Life in the Rapids!

Lindsay appears to finally collapsed into sleep. She has been remarkably awake considering...

So, I picked her up yesterday around 8pm. Friday night I went out for "spicy pork" in hongdae, but it was an early evening. I slept in Saturday and then put off tackling the cleaning until the absolute last minute. However, it all got done and off I went to the airport. Just as I met Lindsay, James called drunkenly, which was highly amusing, as I attempted to say hi to her, push the cart, find the correct bus stop, and talk to someone who kept accidentally hanging up on me by dropping the phone. 8 beers, indeed!

We got back to good old Deungcheondong fairly quickly and walked her rather heavy suitcases to my place. Then, it turned out she was wide awake, so we went to Pedro's for drinks, the admiration of his new satellite tv, and my rather amusing attempts to get in and out of a hammock in a skirt. Lindsay liked the lit up bridges in the taxi ride over and the view from Pedro's. And he was kind enough to feed her fruit loops.

So, after only 4 hours sleep, we were up and on our way to meet the Adventure Korea bus at Hongdae. After a rather long bus ride that I sort of napped through, we arrived at a bridge where some people bungy jumped. I had been quite tempted, but don't want to do any more damage to the still-dodgy ankle right before heading to Thailand. So, we sat below and watched the fun.

Then it was on to a Korean buffet-style lunch, which Lindsay quite enjoyed. Pretty easy to handle stuff - bulgogi, some spicy tomatoes, ommelette things, and rice. She made a decent job of the chopsticks too.

Then, the whitewater fun. I must say, I am quite the tomato-red colour as a result of today's adventure. Lindsay and I ended up on "Team Death". We were number 4 you see, which looks like the Chinese character for death (check out Korean elevators, often the 4th floor has a F instead of the number). Seemed a good nickname for some rafting. They had us all get in the water and get wet first. Was concerned it would be cold, but I was fine inspite of my reptilian blood and need for heat! The guide was really funny - his English was basic but good and he told us the names of lots of the rocks and stuff. Instead of being all boring and paddling along to hanna, dul (one, two), we used two syllable words: kimchee, soju, mekju, galbi. Enough to make you both hungry and thirsty! In addition to paddling our way through rapids, we got to float along in the current, use the rafts as slides into the water from a beach, wrestle on the upturned rafts, and do various standing and rocking stunts designed to knock us all into the water. There was also a lot of splashing wars, naturally.

Some amusing points:

* Korean women really do wear high heels everywhere. And I thought sporty flip flops were silly, at least I wasn't sporting stillettos!

* Don't do up the straps that go between your legs tightly! Some poor Korean girl was yelling "My ass! My ass!" as she was hauled back in her raft. Thanks to a lovely Korean girl in our boat for the amusing running translation of the incident.

* Who knew that smoking a cigarette and simultaneously being a lifeguard for children floating along in a river current were allowed?

* Suntan lotion! More!!!

* Yes, Virginia, my ankle is fucked. Dunno what is wrong exactly, but today's activities didn't make it very happy.