Border Crossings and Riding in Cars with Russians

Pattaya, Thailand

Sometimes when you are on the road, traveling for a long time you hit a wall.

I hit the wall in Thailand.

A tuk-tuk brought me to a back-packer guesthouse in Siem Riep, Cambodia. It was early enough for me to be barely awake and also miserable, but it was already hot and humid enough for me to be drenched in sweat.

Further, the place was jammed and there was really no room for myself or my two rolling-luggages, backpack, or camera bag and I basically just stood red and wet in the middle of everything like I was totally fine.

At some point a big old bus came rolling up and we were carted on. A girl around my age, who happened to be quite large, sat in front of me until the driver made a big fuss about her size and made her sit on the tiny, fold-out seat at the front to the bus.

The bus went to the Thai border. Here we were let out at the most grueling border crossing I have experienced thus far in my life.

To begin with, the bus dropped us off in a cluster-fuck of traffic. All around were trucks, freights, cars, motorcycles laden with all manner of luggage and goods. Once past all of that, we had to stand in line at a check point. While waiting and sweating profusely, I exchanged a few hundred US dollars and the bulk of my remaining Korean Won into Thai Baht. It was sad to part with the won.

Once through the checkpoint, I had to drag my luggage somewhere close to half a mile, over curbs, broken sidewalks, through groups of people and chickens (seriously) to the other side. It was a sort of no-mans-land, I guess. Here, I waited in line again, this time with sweat pouring into my eyes as I passed into Thailand.

Once my passport was stamped I was pointed through some doors, hollered at to walk straight and take a left, hollered at again that I went the wrong way, and hollered at again to find the right bus. The bus company tasked with getting me from Cambodia to my randomly chosen destination of Pattaya, Thailand, apparently ran several routes.

So, I sat or stood and perspirated for a time underneath the awning of a little market. Some people tried to eat ice cream before it fell onto their shirt. A guy with long hair was talking about doing a work camp, I thought about chiming in about my camps but remembered that it was too hot and I wasn’t in the mood to talk to anybody.

We waited an hour or so. Vans came, picked up the right people, and were then bouncing on the dirt road to such places as Bangkok or Phuket. I fell into conversation with the large girl from the first bus. For the sake of not calling her “the large girl” I will call her Mary, for no reason. I do not remember her real name.

She told me that she was returning to Pattaya from vacation, that she was staying there for a couple of months trying to soak up the experience, and that I should shadow her until we arrived. So I did.

When our van finally arrived the driver and his little buddy were dismayed when they saw my rolling luggage. They argued amongst themselves and then started shouting my way.

“This is too much!”

I stared at them and said something like “uhh ok.” I was wondering what the hell they expected me to do about it, and besides nobody ever mentioned an official baggage limit of the “White Rape Van Travel Bus Company” when they told me I must pay.

Here we go again, I thought.

He then quoted me 90 baht, around $3. Mary said he was ripping me off but after getting taken for a $50 cab ride in Vietnam (twice) “ripping off” can become a relative term. So, we loaded into the van, a fuss was made of the size of Mary, and we were off.

In the van was a Russian couple, Mary, and myself. Mary made a comment about how nice it was that the van wasn’t crowded, then immediately after karma punished us all for something.

We spoke for a while, not really noticing that the van would occasionally stop at a corner or a checkpoint and somebody new would hop in. Mary was essentially on vacation. She had a friend who owned property in Pattaya and had set her up with a place to stay for a few months. As for what she did in real life, I don’t know. She said she was going to try and rotate between life in small town USA and Pattaya.

The Russians were on holiday for a few months and were, like me, almost at the end of the road: they had a handful of days in Pattaya and then were heading back. Somebody made a crack about the American having a lot of baggage for a vacation and I felt it necessary to inform them that I had been living in Korea for a year and had been unable to send as much home via cargo ship as I had hoped. I felt vindicated.

The bus could seat 11 comfortably. By the time we passed through the last armed checkpoint near the border, there were 15 people jammed in on top of the luggage. I was cut off from conversation and basically jammed into the window. The air conditioner basically became pointless.

It took us a long time to get where we were going and while the tropical trees and landscapes of Thailand were nice to watch, the general crappiness of the van became too much to handle.

After a few hours we were let out at a gas station where I met a ladyboy and ate a kind of cheese pastry and bought a water. Then, the Russians, Mary, and I waited with anxiety for the van to come and pick us up and worried if maybe it had left us.

