I haven't met a Makgeolli I didn't Like

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We have learned we shouldn't go from a 5 star place directly to a 3 star place, we arent above staying at a 3 star place, but the contrast is abrupt when we come from the swank that is a 5 star hotel. Our hotel here is akin to the lesser of the hotels we stayed in the last time we toured Asia, 7+ years ago when we had less money. So, the place is ok, we didnt understand that turning the heat down didnt necessarily make the room cooler, we had to use the TV remote to operate the air conditioning, and the in floor heating was up to the whims of the entire floor/building automated sytems, the fact that it was 80 degrees while trying to sleep, on a 3 star bed, meant we had a not great sleep. Also at various points the auto-on lights tripped (Laura is convinced it is a ghost, I think it is Chinesium electronics) on and forced us out of bed to turn off lights. so we woke up ready to try and find a new hotel, honestly this spot was so inexpensive, if we paid the same rate for the next hotel it would still be in our budget, so we literally walked to other hotels in the area and asked for vacancies, there were none...

We also called the concierge services on the back of our upper-mid tier travel cards (rant incoming).

The last time Laura and I took any significant vacation was on my way out of the Army, the big 10 week travel around Asia (dig through the blog, youll find it), and we both got seperate Chase Sapphire Reserve cards, and given the travel, and my myopic attention to detail, left us ahead of the credit card companies. However, then, and basically through my whole life I have put little value in the concierge services associeted with these "high end cards" I am pretty good and planning travel and finding deals, and outsourcing that effort might have value if they can do it faster/cheaper than I can. BUT after today, my suspicions have been confirmed. Atleast when it comes to Visa Infinite, they have access to nothing that I dont have access to, they cannot search any better than I can, and chances are, any specific service rep that you get on the phone knows less about the parcticular country/city/district than I do, and ultimately calling them is a waste of my time. Maybe the ultra-high end services associated with invite only (looking at you AMEX) cards, but anything us plebs can get isnt going to beat what you can do with a little gumption (that being said if you dont want to put any gumption in, I suppose they can do things you are unwilling to do, which I will judge you for, but again who the fuck am i? do what you want). ANYWAYS I HAVE GOTTEN WILDLY OFF TOPIC.

The hotel we were in was not great, last minute booking somewhere else was prohibitvely expensive, we complained, and left the AC blasting all day so now things are maybe ok. We went to start our day proper.

I havent entirely figured out why, but there is a sizable Central Asian expat population here in Seoul. Big enough for Seoul to have Mongol Town. We went to the Mongol town to go to an Uzbek Restaurant

THe first dish is a Udon type noodle stir fried with beef and peppers and peprika, we also got some cumin beef dumplings, and a rice soup with peprika and small meat balls, we also got a little bread, which is the first time we have had bread since leaving the states.All of them wer delicious, and actually spicier than much of the other Korean foods we have had. We then walked through the Myeongdong shopping areas, which were absolutely bananans.

These pictures really dont do the area justice. There are a half dozen malls that are all 5+ stories, the old school shopping areas are literlaly miles long. The indoor pictures are from a single line of stalls that was 2 floors of over 700 linear meters of shops. Just stall after stall of hats, and jackets and socks. I suppose if I had an interpreter I could have gotten a suit and then later gotten in tailored for me for around 50USD, but we werent really here to shop, we were here to be stimulated beyond reason with capitalism.

Last night, while drunken, we discussed making Makgeolli at home, because this stuff is probably my favorite alcoholic product. US hyper-pro pasteurization regulations makes import or mass production of makgeolli impossible, as it is a "raw" fermented product, so the only way to get it as good as it is here, is to make it myself. So I started poking around, and like most fermented product you need a yeast starter, and the thing that makes makgeolli is Nuruk, which is a wheat/rice mash that kickstarts the process, it can be found online for not too much monies, but I thought it would be fun to try and source here. So we went to Gyeongdong Market (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gyeongdong_Market) which is probably the last remaining old school open air market in Seoul. There were no other discernable foreigners here. This place has the largest selection of traditional herbs and the makgeolli blogs said this is the place to find stuff to put in your recipe.

It looks like effective chaos, there are people everywhere, with vendors yelling, and people bargaining left and right, theres always more than one vender selling whatever you are looking for so there appears to be haggling abound. A few meters into the place laura spotted the pucks of Nuruk and, I am ashamed to say I didnt negotiate for it, the little old lady was so nice, and the base price was so low, I just paid 5000KRW for what I think is an 850-1000g puck of Nuruk and a packet of yeast (that may or may not be necessary) to make some rice wine back in Seattle next week, I hope to perfect a batch by the holidays (given that it is a fast ferment of only 7-10 days I should iterate to something tolerable by christmas. I hope I can get through US customs with it.

We headed back to the hotel to dump the precious cargo.

