Currency Confusion and Tram Assassins

Sorry I haven't been updating about my time in Melbourne much. I've been here a month now and I'm finally settled enough that I'm able to relax and reflect on my time here. And so I present to you some stories about my early days in Australia.


Australian currency is similar to Canadian currency in the breakdown of bills, and to some extent the coins. They have $5, $10, $20, $50, and $100 bills and they have $2 and $1 coin. But they also have 50 cents, 20 cents, 10 cents, and 5 cents. Apparently the metal some of the coins are made from is worth more than the coin itself, so I'm thinking of doing some metal melting. They don't have 1 cents here and the stores round your purchase total off (it’s actually a really handy way of doing things, they do this in Holland too.)

But there are some funny differences between the money here and the money back home. The coin, for instance, is very different in shape and size. The bills are where I’ve had the most difficulty. When I first arrived in Australia I exchanged my Canadian cash to Australian dollars, and it worked out to about $88. So I was very confused when I was handed back a bunch of red bills. Here $5 is purple, $10 is blue, $20 is red, $50 is yellow, and $100 is green. It’s taken a bit of getting used to.

Tram Karma
In Melbourne there are 3 ways to get around the city via public transport: by train, by tram, or by bus. The tram is generally the most convenient and most used mode of transportation, especially for travelling around the Central Business District (CBD, or, downtown). I am fortunate enough to be living close to a tram stop and a train station, so I have my options for getting around. The tram line that I’m near though is my best bet because it stops just a couple of blocks from my campus.

Now, I seem to have developed a bit of bad tram karma and I don’t know exactly what brought this on (the bad bank karma I can understand). You see, whenever I’m on the tram or planning to be on the tram there’s an increased chance that something will happen in relation to the tram. In my first 3 weeks here, I have been on trams where tickets were checked more than most people probably encounter in a year. Needless to say, I’m not hopping the tram! But, that’s just the light side of my bad luck spell (and it's more bad luck for the other people on the tram, because frequently someone gets a ticket, or, escorted off the tram).

In my first week I was on a tram that hit a car. Now, the trams are the reason why I don’t think I will be driving in Melbourne any time soon, if ever. They go down the middle of the road and they have the right of way. Their presence has inspired some unique traffic rules, like, the hook turn. If you’ve ever felt nervous making a left turn at a busy intersection, multiply that by a hundred and that’s a hook turn. When a tram hits a car it is almost without question the car’s fault, as it was in the case I witnessed. The car was pretty smashed up. The tram was fine.

But even that is pretty pedestrian compared to my next story! I was on my way back to my hotel after wandering around in the city, minding my own business, listening to my music, when suddenly a bunch of people at the front of the tram started shouting “Stop the tram! Stop the tram!” and the tram came to a screeching halt. I thought “oh, maybe we hit a puppy this time” but no, we hadn’t hit anything. Now, since I didn’t actually see what happened I don’t know how this all got started, but according to the police witnesses a fight broke out between 2 men, an older one and a younger one, at the front of the tram. Apparently the fight had something to do with someone being drunk and someone sitting in priority seating, but all the possible combinations of who was who could fit with the story so I can’t get into specifics.

What I saw, shortly after the tram stopped, was the 2 men in question running up the street while the younger man attempted to punch the older man. He did manage to get some hits in before the older man got away (rumour has it he hopped in a passing cab). A couple of other guys from the tram were trying to separate/restrain the younger guy, but to little avail. Our tram, for its part, kept going after the guys had ran off. But, the younger guy seemed to have gotten it in his head that he wanted back on the tram and came chasing after it. And that’s when things got really interesting.

He ran up to the tram, which was now stopped at Separation Street (a place forever etched in my mind as having a yellow building and a waxing parlour offering a discount on brazillians) and the people at the front yelled “Don’t open the doors! Don’t open the doors!” And the dutiful tram driver did not open the doors. Well! Our young man with the fiery rage burning in his eyes was having none of that! He started screaming and cursing at the tram driver to open the doors.

