I'm baaaaaaack!!!

Holy cow....

It's been way too long since I've touched this thing.

So many things in my life have changed since my last post.  Instead of writing about life, I've been living it.  I really wish I could write about all of it right now...sometimes it's much more interesting to do that.  But I find myself so busy these days...much busier than being back at Maple Leaf, that's for sure.

You're wondering where I am.  I'm back in my native Vancouver.  That's right...I'm no longer an expat.  All those times are just memories now.  It was an amazing three years abroad. I have no regrets in leaving Canada for that amount of time.  I traveled to some great places and have met some great friends that I'll never ever forget.

But my real struggles start now.  Expatriation was surprisingly easy for me. It might seem like a struggle for some.  I think it gets easier over time. Some even come to love it.  I suppose it all depends on how you go about living life and traveling out there.  Only now in retrospect, in the comfort of my home, do I have a deep appreciation of what has happened to me in the last 3 years.  I miss being abroad, and I realize now how brave expats really are.  Maybe one day, I'll go back out there...

I have found, and as many expats have found, repatriation is hard.  I'd go so far to say that it is the most difficult part of being an expat.  My first few months back home...well...let's just say I'll be writing about that later...a lot about that later...

And now for catch-up blogging!  I gotta finish off my stories from my final year abroad...

*     *     *

I'm too lazy to actually put pictures up of Yangshuo, so I'll just make a bullet list of some interesting things that led up to Spring Festival 2013...I'll do Yangshuo later.

• Another Shanghai bachelor party.  Trained it to Nanjing then to Shanghai.  Highlights: a colleague throwing a large McDonald's drink at a taxi that almost ran us over, seeing Chinese youth dance to Indian beats in a Nanjing nightclub, eating a delicious Teppanyaki  feast, and then replacing beer with a bottle of scotch because I wasn't getting drunk fast enough.  Needless to say, that last one was foolish of me. I was the first one to drop that night.  Apparently, I did tough guy shots again, but I don't seem to remember.  My colleague Joe had to drag my sorry ass back to the hotel. What a great guy. The next day, I had lunch with Hedy near Hongqiao Airport. We had one of our shared favorites  - American BBQ ribs. Coming from Wuhan where that doesn't exist, it was pretty effing sweet.
• I "fought" a student during Sports Day.  Muay Thai Boran vs. North Korean Tae Kwon Do. Highlight (accident) of the fight: I took a full on flying kick to the face which stunned the crowd.  In the end, I was "killed."  Students loved seeing me dead, and my victorious opponent was deemed "the most dangerous student at Maple Leaf."
• Cathy left Maple Leaf in January for a seemingly better job.  Seemingly.  Yes it is a lot calmer and less bothersome than being a Maple Leaf counselor, but it is also quite isolated and the pay was initially not as much.  However, we think it was a good move and she's "moving up." Now she's getting better pay for a less stressful job.  Cathy also moved in with me just before the end of her time at Maple Leaf.
• A swanky bar at the Royal Grace Hotel opened up near Wanke Cheng Shi Hua Yuan (Wanke Garden City), an apartment complex where most of the teachers lived.  I'm not much of a mixed drink guy, but my new favorite mixed drink is hands down the Singapore Sling.

Epic Fail

Well, well, well...I totally effed up real bad.  I haven't written about my vacation with Cathy, Hedy and Alex in Yangshuo yet, and now I'm on vacation again!  Right now, I'm in Bangkok doing some training in Muay Thai with Kru Suphan again.  To top it all off, not only did I miss posting about Yangshuo, I went to Nanjing and Shanghai in November.  Lots of stuff has happened at the school too.  I'll have lots of time to blog once I'm in Seoul, so maybe that's when I'll actually sit down and write.

Muay Thai With Kru Suphan/ End of summer 2012

Okay, so I sort of lied about updating this thing throughout summer. I have 1 more week before I go back to Wuhan.  It also happens that I'm in Seoul right now and it's raining hard, so I guess I have time to update this thing.

