Cheju, South Korea (Jeju)

Dear Family and Friends,

We boarded the cruise ship, Costa Classica, on Friday, July 17th. Our first port of call was an island off the mainland of South Korea. There seems to be two different English translations for this island (Cheju and Jeju) both are pronounced the same. Cheju Island is located about 40 miles off the south-west coast of Korea. We were told that it is known in Korea for its strong winds, fantastic rocks and its extraordinarily beautiful women.

The island was formed by a now extinct volcano over the course of five eruptions millions of years ago. This volcano is now known as Mount Halla (6,397 ft.) Cheju Island is a very popular place for Korean couples to spend their honeymoon.


As you know, at each port of call the cruise ship offers tours of that destination. These tours are quite expensive but it is a good way to see a place in the short amount of time that the ship is in port. Chuck and I usually opt out of these tour packages. We have found in the past that if we get off the ship and look around we can find a taxi that will take us to the same tourist sights at a fraction of the cost.

As we got off the ship we were greeted by this Korean drum and gong corp.


We went through the terminal and we saw many taxis outside. There was one man who seemed to be the taxi captain. He spoke some English. He would negotiate the price and then hand people off to a non-English speaking taxi driver.

Chuck talked to the taxi captain and he said he could give us a complete tour for $8.00. Chuck told him we did not want a complete tour, just a half tour and the cost ended up being $6.00. We were so happy because this was such a GOOD price.

The first place our driver took us was to see the Haenyeo, the women of the sea, who fish for shellfish. Approximately 6000 women are involved in this work. They work without breathing apparatus to more than 50 ft. below the surface, using only goggles and a wetsuit.



We looked down to see the "working mermaids" but alas, all we could see were tourists.

The next picture is of Chuck and I posing by a replica of a Musin. Musins are statues that are on the island representing the guardian gods. I thought this Musin needed some horns. It is so funny how at the time you think you are being so clever but when you look back at the picture you see how stupid you looked.


The next place the taxi driver took us was to Mystery Road. Here we are standing on Mystery Road. It is an optical illusion. You think you are driving up hill but in actuality you are going down hill. The driver turned off the car, put it in neutral and we rolled backwards up the hill.


Besides Mount Halla there are many small valcanos on the island. Our driver took us to one so we could walk up and see the crater.

And here it is. We were too close to get a picture of the whole crater but hopefully you can tell it is out there. Chuck climbed up on a tall platform to even get this picture.

One thing they had on display in this park was a huge rock made out of volcanic material. It had flowed around a tree and the tree had long since decayed. This left a huge rock with a hole in the center. Here is Chuck checking it out.


I loved the signs indicating the restrooms.


When I got inside the women's restroom I was surprised to see I had a choice of toilet style. The doors on the stalls indicated whether the toilet inside was a western or eastern style toilet.


And, if you are interested, this is an eastern style toilet. I call it a squatter.


When we got back into town we asked the driver to let us off at McDonalds so we could get some coffee. I've seen McDonalds all over the world, but the is the first one I have ever seen that offers home delivery.


While we were still at McDonalds and not yet back at the ship, Chuck pulled out $10 and gave it to the taxi driver. It was at this point we relized we were being scammed. The driver smiled at the money and said no and whipped out a piece of paper and wrote $60.

I won't write about the conversation that followed. But I was so very very angry. We knew exactly what was going on. I left the scene and went inside McDonalds to cool off while Chuck was left to handle the situation.

In the end Chuck paid the driver the $60. It was a very unpleasant situation and I am sharing the incident so that hopefully this will not happen to others.

We were talking with another couple on the ship that night and they said the same thing happened to them in China. They were told by the pedi-cab driver that the ride would be $4. (The driver held up four fingers and then said dollars). When they got out and tried to pay the driver he quickly whipped out paper and pencil and wrote $40. Like us, they succumed to the scam.

Well at least we have learned our exspensive lesson. In the future we will have our own paper and pen and when we get a price quote we will have the driver write it down for us before we take the ride.

Like China, the weather was overcast, hot and humid. We were glad to get back on the air-conditioned ship.

Nancy

China First

Dear Family and Friends,

I arrived home in Cuenca yesterday. I had quite an adventure getting back here.

Chuck is still in the USA for a couple of weeks. He will be back in Ecuador on Tuesday, August 18th. I can't wait for him to get here, I miss him already.