He stood in front of the tram so that it couldn’t move. He came back to the middle doors, which I happened to be sitting beside, and started shaking them with all his might, still yelling and cursing at the driver to let him on the tram. We had a would-be hero on the tram who came and stood in the door way, ready to fend off the beast should he succeed in opening the doors. The angry guy then started shouting at our would-be hero, who happened to be black, to get out of his country and go back where he came from. Which was ironic because our aggressor was clearly of immigrant decent himself.

Eventually he tired of shaking the doors and this time he went over to a garbage bin and pulled out a broken umbrella, which he used to start bashing on the drivers windows. He did, in fact, succeed in smashing one of the windows. Of course, by this time the police had been called and he gained enough sense to flee the crime scene, though it didn’t take terribly long for the cops to find and arrest him. The police came, took statements from the passengers sitting up front, we all had to get off the tram so it could go to the depot for repairs (which, incidentally, is not too far from my new place). Normally having to get off a tram and onto another one would be a huge pain, but by this point there were about 8 more trams stuck behind us.

Let’s just say I’m glad to not have to take that tram route anymore. The biggest problem I seem to have with my new tram line is delays. I can handle delays.

Waegook Wanderings Part Two

As we soon found out, Samcheok is a city full of very pleasant surprises. We stayed in a “love motel” right beside the bus station and took off to find ourselves some kimbap for dinner. After wandering a bit, we found ourselves in the midst of a good sized market, still open in the evening. It mostly was selling various fruits, vegetables, and fish. I’ve never seen so many anchovies in my life!

Eventually we found a little place that had kimbap. Now, kimbap is actually made with ham, so we’ve been ordering it without ham. This place had their kimbap premade, so we had to pick the ham out (which isn’t particularly hard if you have good command of chopsticks). This gave the ladies running the shop quite a laugh, but they came over and helped us remove the ham. Between the 2 of us we had 2 rolls of kimbap and 4 red bean pastries. The total for our meal came to a whopping $3.

After dinner we decided to see what kind of a jimjilbang this Samcheok place had. And then our minds were blown. We caught a cab, and happened to get a female driver, which Laura tells me is extremely rare to see in Korea. We told her what we were looking for and she excitedly took off exclaiming that we were in for a treat! (Okay, I don’t know what exactly she was exclaiming, but from the tone of her voice I could tell she had something special in store for us.) We pulled up in front of this huge building, which we were told housed a pool and a karaoke room, along with the jimjilbang. Clearly Samcheok has more to offer than giant wooden phalluses! (And a cave, but we didn’t have time to see the cave.)

The jimjilbang was incredible. I don’t know how to describe it other than to say that it alone was worth the 7 hours on a bus. And we didn’t even check out the pool and karaoke room! We slept very well that night. So well, in fact, that we didn’t wake up until after 10am. We had to leave that same day to go back to Seoul, so our intentions had been to get an early start to the day. Instead we threw our stuff into our bags and threw on some clothes, and headed out to catch the city bus out to Penis Park.

Penis Park is exactly what you except it would be, well, it was exactly what I expected it to be. The story goes that there was a young virgin who was due to be married and she was collecting seaweed (or something) on a rock out in the sea. Her fiancé was supposed to collect her at the end of the day, but because of a storm he was unable to and she drown. After her death, the village experienced a shortage in fish. Then, one day a man was attending to “nature’s needs” (I’ll leave it to you to interpret what that means) and exposed himself to the ocean. That day, the fishing improved. And so the villagers began erecting giant wooden phalluses in order to appease the dead virgin girl’s soul.

The park is actually situated between the sea and the mountains, so the scenery is quiet beautiful in and of itself. All in all it was a very enjoyable trip and we were both sad that we didn’t have more time to discover all that Samcheok has to offer. It was now Feb. 13 and we had a tour scheduled of the DMZ for Valentine’s Day, so after we took in the penises we were back on a bus to Seoul.

The DMZ tour starts very early (like 7:30am early) and we were running a bit late. Fortunately, the start time we were given was a big earlier than the actual time the bus leaves Seoul, so we didn’t really need to run from the subway to the USO (our tour guide was actually on the subway with us and watched us run to the USO, he informed us of this after our bus got underway). The DMZ is about an hour or hour and a half’s bus ride from Seoul. On the way you drive alongside a river that is heavily watched by the South Korean army for North Korean submarines.