(that is my own ziplock bag, it came home from the market in a loose black plastic bag, the kind you would bring home from the bodega, except the puck of nuruk was just open to the air, unsealed. Anwyays, the AC running all day brought the temp down in the room, so we headed back out to the Myeongdong area.

Once we got to the area, we realized we had indeed been here before (again, Ill leave that to you to dig through past posts, im drunk, and dont care to facilitate your journey beyond making you read this post). Myeongdong is the place to go for K-Beauty products, there are hundreds of cosmetics shops, with several of the same brand in the area. We found some Joseon Beauty products that Laura wanted to try to encourage some honey skin (I dont fully understand what honey skin is, but I know I shouldnt describe it as "being extra shiny"), we then meandered about the very bustling streets with the most foreigners we have yet seen, and ultimately settled on a restaurant because they had an exhaustive makgeolli list. We got a bottle, and a hot plate of stir fried pork

The rice wine and pork went so well together, it is almost as if the cuisine has 500 years of co-development alongside the booze. I have also pictured both of the makgeolli we tried at this place. The first bottle had actual short grain rice floating in there, not enough to provide a real textural difference, but they were in there, and the second had a lot of "body" making it super smooth.

From here we went to the 7.8 Makgeoli place we tried to hit last night, we got in and sat down, getting the recommended makgeoli and "snack"

The was a tteokbokki in cream sauce, and the other snack there was given "on the house" because the chef recognized us from the nightbefore, it was a 4 cheese fried shitaake, meaning the mushroom was turned upside down, filled with 3 types of cheese, breaded, fried, and then finished with a shredded cheese on the serving plate, and WOW it definetly helped us to drink an additional 4 bottles of mokgeolli tonight. Also, the space was intimate enough for the general manager/owner guy to just decide he wanted to open bottles for himeself, and then provide samples to whoever was around.

Pictured are the 3 bottles we drank at the restaurant, and here is the one we got for takeaway, and I managed to drink while writing this and the previous post.

That was one of the samples, it had yuzu infusion giving it a slight citrus flavor. Anyways, we stumbled our way along the canal to get to our hotel, where we still had the AC running (despite it being late november in Seoul, its supposed to be 36F tomorrow, and we are still running the AC all night to fight the very aggressive heating in the building), drank said Yuzu Makgeoilli, and I wrote this and previous post while laura fought a losing battle with sleep.

I have no intention of proof reading this, so I apologize in advance for errors, but my readers are very intelligent and will be fully capable of decoding my ramblings.

Bonding over Beer

Day 8

15052019

First full day on the cruise, stopping in Harlingen, Netherlands.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harlingen,_Netherlands

The town is pretty small, we are glad we didn't do any of the ships excursions because I feel like it would have been pricy for what it would have gotten us. We just walked around the town. I think it would be most aptly described as being quaint, most of the town was still asleep, it was a weekday after all.

The canals on the town are so small that they have a crew of guys that bike around to open and close the canals and raise/lower bridges.

We happened to be stopping to use a public toilet as the canal tour boat hired by our cruise ship was passing through, so we got to see how manual the process was.

Given that the whole time in Port was relatively short we headed back to the cruise ship. Laura and I stopped off at a grocery store to bring in some extra wine on board. We also snagged a discount bottle of beer to drink on the sock before getting on board.

While enjoying that beer in the pleasant weather security approached us: “what're you drinking there?” and struck up a conversation, we basically got a portion of the info we would have gotten had we taken the tour. He himself was port security out of Amsterdam and travelled around to support these smaller ports. He lived in Friesland.

He told us about how Friesland used to be a separate landmass, but was connected to the rest of Holland by landfilling. And that they actually have their own language. He talked about the beer we were drinking, that it was from a monastary in the dunes of Holland. The monks have been brewing this beer for centuries.

He pointed out that Harlingen has a long history of fishing, whaling and exploring the northern seas, he claims a Frieslander discovered both Iceland and Greenland before the Norwegian Vikings did. Which is exactly what Tord the Norwegian in Iceland told us would happen. All the various flavors of sailors around here claim they discovered America, they only seem to agree that Columbus was 400 years late to the party.

After getting back on the ship easily with the wine, Laura decided she needed more wine and we went back to the grocery store to grab another €8 bottle of wine and spotted a bottle of Aperol for €11, which is a great price honestly. And given that it's not actually liquor we thought we could get it on. Aperol and the tonic they have on the ship? Aperol spritzes on a cruise? Sounds great.

No dice, security caught it, didn't have a problem with the wine, but took our bottle of Aperol to give us when we get off the ship. So now we have 3 days in Sweden to drink up a bunch of Aperol.