This summer has proved to be both one of the best and worst.  I'll fill in the details in later posts, but I'll just summarize right now.  Travelling to Ottawa, Boston, Seattle and Seoul has squashed the travel bug in me...at least for now.  Getting to see my brother Rob after two years was definitely a big deal.  The only thing that prevents it from being the best thing during summer was the fact that he finally managed to beat my Liu Kang in Mortal Kombat. I'll get you for that, Rob.

In Vancouver, I got to hang out with my awesome friends and do really cool activities. Some highlights include yachting (thanks Jeremy and Fei), firing lead down range (thanks Jer and Mark), eating delicious white food (thanks Kristy) and drinking bubble tea (thanks Henry), figuring out how to finally navigate Richmond (thanks Hedy), and having quality manversations with various guy friends.

The two biggest highlights were about Cathy and Honey. One was good and one not so good.  Cathy visited Vancouver with a bunch of Maple Leaf students, and I had the privilege of "kidnapping" her for a couple of hours here and there to be with her in my native BC.  She managed to see my friends Anthony, Henry, and Puja, as well as Mom, Dad and my Aunt Peggy.  That was the good thing.  The not so good thing was the death of my pet dog and best friend Honey.  Again, I'll fill in details in later posts.

Okay.  Since I failed to put out a large post on my Muay Thai lessons in Bangkok, I'll just post a video.  In short, my time with Kru Suphan and his assistant Mami was so fun and educational that I'm going back for 1 more week at the end of my 5 week holiday next year.

Chiang Mai

One more week until my colleagues and I are back to our adventures.  How fitting I'm blogging about Thailand right now because that's where I plan to go...again.  I was planning to go to Nepal, but that fell through.  Apparently, it takes at least a 2-3 week tour just to see Mount Everest on foot.  Other tours through valleys and mountain passes were 9 days, which I do not have.  I also didn't want to helicopter the Himalayas, so I put Nepal on hold for now.  I looked to alternatives.  Cathy and my parents suggested I go back to Thailand.  It was a tossup between that and going to Tokyo. I chose Thailand.

Yes, I really like it down there. The shopping prices are right, the people are friendly, it's easy to navigate, and the food is crazy delicious.  So sue me if it's cliche as an expat to say that I love Thailand.  I'm going there for hardcore Muay Thai training.  For those unaware, Muay Thai is Thai boxing.  By hardcore training, I mean about 6-8 hours a day. I just hope that my body won't shut down half way through the week.

Okay. Enough about my plans.  They'll happen and I'll blog about them later...check back for updates.  Back to my trip to Chiang Mai.  Hands down it's my favorite place in Thailand until I travel more of the country and find somewhere better.

Cathy choosing lunch at a cafe inside the old city walls 

Lemongrass juice.  It wasn't that great, but at least it was fresh.

Thai yellow curry with chicken? I don't remember what I got, but it was delicious.

We went temple-hopping for the day within the old city. Before sunset, we stopped for a massage in what looked like a refurnished family garage. The old ladies who massaged us had awesome hand strength. They mashed Cathy and I as if we were pieces of dough for making bread.

Wat Chedi Luang

Cathy trying out the prayer bells.

Street food in Chiang Mai is diverse and flavorful.  Something about the
Burmese and hill tribe minorities' influence of the area?  I had fried fish in sour sauce,
mango pad thai, some sort of white dessert, and a Singha beer for dinner.

Mango Pad Thai.  Not sure where the mangoes in it were...

Cathy loved trying different roti.  They're more or less crepes.

The Night Market is filled with interesting things to buy.
I got myself a set of standard Thai spices for cooking.
I suppose since I'm going back down to Bangkok, I should learn
how to use them in a cooking course...

After walking around the Night Market, we found some seats near a free performance,
got some coconuts and fruit smoothies, and relaxed as we people-watched.