It didn’t, and hours later we finally arrived in Pattaya.

The sun was sinking and that nervous feeling I get when I get to a place with no plan whatsoever was put to ease by Mary offering to get the Russians and myself to the main drag so as to find cheap lodgings.

My baggage became an issue again. In Korea there are taxis, Vietnam: taxis, Cambodia: tuk-tuks; in Thailand there are dudes driving pickups with a couple of benches in the bed. They wanted to charge us extra and Mary did not want any of that nonsense.

I did, but I was tired and hungry enough to where I was starting to lose grip on what was really going on. So, Mary called up her friend and soon I found myself flying through town in the back of a pickup with a couple of Russians sitting on cardboard boxes.

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Seoraksan Part 1: In which our hero tavels for a long time and loses his most valued posession

If I have learned anything about internal travel in Korea it is this: the news isn’t usually wrong when it predicts horrendous traffic.
After the eternity that was the duration of winter intensives finally ended, Korea was given a much needed vacation.  This was good news.  The overloaded class schedule and bouncing from school to school on Fridays without breaks had wrecked me.  I was looking forward to catching up on some sleep.
The plan, for myself and a couple of friends (Rick and Lauren) was to get from our respective homes in central Korea to the northeast.  We were making for Seoraksan National Park in Gangwon Province. 
One of the things that I will miss about Korea is that you are never very far from a mountain to hike on.  Even if it is not a very large mountain, there is usually some payoff.  Sure, Watchusett Mountain might offer some nice glimpses of Fitchburg and exotic New Hampshire, but the local hike here has a fortress that predates colonial America by a long ways. 
Seoraksan, it should be stated, is not a “local hike.”  It is almost as far from our cities as you can get.  What complicated this issue further was that we were attempting to get there on arguably the biggest travel weekend of the Korean Year.  Lunar New Year was the occasion of our vacation and it was the reason why everyone with a car in Korea takes to the road to reach their home villages and families that they left behind in on their way to urban modernity.  The result is that highways around major cities become something of a nightmare. 
The only other time of year that can compete with Lunar New Year is Chuseok.  We traveled during Chuseok too, but we had the benefit of a KTX (bullet train) that took us from Daejeon to our final destination for Gyeongju.  The KTX was a benefit we would not be enjoying for our relaxing Seoraksan vacation. 
Relaxing would also not be one of our enjoyments.
We would cross the peninsula via bus.  When I asked my coworkers how I might get from Cheongju or Daejeon to Seoraksan, Han informed me that we would have to switch busses a handful of times.  Further, she said that not only would we have to deal with the nightmare traffic, but we would also have to transfer bus stations at one point. 
This last part was what worried me the most.  Reading Korean is no problem.  Bus stations usually have destinations written in English.  What could be a problem was getting from one station to another in time to catch another bus.  Frankly, I was starting to recall the trip to Dacheon Beach in the summer.  I was wondering which one of us would be barfed on.
Han tried her best to simplify things.  Ara, the new teacher, did as well:
“I think you should just stay home.  Or you can just go to Songmisan (the local national park).”
This was actually a valid idea.  I wanted and still want to go to Songmisan.  I even meant to do so last weekend but I was sidetracked by eating lunch.
The thing is, when it comes to vacations I am stubborn.  I rarely budge from my initial plan and it is difficult for me to accept any compromises.  I don’t mean to say that I do not go with the flow and enjoy the unexpected- I am fine while I am ON vacation.  What I mean is that once I decided that I was going to Seoraksan, there was no way in hell that I wasn’t going to go to Seoraksan.  The complicated bus route and the potential 10 hour bus ride (it was ordinarily 4 or so hours) didn’t have the slightest impact.  In the end I conceded a day and we left on Thursday instead of Wednesday to avoid the bulk of the traffic.
The plan:
1. Head to Daejeon Wednesday and stay in my first of 3 motels. 
2. From Daejeon take 3.5 hour bus to Gangneum in the northeast.
3. Go from the intercity bus terminal to the express bus terminal (it could have been the other way around)
4. Take a bus from Gangneum to Sokcho, a bit to the southwest.  Once here, I was ready to call it a success.
5. Take a city bus to Seorak-dong, and find a motel in the national park. 

