Korea's Lunar New Year holiday ('설날') occurred over the weekend. It's a time of year that involves families gathering together, and all the inevitable responsibilities that go along with this, both subtle and overt. This year it clashed with Valentine's Day, leaving people with a choice of which to celebrate. With family being so important the New Year invariably won, although once again, ever-evasive Korean Brother managed to avoid any such obligations. As the eldest in her family, and with both parents having passed away many years ago, it is Korean Mother's responsibility to host to her young siblings for New Year's meals, and it's not an event without its tensions; with a sister who works as a Buddhist psychic and a brother who works as a Christian pastor, they are a microcosm of the religious differences which can sometimes bubble away uneasily in Korean society.

Pastor Uncle stipulated that he would only eat food which hadn't been in any way involved in any kind of Buddhist blessings or rituals, which theoretically required Korean Mother to spend the whole day preparing the dishes for the meal. This was unfortunate because Korean Mother was extremely tired having just returned from two days of New Year family duties in Namhae, and Psychic Aunt provides a steady supply of religiously-tainted food and dishes to our apartment. Thus a moral dilemma was created of whether to pander to someone's religious objections - or take the easy path of claiming an incorrect provenance. I was not keen on the latter but my limited experience in the murky world of Korean religion is that neither faction necessarily affords the other much reverence.

Korean Mother and Psychic Aunt wanted Makgeolli ('막걸리') - Korean rice wine whose popularity is rocketing - to drink with their meal, and phoned Pastor Uncle to ask him to buy some on his way to the apartment with his family. He was completely taken aback - he couldn't possibly be seen by his children buying alcohol (despite the fact that Jesus was well known drinker). Perhaps he's one of these people who've made up their own version of the Bible. So the two Buddhists had to go out and buy their own booze.

When Pastor Uncle arrived, our borderline-insane dog tried his best to feign a case of rabies and scare him into leaving. But Pastor Uncle had evidently been drinking the Biblical Kool-Aid and persisted in holding out his hand repeating "I love you, I love you", in English - oddly enough; our dog doesn't speak English nor does he have the gift of tongues. As usual, almost all the hospitals were closed for the holiday, so it wasn't clear where Pastor Uncle intended to have his finger sewn back on, but perhaps he felt that God would provide. He explained that the power of love could conquer any animal, which makes one wonder how these missionaries keep getting themselves killed overseas.

His children performed their 'big bows' to Korean Mother - a ritual at this time of year. It's extremely important partly because it confers respect on ones' elders, and affords them a formal opportunity to impart wisdom and/or lecture their juniors, but mostly because - from the point of view of the juniors - they are given gift money in return. We'd already done our bows earlier and made our profit, and while Korean Brother had to go, he'd somehow managed to stay long enough to get his pay-off too.

Before long the collected family factions were sitting on the floor around a long low table reminiscent of some medieval European banquet - if Europeans ate copious amounts of crab, noodles, rice and plants. But before we could eat, Pastor Uncle had to say Grace, and his faction put on their most serious looks as they bowed their heads while the rest of us waited. Once he'd finished, Psychic Aunt decided to immediately follow it with a Buddhist prayer, which is not normal and very much felt as though it was designed to make a point. I believe this was obvious to everyone and the atmosphere seemed to have become very uncomfortable. It looked set to be a long evening.

But if there's one thing that can unify Koreans it's food - so it wasn't long before animosities were buried in favour of devouring the feast of potentially questionable provenance. Bits of crab flew through the air amidst this fine social scene, with Psychic Aunt pausing at one point to pull a piece out of the hair of Pastor Uncle's wife. Perhaps there could be peace in our time.

I was not faring so well. The soup tasted of seawater, the meat was of the don't-ask-don't-tell variety so popular in this country, and by the time I'd finished I felt like I'd been sucking on a metal bar for fifteen minutes. Five minutes into my re-acquaintance with authentic Korean food the Makgeolli had started to look like a good way of conducting a mercy killing of my taste buds, but it seemed rude to ask the two older Buddhists for a glass of their hard-won liquor. Unfortunately, I'm not usually offered alcohol since I'm possessed by the evil spirit which is Meniere's Disease, and for my sins I go through much of life having the balance of a drunk while actually being stone-cold sober. So it was just me, the seawater soup, and the misery of being all alone behind the language barrier with only the partially-obstructed view of the South Korea v. Japan Asia Cup game for company.