I am so excited to share our trip with you. We had a wonderful time and saw the eclipse in all it's glory. I have been sorting through pictures and there is no way I can fit everything into one blog posting. I have decided to do posts on each country we visited and then do a post on the cruise ship and the eclipse.

This first post will be about China.

We left Seattle for China on Monday July 13th about 2:00pm. We flew Korean Air which means we changed planes in Seoul, Korea before arriving in Beijing. We got into Beijing around 8:00 pm on Tuesday, July 14th. (we crossed the international dateline so we lost a day in transit).

Chuck had arranged a hotel near the airport for our first night. We hopped in a taxi and went straight there. We were both very tired so we showered and went straight to bed. I had noticed that there were shower shoes in the bathroom. What a nice touch I thought. When I got into the shower and read the posted sign, I went back and put on a pair before I started the water.


The next morning we checked out of the hotel, went back to the airport and got directions for taking the bullet train to Tianjin. Tianjin is a large city near where we would board our ship. We arrived in Tianjin before lunch. Got a taxi to and checked into our hotel and then started exploring the city.


I've put this picture first because it is so typical "tourist China." This is a market for tourists to buy souvenirs.

Actually Tianjin is a very large, modern city. Tianjin's urban area is the third largest in China behind Shanghai and Beijing. The population is more than 10 million. Even though this city is big, we had never heard of it before we took this cruise. It is not a city that is usually visited when touring China.

Here is a picture of some escalators inside a modern shopping mall we visited.


Yes, they do have Wal-Mart. We couldn't imagine what Wal-Mart would be selling to the Chinese. We went to visit and found that not one thing there was anything like the goods they sell in the USA. China exports "special things" for us I guess.


They have so many bicycles in China that the bicyclers get their own traffic cop.


You can see why they need them. This is what it looks like much of the time. Somehow it all works out. (You can double click on the picture for a better view).


To give you an idea of the number of people who ride bicycles, I shot this video from the street corner.



The weather was very very hot. We walked all around town even in the heat. Chuck says it is the best thing you can do for jet lag. I guess he is right because we adjusted just fine. We met a man who wanted to practice his English on us. He was kind enough to take this picture of us down by the river.


We discovered a restaurant about a block from our hotel that was really fantastic. We went there twice before we left on our cruise and even once after we returned. It was quite an elegant restaurant to us. The chairs were covered in white slip covers, table cloths, linen napkins and lots of service.

We loved the food and we loved the staff. Every night we were given special treatment. They seemed so happy to have "Americans" there. I know we provided them a lot of entertainment because we were completely clueless about Chinese customs. They lined up and watched us eat with chop sticks. A lot of giggling was going on.

Here they are, all lined up. Every time we went there, they lined up and watched us.


After we returned from the cruise we stayed in Tianjin another day. Chuck had the hotel desk help him with getting a taxi to drive us to Beijing. Another round of laughter with poor communication, but we ended up hiring a taxi for the trip the next day.

Since a picture is worth many words....here is our comment about the air pollution. The air was so polluted you could look directly at the sun in mid day. It was really bad.


Here is our taxi driver.

Chuck had written the name of the hotel in Beijing on a piece of paper and had the hotel desk clerk translate it into Chinese to give to him.

As we started out I started having doubts by the way he kept looking at the piece of paper.

When we got to Beijing, he had to make several stops to ask people where the hotel was. This is a funny picture I took from inside the car. A lot of discussion was going on over the piece of paper.

Eventually, we got to our Beijing hotel. It was a Best Western and we had stayed in it when we were touring China about three years ago. We wanted to stay there because it is within walking distance of a fantastic market.

Unfortunately, the market is only open on the weekends and we only had half a day Thursday and all day Friday. Our plane departed Beijing on Saturday.

We went to the Pearl market on Thursday afternoon. We did the Silk market on Friday morning. The Pearl and Silk markets are multi-story buildings packed full of vendors selling fake high end name brand items. Watches, clothes, shoes, jewelry, purses, luggage, electronics and about anything else you can imagine.

We returned to the hotel around noon and went to lunch at a great restaurant. We were so near the weekend flea market we decided to walk over and look at it for old times sake even though it would closed.

To our surprise, about a third of it was open. All the shops were open and there were vendors there too.

Here is Chuck standing among some of the stone statues they have for sell. Talk about covet, Chuck was salavating.