The reality was not much different from the plan save travel times.  I made it to Daejeon with no problems (like I’ve done many times before).  I stayed at the Sharp Motel near the bus terminal and, as always, it was awesome.  Rick and Lauren treated me to a dinner at TGIF so the day was a total success. 
The next day we woke up bright and early and met at the bus terminal (bright and early for hag won teachers is different from that of normal people: 9am).
The bus, according to the website left at 9:45am.  We then spent a couple of hours waiting around and drinking coffee counting down until 11:30ish when the bus actually left.
One of the benefits of being in Korea alone, is that more often than not nobody wants to sit with you on the bus.  On the rare instance when I am not put in a row with just one seat, the person assigned to sit next to me usually gets up and leaves once the bus starts rolling.  Maybe I should be insulted.  Maybe I should just stop showering at home so I can always sit alone on the bus.
So, for the entire 5 or so hours of the 3.5 hour bus ride, I stared out the window and spoke only to Ricky or Lauren when the guy on the bus TV did something weird.
Rick and I searched for food when the bus made a quick rest stop.  After getting on 3 busses because we failed to remember where our bus was parked we sat down and enjoyed our lunch.
It was called a kebab.  It was a skinny hotdog with spicy sauce wrapped in a soggy tortilla.  How I made it the rest of the way without crapping my pants, I do not know.
After a very long time the plains gave away to outcroppings of the Taebaek mountain range.  We came at last to a city bus terminal where we sat until the bus driver politely informed us to get off as we were at our destination.  It was here that I did the dumbest thing I have ever done.
I rushed out of the bus and stood on the sidewalk for a moment after the bus drove away.  I then realized that I had left a bag containing close to $2,000 worth of camera / lenses on the bus.  I sprinted after it but it was gone.
My joy for vacation was wracked with devastation.  If I wasn’t in shock I probably would have cried.  Not only was that camera important to me, but it was how I made the bulk of my income at home.  For a time I told myself that it was ok, I had to upgrade anyway, but it was all a lie. 
I would be the only moron on top of the mountain looking through the viewfinder and winding the film of a disposable film camera.
In a panic I called Han.  I felt bad for bothering her during the holiday but I saw not other option.  She was my Obi-Wan. 
For an hour things looked bleak.  Things looked real bleak.  She managed to get a hold of the bus company and eventually the driver.  She relayed the message to him that the camera had been left on the back of the bus.  He replied that there was nothing.  He would check the CCTV but he wasn’t hopeful.
“I am sorry Tom,” Han said.  I hung up the phone and felt ill. 
I was drinking coffee with Rick and Lauren in despair when Han called to tell me that they had found my camera, and if I could wait until 6pm, then I could pick it up at the company office upstairs.
Words can’t really describe my relief.  Oh, wait, yes they can: imagine losing your really expensive still camera / cheaper video camera / lens / etc. for an hour and then having them returned.  That is what it felt like.
So, camera bag firmly in hand, we embarked on the second to last bus of the night: Sokcho.  Luck was with us in that too, as we did not have to go to another bus station to get to Sokcho, as I had feared.
The way to Sokcho is interesting.  For one thing, the coastal road forces you to remember the conflict with North Korea.  Vast expanses of the shore are lined with barbed wire.  Here and there, there were manned guard towers casting halogen into the black sea under the moonlight.  According to the guidebook, there were several tank traps along this route to protect against invasion.
So, 10 hours or so after we left Daejeon, we stepped off the bus into the night of Sokcho at the base of Seoraksan.  There, we breathed in clean air for the first time in a long time.

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Going to the @*$&@(@ng beach

So, I'll count the past few weeks as a hiatus.  I was running late anyway but then a week or so ago my Gramma passed away very unexpectedly.  It was one of those things that makes you realize life at home continues even when you are so far away having this crazy experience.  It's sort of hard to deal with that sort of thing when you can't be there so I dropped off the face of the earth.  Without further ado:



Sometimes travel, like the life it represents, is a complete and spectacular disaster. The trip to Dacheon Beach in on the western shores of peninsula was, and I reiterate, a disaster with a high casualty rate.


It started at 9am on a Saturday, an hour few people ever claim to see in Korea. I met my neighbor Amanda R. outside of our lovely apartment building (my provided fridge ceased to function about a month ago, I have cockroaches, and my toilet is emitting a steady spew of water onto my bathroom floor). A short taxi ride took us to the other side of the river in Cheongju where we met up with Tim and learned that the tiny satellite bus terminal did NOT offer a way to the city of Daejeon.

