Burgers, Chocolate and Scrabble - What a Sunday

 Woke up a little tired and emotional last Sunday but the sun was shining so we dragged ourselves out of bed.  Where to go though was a problem.  The problem was based on food.  Feeling a little over boozed and under nourished, the regular dose of kimchi and rice just wasn’t going to cut it.  There-in lies the problem.  Where to go in Daejeon to get something to eat if you don’t want Korean food.  We had three options:  Stroll to Gung Dong or Dunsan-Dong and hopefully find somewhere satisfactory or jump the subway to Eunnangdong and similarly keep our fingers crossed.  We ruled Dunsan out quickly enough, comparing it to a Temple Bar of sorts.  Eunhang-Dong was next to go for fear that the hunger grumps would get us after a half an hour on the subway.  To Gung-Dong it was without much hope that we’d find something totally satisfactory.

The River on a Nice Sunny Day

As I said though, it was a lovely day, there was a slight nip in the air but the sun was shinning and there were plenty of people out and about, strolling along the river bank.  After crossing the river and coming up to the road just at the edge of Gung-Dong, Nick let out a little yelp ‘Play Burger! What’s that?’  That’s a burger joint in Dunsan I remember hearing good things about is what it is! ‘Yes! Let’s go!’  Delighted with ourselves, we were too excited to wait for the green man to cross the road and ran across to various stares and the odd car horn beep!

After such initial excitement, opening the door of Play Burger and going in, could have been a massive disappointment but it wasn’t.  It was like we’d just stepped out of South Korea and into a cosmopolitan European city cafe.  Very Exciting!  The first such place we’ve been in since we’ve been here, which incidentally is almost exactly four months now.  The menu was just burgers, not that you’d expect much else given the name of the place.  No explanations, just the names of each one in an altogether too cool for school minimalist menu, but with lovely friendly prices to boot!  The menu said they were committed to using the freshest of produce and that everything was made in-house and judging by what we were presented with they weren’t lying!  I don’t think either of us spoke for about fifteen minutes apart from the old yelp or exclamation of joy!  A burger too big to pick up, crammed with goodies, a massive green salad, a couple of hash browns and a re-fillable drink all for just over a fiver! 

 Nick Lookin' Chuffed With Himself!

The Best Burger in Korea

After eating and drinking our fill we headed off in search of a coffee, feeling pretty content with life!  Little did we know the day was going to get better!  We found this tiny little cafe with kitch decor and a bit of a French feel to it.  I ordered a hot chocolate not really feeling like a caffeine hit and my god was I glad I did when it came.  It was a cup of melted chocolate with a little jug of steamed milk to add to it.  I was tempted to leave the milk out of it altogether!

 The Spoon Was As Delighted As I Was!

I Put Nicks Spoon into My Chocolate Too So He Could Join the Fun! 

We were trying to think of what we’d do next, eating and drinking had been well and truely ticked at this stage which made thinking of something a bit difficult.  I had a vague memory of someone telling me about a cafe near by there where you could sit and play board games so we headed off in search of said place.  We found it, but it was shut.  Done and dusted, never to open again.  Big sad face.  A spanner in our almost perfect day.  Until we turned around and saw it across the street.  Delighted once more, off we went hoping we’d find a game of scrabble, in English and not Hangul.  We did!  I ordered a couple of drinks, Nick went off in search of the facilities, we snagged the game of scrabble and plonked ourselves down at a table.  Next thing I knew, Nick was saying he was hungry and it was 8pm!  What a day!    

Serious Scrabble Face!

Skiing in Pyeongchang

The Ski Season in Phoenix Park officially ended last weekend.  As a result, there were some pretty good deals to be hand.  A company called Adventure Korea was offering transport to and from Seoul, accommodation just off piste, lift pass and equipment rental all for 70,000won (about50euro).  Although it hasn't snowed all that much this winter, Pyeongchang, the area where Phoenix Park is, is due to host the Winter Olympics in 2018 so we figured the snow'd have to be half decent!  We booked the KTX, or fast train, for Friday night at 10, thinking we'd be up to Seoul by 11, find somewhere to stay and then meet up with the group the next morning.

