EA Fave #3- Amusement!

This post is long overdue. I've been working on it for a week and a half.... the videos take forever to upload, but this post would be incomplete without them, SO please take your time and enjoy this guide to East Asian amusement.

There's no lack of entertainment in EA. It's easy to be amused by something a majority of the time and not hard to find things to do in your spare time. Here are a few of my favorites....

Singing.....

In East Asia they have this little thing called "KTV".... EVERYWHERE! Why has America never jumped on this bandwagon!?!? I know that we have Karaoke bars, but the likely-hood of me EVER singing in one.... slim to none. So they have KTV places everywhere that you can go rent out a room for you and your friends for a certain amount of time and go to town with TONS of American songs perfect for Karaoke. Here's a video..... you get the picture!

Nick & Adam serenading each other to some Backstreet boys

After a fun night of KTV with our friends

A now for your listening pleasure.......

Apparently this takes a lot of skill and talent. I'm not sure what I think.....

Dancing.....

Everybody knows there's not much I love more than dancing..... and you never run out of places to dance! Every night.... and almost all day everyday, there are groups of people dancing in the park. Sometimes it's groups of women like these who have some kind of choreographed danced, often with props....

It's not quite as normal to just jump in..... but hey, when in East Asia right!?

However, every night there is techno line dancing in the park for everyone! I don't think I've ever seen Adam as excited as he was when he discovered it for the first time, but who could blame him?!

It's rather impressive.... the song changes and so does the dance and they never do the same one over again.... and they all know them! It's like in order to be East Asian, you have to know like 1,000 line dances. They get a good kick out of us learning along with them.

I know that we have DDR in America, but i just had to share this with you. Adam is a different person when you get him outside of this country and rarely acts like this around people other than me here, so I thought I'd give you a little peak into overseas child-like Adam.....

OR you can go watch people dance....

Like at this school performance.....

or this ADORABLE ballet class I came across one day!

So cute.... but nothing like my ballet class when I was 5.

Don't tell anyone I took this video.... at the acrobat shows, they are camera Nazis! They shine laser pointers at your camera screen before you even have the chance to take a picture, so I was very sneaky and got this video.......

I mean seriously!? The East Asian acrobats are pretty darn impressive. I can't even count how many girls are on that bike.

Fun in the park.....

There are lots and lots and lots of parks with fun things to do....

Like triple-tandem bikes! Again, not so sure where these are hiding in America.... could be some safety/liability issue.... but not there! I'm actually not sure there is such a thing .....

.....and large gatherings of people watching people perform- either singing or playing instruments- nothing organized, just people who want to come perform in the park... but it's not like we're used to where people play for money- it's purely for entertainment.

..... and lots of really random water activities.... like these water hamster ball orb things.

Here April & Audrey take them out for a whirl....

.....and the 76 year old duck boats! They were so questionable that our poor friend was afraid to get in without a life jacket on because she can't swim. Catherine and I got a killer leg workout paddling us around though!

Reject Amusement park rides.... like these bumper cars that were clearly intended for a different country, but didn't quite make it there.

Tourist-y "Attractions".......

There are all sorts of tourist-ish attraction-ish sites (i will refrain from calling them traps, because I am positive that the people there definitely don't see them that way).

Like these caves..... with these magical, mystical colored lights everywhere......

That you could ride through in a boat....

Or this "minority village"- basically epcot for East Asia- highlighting all of the many minorities found in that part of the country.

Animal Parks..... (not zoos, parks)

At the minority village there are lots of elephants and things to do with the elephants.....

Like take a ride on their trunk and give them a kiss....

or just take a nice quick picture with the elephant because you are way too freaked out by its unpredictable trunk to take a ride on it.

This was quite possibly the highlight of our first summer in EA. We went to an elephant show and they clearly kept asking for volunteers for things, as people kept raising their hands and then running out to the ring.... where they would ride on their trunks and other fun things like that. After a few times of missing out on the opportunity to do such a thing, the next time that people started raising their hands (we didn't know when they were asking because we couldn't understand anything they were saying) Jesse started jumping up and down waving her hands. I'm pretty sure they jumped at the opportunity to humiliate a foreigner in this way....

It was hilarious and it went on for almost 2 minutes! She said it was pretty disgusting with dirt and other things (probably elephant remains) flying around and landing in her eyes and mouth. Talk about amusement for everyone.... except Jesse of course!

