When Seoul was chosen as host for the 1988 Summer Olympics, their neighbor to the north wanted in. The dream of reunification was still in the air. The North wanted to co-host. South Korea said "whoa! wait a minute ... not so fast." Working through the IOC, the South offered the North five events: some early games of the soccer tournament, archery, the cycling road race, table tennis and women's volleyball. This pissed off North Korea and talk of a boycott ensued. Boycotting the Olympics was a big thing in the 80's.
If the North's outrage stopped there, we could live with it, but in 1987, they bombed a Korean airliner killing 115 people. A couple of assassins boarded Korean Air Flight 858 with two time bombs, one disguised as a bottle of cognac and the other in a Panasonic radio and left them in the overhead bin. They deboarded the plane at a stop over in Abu Dhabi. The plane departed for Baghdad and it exploded over the Andaman Sea killing everyone on board. When caught, the two assassins took cyanide pills hidden in cigarettes. The male, Kim Seung II, died. The female, Kim Hyon-hui, survived.
Hyon-hui was supposed to be executed, but her interrogators realized that she was brain washed. She was lead to believe that Seoul was filled with starving and a pawn of the United States. She was exposed to a film of modern day South Korea and taken for outings outside the prison to see Seoul in action. She realized that she had been duped and broke down, confessed to everything and pleaded for mercy. The president of South Korean, Roh Tae-woo, pardoned her. She still alive today and plans to watching this year's Olympics in Pyeong Chang, South Korea, from her home. It will included a unified team North and South Korean team during the opening ceremony and a unified women's hockey team. Who says sports doesn't promote peace?
Historically, you could say that this event marks the downhill trajectory for North Korean. Forever playing one-upmanship with their southern neighbor, they responded by planning what the World Festival for Youth and Students in 1989 in the capital of Pyongyang. It was a socialist response to the Olympics. They spent billions of dollars building sports arenas, hotels and expanding airports. The event was a flop. A few years later North Korea's number one trading partner, the Soviet Union, collapsed. They would have recovered a lot easier if they hadn't spent their war chest. In the 1990's they were hit by floods and droughts throughout the country resulting in famine. That is how we got the North Korea we know and don't love today.
For the South, the '88 Olympics had the opposite effect. It was their coming out party. The building boom stimulated their economy and helped convert Seoul into a modern city. The world learned to love Korea. Since I have friends in South Korea, I wanted to attend this year's games but it just didn't happen. My wife and I have always wanted to attend the games. I'm hoping for another Montreal or Lake Placid Olympics.
Wednesday, February 7, 2018
Tuesday, February 6, 2018
The Resort Vacation
When we were younger, the vacations that my wife and I went on were extremely cheap. They usually involved a road trip and a tent. Even our honeymoon was a road trip from Boston to Montana up to Canada's Jasper National Park and then back home across Canada. These were great times. Now we have more cash we are still not extravagant travelers. It wasn't until this year that we actually went to an all-inclusive resort.
Living in Vermont now, I like to take a vacation in warmer climes. In January or February we like to take a road trip south to Florida, Georgia, Alabama or Arkansas and we usually take our dogs. We have had some bad luck weather-wise on some of these trips. We had a cold rainy week on Tybee Island. We even had snow in Alabama. We were getting in a little tired of this. We decided this year to go some place really warm. We had reward points towards a vacation on our credit card and we found a reasonable flight from Montreal to the Dominican Republic. So we booked the resort vacation, at the Iberostar in Punta Cana. We even discovered a good deal with Montreal hotels near the airport. If you stay the night, before your morning flight, you can park at the hotel for free for the week. It is so much cheaper than parking at the airport.
I'll be nice:
Before I trash the place let me say some nice things about the experience. I don't think I have ever been more relaxed after a vacation. So this ultimately is a very good thing. I have been home for a week and I don't feel a tinge of stress. Each day we slept late, had a descent buffet breakfast, then went for a morning swim in the ocean, sat on the beach spending the next few hours reading and drinking cocktails being delivered to us, we moved to the pool in the afternoon, swam and then continued to read. Then we went to dinner. Evenings were spent low key, walking the beach, playing cards at a bar or losing a small amount of money at the casino.