Pyeongchang as seen from a cable car

We'd had a bit of a rough day in work, Fridays in general are never that nice, so when the train came and there was someone in one of our seats we weren't too shy about waking him up and telling him to clear off.  We caused a bit of a commotion, and the man didn't budge.  A ticket inspecter came along though so we thought he'd sort the eejit out for us.  Turns out, we were the eejits.  We were on the wrong train!  It was still going to Seoul though, just going there a bit slower, so it was almost midnight when we arrived, without a notion of where we might stay.  We had planned to stay in a jjimjilbang, but neither of us having been to one yet, we decided that we'd try and find a cheap love motel instead.  We found one without too much hassle and just as I sat down on the bed I realised that I hadn't a notion as to where we were meant to be meeting the group the next morning!  I had to ring a friend in Daejeon to get her to look it up.  With panic number two over I was out like a light.

I'd set the alarm before going to sleep but got woken by a text message.  Who the hell is texting me before half six in the morning I wondered.  The answer was nobody.  It wasn't half six.  It was ten past eight.  Forty mins AFTER the meeting time.  I had somehow managed to set the alarm for 8:45.  Brilliant!  Panic number three!  I've never seen either of us get up and dressed and out the door so quickly!  We jumped a taxi to the bus station and bought a ticket to Pyeongchang, then belted across the road to a PC Bang (internet cafe) to look up the phone number of the guy we were meant to meet and tell him we were chasing them!  Got it, legged it back to the bus station with about 5 minutes to spare and finally let out a massive sigh of relief!

After a particularly wobbly start, everything else went as smoothly as you'd hope for.  We arrived, met the guy, dumped our stuff in our room, got our pass and gear and jumped into a cable car.  The day had been pretty overcast up to that point, it even tried to snow a few times but as we got to the top of the mountain the sun came out.  It was so nice to be back in the mountains on a pair of skis.  I really want to do another ski season, being there just gave me the thirst for blood!

The view from the top

Acting the eejit

Nick stylin' it

The lift passes are structured in a slightly odd way.  There are morning ones, afternoon ones, and two night time ones.  Ours went from 12:30pm to 4:30pm and from 6:00pm to 11:00pm but there was another one you could get from 11:00pm to 02:00am.  I couldn't believe the number of headbangers out on the slopes 'til that time.  I suppose if you do work like a lunatic and that's the only chance you get to hit the slopes you would, still seems a bit crazy to me though.

Night Skiing

This should read 'Play Hard, Drink Hard, Smoke Hard, but only after you've worked hard too'!

The slopes were dominated by boarders.  There were very few skiers to be seen.  And the get up on the lot of them was crazy.  Ski slopes can be fashion shows at the best of times but this was something else.  Everything was brand new and all designer.  They seemed to treat their boards quite carelessly, and it seems on purpose.  There's an overwhelming sense of being 'too cool for school' about the place.  Although I suppose if you work like a lunatic, splashing out on new snowboarding kit probably seems like a very worthwhile expense.

Nick desperating searching through his phrase book to chat up one such boarder!

Anyway...got on the slopes and got back into the swing of things fairly quickly.  Had a brilliant day despite my boots being the smallest, most uncomfortable pair in the world and my ski's never having been edged or waxed!  Filled up on a load of sundubu jigae, hit the sauna to ease the aches, had a few beers and fell asleep feeling pretty content with the world!!

Smallest Ski Boots in the World...barely came past my ankle!

2012: The Year Of Joseph Kony's Demise?

I came across this video (http://vimeo.com/37119711) on Facebook a few days ago. Since then it's been shared and re-shared a mind boggling number of times.  Before I’d watched it, The LRA, or Lord’s Resistance Army, was an organistation that rang very distant bells in my mind, nothing more.  Who they were, or what they did I couldn’t’ve told you.  As for Joseph Kony, the leader of the organisation, my response would’ve been ‘Joseph who?’.

After watching it, I cannot believe that I wasn’t aware of Kony’s existance.  All well and good recognising the organisations name, but not knowing the name of the person or people behind said organisation leaves you a little bit on the ignorant side of things!  Invisible Children, the people behind the above video, state that Kony’s rebel war is the longest running war in Africa.  A war that forces children, known as night commuters, to travel from their homes each night to the relative safety of a town, to avoid being kidnapped by Kony’s cronies.  And I hadn’t heard of him.  Embassing?  Disgraceful?  A typical westerner with a disbelieving what-difference-can-I-make attitude?  All of the above?