Then there's the DREADED (for me at least) Monkey Park.....

Which started out okay when it seemed like this was what it was going to be like.... looking at the not-so-cute monkeys from a short distance....

But that didn't last long and people started coming up with bags peanuts to sell to you (for about 12 cents) so that you could feed them..... which everyone (but Catherine & me) started doing......

Which then resulted in this.......

which then resulted in this.......

.......which all then resulted in ME, the one who didn't want any disease-filled evil monkeys touching her, being attacked by a stupid monkey! Ashley, the one in yellow who just loved feeding these things, wanted to hide her peanuts in my purse so she could just feed them a few at a time. I said NOOOOO WAY. I'd just seen several of these things jumping on people's backs to try to get food out of their backpacks. Well she persisted and put the dumb things in there anyway and as soon as she walked away, a big monkey jumped up and grabbed onto my purse- basically IN my purse to fish the peanuts out. I screamed and flung myself around in a circle in a tug of war match with the stupid thing.... everything went flying out of my purse, including MY food that I was planning on eating myself later in the day.... now perpetuating this terrible cycle and feeding the stupid monkeys.

It was terrible. I was terrified and didn't want anything to do with the stupid monkeys and wanted to get out of there, but nooooo everyone else (but Catherine who was just as terrified, if not more than I was) wanted to stay all day and play with the monkeys. Well the further down the road you go, the more and more monkeys there are and at points I was completely surrounded by these savage unpredictable things. I am positive I have had night-mares of this nature several times before.

Adam finally convinced Catherine & I to feed one to make peace with the dumb things before we left. I made sure there was a good 5 feet between him and my purse and gave him one and ran.

Catherine on the other hand...... this monkey somehow knew she was terrified and didn't want her peanut. He actually hissed at her and swatted it out of her hand. It was pretty funny. She ran away, and we immediately fled out of the park.

I will NEVER return to the monkey park again!

This animal park really is more of a zoo where the animals are in cages for the most part, but you can do fun things like this......

I mean who doesn't want to feed a tiger raw meet on a string for a dollar or two!? ....

Or take pictures with a Panda bear.....

Or feed a nice zebra some grass right from your hand!?

This was a little sad.... you could pay to go into this bunny pen and chase them around with nets and catch them. I don't know that you even win a prize and they just dump the bunny back out. I'm not sure what the point was.

The last crazy thing that was done at this animal park will remain un-posted but we'll just say that someone fed a live chicken to a lion. It was out of control and slightly traumatizing. I just kept singing The Circle of Life to convince myself that it's the way God designed it.... except probably not with the intention of a huge beast like a lion being confined where the chickens have to be thrown to him. Just going to keep singing the circle of life......

Being Pampered.....

Being pampered costs next to nothing in comparison to what it does in America, so it makes for a great cheap girls night. This night we got leg messages at an "International Spa". They were pretty nice!

This night the next summer, we got a "foot wash". They should just put a giant sign outside that says "come pay for torture!" After putting our feet in scalding hot water for a half an hour, the real torture began. Their philosophy is that if it doesn't hurt, it isn't working. Ashley (the one screaming in this video) has a "shin phobia" - she hates for hers to be touched and doesn't enjoy having her feet massaged even when it isn't painful so needless to say this was absolute torture- but pure entertainment for the rest of us.

When the video starts, she is yelling "1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10" in their language and then starts over again. They had to have thought that she was insane.

Getting a hair wash is another story. Definitely NOT torture and basically entails getting a half an hour head massage with a hair wash and a "blow-out" hair drying at the end for about $2.50. Sounds good to me!

And then there are lots of other random fun things to do like decorate cakes at a cake shop.....

Or go on beautiful hikes.....

Or play watch and play basketball....

Or teach your friends to play American football.....

Or take an afternoon stroll through the meat market so your friend can make you baked ziti later that night. (Hello Dorthy... we're not at Kroger buying nicely packaged Laura Lee 4% fat ground beef anymore!)

I had to somehow throw that one in there :)

There's clearly not a lack of things to do for entertainment in EA. I'm finished now even though I could keep going on and on and on with things to do for fun in EA. I hope you enjoyed!

Joyfully amused,