Stealing the Seoul of South Korea! Part 7

Day 7

Apparently, unbeknownst to many people, Chinese tourists visiting Seoul really like to take pictures at Ewha Women's University.  It was my first stop of the day.  When I finally got there from Myeong Dong, I wondered what was so interesting about it.  It was a nice university campus, but that was about it. Some of the buildings reminded me of UBC.

After looking around, I ended up stranded at a nearby Dunkin' Donuts because snow was coming down hard.  Luckily, I had some postcards that needed writing in my bag and a wad of cash in my pocket to buy multiple cafe lattes.

By the time I was done writing, the snow did not let up.  I walked back to the nearest subway stop and got myself to Gangnam, a popular but expensive area for the people of Seoul to hang out, learn English, and get a face lift.  Found an Irish pub for my usual Guinness that I drink when traveling, but no one was inside.  Lame...the Guinness would have to wait.  Settled for street food instead.

Getting back into the downtown area, I tried to find city hall, but stumbled over a really quiet palace park called Deoksugung Palace. Normally, I figured if I saw one palace, I've seen 'em all, but the snow made the area really nice. I went in to look around.

It was beginning to get dark, so I went back to my home stay to get ready for my second hapkido lesson. Mama and some other old lady were cooking Korean pancakes and some sort of sweet sauce (I think Mama was trying to tell me it was homemade jam).  They sat me down and fed me well before I took off to Itaewon.

More people were at the school this time.  There was some group activity, but then we paired off for the bulk of the time.  My partner and I practiced various joint-lock take downs. It was a lot of fun and refreshed my skills quite a bit, but Master Kim was all...well...Asian about it...

While trying to execute a take-down from a full nelson, Master Kim comes over and sees me talking my way through the whole affair...


"No! No, not too much thinking. Everything soft...hapkido is about feeling [grabs Paul's arm].  You search for pressure points okay!  [massages Paul's arm]...You feel...[graduates to a vulnerable joint and applies pressure, Paul tries to fight pain] attack...feel [moves up the arm and applies pressure to a pressure point, Paul cringes in pain] attack...feel [moves again and Paul contorts face in even more pain] attack...feel [moves down to Paul's wrist while wrenching at it. Discovers Paul's home stay's bandage while Paul is tapping-out].  Oh! What's that?


After the lesson, I bid Master Kim and the black belts a thank you and farewell.  I also told them I'd be back in summer for another week of lessons. I plan to keep my word on that one.

I got back to my home stay pretty late.  The next day I would leave Mama's home stay for a really nice hotel, so I spent late evening packing up my stuff.

Stealing the Seoul of South Korea! Part 6

I didn't take too many pictures on day six. Mama woke me up again.  After breakfast, I contacted a Hapkido dojang in Itaewon to confirm a lesson that evening.

I decided to go to two places: the business district of Yeouido and Seodaemun Prison just outside of downtown.  I started with the latter.  The place has a pretty violent history.  Patriots of Korean Independence during the Japanese Occupation were tortured and killed here in extremely painful ways (chained up and beaten to death with a lead pipe, anyone?).  Apparently, there are mechanical figure depictions of such brutality inside the prison.  Quite a different way of presenting colonial history than in Japan.  It's more in tune with what you'd see in China, Philippines...other parts of Asia for sure...

Seodaemun Prison entrance

A view of the prison from a distance. Closed on Mondays.

...Alas, I only know of this place through internet searches.  Unfortunately for me, it was a Monday.  As I should have suspected, the prison was closed (where in the Old World are museums an monuments not closed on Mondays?).  I guess I'll have to come back one day. Instead, I just walked around the area to take a look at what Seoul was like outside the city core.  The area around the prison was pretty nice, despite a large viaduct cutting through it.  There were various hills surrounding the neighborhood, and a jjimjibang across the street.  I wanted to go in, but realized that I should have my martial art lesson first.