Watch the video.  It's half an hour.  Its powerful.  Its moving. Watch it and then decide for yourself whether you should pledge your support to Invisible Children or not. There are always two sides to every story.

If you want the other side, you could start here:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/reality-check-with-polly-curtis/2012/mar/08/kony-2012-what-s-the-story

http://www.hugoodoherty.com/2012/03/08/a-hypothetical-kony-2012-situation-success/

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=KLVY5jBnD-E

Valentines Day

These chocolates were on my desk when we got into work yesterday.  Valentines Day pressies from the boss!
It seems to be a pretty big deal in Korea.  All the kids in school kept saying to us on Tuesday 'Valentine Day tomorrow teacher!'.  In South Korea, and in Japan as well as far as I'm aware, it's traditional for the girls to give the boys chocolates so lots of Nicks students yesterday asked him if I'd given him any!

Mother Teresa: A Tainted Saint?

Kolkata, or Calcutta as it was formerly known, is a total melting pot of people, lifestyles and cultures with everybody going about their business in whatever manner it needs to be done. Some eking out a living shining shoes, shaving people on street corners, hawking, repairing and servicing items that look like they’ll never work again, washing, sweeping.  Some dressed to impress,  straight off the set of the latest Tollywood (Calcutta’s film industry is known as Tollywood) film.  The list goes on and on.  All sorts of people, all sorts of wealth, all states of health, all shapes and sizes and yet, all smiling.  A big city with a big heart but a with small-town, friendly feeling.  It’s a heaving cosmopolitan city which, at first glance, is most obviously apparent in the hairstyles of the women!

Going to Calcutta was never meant to be about volunteering, for me.  It was the one place in India that I thought might be ‘too much’ for me.  I thought it might be better visited with company, rather than alone.  But, it was my second time in India and I felt it was a must, so I plucked up the courage and booked a train ticket.  After being there a few days though, I was inspired to do something useful with myself.  The atmosphere in the city was so welcoming, so warm and there appeared to be endless opportunities to help the thousands who needed it, so I decided to stay a while and get stuck in.

I ended up staying in a guest house called Modern Lodge.  Modern it was not!  But that wasn’t what was unusual about it.  What was unusual, was that almost all the rooms were occupied by semi long-term volunteers at the ‘Mother House’, the commonly used name for Mother Teresa’s Charity body in Calcutta, called the Missionaries of Charity.  It seemed so strange that all these young people were volunteering at such a religious organisation.  Were they all devoutly Catholic? Surely Not.  Maybe the attraction was the ease with which you could get involved.  You can volunteer with the Missionaries of Charity for whatever time you choose, one day or one year. You sign up and start immediately.  You don’t pay anything, nor are you asked for a monetary contribution.  It suits backpackers.  You can breeze in and breeze out.  Although I would’ve preferred to volunteer at a secular organisation, I was intrigued by the Mother House and wanted to see what all the fuss was about.

As a volunteer, your day starts at 7:25.  Everyone meets at the Mother House.  This is where Mother Teresa’s body in entombed.  The nuns lead a few prayers and a hymn or two, dish out a banana to everyone and then you head off on your way.  There are eight different parts to the organisation. Some are for adults in varying degrees of ill-health, some are for children and some are for the mentally disabled.

I volunteered at Premdan, a home for men and women who have nowhere else to go and nobody else to help them.  They are not quite on their death beds, but they aren’t too far off them either. Kalighat, which at the time was closed for renovations, is known as the ‘home for the dying’ and Premdan seems to get their overflow.  With Kalighat closed, both lots of patients were in Premdan.  My first impression of the place was ‘This place is a bit odd’.  Men and women are completely seperated, and therefore so too were the volunteers.  The seperation is to such an extent that it has a slight prison feel to it.  The men and women are not just on different floors, they are in different buildings, with different staff.  Not that I was surprised by this, but it also has a very convent type feel to it.  Lots of nuns, lots of statues and lots of prayers being mumbled under peoples breath.

