The Blithe Traveler

Mauna Kea

Please welcome back Jeff, for another guest post! Ellen

Tom, Ellen’s father and I took off for the tallest mountain in the world one afternoon.  Most people think that we would be headed towards Mount Everest, but that would be the highest mountain.  The tallest mountain measured from base to peak would be Mauna Kea on the Big Island of Hawaii which measures over 33,000 feet from its base at the bottom of the Pacific to its peak 13,796 above sea level.  It would also seem odd to take a 6 year old to climb a mountain almost 14,000 feet high especially since we were starting right at the water’s edge.  The cool thing about this mountain is that it has a road going to the top which is used as a platform for the world's largest observatory for optical, infrared, and submillimeter astronomy.

It was about a 90 minute drive to the base of Mauna Kea, obviously on an incline a good part of the way.  As we approached the access road, we could see the observatories on top of the snow covered peak.  Yes that would be snow in Hawaii.  Since we were planning to go pretty high that day, I wanted to make sure that Tom was handling it well (1).  So as we climbed I asked him math questions to check his reasoning powers.  To make it a little more of a realistic test, I asked them in Chinese.  We started with some easy stuff like “er jia er” which is 2 + 2. 

The access road climbed through cattle grazing land to the visitor center which was at about 9,000 feet.  Here there were tour group acclimating to the altitude or buying souvenirs.  We all changed into long pants and put on a sweatshirt or fleece as well as used the facilities here while we were acclimating and then off we went past the signs recommending only 4 wheel drive and warnings that I’m sure some people read and follow.

The views as we drove up the mountain were incredible.  Mauna Kea is a volcano rising out of the ocean making a rather large island with its more active sister to the south.  The Hawaiian Islands were all hooked into this reservoir of magma under the earth which spit up basically an island at some point and then the huge plate that the islands are on kept moving north.  So all the other islands were hooked into this island making machine and then passed north to let the next one form.  Mauna Kea is on the northern end of the Big Island.  There is an active volcano south of it on the island and another large volcano still underwater, still growing an Island south of that. Lots should be available for sale in about 10,000 years. 

As we climbed the grass disappeared and the feeling of being a bit closer to the moon increased.  The original lunar dune buggy was tested out in this area.  The photo below shows a volcanic cone that was an interesting shade of red. 

You might also notice that the cloud cover is a bit below us already.

We stopped a bit along the way to let Tom acclimate.  At one stop Tom enjoyed his first playing in Hawaii snow.

As we went I kept asking Tom some more math questions.  They only involved simple math that he was very capable of such as san jia chi (3 + 7).  We could not do multiplication anyway since I didn’t know how to say “times” in Chinese.

The road switched from paved to gravel and back to paved at the top.  The view grew more and more incredible.  Near the top we passed a recreational area for the astronomers.

At the top, pictures tell a better story.  It got darker and colder, but more incredible.

As the sun was setting, it was getting colder and colder.  Tom was very much in favor of heading for the car and turning up the heat.  His ability to do his Chinese math had fallen apart a bit too.  He could no longer figure out what wu jia wu (5 + 5) was.  So down the mountain we headed.  In no time at all we were all warm and able to do math problems.  The sunset on the way down was rather pretty too.

I asked Tom how he liked the mountain and it was no surprise that it ranked way high on his list of events.  But by the end of the week it had fallen below his trip to the barber.  When I asked for details on this rather drastic fall in popularity he still says “But I couldn’t add 5 and 5”.

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(1) Note from Ellen: Altitude, as you probably know, deprives your brain of oxygen. It can make you a little (or a lot, depending on age and susceptibility ) silly.  I stayed home with Hope because we were concerned that she was too small to handle the altitude change well.

South Point

I bet you knew that the southern most point in the whole US of A resides in Hawaii, and not Florida. Well, I bet at least April knew that. Jeff and I spent a week of our honeymoon on the Big Island and we spent most of our time down south. One of the reasons we even wanted to come back to the Biggest of the Hawaiian islands is that we thought it would be neat to show our children some of the stuff we saw before they were so much as a twinkle in anyone but their grandmother's eye. 

One of the places we scouted when we were here in 2001 was South Point, the southern most point in the US. Lovely place, but what stayed with me the most was the Wind Farm. South Point is a windy, cliffy, kind of desolate place. Ideal for a wind farm. People seem to take offense to these structures that harness the power of the wind, although I, for one, am a huge proponent.

South Point is gorgeous.

And windy.

 

Check out those little white posts in the distance.

Here's a close up.