Sounds nice doesn't it? It was. For the most part we really enjoyed ourselves and had some good couple time. All the staff members were really nice and we only met one group of guests that annoyed us. That might be a record. It was 82 degrees F most of the week. It rained towards the end of the week but when it did rain, it torrential rained for a few minutes, but then cleared up again. One day we left the beach because of the wind.
Our best day was a half day excursion we ended up paying for. Punta Cana is all resorts lining the shoreline of northeastern Hispaniola. We took a bus from our resort to a catamaran that had about 35 people all from different resorts. The boat brought us to an area to snorkel. For those of us who didn't want to snorkel, we had an open bar. We got very drunk with some strangers. Made friends with a gay couple from Toronto. It was a good time.
We paid for the excursion by sitting through a sales pitch for us to buy a ten year package in their resort. We had no interest in this and they didn't pressure us. They gave us a $100.00 voucher and we used it to pay for the excursion, plus another $30.00 out of our pocket. Just a couple hours of our day wasted on the pitch but it wasn't so bad and worth the voucher.
Not so fast:
You can't complain about a week in sun can you? I can. It was a matter of isolation and lack of variety. I have already said that this was our first resort vacation. I found a little confining. I like to explore an area. When you stay at a resort, you don't get to see or to know the place you are visiting. I've been to the DR and I don't feel like I have. Other than what I saw from the cab from the airport and the beach, I haven't really seen it. We considered renting a car, but didn't want to spend any more money. I felt restless and grew tired of the 10 acres or so that was our resort.
Perhaps I've become a bit snobbish when it comes to food, because I live in the foodie paradise of Burlington VT, but the food wasn't very good. Each meal we had a buffet with a wide variety of food but it is same wide variety all week. Iberostar has five themed restaurant that we can eat at each once while we were there: Asian, American, seafood, French and Mexican. Other than the French restaurant, none of them were very good. That's right, I've had better Mexican food in Vermont. The food was very disappointing.
I am not a big drinker but an open bar meant that I drank more than usual. This was a new experience for me but we quickly figured out that that the drinks were not very strong. A mojito or margarita at the resort did not taste like the same drink at home. I was going to drink beer, but there was only one beer available, Presidente, a local beer. It is okay but not great. It tastes like Budweiser without the aluminum aftertaste. I am used to having about twenty micro brews available to me. Again variety would have been nice. We ended up drinking a lot of sangria because it goes well with the beach and it was the only drink we could find that had a good kick to it.
When I travel internationally, I like getting exposed to the culture I am visiting. When visiting Portugal, I like to hear fado music etc. I heard some meringue music in the DR, but not a lot of it. Most of what I heard seemed like latin pop with a very loud bass drum beat ... let me emphasize LOUD. They blasted something most of the day at the pool. At one point I couldn't hear my book on mp3. It was pretty annoying. You could even hear it on the beach. We had to walk to the far end of the beach to get away from it.
The duplex we stayed in was basic. We were in the spa package so we were next to the spa and had access to it whenever we wanted. It is a very poor planning that they put the spa rooms near the performance stage. So the people who are there to relax, also had live music blasting in their rooms until late at night. We had the television blasting over the Olivia Newton John covers. Not relaxing.
Our television didn't work for three days. We asked for it to be fixed three times. The internet didn't work at all. We had to go to the dining hall or the beach to use the net. Also, every time our maid came in the room she blasted the AC and we came back to a room in a deep freeze.
Conclusion:
I am not a resort person. I like paying for my room and not having it cleaned until after I leave. I like adventuring, going on quests for food and seeing the land. I don't like being trapped in one place being forced to listen to bad music and to eat sub par food. The confinement was relaxing, so if you want to only relax, perhaps this is for you.
Living in Vermont now, I like to take a vacation in warmer climes. In January or February we like to take a road trip south to Florida, Georgia, Alabama or Arkansas and we usually take our dogs. We have had some bad luck weather-wise on some of these trips. We had a cold rainy week on Tybee Island. We even had snow in Alabama. We were getting in a little tired of this. We decided this year to go some place really warm. We had reward points towards a vacation on our credit card and we found a reasonable flight from Montreal to the Dominican Republic. So we booked the resort vacation, at the Iberostar in Punta Cana. We even discovered a good deal with Montreal hotels near the airport. If you stay the night, before your morning flight, you can park at the hotel for free for the week. It is so much cheaper than parking at the airport.