When we arrived at the DMZ we were inspected by an American military personnel, who then provided us with a tour. We had to wear UN visitor badges for the duration of our tour and were told when and where we were allowed to take photos. First we had a presentation on the history of the Korean war and the DMZ, and then we were taken to the boarder, where we were instructed not to point, smile, or make any attempts at communication with the North Korean military. Since it was a cold day, there was only one person outside from the North Korean army, and he was way up on their building. There were others inside the building, you could tell because he would go stand beside a blacked out window and talk to them. (You couldn’t hear him talk, he was a ways away.) We got to go into one of the UN buildings that straddles the boarder and is used for peace talks, and inside this building we were able to cross over into North Korean territory. In this room there are microphones on the table and everything is recorded, so you know whatever you say will be listened to by the North Korean military. It’s a very weird feeling.

Afterwards we were taken to a lookout point where we could see both Propaganda Village (NK) and Freedom Village (SK) off in the distance. We were taken to the bridge of no return, though we weren’t allowed to get out of the bus because they believe that the North Koreans guarding their side of the bridge don’t obey the rules on allotted weaponry within the different sectors of the DMZ. We were also shown one of the caves that the North Koreans dug underneath the DMZ. The North Koreans claim they were mining coal, though it is very clear that there is no coal to be mined in these tunnels, and that the South Koreans dug them anyways (but it’s obvious from the way it was dug that it came from the North’s side). There are several of these tunnels, and they are all intended to end at point near Seoul to facilitate a surprise attack. While this is unlikely to happen, they still haven’t found all the tunnels that have supposedly been dug.

That was quite an interesting experience, and if you’re ever in South Korea the DMZ tour is not to be missed. I’d like to take it from the North Korean side one day, but as it stands right now it costs about $10,000 to go on the government controlled tour of North Korea.

Well, that about concludes my trip to Korea. My last day was just spent relaxing and doing a bit of shopping and then Laura and I parted ways at the bus station and I headed on to Singapore (for about 2 hours) and Melbourne, where I am currently getting myself set up and established. There will be much, much more to come on that!

Adventures of a Waegook (aka my trip to Korea)

After a long month of packing and stressing and preparing to leave, the day finally arrived. I headed off to the airport with my family well before the sun came up and we had a tearful goodbye. I managed to hold it together to make it through customs. Plus, being excited to see a friend I hadn’t seen in about 4 years helped distract me from the whole leaving home for a really long time thing.

I flew Singapore Airlines to Seoul, and let me tell you! I was impressed from the get go. When I walked into the plane I saw a flight attendant in a glamorous uniform that I remembered seeing often during my numerous layovers in Frankfurt. I never knew which airline these women were with, but I always wanted to fly on whatever airline they worked for because I knew if the flight attendants looked that glamorous that the airline would follow suit.

And I was right. The plane was big and the seats were roomy. That ended up not even mattering because the plane was nearly empty and I had a row of 3 seats to myself. The thing about Singapore airlines is that they combine the glamour of airline flying of the 60’s with the technological advancements of today. Every seat has its own entertainment system. The meals were served with real glass cups and actual metal knifes. Even the plane washrooms were nice. All of this made the 13 hour long flight a pleasure.

Once I got into Seoul I had no problem getting through customs and collecting my bags. I got some weird looks as I piled my massive suitcases onto my cart, but no hassle at all from customs as I wheeled them out of the baggage claim area. Laura met me at the airport, and thank god she did because I would have struggled without her. Laura has developed a pretty good command of the Korean language, and can read the alphabet fluently. (And by the end of my trip she had even taught me a bit of the alphabet, enough to not be completely lost when I saw something written in Korean.)

I just happened to be coming into Seoul on Lunar (Chinese) New Year, so Seoul was basically a ghost town when I first arrived. This at least made it easier for us to navigate the subway with my luggage. Of course, carrying my heavy suitcase up all those flights of stairs was not so much fun. Once we got out of the subway, we had to find our hostel. By this time it was around 10pm and neither of us really had a clue where we were. So obviously we got a little lost. But eventually we got ourselves to the hostel (thanks to Laura’s cell phone) and by the next morning we had mastered navigating our way between the hostel and the subway (which involved going through a narrow alley for a few blocks). Laura had booked us a double room at a hostel, so it was quite cozy. In Korea they use floor heating, which resulted in us having very warm clothes when we got dressed and a lot of melted chocolate.