I have to say, I think they are just gorgeous. I know some of you might be thinking, "Wahh??? Those cliffs! Gorgeous! The green sand! Gorgeous! Those blue eyes and red curly hair, gorgeous! But those windmills??"

Yeah. Those windmills are just gorgeous. You know why? Not just because they are slender, and tall, and elegant and almost whisper quiet. And do no more damage to the birds in the area than the average suburban homeowner's glass deck door. But because they are clean, risk free energy. No mines were dug, no holes were drilled, no non-renewable resource was tapped. These gorgeous windmills are taking the energy that swirls around us every day and harnessing it. They are so beautiful they make me want to sing.

The tricky bit with this post, if I am going to be honest, is that while this Wind Farm just takes my breath away, right behind it is an old, abandoned Wind Farm (same folks, older, outdated equipment) that is kind of shabby looking.

This was the Wind Farm that was in operation when Jeff and I spun by in 2001, and it was kind of noisy. Now it just looks abandoned and shabby. One imagines that there is a some way that the metal in these structures can be recycled. I am guessing it's not the priority of the folks who are busy harnessing the wind, but I do wish they could bump it up the list a bit.  Hey, I call 'em as I see 'em.

Jeff's DMZ Tour

Introducing, Guest Blogger Jeff:
Seoul, Republic of Korea (South Korea) is about 25 miles from the DMZ (Demilitarized Zone) between North Korea and South Korea.  For many the DMZ is a leftover of the cold war like the Soviet Union.  It is something that happened and the remnant is around if you can find it kind of like the Berlin Wall.  But today the DMZ in Korea is the most heavily armed border in the world.  The two sides still shoot at each other.  In subways and public buildings in South Korea there are still well maintained cabinets full of gas masks.

The word we heard was that the USO in Seoul gives the best tours of the DMZ.  You need to get your butt to the Seoul USO by about 7 AM to hop a bus.  The USO is a group of kind of dumpy buildings behind some marginal fencing.  It reminds you that our guys don’t always get the best when they are away from home.     

After a ride through the city and then through some interesting security which includes a bridge that is set to blow up if the north starts to roll towards it.  Our ID’s are checked and we now have a soldier with us on our bus.  Soon we arrive at Camp Bonifas where we switch to a military bus and then we get a briefing which includes what we can do and not do.  Much of the area is off limits to picture taking, but much of it is open season.  The difference seems to be that we can’t take pictures of what the North can not see for themselves, especially anything security related.  The biggest thing about the briefing is the reality check it gives those who do not understand that these two countries are still at war.  If you don’t get that, there is a ratty one hole golf course that is rated as the most dangerous in the world since it is surrounded on 3 sides by mine fields.  If you still don’t get it, we pass the quick reaction force which can be in their trucks rolling fully loaded in less than a couple minutes 24/7.  And they have been used. 

In seeing the housing of our troops in harm’s way, it seemed to me that our politicians get too much and our troops get too little.  Maybe we should treat our politicians less like royalty and our military a little better.

From Camp Bonifas we head into Panmunjeom and the Joint Security Area.  Panmunjeom is the South Korean town that is next to the DMZ.  It’s made up of farmers who where there when the war broke out or are direct descendants  of those people.  They grow rice under the protection of the military.  They have about twice the income as the average South Korean farmer and pay no taxes. 

The joint military area is where the north and south meet.  It used to be co-managed by the UN and the North.  After many deaths caused by the mixing of enemies, both sides are now required to stay on their own side.  The center of this area is where both sides have buildings and there are meeting huts that are half on each side of the actual border which are the low blue buildings in the photo below.  The army guys with their backs to us are ROK (Republic of Korea, South Korea or the good guys) soldiers.  They are there to protect us from the somewhat unpredictable North Korean soldiers, one of whom is visible on the steps across the way and many more are not visible.  We were permitted to take pictures, but not point towards the north.  There was also a dress code all in the name of not giving the north any propaganda material.

The top floor of the big building was added so that the building in the North would be taller than the equivalent building on the South side.  The North did the same thing with flag poles ending up with the tallest flagpole in the world.  That this in a country where their people are starving puts their government in prospective.

We were escorted into the low blue building on the left were we could roam freely between the South Korean side and the North Korean side. Below is one of the ROK soldiers who is guarding the door on the North Korean side. Since so much of this is a psychological operation, these guys all wear the same sunglasses, look, attitude and clenched fists which are part of a martial arts thing to be ready at any time.
 
