Dear Sal,
After working for nine months straight, with only one day off, it was finally time for me to take my holiday. One of the scariest things about signing the contract that brought me to Korea, was seeing the mere five days paid vacation that I would receive. While some hangwons offer two weeks paid vacation with additional days off, I am only gifted with one. One week, for a whole years worth of work teaching, fives days a week, every week, with no extra days off. I sound bitter, but it hasn't been too bad really.
My destination was Malaysia, more precisely the island of Borneo and the city of Kota Kinabalu. My trip began early Saturday morning as I made my way to Incheon airport via a four hour bus ride from Dong Daegu station. One of the great things about living in Korea is being only a hope, skip and jump away from some of the most exotic locations in the world. Places that would have cost a small future to visit when living in England, but are relevantly cheap when you reside within Asia.
I will be completely honest with you, the days building up to my departure I felt oddly nervous. I didn't realise at first but it wasn't until this moment in my life, at the ripe old age of twenty nine, I had ever traveled on my own. Through out my lift I always seemed to have had a helping hand from someone, My parents, a teacher, a partner. The night before I hardly slept, running over and over things in my mind. Had I forgotten anything? What if I am late? Or what if I read the wrong departure time? After several checks, double checks and a couple of cigarettes I finally drifted off to sleep. Only to awake a few hours later, well before my alarm was due to ring.
I don't know what all the fuss was about, the whole thing was piss easy. I spend most of my Saturday reading, watching movies and wishing the seemingly never ending journey would hurry up and be over so I could see Jason. The time soon past and before I knew it and so had my whole Holiday. It went by far too quickly.
In the space of only six days me and Jason managed to squeeze a lot in. White water rafting, a three day river safari, spending two nights sleeping in the jungle with only a mosquito neck to protect us against the elements and insects. Getting to see the rare sight of a orangutan in the wild and the not so rare sight of seeing one in a sanctuary. Island hoping, hiking, swimming and exploring the countries rich culture and history. Apart form the actual museum, that sucked.
I had a wonderful time in the glorious hot weather. Just as the final day came my body had finally adjusted to extreme heat and early morning wake up calls of Borneo, only to return to plummeting temperatures and late night work scheduled of Korea.
There is far too much for me to go in too much detail now but I will write again soon and tell some of the more about it. Right now I have a lot of work that I need to catch up on and student reports to write.
Love, hugs and I could do with another week off.
Samuel James.
No comments:
Post a Comment