The women,or Masis, who work there year round are from neighbouring slums.  They are employed to cook, clean and generally keep the place going.  They are typical Indian women, in that they are tough and they can be quite harsh with the patients.  They show very little compassion to these sick women and are happy to let them drag themselves, often naked, along the floor to get to the bathroom rather than helping them get there.

A volunteer’s day starts with washing.  Washing sheets and hospital gowns to be more specific. Hand washing.  The Masis wash the sheets to begin with, before they are given over to the volunteers.  Then the volunteers wash them three or four more times, in cold water.  They are carried up to the roof by the bucket load and hung out to dry.  I have no problem hand washing clothes but given that these garments are more often than not covered with urine, feces and blood, surely a industrial washing machines would do a better, more sanitary job.  However, the Missionaries of Charity refuse to buy them.  Washing sheets by hand is god’s will, didn’t you know?  He did not intend us to have machines to do it for us.  Washing sheets is the main job done by volunteers, even those who have medical backgounds who would be better put to use in multiple other ways.

The washing takes the guts of two hours.  Then there’s a tea break, for the volunteers.  Tea and bananas all round.  The patients lunch time is next and this is the first real exposure, as a female volunteer, that you have to any of the women in the facility.  There are always men out in the court yard, lying on the ground or sitting awkwardly on the walls, so you see some of them each morning when you arrive.  There are never any women out there with them though.  They never leave their beds.  There is no physical rehabilitation provided nor is there any mental stimulation for these women.  They spend all day, everyday, inside with nothing to do to.  They come in sick and they get worse.  Most never leave.

On my first day as a volunteer, I wasn’t too sure what to expect, but what I saw shocked me.  I was well out of my comfort zone.  Some of the women were just old.  Some had an injury of some sort (a head wound from being pushed onto train tracks for example), some seemed close to death and others were indescribable, their conditions indecipherable.  The few women who can walk, do, while the others are dragged or pushed out onto the balcony for lunch.  The really sick ones stay in bed.  I was called inside to help feed one of the women still in her bed.  She couldn’t sit up, with or without help.  Her legs were just skin and bone, her head lolled to one side and when she tried to eat, a horribly haunting grinding noise came from her throat.  She ate some of the food but a lot when down her chin.  I did my best to help her but I was well out of my depth.

After lunch time you’ve to help get the women back to bed.  Meal time is the only bit of movement they get.  They spend the rest of each day lying helplessly in bed.  Some of the women are so wretched, so desperate.  It was unnerving to see.  One woman in particular will stay with me forever.  When I saw her, I honestly thought she was dead.  I did a double take.  I couldn’t speak and my eyes welled up.  She was skin and bone.  She had been burnt.  Most likely by her in-laws, a dowry burning of some sort.  One of her eyes was gone, there was just a hollow socket where it should have been.  The other was burnt pink and raw.  She had no hair.  Her nose, top lip and ears had melted off.  Her arms and legs were covered in severe burns.  How she was alive I don’t know.  How long she lived there without proper medical treatment I don’t know either. It can’t have been very long.  I could go on and on about the people I saw and the conditions they were in but, this isn’t so much about them, as it is about the Missionaries of Charity.

During the first few days I spent at Premdan, I had such a feeling of helplessness.  I was completely overwhelmed by it all, shocked and constantly on the verge of tears.  With a bit more time though I started to question lots of things.  I got no answers, or none that satisfied me anyway.  I overheard a volunteer, a middle aged British nurse, saying that she had been to Mother Teresa’s beautification in Rome and had received a piece of her sari.  She said she rubbed it on a dying man’s body in whatever hospital she was working in at the time, and he miraculously recovered.  She wasn’t joking! She really believed that a piece of sari had cured him.  It was scary to hear.  The power of ‘The Mother’ is well and truely alive and kicking!

The amount of full time staff working for the Missionaries of Charity, who are skilled in any capacity, is minimal.  Very few of the sisters working on the varying wounds and infections, doing the dressings etc, have any formal medical, or even first aid, training.  Skin diseases and infections are rife among the patients, yet the staff don’t wash their hands or change their gloves from one patient to the next.  Is that the result of ignorance and a lack of education or is it a matter of blind faith and belief that ‘the mother’ is watching over everyone.  I fear it is the latter.