After my stroll into North Korea, we got back into our busses. We went by a marker which was for what is known as the Axe Murder which happened in 1976. The short story is that there was a tree that blocked the view of two of our lookout points which is a breach of security as you can imagine, especially when one of them is being occasionally attacked by soldiers from the North who are kidnapping soldiers. We sent some guys to trim the tree with the required notification to the other side. Some soldiers from the North showed up and attacked our guys killing two of our guys including Captain Bonifas who the camp is now named after. In order to get the tree problem resolved in a way that would leave no room for question, South Korea went on top military alert. The US moved in an aircraft carrier and helicopters and jets were launched. A chainsaw crew was dispatched to do the job. Instead of a trim, the tree was left as an ugly stump. An interesting read of the event is found at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Paul_Bunyan if you are interested.

Our next stop was the bridge of no return. This is where the POW’s from both sides were returned when the sides stopped shooting at each other. The name came from the fact that once a POW crossed the bridge, they could never go back. Not a concern for our returning military, but certainly something that the other side thought about. The last time it was used was for the return of our crew from the USS Pueblo on December 23, 1968.
We stopped at a lookout post which was on the border. On the way up to this post both sides of the road were posted with “mined” signs. At the top, you had a great view of the North and the border. After taking a couple great photos a young soldier explained the security procedures that forbid picture taking at that point. He patiently waited and watched as I deleted those nice shots.

We made it back to Camp Bonifas and were shown to the camp store where we could buy souvenirs of the place. I had a brief conversation with a US soldier who was guiding us. He had used the term Communist North Korea a lot and living in Communist China, it sounded odd. I tried to explain this to the soldier and when I explained that I lived in China, he stopped me and asked why I would want to do that. After explaining about a job and then joking about the police coming by to give us a book which included the restriction on religion that we could practice we seemed to have bonded a bit. He called over one of his buddies to tell him about the Chinese police and all was well with me being a US buddy in another Communist county. Another guy asked if we saw more than the other commercial tours. The soldier responded that the USO tours were the best. When pushed he said that they all saw the same thing. I think that the USO tours are the best because some of the proceeds go to help our guys in Korea. That would make them the best.

Winter Wonderland

Lava crackles, are you listening?
In the lane, the A-a’s(1) glistening
A beautiful sight
We’re happy tonight,
Walking in a winter wonderland!

Pāhoehoe lava (the pancakey type). And a glimpse to the magma below. We took the photo. Video at 11.

Gone away is the cold weather,
Here to stay is the warm weather
We sing a happy song
As we go along,
Walking in a winter wonderland

Green sand beach!

In the black sand we can build a sand man
And pretend that he is Ranger Rick
He’ll say are you watching the lava plume?
You know that sulfur dioxide
When you breathe it in
Can make you sick!

Black sand beach. Hard to see it, but that's a lava plume in the background.

Here's how the lava plume looks from our deck.

Later on, we’ll get snoozy
As we dream in the jacuzzi
To face unfraid,
The volcano plume in the shade
Soaking in our winter wonderland

Soaking in our winter wonderland
Soaking in our winter wonderland

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A-a Lava is the gnarly, rough, pointy stuff. Really, really cool.

In Which We Leave Korea and Travel to Hawaii

This bit is of interest only in that we stopped for a short layover in Japan. Getting from China to Hawaii is not an intuitive kind of trip. Unless, of course, you are willing to spring something like 14 million won for a ticket direct from Shanghai. Jeff is rather big on exploration, too, so for him, the idea of making a few stops on the way makes a ton of sense. I'm more of a direct flight sort, but particularly in this case, getting to Hawaii via Korea and Japan turned out to be quite nice. I loved being in Korea, and our short stop in Japan also turned out rather well.
The obligatory "We're in Japan!" photo. I think ten years from now Hope is going to look back on all of this and wonder if she had more than one outfit for the entire time we were in China.

We had four hours in the airport, and intrepid traveler Jeff determined that we could easily take the train to Narita (about a 7 minute ride), walk about the cute bits of town and have sushi for dinner, all without danger of missing our plane. This all turned out to be true, and quite lovely. I do find that travel gets easier as we have more experience about what does and doesn't work.

Sushi!

 

The bear was excited about it all, salmon being a fan favorite.

Post sushi, we hopped the train back to the airport for an "overnight" flight to Honolulu. The flight turned out to be only six hours, so it was kind of a short overnight. But we all got a little sleep. Which was good, because once we arrived in Honolulu, we needed to hop a plane to the Big Island where we were spending the first week of the actual vacation part of our vacation. Good thing we like to travel, don't you think?
 