I'll be nice:
Before I trash the place let me say some nice things about the experience. I don't think I have ever been more relaxed after a vacation. So this ultimately is a very good thing. I have been home for a week and I don't feel a tinge of stress. Each day we slept late, had a descent buffet breakfast, then went for a morning swim in the ocean, sat on the beach spending the next few hours reading and drinking cocktails being delivered to us, we moved to the pool in the afternoon, swam and then continued to read. Then we went to dinner. Evenings were spent low key, walking the beach, playing cards at a bar or losing a small amount of money at the casino.
Sounds nice doesn't it? It was. For the most part we really enjoyed ourselves and had some good couple time. All the staff members were really nice and we only met one group of guests that annoyed us. That might be a record. It was 82 degrees F most of the week. It rained towards the end of the week but when it did rain, it torrential rained for a few minutes, but then cleared up again. One day we left the beach because of the wind.
Our best day was a half day excursion we ended up paying for. Punta Cana is all resorts lining the shoreline of northeastern Hispaniola. We took a bus from our resort to a catamaran that had about 35 people all from different resorts. The boat brought us to an area to snorkel. For those of us who didn't want to snorkel, we had an open bar. We got very drunk with some strangers. Made friends with a gay couple from Toronto. It was a good time.
We paid for the excursion by sitting through a sales pitch for us to buy a ten year package in their resort. We had no interest in this and they didn't pressure us. They gave us a $100.00 voucher and we used it to pay for the excursion, plus another $30.00 out of our pocket. Just a couple hours of our day wasted on the pitch but it wasn't so bad and worth the voucher.
Not so fast:
You can't complain about a week in sun can you? I can. It was a matter of isolation and lack of variety. I have already said that this was our first resort vacation. I found a little confining. I like to explore an area. When you stay at a resort, you don't get to see or to know the place you are visiting. I've been to the DR and I don't feel like I have. Other than what I saw from the cab from the airport and the beach, I haven't really seen it. We considered renting a car, but didn't want to spend any more money. I felt restless and grew tired of the 10 acres or so that was our resort.
Perhaps I've become a bit snobbish when it comes to food, because I live in the foodie paradise of Burlington VT, but the food wasn't very good. Each meal we had a buffet with a wide variety of food but it is same wide variety all week. Iberostar has five themed restaurant that we can eat at each once while we were there: Asian, American, seafood, French and Mexican. Other than the French restaurant, none of them were very good. That's right, I've had better Mexican food in Vermont. The food was very disappointing.
I am not a big drinker but an open bar meant that I drank more than usual. This was a new experience for me but we quickly figured out that that the drinks were not very strong. A mojito or margarita at the resort did not taste like the same drink at home. I was going to drink beer, but there was only one beer available, Presidente, a local beer. It is okay but not great. It tastes like Budweiser without the aluminum aftertaste. I am used to having about twenty micro brews available to me. Again variety would have been nice. We ended up drinking a lot of sangria because it goes well with the beach and it was the only drink we could find that had a good kick to it.
When I travel internationally, I like getting exposed to the culture I am visiting. When visiting Portugal, I like to hear fado music etc. I heard some meringue music in the DR, but not a lot of it. Most of what I heard seemed like latin pop with a very loud bass drum beat ... let me emphasize LOUD. They blasted something most of the day at the pool. At one point I couldn't hear my book on mp3. It was pretty annoying. You could even hear it on the beach. We had to walk to the far end of the beach to get away from it.
The duplex we stayed in was basic. We were in the spa package so we were next to the spa and had access to it whenever we wanted. It is a very poor planning that they put the spa rooms near the performance stage. So the people who are there to relax, also had live music blasting in their rooms until late at night. We had the television blasting over the Olivia Newton John covers. Not relaxing.
Our television didn't work for three days. We asked for it to be fixed three times. The internet didn't work at all. We had to go to the dining hall or the beach to use the net. Also, every time our maid came in the room she blasted the AC and we came back to a room in a deep freeze.
Conclusion:
I am not a resort person. I like paying for my room and not having it cleaned until after I leave. I like adventuring, going on quests for food and seeing the land. I don't like being trapped in one place being forced to listen to bad music and to eat sub par food. The confinement was relaxing, so if you want to only relax, perhaps this is for you.
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