I headed to Yeouido across the Han River immediately after, which was little more than a business district.  Walked the whole strip of Yeouido Park and got to the National Assembly Building, which, according to Kwangseok, "has better fighting than K1 boxing."  I've seen the news on this. Apparently, flying chairs, shoes, and fire extinguishers were frequent appearances all within the last decade.  Apparently the civilized aren't so much what they proclaim to be...be it Imperial Japanese colonialists, or suits in the modern South Korean Assembly.

Seoul has done pretty well for itself.  From having
patriots imprisoned 70 years ago, a bloody war 60 years ago to
glistening high-rises overlooking a nice park?

The National Assembly...or is it the SK gladiator stadium?

Taking a right turn, I went to the Han River and walked around a really nice riverfront park.  It was deserted.  However, Sue told me that many people pile into that area during summer and have fried chicken and beer delivered to their location in the park. Sounds like a good time to me.  I decided to take a stroll up to a Seoul landmark: The 63 story tower, which, by the way, is a beautiful building.

Practiced some manual exposure shots on this
Seoul landmark.

I went back to get prepared for my hapkido lesson and left for Itaewon early to get some dinner.  And then I saw it...Taco Bell.  Earlier, Sue mentioned that there was Taco Bell in Seoul, but we never bothered going there.

You people back in North America might be saying, "What's so special about Taco Bell?"  Well, if you say that to someone who doesn't have the vast choices of fast food as you do (ie: the bulk of people in Asia), you're rubbing in the fact that you are a spoiled and privileged elite.  Insensitive jerk!  Be more appreciative of what you have!

Anyways, I haven't seen one in years!  I totally ate there and it was delicious.  To most expats and Seoul Koreans, it's probably nothing. But to me, it was a treat equal to having a Tim Hortons coffee outside of Canada (which BTW is extremely difficult to find).

Next up was my hapkido lesson.  Walking in, I met some of the black belts practicing on the mat.  They pointed me to Master Kim - a really serious and well mannered guy.  After a short talk, I think he was a bit disappointed that I could only train for 2 days. He told me to get in a uniform and stretch. 

I had nice conversations with Master Kim's students.  All of them were English speaking expats: Brits, Americans, and an English speaking Thai gentleman.  I chose to come here over a Korean-heavy hapkido school for 3 reasons. First, I wanted to understand the instruction. Okay, Master Kim' English wasn't perfect, but it was understandable.  Second, I wanted to talk and get help from the students and master.  Third, I read online that going to a Korean-heavy martial arts dojang was only beneficial if you stayed in Seoul for a prolonged period of time.

This is because dojang don't initially accept you until you prove your worth and commit to their program.  I would go to such schools in a hurry if I had months of time in Seoul (which I plan to have one day).  But, lots of expats that go to these dojang just stay on the sidelines and mimic Korean students' movements for the first few days, if not weeks.  Wouldn't that be sooooo educational?  Would I have to pay for that fang pi too?

It started off real easy. To be honest, I've forgotten some of the stuff.  But over time, I remembered my basics.  I think after they realized I had some latent skill, the students and even Master Kim went harder on me.  Maybe they wanted to beat me up and get me out of there?  I'd like to think it was their form of accommodating me. 

Master Kim grabbed my hand and wanted resistance.

"Okay Paul. Strength." 

I gave some arm strength.

I remember that my old instructor Dallas told me that he once trained with Grandmaster Ji Han Jae, the founder of Hapkido. Grandmaster Ji threw foreign students around like sticks while assuming no consequence for the result.  He almost broke Dallas' wrist or arm.  He just smiled at Dallas and continued with the lesson. I suppose he assumed those foreigners were well-trained, which is a bit of a leap. Luckily, Dallas was well trained.

I see now that this sort of instruction is a quintessentially Korean thing.  At first I just thought Master Kim was just going to demonstrate to the other students, but then he threw me full speed, without warning, assuming I knew my break falls.  Luckily, my gong fu instructor Carol back in Wuhan made us do some rolling and falling. I rolled out of it without getting hurt. I did, however, receive a minor wrist injury later in the lesson.  Mama slapped a healing poultice on it when I got back to my home stay.