Daejeon, while not being our final destination, serves as a hub of this general neighborhood. From Daejeon, a bus would take us to Boryeong and another would take us to a splendid hot summer day on a sandy beach. Being that the way to Boryeong from Daejeon was made only hourly and we had already lost some time, we took a cab from the little terminal (I want to say it was called Bukbo, but I have been getting the terminal name confused with a Bill Cosby skit recently so who knows) all the way to the grand monstrosity on the other side of the city.

A half hour or so later we were on a bus heading to Daejeon to meet up with Andrew and Amanda C. We would be getting to Dacheon Beach a little later than we all had hoped with a 2 hour ride from Daejeon to Dacheon but there would still be hours and hours of fun and swimming to look forward to.

Things started going south as the bus pulled off the highway and into the main drag of Daejeon. Amanda, who sat in the seat opposite Tim and I had been minding her own business when the sleeping Korean guy behind her exploded. It sounded at first like somebody springing awake after unexpectedly dosing but was followed then by the unmistakable sound of someone shotgun-barfing into their hand and a sick splattering sort of sound. This was followed by the smell of tomatoes and a look of sheer terror on Amanda’s face and shock on those of everybody else’s.

In hindsight, maybe this would have been the appropriate moment to get off of that bus and straight into another that would take us home, but we went on. It seems that if one believes in omens and such that somebody almost hurling on you pre-10am might be a good indication to get on home.

We met up with the others and were soon on a bus headed to Boryeong with a handful of Brits sitting a few rows behind us. In all likelihood, the only place to which any foreigners on that bus were going to was Dacheon Beach and it is always nice to have reassurance that you are at least on the right damned bus.

We drove on for a long time. It seemed clear already that our chosen route to the Beach probably would be taking a bit more than 2 hours. Still, bus rides are always nice in a foreign country with a unique landscape.

After a handful of stops, some eavesdropping and shared information as to where exactly our stop was we exited the bus in a combined wave of two groups of foreigners.

My mother has always said that Brandon (my adventure friend, with whom I have hitchhiked, climbed and generally wandered for many years) and I should sign up for The Amazing Race. Each time I watched the show with her she would say so at least twice.

If we departed the bus at Boryeong or some other god-forsaken city I do not remember. What I do remember is that we found ourselves walking on a dirt surface amongst the pollution of diesel, a sweltering heat and the chaos of a poorly organized bus stop in some out-post town. We walked, trailing the Brit’s a bit until a Korean lady began yelling and gesturing that we were apparently in the area designated to busses picking up passengers as opposed to the human-only area, full of people trying to get the hell out.

We passed through the divider and were soon bouncing around Koreans under a strong-as-hell early afternoon sun trying at once to get out of the crowd and figure out one: where we were, and two: where we were headed.

Bus stations that go anywhere you actually want to go are generally fairly accessible and well labeled, even if it isn’t in English. This place was not. It was dirty and crawling with locals who had been around long enough to know all they needed to and therefore didn’t care much for the placement of signs to help others.

We stood for a while; our group of Americans here and the Brits off about 20 feet. There was some talk between the two of us as they too seemed to be a little dumbfounded. Passively, they followed us for a little and we them but ultimately it was decided that this place probably wasn’t going to be getting us anywhere we wanted to go.

We wished eachother luck as they hopped in a cab.

We saw them again, 20 minutes later as we waited in another bus station down the way and past a fortress wall perched atop a green hill. This station, thankfully, was labeled enough so that we were soon on a third bus, headed finally to the beach.

On the face of our plans, we anticipated a 2 hour ride from Daejeon that would give us time to relax and then a day at the beach before we made the return journey. Somewhere along hour 4 of our trip to Daecheon Beach, between Tim rocking a hard Texan accent talking about deep-fried butter with Amanda, and a couple of kids who had developed a 2 hour long obsession with Andrew and Amanda C; Amanda C had either the good humor or pleasant sense of sarcasm to say that “hey, at least we’re all together!”

That final bus dragged on forever. We whipped around on the sides of small mountains, on the edges of a lake and through village after village. We passed through town side streets and over highways that divided only one rice-patty from another. We passed even the point at which it was utter denial to think we were going to be spending the same amount of time as we had spent traveling to the beach actually AT the beach.

At some point the bus pulled into a sandy parking lot that housed couple of trailers that served as bathrooms, a convenience store that didn’t sell water, and a ticket counter.

