Winter has come, bringing a maximum of 9 hours of sunshine per day and maximum temperatures just above zero degrees (soon going into the two-digit negatives at night). Nevertheless, since the central heating got turned on im my goshiwon I can’t complain about the coldness, as it is sunny 90% of the days!
Speaking of nice weather: Hong Kong!
Absolutely wonderful days I spent there, and contrary to my first assumption I was never alone (I did fly to Hong Kong without company). On the first evening, the owner of the hostel invited us to Tim Ho Wang, a Michelin-Star-graded Dim Sum restaurant. With ten other hostel residents, we ordered sets of pretty much everything the restaurant had to offer, and shared it among us.
Sweet buns with BBQ pork filling, shrimp/pork dumplings, crunchy spring rolls etc… – everything tasted wonderful and carefully crafted. And in the end, I did not pay more than 8€ to completely fill my empty stomach!
Apart from the awesome food in HK, I also met great people (especially on the first Tim Ho Wan dinner) from all over the place, and spent the following night with them in SoHo (the club/pub district of HK Island). Furthermore, in our new travel group, we continued to do stuff together in the following days: Victoria Peak, Street markets, a Lamma Island hike incl. seafood dinner, a rooftop bar visit and even a visit to a local all-you-can-eat-and-drink restaurant.
As they all left HK to continue travelling or to get back to the place where they have their exchange studies, I was finally bound to be alone on my last day, on which I visited Lantau island and the Big Buddha statue. As I became very frustrated by the amount of people doing the same on that day (waited 2h in line for the cable car to the peak), I tried to get away from the main tourist attraction and the scores of people there – so I followed an elderly travel group (8 people between 40 and 60) that looked as if they knew where they want to go. Five minutes later they were lost, and they realized that a young boy had tagged along them. In the end, I spent an awesome day with them, wandering around an abandoned spiritual place and a village before comitting to the main attractions. Afterwards, we hiked down instead of taking the cable car, passing by a small village in the woods in which almost all houses were abandoned aswell. Quite an atmosphere there!
See my clothes in that picture? That’s perfect 23 degrees for you! However, I had to change back to jeans in the evening, as I would fly back into 4 degrees celsius. My flight went through the night, so that I arrived back in Incheon at 4:30 AM. Waiting an hour before the first busses and subways went to Seoul then further delayed my jorney back into bed, so that I fell asleep in my Goshiwon at 7:30 AM. I slept through the 11 AM class and woke up for lunch and the 2 PM class. Another class, followed by a photo shoot with my buddy group, and I went to sleep at 10 PM (ditching my group which went to the thursday pub), as I went to Gyeongju the next day.
The city itself is almost as big as Karlsruhe (260K inhabitants), but it feels like a bigger village. However, this city was the former capital of Korea and therefore boasts with a rich collection of monuments, museums and cultural sights in general! I spent half a day sightseeing and then joined my frisbee team for dinner. In fact, the actual reason for the travel to Gyeongju was the K-CUP, an annual Frisbee tournament with some of the best teams of Korea! This time, there was also us. Short summary: we got beaten pretty badly (most of us, including me, are still beginners), but still had fun. Being on a 2-day tournament with your team and experiencing all aspects of that is just a very nice thing to do. In the end, we were able to watch the finals, and with them some actual high-level play!
As I came back on sunday evening, I realized that some fun days had passed and that I had to do university stuff in cold Seoul for the next weeks! So the next weeks will be a mixture of finals, term projects, assignments and the final days with the other exchange students, some of whom became very good friends! As I am staying here for one more semester, this situation becomes quite weird because the others are all having farewell-attitudes written on their faces. We will spend another one or two days talking, drinking and dancing together, before they leave, most of them probably never to be met again. But hey – that happens when you’re an exchange student or when you’re travelling around. I am getting better at staying untouched when wishing such farewells, it’s up to you to tell whether this is a good or a bad thing.
I will probably write one more article around christmas before heading off to South East Asia… speaking of which, I really need to find some time to plan the first steps there! Bye bye!