Mireuksa Temple; Exploring Iksan

So I'm not much of a tour-taker. I'd much rather just go out and experience stuff on my own. The whole agenda is within my control. I can see what I want to see, spend as much time as I want , and you don't have to worry about people in your tour group being idiots.

I chose the city of Iksan for this weekends' trip. I took 103 pictures, here's some of them.

As promised, here's some food: Chicken Bulgogi, start and finish with some sides.









































I went to The Mireuksa Temple. Check the link above (Click this Post's Title) to learn about this amazing piece of Korean Buddhist History. Here's how the Temple was laid out in the 600's AD.



























This building was constructed around the remains of the temple to protect it while it is being restored.













And here's the restoration job inside.














The West Pagoda






































Here's a close up of the bronze wind chimes, I wish there was enough breeze to hear them ring, but there wasn't.
























I stopped here to eat and kill time waiting for the bus to come:













The menu was written in Korean on the wall. No pictures, no English. I pointed to "noodles" in my dictionary and got a cold noodle soup. It looked very nice, but I forgot to take a picture before I tore into it, but here it is after I remembered:













And my sides:













Here's three boys catching fish with a net in a river.



























If you come to Korea in the summer, you will see red peppers drying in the streets everywhere you go, I mean everywhere!




















And here's huge bags of them in a market:













That's all for now.

Holy Crap; Finally!!!

Hooray!!! I’ve finally got internet access in my room. I am actually sitting here, typing away and I’m not worried about losing my connection; life is grand. It’s been three weeks today that I’ve been here at Kunsan and it really sucked without the internet. I didn’t realize how much I relied on it, I guess. One big thing was not being able to log on here and check for comments or post new drivel. I’ve also been waiting to talk to my wife and kids on the ‘ole webcam, which we could do now, if it weren’t 4:30 in the morning in MT.

More great news: My stuff comes tomorrow afternoon!!! Three weeks and one day, not too bad of a wait I guess. My coffee mug and Thermos! My bicycle, no more walking! My TV and PS2! A second pair of boots! Unfortunately, we drained and washed out the Pre-Sedimentary tanks at the Water Plant today, so I get wet boots tomorrow morning. I missed my chest waders by one day; that sucks.
Here’s the hustle and bustle of the big city outside Kunsan AB. This was taken from our pump station out on the reservoir; smack dab in the middle of a rice field. It makes my Agent Orange kick in.














Here’s another picture of Yogi. Sometimes I call her Yogi Bulgogi; it makes me laugh but the Koreans don’t. They've either heard it a million times or they prefer chicken. I talk to her a lot during the day. She's the first dog I've known that recognizes the word "reservoir." She likes to ride there in the truck I guess, but I haven't taken her there myself. You're gonna get sick of my Yogi pictures, most likely.














Here's the tank we drained today, before we drained it:




















Here's what it looks like drained. At the reservoir, we add charcoal to the water to absorb odor and taste. When it comes to the Water Plant, the charcoal settles in this tank before it moves on to the clarifiers. The black sludge you see is that charcoal. It's so much fun to clean:





















Here comes the water from the reservoir to fill it back up. Yes, its a thrill-a-minute at the Water Plant. By the way, it may look disgusting in these pictures, but this is only step 2 in the entire treatment process. It ends up clean, clear and safe. I drink that water all day!















Wow, it's past my bed time! This is the first time I've been up past 8:15pm this week! Sleep's a great way to kill time when you have no TV.

Bye for now.

Meeting Matay

Another damn email post. I've been here over two weeks, and my stuff still
hasn't gotten here. The transition between me and the last guy went quite
poorly. I was getting a little stressed out last week and was about ready to
snap by the time Friday was over. I grabbed a ticket to Osan and left on the
0730 bus on Saturday morning. Just what I needed.

My buddy Matay met me at Osan's BX, and we cruised over to the golf course
for a couple hot stone-bowls of Bi Bim Bap and sides of Kimchi! Fantastic.

Then we Bee-bopped and skatted over to Suwon and I tossed my gear into the
room Matay snagged for me; what a host!

We took the train over to Suwon City and walked around town. There must been
50 BBQ joints (with the grill in the table so you cook yer own food right
there) in that city, and we only walked a few blocks around the train
station. My ass is definitely going back there!

We ended up eating at a restaurant on the fifth floor over the station. We
ordered Beef Bulgogi for two and cooked it up there at the table. There were
these long skinny green peppers that you dip in the miso-pepper paste that
kicked butt. As we ate, the plate of Romaine Lettuce (for wrapping) was
dwindling down. We were gonna ask for more, and then I decided to wait until
the plate was completely empty. As I grabbed the last piece of lettuce, a
waitress came swooping in out of no-where! She had a fresh plate of lettuce
down in the blink of an eye!