Anyone looking to read about fun at Dacheon Beach will be disappointed to find out that here the bulk of the story ends. All told, we spent around 5 hours trying to get to the place and had now only a few hours to spend beachside before we had to pack on another bus that would take us direct to Daejeon and then home to Cheongju.

The first thing we did was buy beer, water, and snacks. We then proved to be a beach vendor’s good fortune by immediately renting a platform and an umbrella to enjoy what time we had there. We drank our beers and talked and I wandered back and forth looking for some place to change into my bathing suit.

I walked for what seemed like a long time in bare feet towards various buildings I hoped to be a bathroom but had no luck until Andrew and Tim came running up with my heinous flip flops and I found a bathroom in which to change.

Tim and Andrew came back some 45 minutes later (probably a good third of out time at the beach) with a full pizza box and a bottle of Coke (or Pepsi). I have gone on at length here, there, and elsewhere as to the properties of Korean pizza. Never is there real cheese, often there are odd and funky toppings, and always there is corn. This pizza, though, was something special. It proved at once to be one of the brighter points of my day and also the bane of my existence.

It was a cheese pizza. It was topped with sauce and a dump-truck load of cheese. Real cheese. At the time, the amount of cheese on this thing seemed absurd. You could feel its give and snap as you tore off a bite. If I were at home, the thing would probably be lackluster at best; but I was not. As it was, that pizza was the best pizza I have yet to have in Korea.

The water was freakishly warm, something that was quickly blamed on our proximity to China. We were bathing in the luke warm Yellow Sea and I will maintain that it is better to believe that one is swimming in toxic pollution than urine.

Two things happened on the way home. Tim’s wallet never got out of a taxi cab in Daejeon and by the time he noticed (about half a second after he closed the door) the guy was gone. I think things turned out ok, but I don’t imagine it is a good feeling to lose that amount of important objects (money, bank card, Alien Registration Card) all at one go.

The other thing that happened is I all but confirmed my inkling that I might be the slightest bit lactose intolerant by spending an hour trying with all of my might not to crap my pants. The cheese, glorious as it was, turned into napalm somewhere inside of me. I will spare the details but suffice it to say that the pain was excruciating, the sweats were cold, the tremors fierce and at one point my mind had accepted that there was a pretty good chance that I was going to have a worse story to tell than the tomato-barfer.

Beach photo courtesy of Amanda.

What did I eat today? A peanut-butter sandwich and kimchi-fried rice.

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Busses and Quizzes

The general layout of things.

The new apartment is fantastic. It has a more separated and natural layout. The kitchen is a bit more spacious and the bathroom is awesome. The walls and floor are laid with green tile meant to look like marble and it is much bigger than the last one which makes showering a bit easier given that the shower is just a hose pinned to the wall. The main living space has a much bigger fridge and even includes an actual freezer. What’s more is that inside the freezer is a big heavy bag with the picture of a cow and nothing else. The floors are made to look wooden, though they are still made of a sort of soft plastic or rubber. I even have a couple of closets!

My lovely bathroom.  Ignore the
Urkel style.

There are two problems however. The first is that when I close the sliding, foggy glass door between my room and the kitchen and then try and turn on the kitchen light in the dark it looks absurdly creepy and each time I think I see the girl from The Ring. Also, the bathroom sink’s pipes aren’t actually attached so that whenever I run the sink the water just pours out in the general direction of the drain. Oh, another issue is that I have no idea how to heat the floors, but this won’t be an issue until fall as it is starting to get pretty muggy.

A big plus is that this place is directly across the street from my school, so my commute takes about 40 seconds.

After much trial and error I figured out what was wrong with the computer, or rather what was wrong with me. The converter was unnecessary and was preventing enough wattage from getting to the computer; now all it takes is my cheapo adaptor plug. I should have brought more adaptors because as it is only one thing can be plugged in at a time.

Days at school pass by quickly. I get by on a lunch and dinner of rice, a platter of side dishes, a few slabs of spam and occasionally a cold chicken nugget. One thing I must say is that their ketchup is refreshing. For one thing they put it on the last things you would expect anybody to put ketchup on. Spam and sausage, for example, are always eaten with ketchup. Also, it has a much bolder flavor than our own being fortified with a heavier dose of garlic.

The view from my window.

On my first Saturday I walked out my door armed with a list of phrases written in Hangul that would get me to a bus station and then to Cheonan where I would be met by Larry. After, I would be taking part in a pub quiz in an expat bar called Adonis.