The amount of volunteer traffic through the organisation every year is massive.  But are they really any use?  Using volunteers to wash sheets and wash the dishes after lunch probably isn’t getting the most out of their time.  Would it not be better to have them interact with the patients, providing some much needed mental and physical stimulation?  And what about the medical workers who volunteer there?  Surely using them to wash sheets, when they could be helping with dressings and medications, is counter productive?  

It’s impossible to come to a place like Calcutta and force our western views on it.  It is different to the places we are used it, its works differently, it survives differently.  Life in Calcutta can seem at times to be survival of the fittest at its most elemental.  People do what they have to in order to survive.  If that means abandoning a disabled family member to keep everyone else alive then that’s what’s done, in much the same way as a weak buffalo calf will be left behind by the herd if it can’t keep up.  Some of these marginalised people end up in the care of the Missionaries of Charity.  It cannot be denied that providing a refuge for these people is a good thing.  However, the charity has received millions of dollars in donations over the course of its life, and continues to do so.  They cannot account for the money they receive.  They have been questioned on this by many, and still they refuse to account for it.  The level of care given to these people, the fact that very few are ever rehabilitated enough to leave, just doesn’t seem acceptable for a charity with such spending power, western outlook or no western outlook.  Buying washing machines and disposable latex gloves, such simple things that would improve sanitation and hygiene beyond belief, are not beyond their means and I cannot imagine god would be too put out about it!

You could probably use every adjective known to describe the Mother House and its various branches, and all would be at least partially correct from someone's perspective.  The staff may be rough at times but they give their lives, day in and day out, to these people.  Volunteers often seem to feel that criticising that, and they way they do it, their methods, coming from a cosy western background is hugely hypocritical.  However, basic human needs are being denied to these patients and not because of a lack of funding, but because of a blind trust in god and his will.  Mother Teresa is revered world wide as one of the greatest do good-ers of modern times.  A selfless individual who devoted her life to helping people who needed it most.  However, delve a little deeper and the smell of roses fades rapidly.

If you would like to read more about this, these links are a good place to start.  However, they are not the only places you’ll find information like this.

A ‘Big Think’ article written by Hemley Gonzalaz:
http://bigthink.com/ideas/41486?page=1

Hemley Gonzalaz’ corresponding Facebook Page:
http://www.facebook.com/missionariesofcharity

Mother Teresa at a glance:
http://bklists.blogspot.com/2011/05/five-lesser-known-facts-about-mother.html

A Channel4 Documentary narrated by Christopher Hitchens:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9WQ0i3nCx60

Mother Teresa: The Final Verdict by Aroup Chatterjee.  This book inspired the above Channel4 documentary.
http://www.meteorbooks.com/index.html

What have I been doing with my time?

I've been pretty quiet of late, on my blog that is.  Things here are starting to become 'normal'.  All the strange and exotic things when we first arrived have all begun to blend into the background as we go about our daily business much like anyone else, anywhere else.  The language doesn't seem as alien.  The food which had so many unknown flavours in it when we arrived, is now exactly what I crave. When we got here first, I remember a friend telling me how she loves eating seaweed paper.  She said she used to be a crisp monster at home (Ireland) but now she chows down on seaweed when she's watching telly instead! I thought she was a lunatic but I'm beginning to understand what she was on about!  There is something nice about it alright!

I've started doing an online TEFL course.  I started it almost two weeks ago now.  That's another reason I've been so quiet.  It's taking up a lot more time than I thought it would.  It's a fairly intensive course; 120hours in 100days. I'm trying to do it in three, three hour blocks a week.  All the grammar is killing me!  I know what it all is, I've just no idea of the names of all the different things but getting my head 'round it all has already started to have benefits in school.  It's crazy really that Korean schools employ people like me, with no teaching qualifications what so ever.  Especially when you think that the kids parents are paying roughly US$1000 a month per child!

What else have I been doing with my time? I've been trying to get a bit fitter.  I started a program three weeks ago.  Its half an hour four mornings a week.  Friday will be the last day of it.  It's been mainly conditioning rather that aerobic cardio kind of stuff but i'm feeling so much stronger.  Once the weather warms up a bit more I'll get out and start running too.  We've got a really nice park about a kilometer up the road, with loads of exercise machines which is where Nick's been doing his running (until he sprained his ankle) and the river is really close by too.   You can run along the river bank for about twenty miles (if that's your thing!)