Because of the holiday, most of Seoul was shut down for the first couple of days I was there. This made it easier to adjust to being in Korea as the pace was slower than normal, but it also meant that most things were closed. On my first day Laura took me to one of the Palaces, which fortunately was open. We got there just in time to witness the changing of the guard ceremony.
This Palace was a summer Palace and was decorated in lots of vibrant colours and flowers. I found it quite beautiful and enjoyed wandering around the grounds, imagining what it would have been like to live there. We saw lots of little kids dressed up in traditional costumes and many of them smiled and waved at us foreigners (waegooks). We checked out one of the museums, where they had some very realistic plastic models of Korea food dishes. It was an interesting museum.

Afterwards we headed off to Itaewan, the ex-pat district, where fewer things were shut down. We had lunch at a nice Indian restaurant then went to, oh the shame, Starbucks and chatted for hours. Then we went to a Thai restaurant for dinner.

On my second full day in Seoul we set off to find the USO to pay for our DMZ tour, but were unhelpfully (and very incorrectly) informed that we would not be able to find it from our location near the war memorial. So we went to the war memorial and museum instead. There I got a history lesson on the Korean War. I also got to get hands on in the Emergency Experience Hall. And what did that entail? A foam helmet and a tarp like cape! I wish I had a helmet and cape for when I was volunteering on the crisis lines and/or working in fraud squad! This was definitely a high point in the trip for me. ;) Afterwards we decided to wander around in Insadong, a cool and large market near our hostel. I fell in love, and now have the coolest fish earrings ever.

We were originally going to leave Seoul on the 9th, but opted to stay an extra day to meet up with some of Laura’s friends for dinner (we were supposed to on the 8th, but I succumbed to jet lag). During the day we continued our adventure to find the USO, and were eventually successful. That night we returned to Itaewan for dinner with Laura’s friends…eventually. That was not the highlight of my trip, not that Laura’s friends weren’t good people!. I actually got to meet a woman from Melbourne, so that was a good connection to make.

The next day we took off for on a bus to Jinju, the city where Laura has been living. The nice thing about taking inter-city buses in Korea is that there is usually a bus leaving every 15 minutes. After getting ourselves settled in at Laura’s, we met up with another of her friends for dinner (Korean food this time). We ordered a whole whack of mandu, which is like tofu dumplings. It was pretty decent. Afterwards we went to a teahouse for, obviously, tea. In the basement was a shop filled with various handmade ceramic products made by the owner. We went and had a look around at his work before settling down to a nice cinnamon tea. Afterwards we got in a cab and headed to E-Mart for my Korean grocery shopping experience! Kid in a candy store, that’s what I was.

On Monday Laura took me around Jinju and gave me the proper Jinju experience. We started off with a crazy bus ride, then went for a walk through the market. Afterwards we found ourselves a little kimbap place (kimbap is like a California roll and was by far my favourite Korean dish) for a light lunch. After lunch we went for soy ice cream. Yum!

That afternoon we wandered around the Jinju castle, which is the site of a heroic act on the part of an entertainer woman named Nongae. The Japanese had invaded Korea, and the general was quite taken with Nongae. She was able to lure him out to a rock in the river, where she linked her hands around his back and threw herself, and him, into the river and to their deaths. By doing this she saved Korea from the Japanese invasion. Nongae is now considered a heroine throughout Korea.

An important part of Korean culture is the jimjilbang, otherwise known as the public bath house. Laura happened to live right across the street from one (lucky!) so after dinner we headed over for some R&R in the saunas and baths. It was a lovely experience, and despite Laura’s concern, I didn’t get physically assaulted because of my tattoos.

Our next adventure had us on a 7 hour bus ride up the east coast of Korea, from Jinju to Samcheok. Now, the only reason we decided to go to what we figured would be a quite small city whose main industry would be fishing, was to see the infamous Penis Park. Boy were we in for a surprise!

