Save the whales! Damn the government!

My most recent adventure had me drinking Brandy in a tent in the industrial sector of Ulsan with a group of hippies from Greenpeace at 3am.

What could be better than that?

It all started out when I finished work and wandered over to Samantha's apartment, near my place. Expecting a trip to the supermarket, she informed me that our friend Leah was coming over in a bit. We were going to hang out with some Greenpeace people that we'd met at Tombstone a couple of days earlier.

Being the nice people that we are, we made sure to bring a few beer along. It's common knowledge that when a bunch of hippies are in a dry country (ie. a place with no weed), they like to drink beer.

Before we were able to share the beer, we actually had to figure out how to get to where these guys had set up camp. I had the address and phone numbers, but I left them at home (I wasn't expecting to need them anyway). Samantha, who wanted to go in the first place, informed us right before we grabbed a taxi that she had forgot the contact details at her place. Being the smart guy that I am, I hopped into the taxi anyway. Being the smart friends that I have, Samantha and Leah followed suit without question. To her credit, Samantha did remember the area of the city where we were supposed to be (Jangsaenpo). Unfortunately, we weren't very confident in our ability to figure out just were we were supposed to be, so I made some funny gestures to the driver to pull a u-turn. He turned left down a busy street, so I just assumed that he was looking for a place to turn around. He kept on driving and started giving me "where the hell am I driving to?" looks. Not knowing what else to do, I told him "Taehakyo(university)". He gave me a "WTF???" look, since when we hopped in the cab we were at the university. When we got there, I just kept motioning for him to go straight. Eventually, we got him to drive to Samantha's place. She got out to get her stuff, and Leah and I had to tell the cabbie not to drive away (as he was beginning to do). Thankfully, Leah had a cell phone. She called the save the whale guys and they told the cabbie where to go. After a 11,100 won cab ride ($11.10 US; expensive for Korea!), we arrived at the Ulsan whale museum. It was 11 pm.

As soon as we walked in the tent, we were greeted with handshakes and beer. Apparently, while the beer was appreciated, they didn't need it at all. They had a cooler full of the Lord's finest drink. Mixed with a bottle of Brandy, it was a good night.

There were a couple of tents. One of them is in the picture below, and the other was actually a few smaller tents covered by a huge tarp. The 'other tent' served as the living area; bedrooms, kitchen and living area. A few people seemed to have personal tents to sleep in as well.

We stayed up talking with the Green peacers until about 4:30 am. Well, we didn't exactly stay up. Samantha crashed at around 2am. I got tired and tried to find a spot to sleep at around 3:30 (I found a love seat). Leah just stayed up. I got about an hour sleep. At around 4:30 I decided that I wanted to take a cab home. I told Leah this, so she woke Samantha up. Finding a cap in the industrial sector of Ulsan (or any city) at 4am is never an easy thing. Luckly, our previous driver gave us his card. Within a few minutes, we were on our way home... travelling through Ulsan at 130 km/hr. Cabbies are crazy here. At least the return trip was only about 6000 won.

I won't write too much about how Greenpeace is trying to save the whales in Korea since there website explains it much better than I feel like doing at 2am. All I'll say is that it looks like the Korean and Japanese governments are being real pricks when it comes to whaling. You can read about it here: Greenpeace in Ulsan.