Hawaii at last!

Lotte World!

Lotte World is the world's largest indoor amusement park. And it's located in Seoul, South Korea! Easily reached via subway! Can you see why I am thinking Korea has potential as a place to live?

Thursday was the Jeff was heading off to the DMZ. As it so happens, you can't bring children there (good thing someone has a good head on their shoulders), so I needed a plan for the day for the wee one's and myself. You would think that after kvetching that I'd really rather head to a fancy schmancy Korean Palace on the subway than to ride the fast train to Busan, on a day when I could technically chose to do whatever I wished, I might chose a palace. No chance. Lotte World called! By the way, Jeff will be doing a guest blog on his trip to the DMZ. It sounded quite fabulous, he has a ton of great photos and he's planning to write it up to email around anyway, so it makes sense to hear it in his words. 

Here's the outside bit of Lotte World. One of the rides is a monorail from the indoor bit to the outside. Does it look a little familiar? I think so. Apparently, Lotte World was modeled after some other largish sort of amusement park that may or may have start with a "D" and end with a "World." Google would probably confirm the number and length of lawsuits, but suffice to say, it all looked familiar.
 
Here's the indoor bit. If you peer up to the top-ish part of the photo, you can see what appears to be a hot air balloon attached to the ceiling. We were riding in one of these when I took the photo. The only downside of our whole experience was that the place was pretty well jammed with people. My spoiled children, who are used to the desert that is Hong Kong Disney were all put out that they had to wait in lines to ride rides. We may have reached the stage in our family life where we are just over amusement parks.
But fun was had by all. The children got to see what Santa and his elves look like in Korea. Younger, I would say than the typical US version.
And then, to close this post, what you are and are not allowed to do in Lotte World.

French Fries For Breakfast?

Option B:
 


Which would you chose?

Seoul Train

*Warning! My spell check seems to have turned itself off, and I'm rushing to get this off before head off for the airport!*

As I mentioned, there are a million awesome cultural opportunities right inside the city of Seoul. Jeff scheduled a DMZ tour for Thursday (shockingly enough, they don't allow children under age 10 to go to the DMZ?? Can you even imagine??), so that day, I planned to take the children to Lotte World, the World's Largest Indoor Amusement Park. But Wednesday was a free family day, so I was charged with coming up with Seoul Touring Options. Easy peasy!

Okay, family, listen up, show of hands for where you want to go!

1. Gyeongbokgung Palace (subway stop # 327!): The main palace of the Joseon Dynasty, with beautiful and relaxing grounds.

2. Changdeokgung Palace (subway stop # 328!): UNESCO has designated this well presereved place a World Cultural Heritage site! Biwon is the ideal Korean garden!

3. Insa-dong Traditional Cultural Street (subway stop #329!): With antique bookstores, shopes and traditional cafes as well as famous art galleries, this street provides you with a taste of the traditions and arts of Korea!

and because I am an idiot, I threw in this last tidbit.

4. Oh, and there is a KTX high speed train that runs around here somewhere. We could go see Busan, a port city, and see dead fish at the fish market.

The show of hands was instant. They all wanted to ride the high speed train to see dead fish! I finally, begrudgingly agreed (hello! Palaces! On the Subway!), only because I could entitle this post Seoul Train. I am a sucker for a good pun.

And in truth, I have always loved train travel, but what I realize as our children get older is that what I love about train travel is immersing myself in me. Reading, knitting, thinking, looking out the window. What I don't love about train travel is that small children require some attention during the trip. And this particular trip, which I did not actually do any research on, turned out to be three high speed hours all the way across Korea.

And so, off we went.

So, when I say that we traveled all the way across Korea, I'm not really kidding. I did do enough research to suggest that all we needed to do was head to the train station. High speed trains to Busan run every half hour or so. We arrived, bought our tickets, and settled in for a three hour train ride.
High speed!

Busan, I will say, for the brief period of time we spent there was also fabulous. It is a port city and has the same sort of highly evolved subway system that Seoul boasts. There was tons of easy access tourist info, and we were easily able to hop the subway and head over to the fish market. Which was everything you would expect from a fish market. It was a little more retail than commercial, but the stalls were row after row of one fish, two fish, red fish, blue fish, as well as, old fish, new fish, fat fish, small fish, flat fish, squid, snails, mollusks of every sort thing and the occasional octopus. Some photos:

And finally, an awesome Korean meal! Off to catch a plane! See you in a few days!!

We Won!