To Be Continued...

In Melbourne Now

Okay, so I'm in Melbourne, got in yesterday morning, things are going decently. My visa, obviously, went through without incident. I managed fine with my 3 massive suitcases and have even developed arm muscles that I previous did not have! (Okay, maybe they aren't really "developed" but still, I lifted those suitcases like no one's business.)

So I'm going to do a huge blog entry about my trip to Korea, which was awesome. But right now I'm hungry and not having a cell phone is driving me crazy, so I think I'm going to head into the city to do something about both those problems. (I unlocked my Canadian cell phone, so I'm hoping I can just purchase an Australian SIM card and get a pay-as-you-go dealy going.)

A few things about my time here before I take off:

I figured out where I am, I'm staying in the suburb of Coburg in this tiny student apartment with an insufficient kitchen. I thought my room wasn't being cleaned, so I hope the cleaning people didn't mind the tripping hazards that are my suitcases. It's been...interesting. I'm hoping tonight I won't attempt to give myself a concussion again.

I'm a registered student now! Complete with ID card and horrible ID card photo. Horrible! Okay, so how's this. The administration people at La Trobe are super pleasant! Especially the people at the Research Graduate Office. They made me feel so at home, I know I'll have no problem contacting them about anything I need. Seriously, I could just take these ladies out to lunch they were so lovely.

I'm living on chocolate and peanut butter, neither of which customs had any issue with me having. I promise I will go get some real food! I have to anyways, I'm almost out of chocolate and I don't have anything else to scoop the peanut butter out with.

Apartment hunting is horrible. Mostly I have no idea what I'm doing and I think my life will be a lot easier once I have a phone. I'm dubious about using this hotel phone. I guess I could just use skype, but, it's really weird talking to my computer. (I'm sure Laura's laughing to herself saying that I prefer to talk to my make-up.) So I'm considering the whole roommate option. There's this website that matches people up quite nicely (much better than, say, online dating sites do) and today I messaged someone who I actually have quite a bit in common with and who I think I'd do fine with. Wish me luck! Although, I'd still be homeless until some time in March. So I may end up living in a hotel for a little while. Maybe not this one though, depends how long it takes me to get into the city.

Google maps lied to me! The result? I took a 2 km walk and got to know Melbourne's industrial side. Which oddly contains a lot of flower shops. Did I mention it's 34 degrees out? At least my little coffin-sized room has A/C. Plus, there's a pool...

Counting Down The Hours

It's hard to believe that in under 48 hours I'll be leaving. I haven't quite come to the point of comprehending the magnetute of this yet.

I had a good, relaxing time in Banff with my Mom. I'm glad we did the trip because it was nice to just hang out together, get a little spoiled, and spend time in the mountains (which I will miss).

As for my visa...well, fingers crossed that that actually goes through. It turns out that there are only 2 doctors in Calgary that do the medical examination, so I was fortunately able to get into one tomorrow. Tomorrow is going to be a crazy day. The doctor appointment is in the morning, and I'll have to tell the doctor to RUSH my results or whatever off to wherever it goes. After the doctor I have to go back across the city to the radiologist for my chest xray. I've also got an appointment with the lab, but I'm hoping that they got me to make that appointment just in case. The documents I have seem to indicate that lab work isn't really necessary. Hopefully the doctor will concur. I do not like needles.

The packing fiasco is mostly under control now. I shipped (literally) a box of stuff off to myself and I have 3 suitcases. Today I am going to go through the one suitcase and see what I can do without for awhile since Mary kindly offered to bring me a few things down the next time she's in Australia. Of course, I probably won't find too many things I'm willing to take out, but the fact that if I get there and am missing something I can have it sent out to me is a great relief.

The past few days have been all about goodbyes. Last night was my goodbye party with friends and the night before I had a goodbye party with family. It hasn't been easy, especially at 2:30 this morning when I finally had to say goodbye to my best friend. :( Saying goodbye to my pets has been sad too. I know they won't all be here when I come back. But I am looking forward to showing people pictures of my dogs and telling them I have a pet polar bear and a pet black bear back in Canada. ;) And, of course, saying goodbye to family is the hardest. I'm really not looking forward to that at all.