Matay got stuffed and stopped, and I dug deep to finish the plate off. Very
tasty food, great service, good price. My dumb ass forgot my camera back at
the room at Suwon, but I promise to take some food pictures this weekend and
get 'em on the blog. I should get internet access at Chez Slim on Thursday
or Friday.

So, my thanks go out to my buddy Matay for a great weekend. He upgraded my
spot on his couch to a whole damn room to myself, and he showed me around
his towns and got me re-acquainted with the train systems.

Mahalo, Matay!

Wireless Internet!!!

There's someone broadcasting wireless internet here in the dorm. I don't know who the patron saint could be, but hot damn, I'm connected. So I'll get what I can on here, and hopefully I don't lose my signal. The clown post will have to wait a few minutes.

Here's that picture from the plane to Helena, MT: That was next to my window.





















Here's my first meal in Korea, sorry to my wife, I know she likes Popeye's Chicken.














Here's the first bag of Kimchi I bought: It made my milk smell like Kimchi, and now my cereal tastes crappy.















Here's a picture of Yogi, the water plant dog: I buy her friendship with extra food from the chowhall.

Starting To Catch Up

As much as I hate Alaska and everyone from Alaska with their stupid "Back in

Alaska" stories, of course TMO books me on Alaskan Air to leave MT. So
because I hear Alaska is the greatest freakin' place on the planet, this
flight should have, no doubt, been a comfortable-ass transport full of foot
rubs, free bowls of chili, and midget wrestling (or whatever constitutes a
great time in your book.) Not so, my friends, not so.
If Alaska was a pack of bacon, and Alaska Air was the "representative slice"

you lift the back flap to see, I'd throw that pack of bacon on the ground
and stomp the crap out of it. Then I'd burn the supermarket down. Thank god
Alaska's not a pack of bacon.

Here's how this trip went down:

I walk up to the window at the airport and only see a little prop-driven
jalopy at the gate. Hmm, guess the plane's a little late getting here.
"We'll now begin boarding flight so and so to Helena and Seattle." Oh no
they didn't! Not only a prop-job all the way to Seattle, but we gotta drag
the trip out by going to Helena first? TMO you bastards!

I've got a couple of pictures of the propeller outside my window, but my
lack of internet access prohibits me from sharing right now. I'll post 'em
later.

So how could Alaska-Freakin'-Airlines screw me a little harder? (short of
crashing that is)

Stewardess: Attention all passengers continuing on to Seattle; as we start
boarding here in Helena, if someone comes up to you and says you are in the
wrong seat, please tell them we double booked most of this flight and to
find another seat. We are sorry, but this flight will be full today.

She wasn't kidding.

Next post: Circus Clowns Abandon Car for Seattle USO

A Post by E-mail

So I'm here in Korea, and I won't have internet access in my room until the
25th of August. Public computers for Blogging in my opinion suck. So, for
now, I will type a post on my laptop, save to my flash drive, bring it to
work and email the post to blogger. That's my plan. This is a test post by
email to see if it works. Kind of a boring post, but there's more to come
soon, I promise.

Tokyo Slim

Goin Down the Road Feelin Bad

Well, despite having known when I was leaving for so long, the good-byes with my family came very sudden. Diamond Cab wouldn't give me a straight answer on when they could pick me up or get me to the airport, so I phoned a friend. My thanks goes out to my homey Schinbone(r) for the ride. If anyone's got leftover minutes on your phone, give Diamond Cab a call at (406) 453-3241 and tell them they suck. So Schinbone(r) was already in his car and minutes away when he said he could give me a ride. Kid #1 asked, when are you leaving, Daddy? My answer was right now. I'm sorry guys. I was hoping for a better quality ending, but maybe quick was best for everybody. Wife and Kids 1 and 2, you know I love you all so much, please take good care of the dogs, and don't forget to feed Cajun. I will call you later from Seattle.














Love you,
Daddy

The Drug Post

So I found out where to score some cheap smack in Great Falls, Montana; at Smith's over by Pier 1 Imports, but more on that later.

About a week ago, we went to Barnes and Noble over by Pier 1 and Smith's, and I was feeling all rich and wasteful so I bought me and the wife a couple of Mocha Frappuccino's at the Starbucks in there. These things are liquid crack! They are so delicious that you can’t stop sipping on them, but they have ice in them, so you get the whole brain freeze, ice cream-head-ache thing going on. You have to stop and let your blood raise your cranial temperature back to normal so you can function, and then you take another couple of hits on the straw and start the process over again. Yup, Liquid crack.

Today, we decided to grab a couple more cups of the liquid crack; hurts so good. Anyway, we were on that side of town so we decided to pop into Smith’s to look for red pickled ginger, and that’s when we found cheap smack. Here’s a pic of our stash:











12 for a dollar; now that's cheap smack!

Here's a close up of one bag,