Sometimes travel is about all sorts of righteous ideals: self growth, lessons in understanding, adventures, etc. Sometimes, though, travel is about not losing your shit. By no fault of the Tomgi Hotel I did not sleep. It has been happening all too frequently that I go to bed and do not find sleep. I stare at the ceiling in misery as the room grows bright. I then have to face my day through the eyes of a guy who isn’t really there at all.
I was told upon my checkout from the Tomgi Hotel that I could extend my stay by another night, but it would cost me. One thing about Korea is that it is still common for a hotel to charge for four hour blocks of time during the day. Checkout was at noon, to leave my things in the room while I searched for an Xbox repair man would cost me 30,000W for the hours of 12 - 4 and another 30,000W for 4 - 8. Not willing to pay an extra 60,000W for what basically amounted to a very fancy storage locker I packed my bags and told the desk clerk that I would return at 8pm. I then set out with one heavy backpack and a camera bag. I was sweating profusely before I got to the first metro station.
Yongsan is miserable if you don’t have a plan. There was no giant neon sign that read: “Are you a moron!? Did you lug your Xbox power supply directly into the wall hoping to kill some zombies only to see death as the sparks flew by and your nose filled with ozone? I got your back-ee.” No, there was no sign. Instead there were about 5 floors with random groupings of computer parts dealers, speaker salesmen, and video game stores.
No problem, I thought. I would walk this building of the market first, then double back holding my broken equipment and saying “fix-ee?” until somebody helped me or I struck out. I would then begin walking the streets of Yongsan and hope for the best.
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The first thing that went wrong (sans-insomnia) almost led to my unraveling: The escalators of the building were not working. I would be lying if I said I was appreciating the exercise of walking up and down 5 steep flights of dirty stairs with my bags hanging from my back. Whatever trouble I was having just to keep my eyes open was doubled by the sweat that was POURING into my eyes and all over my body. Others were eating ramen in the little convenience stores, some were buying parts to make a computer that could take down an entire nation's network if they weren’t so busy playing Starcraft II; I looked like I was about to keel over on Mt. Everest.
I walked around all five small but packed floors with no luck. I stepped off of the stairs hoping to find the advertised food court. I found only closed or long abandoned stores and a dirty floor with a few men who looked like they had taken in too much soju the night before. The basement, it seems, is where those defeated by Yongsan come to die. Promised the indulgence of a lunch and some coffee I found only despair and shoulder pain as I sat with the rest of the downtrodden trying to muster a collective will to go on.
A week later I would return to this very spot to meet Larry. I would walk down one dark hallway to find, of all things, one of two Hooters in Korea. Really Korea?
Somewhere inside I realized that I couldn’t eat or find somewhere to sleep or otherwise get on out of Yongsan until I found somebody to fix my power supply.
I walked up the first set of stairs and was let down by the first floor. Again, up the stairs and disappointed on the second floor. I was starting to wonder, on the third floor after being shooed away by a video game store, if I just looked like a lost cause. There I was, a derelict fool carrying a busted power supply with a full pack while sweating profusely like an addict who can no longer think straight without his stuff.
Floor number 4 was almost the end of me. There were 4 identical video game stores, each of which with a small line of 20-somethings asking questions or sampling games as the clerk fumbled beneath the counters for parts of hardware. I sat and sweated through three lines to be told “anio (no)” by three grumpy men. I was starting to think blowing $100 to have a new part shipped to me wasn’t so bad when the fourth clerk told me that he could fix the thing for 25,000W cash.
I could have cried. My interest in fighting fake wars or killing zombies was non existent; it had been replaced by the urge to stop carrying the damned power supply around. I asked him how long it would take, if I had time to eat. He told me I could pick it up in 4 days. Son of a bitch.
The heat and fatigue can make you do strange things. It was around 2pm; I left my hotel at 10am and I couldn’t return until 8pm. My pack was all the lighter without the power supply / bane of my existence but it was still there along with my camera.
I was completely soaked. I had spent a long time walking around Yongsan (there was classy mall next to the market) and I was starting to let my misery get the best of me. I couldn’t think straight and found myself just sitting on the curb listening to the cicadas and sweating.