The next exciting part of the day was dinner. Laura and I ordered the peppered tofu entree as an appetizer to split, and it was, whelming. Not great, not bad, would have been a disappointing main course, but as an app it was acceptable. I ordered a mushroom sauced roast duck, and Laura got a chorizo and shrimp dish on couscous.

My duck was pretty good, not great. And Laura's dish came sans chorizo, my father got the same thing, and his was also chorizo-less. It was so conspicuously absent we had to check the menu again to make sure. I don't even recall what we got for desserts.

After dinner we went to my parents cabin, which is slightly larger, they have a couch one can stretch out on, ours feet hang off of. There we drank some of the wine we snuck onto the ship.

Selfie taking hipsters are universal

31102016

Full day in shimotikazawa. This if very much the hipster neighborhood of Tokyo, not only is it full of Japanese trendy folks but it is full of young foreigners trekking the world.

We went to a cafe in the neighborhood that had baked goods, various pastries and buns with stuff on them (I got one with olive oil, Italian spices and zucchini) that would get tired real quick before you went on your way to your super cool programmer/internet journalist/etc job.

After that I had second breakfast, a donut covered in soft serve ice cream. Served by this very nice ancient lady, no judgment that I was eating ice cream donuts for breakfast, just a very nice old lady. Most Ice cream over here isn't as sweet, I think they use soy milk so it isn't as creamy or heavy as ours. And the donuts weren't as sugary either. Honestly it was a pretty appropriate breakfast.

We wandered around shimotikazawa and found a cat cafe. For 1440 yen we got to hang out in a room full of cats for 30 minutes. Laura took a bunch of cleratin so we wouldn't get kicked out and burned alive for sneezing without a mask on (everyone here wears a surgical mask when they feel a little sick as courtesy to everyone else).

The cats here look weird. I dunno if these were the broken cats that couldn't get adopted, but most were odd. There was a munchkin cat (I think is the PC term for them) with short little legs, and cats with smooshed in faces, and short stubby ears, and almost inside out ears I dunno.

One was big and fluffy and a huge asshole picking fights with other cats, one gray one was super nervous about everything and another gray one was very friendly. Even hopped onto Laura's lap.

I was not expecting head buts from this cat, but I was sitting the floor in front of laura, and anytime my head got close the cat reached for nuzzling.

Then we wandered around the area pooping into shops. There are a lot of vintage, used, and new clothing shops around, with a wide array of pricing; a used shop with every item 700 yen, next to a vintage shop with what appeared to be sweat pants for 18,000 yen.

Most of the shops were very small making maximum use of their space, be out a basement, a stairwell or multi storey building.

Laura bought a shirt, but Is hesitant to blow her clothes budget here when we are going to China and can find knock off everything for pennies.

We stopped for udon noodles, i got city, and she got noodles in a light broth. This place also had tempura fried stuff, I got a mass of onion, and laura got a slice of yam, and some other starchy vegetable.

The curry udon was so rich, this was my final meal of the day at 1645.

We did a little more wandering, checked out a drug store, got since crazy candy and then went home.

The candy was one of those make your own mini x. This was donuts, they had burgers, pizza, all kinds of stuff. You mix the powdered tapioca with water, and then the frosting with water and put it in the molds and then eat it. I dunno it reminded me very much of MRE milkshakes/pudding. Powdered food product that never goes bad with just add water instructions aren't my idea of a tasty treat.

After some lazing around laura needed for, cause she didn't have fantastic curry udon. We found a burger place, that was

take out OK

got a hot dog and promptly at it when we got home.

I fell asleep shortly there after, while she watched old Steve Irwin clips.

a lil unannounced tour

13712 aright, so things are starting to pick up with the weekend coming. woke up early as per normal, and the commuter train got us to school in a record amount of time, we ended up sitting and waiting for about 20 minutes for class to start. class started, and we did a bunch more grammar, i think one of the girls is bumping up, i think after a day, ill grill her and possibly follow. after class Evan and i meandered around looking for food, we found our way to a cafe and i had a cheese and onion empenada, and a meat empenada. while seated 3 separate street venders ambled in and attempted to peddle their wares. Evan had never seen anything like this, i spotted the first guy before he even came in and mumbled some kind of lamentation, the dude walked straight to us, and placed a packet of highlighters and a crappy flashlight on the table, and distributed the same set to each of the tables. i guess so we could inspect it more thoroughly? without feeling pressured by his scrutiny?, anyways, we werent havin it, i shooed him away, and the next, and the next. after the cheesy incident of the ravioli, and the empenada, i had to find some kind of digestive/lactose aid, so we stumbled into one of the many pharmacies in the area and began to look for it. turns out its an over the counter med, not on the shelf, so i had to ask. and while i asked in spanish, the lady responded with english that it was expensive, and it was pretty expensive, something like 19USD for a packet of 10 pills, whatever i needed em. she put it in a safety magnetic theft-proof bag, and i checked out, swallowed a pill dry on the threshold of the shop, and continued to the meeting point for the architecture tour which we had learned of only minutes after class. so this is what i got from that: Buenos Aires doesn't have any colonial architecture like the rest of the spanish american empire, all of its character is copied from Europe, this and its 19th century focus on immigration, makes it a very European city. Until the end of the 19th century, there was a mass consciousness in the world of architecture, which proscribed the italian/french neorenaissance style as the way to go.

