me and I intend to sit here until it's finished. A young girl just placed a prayer offering near the statue in the garden area down below- I wonder what these offerings symbolize. The sky is full of white, fluffy clouds and the blue sky hasn't yet broken through. I love the view from here. As far as I can see in every direction there are orange and red and brown tiled Balinese rooftops. The top of each is decorated with ornate designs that sit upright like a crown on a king's head. There are trees everywhere- some with fruit, some with with blooming tropical flowers, some that stretch their palm leaves high into the air. A child just walked through the courtyard in the house next door. The family's clothes are hanging out to dry and they move back and forth in the morning breeze. I wonder what it's like to grow up in Bali surrounded by tourists and in a place that feels like summer everyday. I've only been here for 2 days, but already I understand why so many expats choose to call this place home. It's as close to perfection as I've ever seen. I am so thankful to be here...away from the fast-paced life of Seoul. I work in Korea, but I have come to Bali to live. To soak up life. To reflect. Sometimes I still don't understand why so many people choose to go through life without experiencing places like Indonesia, southern Thailand, Laos, etc. for themselves. I am bursting with happiness now. I am filled with contentment. There is nowhere in the world I'd rather be than on this Balinese balcony.

bali bound.

Tomorrow morning at 9 am I'm leaving the Korean peninsula and boarding a plane to Southeast Asia! I'm so excited about spending the next few days laying on the beaches of Bali, Indonesia, soaking up the sunshine, getting daily massages, meeting new people, and trying to capture Balinese culture in photographs. It's my first solo-vacation and I'm a bit nervous, but mostly excited, about heading out into a new place on my own. Check back in a few weeks for photographs and stories from my travels!

Random photos of where I'll be for the next 8 days. Be jealous...

the demilitarized zone.

This past weekend a few of my friends and I visited the most heavily fortified border in the world- the demilitarized zone (DMZ) between North and South Korea. I didn’t have many preconceptions about this area before visiting, and went into the trip thinking it would be nothing more than a good photo opportunity and a neat thing to write home about. However, I quickly felt the tension between the divided peninsula, and realized that I was standing in a place where intense conflict still exists. From the moment we arrived our group was given specific instructions from the American military guides to not take photographs of certain things, to be mindful of our actions, and to think about our conversation topics as we were most likely being spied on by the North Korean military. It was surreal to stand on a hill over-looking Kim Jung-Il’s oppressed nation, tour an old war tunnel, visit a United Nations boardroom that was literally divided down the middle between the North and South, see North Korean guards stare at our tour group with binoculars from across the border, and to learn more about the Korean War. It was such an interesting day...


taken during a slide presentation shown to help our group understand the situation between the two countries and the role the united nations plays in trying to promote reconciliation.


guarding the DMZ on a rainy saturday afternoon.


photo of a north korean guard looking at me, looking at him.
(taken with a telephoto lens).


commonly called "the bridge of no return." during the war korean people chose to take this path either north or south, thus determining where they would spend the remainder of their lives.

Next month I’ll actually be going INSIDE of North Korea to a small city named Kaesong. I realize it might not be the smartest trip I’ve ever signed up for, especially in light of the current situation (a South Korean tourist was shot and killed there last weekend), but I am so eager to see a place that remains shut off to much of the world. Should be interesting…

three hundred and sixty degrees: myeong-dong

I was in Myeong-dong the other night for a friend's birthday and took a short video clip of the area. This is my favorite place to hang out in Seoul, and you can find me here at least once every weekend (although I usually visit during the day). I love the lights, the shopping, the people, the cheesy Korean music, the noise, the constant movement, the location of my favorite coffee shop high above the busy street, etc. It's enough to make a person crazy, but after living in over-populated China for a year I feel right at home. I love city life!



(sorry for the poor quality...it's hard to hold a camera above your head and turn around in a circle w/out shaking a bit!)

the beach. the mud. the friends.

Every year the city of Boryeong brings in thousands of gallons of mud and dumps it at Daecheon Beach for their annual mud festival. The mud is dug up from nearby fields and is thought to be rich in minerals that are good for your skin. Thousands of people from across Korea attend this event each year and it proved to be one of the most dirty, fun weekends I've ever had.

About 20 of my friends boarded a bus early Saturday morning for the 2-hour trip from Seoul to Boryeong. We spent the entire weekend laying on the beach, covering ourselves in mud, playing dozens of mud events, and hanging out. The festival was also the largest gathering of foreigners I've seen since moving to Asia. The beach was literally covered with muddy Americans, Canadians, South Africans, etc. Who knew there were so many of us living in Korea? Everywhere you looked there were people painting themselves with thick, gray mud, wrestling in mud pits, getting dirty in the "mud jail," playing in mud baths, sliding down mud covered slides, and dancing to the music at a nearby stage. It was an incredible sight and so much fun!

Photos from the festival:


the central area near the beach.


mud-wrestling.


stuck in jail.


the stage. the beach. the dancing. so fun!


taken through a plastic bag so the camera wouldn't get dirty.


sarah. me. and eva looking statue-esque.


clean at last!

To read more about the event check out this site: http://mudfestival.or.kr/lang/en/index.jsp

therefore i travel.

I found a brilliant book this past week while roaming through the travel section at the foreign book store. I am so inspired by the author's thoughts and wanted to share a few of my favorite quotes...

"If our lives are dominated by a search for happiness, then perhaps few activities reveal as much about the dynamics of this quest--in all its ardour and paradoxes--than our travels. They express, however inarticulately, an understanding of what life might be about, outside of the constraints of work and of the struggle for survival. Yet rarely are they considered to present philosophical problems-that is, issues requiring thought beyond the practical. We are inundated with advice on where to travel, but we hear little of why and how we should go, even though the art of travel seems naturally to sustain a number of question neither so simple nor so trivial, and whose study might in modes ways contribute to an understanding of what the greek philosophers beautifully termed eudaimonia, or "human flourishing."

"The plane a symbol of worldliness, carrying within itself a trace of all the lands it has crossed. Its eternal mobility offering an imaginative counterweight to feelings of stagnation and confinement."

"Journeys are the midwives of thought. Few places are more conducive to internal conversations than moving planes, ships, or trains. There is an almost quaint correlation between what is before our eyes and the thoughts we are able to have in our heads: large thoughts at times requiring large views, and new thought, new places. Introspective reflections that might otherwise be liable to stall are helped along by the flow of the landscape."

"If we find poetry in the service station and the motel, if we are drawn to the airport or the train carriage, it is perhaps because, despite their architectural compromises and discomforts, despite their garnish colours and harsh lighting, we implicity feel that these isolated places offer us a material setting for an alternative to the selfish ease, the habits and confinement of the ordinary, rooted world."

-Alain de Botton, The Art of Travel