The cicadas in the Korean heat are absurd. I leaned against a pole next to a street overloaded in traffic, pedestrians, and fog and listened as the buzz grew from distant to jackhammer loud in a wild crescendo. I looked for them in the trees like everybody else but found nothing- largely due to the fact that my glasses were sitting somewhere in Cheongju. At it’s peak I could not hear the traffic right in front of me because it was overpowered by the heat bugs.
I saw the building right where Larry said it would be. It looked something like Boston’s South Station with cfogged windows, neon writing, and a covered entrance. I stumbled half dead and delirious and sat under the trees next to a bubbling fountain and a vine covered wooden fence. I sat there for 15 minutes and watched as Koreans came and left before I mustered the courage to go through the doors and into the lobby. I heard splashing water and smelled chlorine. I stood in line for one minute before deciding that this was entirely too big of a leap along the path of “going native” for me to handle.
I left the sanctuary, walked a half mile or so and bought a metro ticket for Itaewon. Itaewon now has a Taco Bell and I guess my plan was to spend the next 6 or so hours eating tacos. I sat in the station looking utterly depressed and desperate until the sane part of my mind that had yet to be melted to its core told me a 6 hour taco binge was a bad idea. So, I headed back to the Dragon Hill Spa.
Dragon Hill Spa is a Korean bathhouse. While public bathhouses generally stir up stories of ancient Rome or less ancient San Francisco, they do not have the same connotation here. They are socially acceptable places to go to relax. Perhaps for the rarity of baths in Korean apartments, or for the desire for a relaxing social experience these places are a staple of Korean culture. They are a must according to any guidebook you read. Korean bathhouses are a place to distress, relax, and kill time (say 6 or so hours). Korean bathhouses are also butt-ass naked.
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I will spare you the grim details and give you only vague ideas of my experience. They are like a giant locker room full of closet nudists. There are enough doors off of the changing area to inspire a legitimate fear in the heart of a westerner that he might accidentally walk out into the coed clothed area. There after showering one walks down a path and hop into a giant tub that is usually just shy of boiling and soak for as long as you can bare it. The water is often infused with herbs and the tubs are usually full beyond the capacity of awkwardness. You then jump into a small pool of cold water and repeat the process which produces a feeling of tingling euphoria.
If you are a westerner you spend most of your time staring at the ceiling and avoiding the kid swimming toward you with swimming goggles.
I spent a couple of hours in the tubs, most of which in the cold pool until I felt restored and headed to the sleeping room. I dried off, put on my uniform and stepped into one of the strangest places I have been to in Korea.
It was a room the size of a large classroom. It’s ceilings were low and everything was bathed in a warm light that passed through narrow, fogged windows. Here and there somebody slept on a mat or sprawled on the floor based on how much they rolled. Everybody wore the same faded shorts and t-shirt uniform. I laid down and drifted off to the soothing sound of the piped in crashing surf soundtrack that was drowned out by the sound of 25 mean with no self-awareness snoring like my father and grandfather had created some anti-sleep demon.
I woke up a few hours later. When I laid down the place truly seemed tranquil and I was at ease. I felt as though I was experiencing some vital part of Korean culture and that by stepping into a place like this I was being accepted in a strange sort of way. When I woke up it reminded me of some sort of hippie-cult commune and got one out of there. Manson probably had a sleeping room.
The rest of the night was uneventful. I ate a couple of tacos in Itaewon and made a little bit of peace with the neighborhood that gave me a bitter taste for Seoul. I accidentally took a metro back to Yongsan and had to backtrack and transfer to get back to Anguk, but soon enough I found myself enjoying a beer on a giant bed in a beautiful hotel room. The next day I would get lost and almost lose my marbles trying to get to a bus terminal and again do battle with the heat. That night though, I sat and watched The Office, Community, and a healthy dose of America’s Funniest Home Videos. All was right with the world.
What did I eat today? Kimchi Jigae (kimchi soup, sour and spicy deliciousness), and Curry Dongas (pork cutlet with curry, made by me to get rid of the rest of my curry).
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