There could have been many reasons why I couldn’t get a cab to stop for me. It could have been because I was a foreigner and would be more bother than I was worth, it could have been because I was holding a piece of paper and they knew they would have to decipher from it what I wanted, it also could have been because I was holding my Lonely Planet guide to Korea and nothing good ever came from picking up somebody holding one of those. Whatever the issue, it took me 30 minutes to get into a cab.

I handed the cabbie my paper and assumed it would be a quick and quiet ride. Instead, he began asking me questions to which I just stared at him in utter fear. I said “bus terminal” and he said something impossible for me to understand. After this we both fell back on the idea that if you kept repeating the same statement over and over and louder and louder that it would break a language barrier. It doesn’t.

He drove aimlessly as I called Han and Boram, neither of whom answered. On a small road I called Albert as a last resort. I handed the phone to the driver and they had a long conversation with much laughter that could only be at my expense. After hanging up, the driver looked at me, smiled and said: “Tough driver!”

How I survived the ride is beyond me. He drove at speeds that exceeded even those of the other lunatics that occupy Korean roads. He would sometimes take the trouble to roll through red lights, but would generally just swerve around cars that actually stopped. At one point he took a left in front of 3 lanes of oncoming traffic and then cut in front of a city bus as he settled onto the new street. All the while he kept repeating the words “tough driver” with pride.

Interesting fact about Korea. Almost everybody has a suped up navigational system, and almost all of these are equipped so that they can and do watch television on them. It is horrifying.

So, finally we arrived at the bus station. No sooner had I gotten out of the car when I got a call from Albert. Albert, worried about my general incompetence, had just arrived at the bus station to ensure that I was put onto the appropriate bus. My self -esteem to say the least was on a downward slope.

The bus station was like any bus station in any country in the world. Albert got my ticket and escorted me to the line of people waiting beside the bus to Cheonan. There we waited for a time and Albert would not leave my side, only asked the driver if I might be let on early because I may be capable of somehow screwing that up.

Ten minutes passed and I was soon sitting in my seat watching Albert smoke his tiny cigarettes. A second later he was back on the bus and asking a 10 year old kid to make sure that I got off the bus when it arrived at Cheonan. Albert then patted me on the shoulder and gave me a coke. My self-esteem was somewhere south of Hell.

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The bus ride was great. I am a fan of slow speed transport and have always looked at bus rides as a great way to see a place if you are on your way to another place. I have taken busses across Mexico, to Canada, and from Athens to the edge of Albania and I often find myself too mesmerized to sleep despite utter exhaustion. This ride was no exception.

The land between Cheongju and Cheonan is rural. There were sparse villages and sloped tile roofs. Rice patties dominated the way, but every now and again there were the burial mounds from times forgotten or never recalled in Western memory.

Downtown Cheonan is massive. The bus station quickly becomes a four-story shopping center with a food court and cinema on top. I wandered for a time while I waited for Larry. Upon walking into the food court I remembered that I was starving and that if I was going to have anything to drink at all I needed food, or else I would be barfing after one beer.

There were so many options that I am ashamed that I fell on the American comfort food that is McDonalds. Please, please do not judge me too harshly: I was starving!

I sat alone, the only non-Asian in the place eating a Mc. Chicken and fries. I was fully aware that if there were a decent photographer present I would wind up in some article critical of fast food imperialism and our unwillingness to adapt to another culture.

After, I sat on a bench outside of the complex and watched people cross the street. This was something to behold. Koreans obey crosswalks and pedestrian signals as though they would be thrown away for life with no parole if they jaywalked. They will wait at the corner regardless of the fact that there are no cars coming.

When they do cross, though, now that is really something! By the time the cars stopped and the cross walk opened up there had to be over a hundred people going to opposite sides. It looked like two enormous waves crashing and breaking into one another.

Eventually, Larry and a friend found me and we were waiting for a taxi while he spoke to an American guy and his sister. A short cab ride took us to the suburbs of Cheonan: the domain of Larry Boire.

The drinking began instantly and I was thankful that I at least had a stomach full of Mc. Chicken. While Larry set off to make final arrangements for the pub quiz, I was left in the company of the first native English speakers I had met since home.

We sat around on the floor and played drinking games with orange juice and soju. We played a game I used to play a long time ago in an East Boston apartment off of Maverick Square and they all reminded me of old college friends who are lost now to life in time. They told me how bizarre it was to speak in proper sentences with adjectives after trying to speak simply to Koreans. Before we left we played poker with a big pile of cigarettes in the center of the floor and I felt like I was in prison.