The track along the riverside, goes on both sides for about 20miles

Work's been going well.  Time is flying by, everyday seems like Friday!  One of the Korean teachers, Kate (who's 19 and isn't actually a teacher either), is working at Lexis during a year out from college (where she's studying Theology).  The aim is to improve her English enough so that she can pass the TEOFL exam and hopefully go to the States on erasmus.  Her reading and writing are almost flawless but her ability to understand and speak English are virtually non-existant.  When she reads, she has no comprehension of what it is that she's just read! Anyway, I take her for a conversation class once a week.  Last week she started telling me about her church and how much she loves it.  She spends every Sunday there from 10:30am til 9pm.  The church is on the 2nd floor of the building she lives in.  Her dad is one of the pastors.  When I told her I didn't believe in god, she asked me what I believe in.  She said, in a disbelieving, shocked voice 'Do you think we come from monkeys?'  So we spent the rest of the class taking about Darwin's Theory of Evolution and at the end of the class I'm not sure who thought who was more mad in the head!

Anyway, that's just a bit of background on Kate.  What I really wanted to say is what happened the next day!  I teach a class of twelve and thirteen year olds, called CH, three times a week, for half an hour each time.  They are one of the nicer/easier class I have.  They always do their homework, they rarely chat in class, if they are messing and you ask them to stop they will etc etc.  Anyway, I walked into their class last Wednesday and they were all standing up, gathered round each other, looking a bit distraught.  They are usually sitting at their desks so I knew immediately that something was up.  I asked one of the girls, Emma, what had happened and she said 'Kate teacher hit us' and put out her hand to show me.  Hitting the kids is a fairly common occurance in the regular schools but its almost unheard of in the academys or hagwons.  Apparently they hadn't been working hard enough so Kate had belted them all across the palm with a metal ruler.  Emma's hand seemed the worst.  You could see where the ruler had come down and her hand was all swollen on either side of the welt.  She couldn't move it, let alone pick up a pen!  I couldn't believe it.  Here she was, preaching to me all about her god and how happy her religion made her feel just the day before, and then the next day bashing the kids about the classroom!

Apart from the Kate incident though, my TEFL and my exercise are all the news I really have.  I'm settling down into being a 'real person' with a 'real job' and so far so good.  We really have such great little lives for ourselves here, the only thing missing is the sun!  Roll on the summer heat I say!

Barbequed Streaky Pork Belly

Why has nobody told me about Samgyeopsal (삼겹살 ) before?? I've been here two months and I had it for the first time last week when I went out for dinner with a friend.  It's basically barbequed streaky pork belly but my god is it delicious!  Koreans are pretty big into their barbeques.  Nearly every second restaurant here has grills in-built into the tables.

The meat arrives and you lob it onto your grill with a set of tongs.  You're given a scissors (Koreans dont really use knives at the table) as-well, so once the meat has cooked a bit on each side you chop it up into bite sized pieces.  Then all the banchan arrive.  Banchan are side-dishes, and no Korean meal ever comes without them.  They vary hugely from place to place, and often from dish to dish, but you always get at least Kimchi and some sort of pickled radish.

We got loads of tasty banchan with the Samgyeopsal the other night.  Garlic cloves, onions and big pieces of Kimchi, all of which you through on the grill too, some shredded spring onions and bean sprouts and a few sauces.  You also get lettuce leaves and seasame leaves, the idea being that you use them as wrappers.  Pop a bit of everything into the leaf and make a little parcel.  Then lob it all into your mouth, mmmm!

It was so tasty that I dragged Nick to a BBQ joint on our street on Sunday for more!  We've been a bit wary of eating barbeque here because when we got to Seoul initially, we ended up with barbequed pig's intestine one evening, which wasn't fantastic.  Also, we were sick of smelling of our food for hours after we'd eaten.  Anyway, I promised him it was real tasty and marched him in the door!

It seemed to be a slightly more upmarket place than I'd eaten in during the week.  The barbeque was coal fired, not gas, and the prices were that little bit higher.  The banchan were also better, another tell tale sign of a slightly better place.  We got a big bowl of soup (the black pot in the photo in front of Nicks right arm) and an omlette (in the other black bowl, behind Nick's hand!).  Other than that the banchan were all the same, and just as tasty second time round.