Pictured above: Italian and French neoreneissance inside-the-line designed buildings built circa 1870s, also note that shadow covers much of the picture, thats because we were taken an an architecture tour in the late afternoon, during winter, in the southern hemisphere, the sun goes down at like 630... im sorry By 1900, many architects had broken off and began their own styles, like the art nouveau (modern) style. Argentina did not have steel until rather late in the global advancement game hence their lack of turn of the last century tall buildings, early on they bought from the US, gogo Carnegie monopoly.

This statue was originally intended to go to chile, but the argentines grabbed it first, it was the first statue of San Martin in Argentina, which is kinda bananas, cause he is a big deal here. It was commissioned by the chilanos in 1878 to some french artist, but when the argentine ambassador to France heard of this, he orchestrated the delivery to be "delayed" to chile, so it was delivered to argentina while the chilanos waited an additional 6 months for their statue First Reinforced concrete building of Argentina, built in 1932, art deco style. While the inside is designed to look much like the palaces in the immediate neighborhood, so old and swanky and full of hardwood and scrollwork.

this was a the view from that park the statue was in

after this, we went home, did nothing, ate some food, and proceeded to find an entertaining and establishment for the consumption of of the (really overall awful) beers of Argentina. my roomate and i met up with a bunch of the other kids and we stood/sat around chatting and laughing and having an all around good time, well into the wee hours of the morn.

Copulating cousins and interests in feces (possibly NSFW)

14512 well today was rather unexciting, we had to get up for our Czech language class. we learned a few more terms, as well as numbers beyond 10. its a fairly simple system ten-seven, or one-hundred-and-eight. after that we sat in a class with a lady who studied czech culture, specifically music. she was talking about the prevalence of surrealism. she explained that the surrealism was so popular in Czechoslovakia and the Soviet satellites, because they needed in escape, and the absurdity reflected the absurdity of their real life. the art/music helps to portray how ridiculous communism is, the contrast between the ideals and the reality of its implementation. the class also discussed the chata movement. chatas are the czech version of those small cabins out in the country that lots of people have across Europe. the chatas were an escape from the hardness of communist life. the auspices of the communist aparatii werent as prevalent out in the countryside so people could get away, and be free, and relax their facade. this was at the same time as the hippie movement of the 60s and 70s. the best way i can describe it as a sort of bohemian movement, but that term is bad, because this is literally Bohemia... anyways they would go out to their cabin and sing folk songs, and play cowboys and indians. really, they were obsessed with cowboys and indians, as the american west was a symbol of freedom for them (much like it was us). after that many of us, myself included went home to nap. after the nap we tottered off to find food, my roomate sam, a few other guys and myself made our way up the hill to a small place, i had a "hearty bohemian soup, with thickening, in bread loaf" as the menu described. it was quite tasty, i believe i am having one of my infamous sessions of illness, so i only had a small Pilsner (cause it was cheaper than water), no need to put undue stress on my immune system with more alcohol. over dinner we had some interesting conversations. as noted in the title, we ended up on some odd subjects, throughout, the really weird stuff started out while talking about european royalty, specifically the congenital defects caused by incest. the hemophilia, essentially brought in by Queen Victoria, and how it contributed to the end of Imperial Russia and the rise of Communism, and all of its effects, you know, the Cold War n stuff. we got into the Austro-Hungarian inbreeding which ultimately killed them off in the 1700s. then one of us of the anthropology persuasion mentioned that incest and scatophilia are really the only two universally taboo sexual practices. so yeah, now ima read some more of our primary source book for class tomorrow, and hopefully get to sleep early.

Sunday 71011

Lazy day, went to the beach, the lake we went to was a manmade offshoot of the river i think. but the lake was refreshing, full of people, not insane full, but busy, the water was clean enough, some of the other kids rented a paddle boat, and we had all kinds of fun climbing and jumping and pushing the boat around. however at the beach the power was out for all the restaurants n stuff, so there was no food, and the beer that i got, was warm and bad.

i dont think i have discussed the beer here, the most common is Jelen (pronounced yelen) it is a very light beer, and honestly not very good, on par with the light domestic beers, Bud, Miller basically not awesome. so i recognize some beer should be drank not ice cold, but that one definately needed it, so that was n unpleasant experience, a warm crappy beer.

other than that the beach was tons of fun, we may very well go again in our free time, thats really all we did today, as i said, lazy day.