Living the Eastern Dream

I should forwarn you that you won’t come away with any mystic Eastern insights on the meaning of life (You’ll need to read Herman Hesse or Kahil Gibran et al for that.) Merely, a small insight into life on board the Korean-run ferry ‘Eastern Dream’ that sails between Sakaiminato, Japan and Vladivostok, Russia, via Donghae, South Korea.

And to be honest you won’t learn much about that either.

Before even boarding the boat we met a Japanese couple from Tokyo (Shimo-kitazawa) who had, for want of a better description, a two person team from The Discovery Channel filming and photographing their departure. Yes indeed! It turns out that he is a photographer and his wife a model/actress and they had secured sponsorship for their 9-month trip from The Discovery Channel. So yes….it helps to be young, beautiful and talented.

The ferry itself is old and a little rough around the edges. On entering you are greeted by a large and hideous plasterwork of Botticelli’s ‘Birth of Venus’ that lines the three tiered staircase. There’s the usual bar, duty-free shop, reception, disco, restaurant, convenience shop and 3 classes of accomadation. Much to our liking it turned out that we had been upgraded to First Class so found ourselves in our own private room next door to The President Suite. Get in there!!

We quickly got chatting to Jorge, a JapaneseBrazilian, who is one of life’s networkers – very friendly; fluent in numerous languages and has lived all over the world. Through him we met Alex from Canberra who was on her way to England via the Trans-Siberian Express. And Mr Shim; a simply delightful Korean gentleman who was driving to Mongolia. He had the gentlest soul ever and talked humbly about his walk along the Silk Road some 6 years earlier (Though unfortunately, he had to abandon this dream after walking 1800km due to a bad back).

There was also a team of 4 Koreans on a month long motorbike trip and a Korean family of five (3 generations) who had a huge custom fitted minibus and were planning a four year long trip visiting all the world’s UNESCO sites. The owner of the bus talked at length to us about his theories on life; the big questions in life and the goal of his trip to discover what connects human consciousness’ together. He had even invented a three-axis graph connecting time, space and insight with which he was using his trip to validate this theory with. He kept asking us what the “question of our journey was” – we had no idea! It was pretty ‘out there’ to be honest!

We disembarked at Donghae for an hour or so as ‘something to do’ and, to be honest, it was a bit of a waste of time as we spent most of the time then having to queue up for another ticket to reboard the ship as well as going through customs again. The only upside was that the shop over the road from the ferry terminal sold Pilsner Urquelle….the things you do for a nice beer!?

From then on we were mostly entertained by a large group of Koreans who formed part of a mass tour group. You have never seen so much unknown branded ‘active sports wear’ in an array of flourescent colours. It was an assault on the senses – lime green vests over acid yellow tops paired with tangerine shorts over fuscia pink leggins; topped off with dark over-sized sunglasses and large sun visors. They were all of a certain age, looked identical and were brash and abrupt to say the least. There was also a pair of Russian sisters who looked liked the twins from The Shining all grown up; Russian men in vests with tummys that made Captain’s beer gut look small in comparison and a lot of big wobbly boobies 🙂

So there we go – The Eastern Dream – lived.