Anyways, I had such a fun and educational experience at the dojang, I decided to pay for a lesson in advance for the next day to force myself back. Unfortunately, that meant I could not visit the Toastmasters club that would take place the next evening.  Whatever. You do what you want to do and enjoy with what time you have on vaycay.

We're in Phuket

Elephant Nature Park on the outskirts of Chiang Mai proved to be a great experience.  The day after, Cathy and I treated ourselves to a really nice spa and went around the area near Chiang Mai University before flying to Phuket.  More on all of this later.  Unfortunately, no ziplining or Muay Thai lesson.  Cathy was too scared to do zip lining (but claimed one day she will try it), and I realized that if I actually do a Muay Thai lesson, it would leave her sitting on a bench doing nothing for about 8 hours.

I figure I'll be down here next year on the way to India.  Hopefully others including Cathy will be traveling with me so I can go off and do my obscure interest of studying martial arts without feeling like I'm stealing other peoples' vacation time.  Also, I resolve to be a lot more physically and skillfully prepared for a formal lesson next time I come down here.

At the airport, I found some good Muay Thai literature.  One is about traditional Muay Thai (which focuses more on the self-defense aspects instead of the ever more popular sport-based boxing elements).  The other one is a "Muay Thai self stadty" book.  On the whole, both are understandable, although it is clear that both have been translated from Thai to English.  The author of the first book is an old master. The second is a guidebook in translation with drawn diagrams. 

Right now we are in Patong, Phuket.  Party town.  We got to the hotel at 1:30AM and there were still small (but extremely loud) groups of foreigners drinking up a storm.  I even saw a guy trying to pee in the Family Mart until his friend stopped him.  Today we are going to hit up the beach and then go to Phuket town.

After 4 years...a hapkido lesson!

Day 6


Okay, okay, I'm skipping around a bit.  I'll blog about day 3-6 later.  I just got back from my first hapkido lesson in 4 years.  It was friggin' awesome.  I think the master went rough on me once he figured out I had experience.  Either that, or he wanted to quicken the pace of my learning because I told him I could only train for 2 days.  Luckily for me, I remembered my break falls.  His teaching method was similar to that of my old instructor Dallas. It was kind of based more on the practical application of hapkido's joint locks over the fancy-schmancy agility feats.  A young Thai gentleman I met even suggested a Muay Thai place in Thailand for me to scope out.  I'll be going back for another hapkido lesson tomorrow.


My right wrist hurts like hell, and pain never felt so good.  I just wish there was someone in Wuhan who would teach me hapkido.  But gong fu will have to do for now, although I'm going to push my sifu to teach me either yong chun or san shou, which are more of my style. We'll see if that's possible.

One more month...

One more month until all of us expats are on adventure again.  I have to say that this last semester went by so quickly.  The school year will be over before I know it!

Anyways, my plans are as follows.  I will be going to Cathy's hometown again, but this time I will stay until Spring Festival is over.  I might go deaf from all the super-loud firecrackers, but at least I will see Chinese New Year in China.

From there, I will solo Seoul, South Korea.  Cathy cannot come with me because the minimum monetary requirement going to South Korea for Chinese Mainlanders is so high.  I'll be meeting up with my friend Sue who I hung out with in Kelowna, Vancouver and New York City.

After South Korea, I'll hop back to Wuhan to get Cathy and drop off a full box of South Korean goods.  We'll get our asses to Hong Kong then onto Bangkok.  We plan to visit that city, Chiang Mai, and Phuket.

One thing I plan to do in Thailand is to take a Muay Thai lesson.  From what I've experienced with my old hapkido instructor, I'm sure I can handle myself.  If I can't find one or don't have time, an elephant ride followed up with some Thai curry would be a nice alternative.