But barely. The Korean won (the currency! ha! I chortle gleefully at my clever puns!) is one of those currencies that makes me want to stamp my feet and yell something like, "Lop off a few zeros, would you, people! Sheesh!" Which may seem futile. However, a bunch of years back, I did raise my fist and shout something quite similar, directed at the Italian lira. And we know how that ended up. So, maybe not so futile?

Anyway, the won is something like 1200 won to one US dollar. And the currency operates down to a coin that is worth 100 (somethings). Which means if you are buying a fast food kind of breakfast, you could be charged 2500 for coffee, 1500 for french fries and 800 for a corn salad. Now, in four seconds, how much is that in US dollars? OK, I made that one rather easy; it's 4800 won, which is easily divisible by twelve. But now that you've done the maths yourself, can anyone please explain to me why they cannot lop those few zeros off and make everyone's life easier? Discuss amongst yourselves and if anyone comes up with a plan, please let me know.

I am loving South Korea; oddly enough, my first reaction to Seoul was something along the lines, of "Hey, I wouldn't mind living here." We are finding the likelihood of getting the "wrong" change exponentially higher here than in Our Fair City back in China, but that might just be a function of the Big City Lights being kind of blinding when foreigners are about. I think in Shanghai people are much more likely to get ripped off then where we live. But other than that, it's been a fine cultural experience. Foreigners are kind of like hen's teeth, but the local folk have been quite a bit easier on Hope than the Chinese tend to be. While people do a double take when she walks by, she is not being harassed for photos or autographs, and very few people reach out and touch her. It's kind of nice, actually.

The subways here are awesome!

I love me a good subway system, and the Seoul system is really high class. Not only are all of the subway stops labeled in Korean and a Roman character version of Korean, but there are subway maps everywhere with helpful little hints about how to get to the main attractions in the city (in English, no less!). Of which there are about a million. It really is an awesome place.

I will say the one small thing that has me a bit stumped is my complete and utter lack of Korean language. We are struck dumb again, and it's a tough way to operate. I remember feeling this way in Lisban a few years back. After a week in Portugal, I could say exactly one thing ("thank you") in Portuguese. And while I am used to struggling to communicate in China, being struck completely dumb and being unable to summon the strength to even work out "hello," "goodbye," "thank you" and "where's the bathroom" is kind of sad. Or maybe it's just a sign that we're in need of some R&R?

I'll leave you with a cute Hope story. We were the only foreigners riding in a packed subway car yesterday, when she turned to me and whispered, "Mum, do you see the man over there with the black hair?" Maybe the joke is funnier if you have been living in Asia for as long as we have, but I have to say, I almost fell over I was laughing so hard. "Well, let's see Hope, do you mean the tall man with black hair, the short man with black hair, the man with black hair with glasses, the man with black hair reading the newspaper, the man with black hair talking on his cell phone, the man with black hair standing by the door, the man with black hair with the red coat, ad infinitum.
 

Puffery

Puffery as a legal term refers to promotional statements and claims that express subjective rather than objective views, such that no reasonable person would take literally. When I used to work in marketing, we'd wrangle with the legal eagles all day and night over such stuff as "the most excellent snack your dog ever licked their chops over." Crappy English, yes, but is it a legal claim, or is it just silly ol' no-need-to-substantiate-it-legally puffery?

I was most pleased the other day to discover some fantastic puffery. I was notebook shopping, and never have I been so inspired! Come, soar with me, as we discover the depths people will sink to sell a notebook.

Just for you! So personal! For such an oddly impersonal item.
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I could sort of see this "technology for tomorrow" one on something like an MP4 device. Mostly because I have no idea what an MP4 device actually does. However, we are talking about paper. With your future outstanding activity most likely being writing. These are things humans worked out quite a bit ago. Maybe not as long as, say, fire, but certainly longer than the microwave.
Hard to argue with this one. Really, I've been trying to come up with something, but my brain keeps circling around the notion with naught but a wee spell of dizziness as the result. 
And this is the one I finally bought. Irresistible, to my noble-wannabe little brain.
Seoul is treating us rather well. We had a most interesting day today, which with a little luck and some good timing, I'll write up tomorrow. I have to say this screaming fast internet is a huge bonus. The tricky bit is that we brought only one electrical adapter with us (This is Korea! Different electrical outlets than China! Didn't really think of that!). Which means that only one thing can be plugged in at a time. If we plug in the router, Jeff and I can only operate as long as our batteries hold out. If one of us is low on battery, then the internet comes off the router. You get the picture, right? Besides, we're not exactly spending huge amounts of time holed up in our hotel room. Hopefully more tomorrow!