But an interesting thing happened. The Christian wants to know how work is going and the truth is I'm growing fed up with it. My wife and trading partner doesn't want the stress while pregnant, leaving me to work alone, and I've finally realised that if there's one thing I really can't stand about trading, it's the people. So what about teaching he asks - after all, one of my wife's degrees is in English Literature which has to be good for something, and in my abortive attempt to teach English in Japan post-graduation I'd acquired a TESOL qualification, although the more I learned about teaching English the more underqualified I felt - and the more I didn't want to do it. The upshot of that was we may have agreed to a potential career change somewhere on the horizon, though unfortunately I can't blame it on the non-existent alcohol.

While the Christian enthused about all the potential clients he could gather - and he's a very well connected person - his equal and opposite sat in silence, making no offer to network for us. On this evidence, I'm not sure how Buddhists intend to win hearts and minds in this country against the onslaught of a group who so rabidly want to help.

I recently came across a number of games on Korea's official tourist website - er, one of them, at least. Start by going to the Korea Tourism Organization's page of games:



Bear in mind the target audience of this website: tourists looking for information about Korea. Now, go to the KTO's main page and see if you can find the link to the aforementioned page of games.

What, you say? You can't find it? (If you do, comment with the path of links you clicked on!) OK, search for 'games' - the first thing you'd expect to find on a tourist website - and you'll eventually come across it.

Click on any of the 6 flash games playable within your browser. Try not to laugh too hard at any of them:

Swing Swing: As a tourist, you should know your job on your bus is to give your seat up to older people. Your job is to try and stand on the bus. Move your mouse left or right to keep your person standing up. Good luck getting past a second.

Helpful to tourists: F - it implies that Korea's buses will toss you about if you're standing up... which isn't too far from the truth.
Game's grade: F - with little time to comprehend what to do, the game is over, and you're left to retry with no more knowledge on how to play.


Jumble Library Book Pile: For centuries, Koreans have been stacking books. Why? Who knows? Just click on the moving book to make the tallest stack in the allotted time.

Helpful to tourists: F - what does stacking books have to do with tourism?
Game's grade: C - the game itself is too easy once you've figured out how to click on the moving book. It also ends after you've stacked 10 books, whether there's time remaining or not.


Dance Dance Rhythm King: similar to any rhythm game you've ever played, hit the arrow keys and the space bar to the arrows. The song? An inoffensive K-pop song that isn't identified.

Helpful to tourists: D - The first game with an Actual Connection to Korea! If I wanted to listen to K-pop, however, Youtube has a much larger selection.
Game's grade: C - not bad. With exactly one level, it's either too easy or too difficult. At about 70 seconds long, the one song ends before the arrows are finished raining down.


Mole Pow Pow Pow! - similar to any 'hit the animal when it pops out of the hole' game you've played before. Use your mouse to click on any of the offending animals before they throw some ink at you.

Helpful to tourists: F - what does whacking moles have to do with visiting Korea?
Game's grade: D - functional. That's about it.



Today School Nurse Sugar! - losing points for its nonsensical name, your objective is to catch the objects, but to avoid the bombs - and the edges. Apparently, running into the sides makes you lose a heart as well.

Helpful to tourists: F - what does catching toilet paper and other unknown things have to do with visiting Korea?
Game's grade: F - between losing hearts for running into the side of the screen and being blown up way too easily, it's hard to win and not very fun.


Auto tour in Korea - because as we all know, tourists will attempt to drive in Korea. Move left and right to visit Korea, but avoid visiting Other Countries! Korea is apparently the only place worth touring.

Helpful to tourists: F - because telling prospective tourists that you're insecure about them visiting other countries is helpful somehow? You'll choose a place to start from, but that doesn't change the view of the game at all.
Game's grade: D - there's a connection to Korea, but it's over too quick and you haven't really done anything except swerving left and right. You've also been taught that visiting other countries is Bad For You.