Visa Requirements

Nothing is ever nice and straightforward and easy.

Today I got my confirmation of enrollment from the university, allowing me to submit my visa application with the Australian government. At one point it asks me which office I would be best able to attend should any interviews be required. Well, the only Canadian city on the list was Ottawa, which is really not convenient at all. So I decided to put down Seoul since I'll be in Korea prior to my arrival in Australia and figured this would make things easy enough.

Well! Was I ever mistaken. You see, I am required to undergo some medical examinations, and there is a quick, easy way to do this online, or you can do it the manual way if the online options are not convienent. So because I put Seoul, the various doctors offices I could attend were all in South Korea. Crap. I look at the manual list of doctors and there's Calgary!

So I call the one radiology clinic and they're like "oh, just come on down whenever. You don't need an appointment, it only takes a couple days to process, it's all good." So fine, great. I call my doctor and he's booking into May, but, they can fit me in Feb. 12. Well, if that's the case, Korea's starting to look good again.

Then I called a walk-in clinic, not the one I thought I was calling but another one (I have a feeling the one I actually called has nicer staff than the one I normally go to though so that's okay). After going back and forth on the phone with them for awhile they informed me that there was a doctor who would be able to assist me and that I could come by tomorrow evening as a walk in. Wonderful, though slightly dubious. I'll take my chances. They can get me in soon enough that if it doesn't work out it's no skin off my teeth.

But, I'm already in a rush for this visa application to go through and the manual way may create some delays. So I sent in a request to change my interview city to Ottawa, explaining my misunderstanding. Now I don't really know what to do. They said that a response would happen in 2 business days, I'm hoping to go into these various doctors tomorrow (although I can hold off since I don't actually have appointments). I might play around with the online forms a bit to see if I can find out what exactly is required of me online versus manual. And maybe I'll get a response by tomorrow from the visa people. One can always hope.

Getting There...

My how time flies! I am only a little over 2 weeks away from my departure date and still have so much to do!

I finally got my passport this week. Complete with it's lovely little warning sticker stating that I am a careless person and should be watched closely. Okay, it doesn't actually say that and I don't really know what the implications of having an observation on my passport means. I can only hope it doesn't mean more scrutiny at customs.

I've also got my plane ticket all sorted out. I leave, officially, for Korea on Feb. 5 and I arrive in Australia on Feb. 17. I start school on Feb. 25, so that gives me a week to find an apartment. Wish me luck because none of my hunting, apparently, can be done before I am in Melbourne.

The last big thing travel wise is getting my Australian Visa sorted out, which is on hold because I need another letter from the university that they wouldn't have been able to send out to me until they recieved my response to their last letter, which I emailed off yesterday. I will start panicking if I have not recieved this letter by Jan. 24.

I've been enjoying life as an unemployed person. I have lots of running around and spending time with people on my plate, so I'm glad I don't have an actual structured job getting in the way of that. Speaking of work, they screwed up on my last paycheque and didn't pay me for all the hours I worked, so that's put a bit of a wrench in the works for me. Nothing too major though.

Today was my last day of volunteering on the crisis lines. It was a good shift, quiet, much to my surprise, but it's weird to be done there. I liked it there. I would have stayed if the commute from Melbourne to Calgary wasn't such a bitch.

But I'm excited, really excited, and happy. Tomorrow I am actually going to start packing my "Australia" suitcase (as opposed to my "Korea" suitcase) in a concrete way. Right now I have this suitcase overflowing with stuff, but tomorrow I will empty it out and start working my Mary Poppins-esque magic to fit a little more than half my life into this one piece of luggage. I won't be finished packing it tomorrow, not by a long shot, but I'll have things much more organized and be that much closer to being ready to go.

I've constantly got this ever expanding and contracting "To Do" list floating around in my head. Every possible thing that I want to get done before I go won't happen, I know, and I can at least partially blame my Mom for that because she's stealing me away to Banff for a few days of R&R before I go. Actually, I'm quite glad for the break and for the Mom time. Besides, all the things that actually need to be done will get done in time.