The pub quiz at Adonis was something else. I came to Korea so that I might experience another culture for a year and that I might come away from it a little richer emotionally and monetarily. It is important though to take a breather every now and again. It is perfectly acceptable to go and get drunk with 60 other English teachers every now and again.

My team consisted of Larry’s friend CJ (actually Larry was friends with everybody) and a Canadian named Miranda. We somehow came up with the name Husky Hamsters. We also lost horribly, but I guess that is not really the point now is it?

We drank and drank and all became friends or at least something like it. Miranda was finishing up a job and would be on to at least another year in Korea. CJ was looking for another teaching job. I stepped outside with everyone else for a cigarette.

I remember talking to a guy who looked exactly like Kevin Bacon and the Pixies started playing. Out came the guy from the taxi stand that Larry was talking to. He had been in a motorcycle accident since we had last seen him and had gotten the worst of it. His shorts were stained with blood as well as his shirt. His limbs were covered in road rash and gashes. It was pretty obvious that he needed stitches, though I found out later he would be going to his doctor in the morning to avoid an expensive visit to the emergency room. It was a shock to see.

Still, the night wore on. The quiz ended but the beer kept coming. Miranda left and Larry and I sat in a booth watching people dance or generally have a good time while we finished our beers.

We headed back to his apartment, drank a bit more and called it a night. Larry apologized for a pounding head and what was apparently an early night for this crowd. It was 4am by the time my head hit his hard couch.

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Los Angeles to Seoul

The flight from LAX to Korea killed me. It went along without incident but it went along sickeningly slow. Despite utter exhaustion, sleep never found me and my fantasy of falling asleep and virtually skipping the 13 hour trip never happened. Instead, I watched Avatar in all of it’s glory: on a 9 inch screen with fuzzy headphones.


The plane was stuffy and cramped; and again I was popping pills like a fiend. In an attempt to keep our internal clocks from completely breaking, the airline forced us to close the blinds as we were flying in perpetual sunlight. Towards the end I was beginning to feel a bit panicky and more than a little claustrophobic but I am proud to say that I kept it together.

It was heaven when I landed. I disembarked and followed the crowds, hoping they were all going to the same general place as I. They were and I soon found myself standing in the immigration line.

Sad as it may be, one major appeal of traveling is the stamp you get each time you cross that border. It is something of a notch in your bedpost type of deal, but I have become quite proud of my stamp collection; despite the lack of a Greece stamp. The addition of an official Republic of Korea visa… my god it might be frame worthy when I come back.

I was met outside of the baggage claim by a finely dressed Korean guy who called himself Mr. Moran. Moran was a driver who had apparently been hired by my recruiter, Steven, to find me and buy me a bus ticket to my destination of Cheongju and sit with me until I was safely on the bus. Perhaps I was a flight risk?

The bus ride from Incheon to Cheongju was 4 hours long according to Mr. Moran, but only 2.5 according to the kid from Hartford on the bus. If I were anything short of exhausted, I would have appreciated the idea of traveling to Asia and instantly meeting a fellow New Englander; but I was exhausted and the humor was lost on me.

Whether Hartford gave me his name or not, I do not remember. At that point I had been up since Wednesday morning Eastern Standard and it was now Friday evening Korean time. I tried over and over to calculate the hours in my head but simple math skills had been lost a day ago. I didn’t know where or when I was. What’s more is that in this state I was starting to see things; not an “I see dead people” kind of see things but on the airplane I was pretty sure I was seeing flocks of birds at 30,000 feet.

Hartford, it turns out had just returned from a Visa run to Japan and was heading back to his second year of teaching.

“I hope you know Korean,” he said, “because where we are going nobody knows English.”


Damn, I knew I forgot something.

But before my head could slump over in exhaustion induced and general un-preparedness aided dread, Hartford told me that Cheongju was actually a pretty dynamic place with its array of neon and ancient fortress walls.

Hartford was right about the neon and the 2.5 hours in any case, because 2.5 hours on the dot the bus pulled into a neon filled lane and stopped.

“Well, this is us,” Hartford said. “Man, I am sure I will see you at the bars.” He then told me where the expat bar section was and I forgot immediately. I stepped off the bus and was virtually assaulted by my welcoming committee.

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