While it's unclear what the KTO hopes to gain from these new features, these games are better hidden underneath layers of the website's better materials. Hopefully those materials are worth the tax won we all paid to develop them.


© Chris Backe - 2010

This post was originally published on my blog, Chris in South Korea. If you are reading this on another website and there is no linkback or credit given, you are reading an UNAUTHORIZED FEED.

Tonight is our last night in Palawan. In the morning we fly back to Manila, chill for a night, and then head back to Busan on late Saturday/early Sunday. It's been a hell of a run and the last two days were the perfect way to cap this particular time out.

Coron and Busaunga Island are historically important because this area is where The Battle of Coron was fought. On September 24th, 1944, a large group of US bombers launched from Admiral Bull Halsey's carrier group suprised a group of Japanese supply ships that was attempting to reinforce the Philippines. It was a surprise attack resulting in the devastation of the Japanese flotilla. To this day these ships lay where they were sunk, and are open for exploration by divers.

We did four dives in two days. Yesterday we hit two large freighters, "Olympia Maru" and "Morozan Maru." It's ironic that the first bears the same name as my hometown. We were with our German divemaster and a young French couple that live in China (when asked what they were doing here, the vaguely answered, "working."). The wrecks were amazing, in 26 and 25 meters of water, respectively. We spent time on the face of the ships, as well a lot of time going inside, which really was the best part. After sixty-plus years on the bottom, the ships have become coral reefs in their own right and are teeming with tropical sealife. We took in lion fishes, a crocodile fish, a big sea turtle, and thousands of others bright swimming things whose names I remain ignorant of.

Today we dived the "Moroza Maru," an aircraft tender, and the huge tanker "Akitasushima." They both were fantastic, with the tanker really standing out, if just for its size alone. The current was strong outside of the wreck, and after diving bow to stern - mainly inside though some dark and tight passages - we floated back to the bouy-line along the lip of the wreck, barely having to swim at all. A huge wall of coral-encrusted metal shot straight down to the bottom, and loads of huge fish lingered in the sheltering outcroppings that now were host to all sorts of life. It was psychedelic, awe-inspiring, and just straight-up fucking awesome. Definitely one of the coolest things I've done in my life, as far as pure thrilling experience goes. We got down to 35 meters (over 100 feet), which is almost double our qualifications as Open Water Divers, but as long as you're with a good divemaster they don't seem to be so strict about these things over here.

So tomorrow it's back to the swampy, crumbling environs of Manila, where I'll try to assemble my thoughts and prepare myself for yet another sememster on The Peninsula. There have been some great characters and stories on this trip that I've only touched on so far, so hopefully I'll be able to process them into a couple of good pieces for this here blog or more glorious outlets, with a bit of luck.

Firstly, we reviewed this restaurant mere days after returning from our trip to Vietnam. Secondly, their Vietnamese food is really, really good.

The Pho really gives you the atmosphere of an upmarket restaurant. As part of "The Terrace" (which also includes "The Pan" and "The Cafe") it has an interesting street view while seating you comfortably back from the foot traffic of Nampo-dong.

Service is excellent. The staff are quite professional and even brought us lap blankets!

The food is excellent value and surprisingly authentic. All the dishes we tried were very similar to what one might find in Saigon and the presentation is excellent. The dish sizes are pretty big though, so if you order, for example, a large Pho you might want to share it.

Generous amounts of tea are also provided free with your meal, which does encourage one to linger under their gas-fired heaters.

After finishing your meal, you can enjoy a Vietnamese-style drip coffee (Ca Phe) - but first-timers may be suprised by the ultrasweet condensed milk at the bottom of their glass.

The Pho is without a doubt my new favourite restaurant in Nampo-dong, and I can't wait to get back there.

Phone: 256-8055
Location: Nampo-dong, near the main roundabout & police station.

English Menu: Yes. And English-speaking staff.

Vegetarian Option: Yes. The staff even asked us if we were vegetarians (did I forget to shower today or something? Maybe its time for a haircut.)

Spring Rolls: 4,000
Medium Pho: 8,000
Fried Rice 8,000