At one of the shops Chuck found a big Budha head. He fell in love with it and spent a long time bargaining the price. I set down beside the shopkeepers wife and we laughed at all the batting back and forth. Finally a deal was stuck.

Here are the shopkeepers packaging up Chuck's treasure. The guy with the black bag is an onlooker. He got caught up in their antics and stayed around to see how the bargaining would turn out.



Here is Chuck teasing about how heavy it is and complaining about his back as he walked away.

Luckily we had bought another suit case just that morning at the Silk market.

We had a great time in China.

In my next post I will share with you about Cheju, South Korea.

Love,
Nancy

Our Eclipse Cruise Plans

Dear Family and Friends,

For those of you who are interested I will share more information about our trip to China. The whole purpose of this trip is to view the total eclipse of the sun. As you can see we will actually be spending very little time in China.


We are flying from Seattle to Beijing on Monday (arriving in China on Tuesday). We are going directly from Beijing to Tianjin. Tianjin is the port from where our cruise ships sails. We will have a couple of days to shop and get over jet lag. We actually sail on Friday, July 17th.

On Sunday we will spend the day in Cheju, South Korea. It is an island south off the mainland. On Monday, July 20th we will arrive in Kagoshima, Japan. This city is in the southern part of Japan.

Then on Wednesday, July 22nd we will be almost to Iwo Jima. This is the day our cruise ship will park itself so that we will be directly under the noon day sun to view the eclipse. It will be visible in Pakistan, India, China, Japanese islands and the South Pacific Ocean, but we will be directly under the midday sun to afford us the longest amount of total darkness. The amount of totality will be over six minutes long. This will be the longest amount of totality in this century. Chuck and I have been planning on this event for over 2 years and now the time is almost here.

This is not our first eclipse cruise. We cruised the Black Sea in 1999 to view a total eclipse and we saw a total eclipse from the Mediterranean Sea in 2006. But this will be the longest amount of totality we have ever witnessed.

After viewing the eclipse the ship will turn and head back to China, stopping in Kobe, Japan for two days. We will arrive back in Tainjin, China on Tuesday, July 28th.

We will be sailing on the same ship we sailed in 2006. It is the Costa Classica, an Italian cruise line. We thoroughly enjoyed that cruise and look forward to this one. Here is a video clip of people dancing through the dining room on our last night cruising in 2006.




Chuck and I will depart from China on Saturday, August 1st and arrive in Seattle at noon on August 2nd. I will fly (6:00am) from Seattle to Quito on August 3rd and on August 4th I will fly to Cuenca.

Chuck will remain in the U.S. until August 18th.

This pretty much sums up what we will be doing for the next month. I doubt that I will be able to post our trip on the blog until after I return to Cuenca.

Stay at peace, keep smiling and know that we care about you.

Nancy and Chuck

Thank God for Friends

Dear Family and Friends,

Chuck left early Tuesday morning for Guayaquil. He flew out of Guayaquil to Los Angeles Tuesday afternoon. Today he arrived in Richland (if all his flights went well....I haven't received a safe arrival message yet).

I would have flown with him but as I have mentioned before I don't have extra days to spare. I'm lucky that I can make the trip to China. When we return from China I will have to fly directly back to Cuenca from Seattle. Chuck, on the other hand, will stay in the U.S. and visit with family and friends.

I will leave for Richland on Friday night and will arrive there on noon Saturday. We have to drive to Seattle and leave for our trip on Monday.

Right now I am thinking how fortunate we are to have such good friends here in Ecuador. With Chuck gone, these few days could have been pretty lonely. Yesterday, I did what any red bloodied American woman does when her husband is gone...I went shopping. Today, my friend, Brenda come over and we toured the market. We came home,fixed lunch and had a great time.

While we were making the rounds at the market Brenda ran into a couple of Ecuadorian friends she had met on her way to Cuenca. They invited Brenda and her husband, Clarke on a picnic this Saturday.


This evening, David and Christa invited me next door for a delightful dinner. We had chicken Kiev, asparagus, potatoes and enough wine to make me woozy.


Tomorrow I will start packing and tie up loose ends around here.

I will share more about our upcoming trip tomorrow when I am a little more sober. But tonight, I am enjoying the glow from the wine and the warm feeling of having such great friends.

Life is Good!!

Nancy

Happy Independence Day from Ecuador

Dear Family and Friends,

Chuck and I send our warmest greetings and best wishes for a nice independence day to all our U.S. friends and family.