Just as we were getting stuck into cooking our pork, the lady that owns the little corner shop beside our apartment came in with her son, who was about to head off to do his army service.  They sat down at the table next to us, ordered some barbeque and a bottle of soju 소주 (a very common local vodka type drink, drunk straight, in small shot glasses) and bought us the coke you can see in the photo!

If you run out of anything, bar the meat, you just ring the little bell on your table and ask for more at no extra cost.  We didn't need to ring the bell, but we didn't exactly leave much behind us either!!    

 And all this, plus a big beer each, for only 26,000won or about 18euro!

Mayhem at the Camel Mela

With twelve weeks in India at the tail end of a trip, I had only one plan: to make it to the annual Camel Mela in Pushkar.  I had read that it's a week-long festival in November and that there would be somewhere in the region of 20,000 camels, thousands more cows and horses, and masses of people at it. It sounded like total madness, something not to be missed, plus it gave me the perfect excuse to go back to Pushkar again.

Pushkar, Rajastan

I arrived to Ajmer train station at 5am and took myself off to the waiting room ‘til it got bright.  By quarter to six though, I was fed up waiting and decided to make a move.  After a fair amount of haggling over the price, and refusing to pay extra for my rucksack, I got on a bus and was the only white face in a sea of turban-wearing, lungi-glad Rajastani camel-drivers and cattle-herders, all headed for the Mela.  I couldn’t have been happier, they were all staring at me and I just sat there grinning back at them like an eejit!

When I got to Pushkar, finding somewhere to stay was difficult enough.  The town was hoppin', so lots of the guest houses were full and any that did have rooms, had seriously upped their prices for the Mela.  I was pretty tired, and having just been on two back-to-back overnight train journeys, my patience wasn’t the best.  I did find somewhere to stay though, and after a ‘welcome chai’ with the guest-house owners, I took myself off for a much needed shower.  

There's nothing like a good aul cold-water bucket shower to wake you up! Feeling well refreshed, I wandered off in search of the Mela ground and I got super excited when I saw a camel! I was wandering through the narrow streets wondering where all the action was when suddenly I came across it all. I’m not sure what I’d been expecting, it being a camel fair, but I was totally overwhelmed by the sheer number of animals and all the crazy paraphernalia that went with them!  There were animals and people all over the shop!

I got lost amid all the neon turbans and the stalls selling camel nose-rings and bells for their ankles, but I found the Mela ground just in time to watch the horse and camel dancing competitions.  Hilarious!  I sat down in the shade and absorbed the madness!  One camel spat at the judges, much to the amusement of the crowd.  Needless to say, he didn’t win!  Ah, Pushkar! What a great place!  

Horse Dancing Competition

As part of the fair there were dancing competitions, turban tying competitions, moustache competitions and snake charming competitions.  There was ice cream made with camel milk and paper made from camel dung.  There were free camel rides as well as a full-on fun fair.  There were people collecting fresh dung to sell as fuel.  There were lots of bargains to be had but there were also scams a plenty.  

Moustache Competition

Dung for Sale!

The Fun Fair in Full Swing!

There were hundreds of make-shift tents and restaurants to cope with the influx of people, lots of extra buses and 24hr entertainment for all the festival goers.  On top of all this, the week-long Camel Mela coincides with a religious festival, which comes complete with all the usual Indian trimmings, just to add to the madness.

The beginning of the week seemed to be when most of the serious buying and selling of the animals was carried out.  The middle of the week was mainly for the tourists, Indian and foreign alike, with lots of evening entertainment and plenty of events to get the crowd involved.  The last day of the fair coincides with a full moon and it is at midnight on this night that the religious part of the festival reaches its peak.  The devout have been fasting for the previous twenty-four hours and then at midnight there’s a mass-bathing in the holy lake, in the centre of the town, followed by a big feast and lots of loud singing, chanting and drum-beating.  This all continues into the wee hours of the morning.  

The next day the town clears out at an alarmingly fast rate and everyone goes back to the regular humdrum of their daily lives! Pushkar, is once again, returned to the sleepy little town that it is and all traces of the fair are wiped out, until the next Mela!

Nice Calm Sunset over the lake, after the Mela.