Kedros Revisited

These past few weekends have been busy but rewarding for me. As Korea comes to an end I have finally put follow though into my effort to see a couple of people in this country. I have 22 days or so left here and there was really no valid reason for not seeing these people. I wish that I had seen them earlier and that I had seen them more frequently, but I am happy that a year in Korea did not pass without me visiting Sun Young and Dawoon.

Top: Dawoon and I outside the hostel in Kedros.
Below: Dawoon and I outside Motel Tomgi in Seoul.

These two were very much a part of my birth into serious travel as they were present at my first trip abroad. They were already seasoned travelers when I met them outside of the bus in Ioannia, Greece but I was about as naïve and clueless as they come. I often say that I don’t know what the hell is going on in Korea, but I really didn’t know what was going on in Greece.

I’ve retold this Greece story enough times to warrant its absence here, but it had a huge impact on how I thought of things around me, of myself, and the grand scheme of the world. Most importantly I left Greece with an openness to new experiences, new people, and new places that wasn’t entirely present before I left home that first time.

Sometimes I compare this experience to Greece. I was in Greece all of 3 weeks and I will have been away from home for over a year by the time I get back from Cheongju. I realize though that the length of time doesn’t make much difference on the impact an experience can have on you.

Left: Sun Young and I on the road in Kedros.
Right: Sun Young and I at a temple in Busan.

Greece was basically a long vacation from hell. We were freezing the entire time, aching from day 2 until the end, and navigating the awkward situation of a bunch of people from around the world sleeping together on a couple of very wide beds and sharing a dirty bathroom.

When we said goodbye it was as sad as it can be with people you had known only a short while, but in intimate circumstances. Well, not that intimate. Some people did make out once, though. I last saw these two in the Athens airport. We stayed up all night with Jardiel from Mexico as the rest of the group likely did the same in Thessaloniki. We drank cheap wine from Styrofoam cups and toasted to the whole wild experience and told the worst stories from our lives that we could come up with or force ourselves to remember.

I was happy for the company I had. The four of us said goodbyes and hugged and passed on to lost luggage, medical school, magazines, and memory.

That I have seen all 3 of my airport companions since then is incredible to me. We planned reunions but even I, the novice, knew that the nature of these sort of friendships is that they usually end at the airport- at least as far as actually seeing each other in person.

I saw Jardiel a year later in Mexico. My work camp failed to pick me up and I spent the scariest night of my life sitting in a dark corner chain smoking with a homeless man and a feral cat that ate cockroaches as a truck full of heavily armed men drove by. Cabbies I had been cautioned against came closer and closer asking me to get in and me with $2000 of camera equipment wrapped around my leg.

After a week I finally found Jardiel and we spent a night eating and talking about the cold, about the dogs, about the work, about the mountains and the people we met Greece.

So, after a lot of planning I went to Busan to see Sun Young and then to Seoul to see Dawoon. This isn’t to be over dramatic but I barely recognized them. We were all grown up, or something like that. We were wearing proper clothing and we weren’t covered in clay or pine needles, or dressed against winter in the mountains. Everyone had legit jobs.

Still, underneath it all we were basically the same. So we all relived a little of Greece in Korea and laughed at Shibal and the pizza, and talked about the nomad Josef, and the cheese and the hikes. It is reassuring to know that as this thing is ending for me that these friendships don’t really end.

Maybe someday I will see the rest of these mad Kedros people.



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Busan, Finale

 

Morning.

For various reasons, there was a blur between the end of the night before and the morning after. I awoke after not more than a few minutes of dozing in time to see a man and a younger guy putting in the first of what would be hundreds and hundreds of umbrellas. In a few hours Haeundae Beach in Busan would be crawling; our bed would be pretty crowded.

Turns out, it wasn’t our bed. The older of the two umbrella Nazis began shouting at me that we were in his way. We wouldn’t have been in his way for another hour anyway but I smacked Larry in the back and we moved further up.

All things told, there are worse places to be exhausted and hung-over than Haeundae Beach. Granted, my mouth tasted like black death and my skin was covered in grime and sand from the past 6 or so hours- the stink of bad barbeque hung around me in a shroud of regret. Luckily we were right next to a giant bathtub.

The water reminded me of Hampton Beach and Plum Island in that it was freezing almost to the point of ankle numbness but not quite there so it was refreshing.

Here’s something you should know about Haeundae Beach: you can’t swim until 9am. Why? Don’t know, perhaps you die. We were throwing around a tiny football when a lifeguard came running up and told us to get out of the water. Fun time was over. We spent another 15 minutes in pathetic childlike desperation. The beach was empty save for a few runners, the umbrella Gestapo, and Larry and I as we sat at the edge of the water and tossed a miniature nerf-ish football back and forth like 5 year olds who would drown in more than 2 inches of water.

At some point we fell asleep long enough to fry and woke up to take a quick dip and clean off a fraction of the sand that would cling to us until we were back home.

Our motel cost 90,000W. Not a bad price considering where we were. It was more than we were hoping to pay but it was close to the beach and let us check in at 10am so we took it.

Love Motels. These classy establishments of the cheap and fornicating are one of the coolest things about Korea. I don’t remember our hotel name (I remember spending 30 seconds sounding out the Hangul til we figured out that it had something to do with BEACH) but it was surrounded by a wall and curtains so that those who walked in would not be visible to the outside, more decent world.

There is a certain shame in these places despite that they are literally EVERYWHERE. They are generally a hell of a lot cheaper than a tourist hotel (90,000W is actually pretty damn expensive for a love hotel) and can be a hell of a lot nicer. Sure, they might come with a few questionable extras- battery-operated devices, an extra channel or two, a few brochures for a little company- point is love motels make a lot of sense for the budget traveler. Though, according to Lonely Planet, there is a love motel in Busan at which one can rent a sex machine for an hour- that place might warrant the covert entrances.

We lucked out with a measly condom machine in our room. I have stayed in some pretty shady places in my life (cough, Buffalo, uncough) and this, well, it wasn’t one of them. There was a giant TV hanging on the wall, the bathroom was large with a deep-but-broken whirlpool tub. We had a nice view to the ocean above a handful of buildings. Our beds were firm and comfortable despite being covered in sand within seconds. All in all it was a fine place. I collapsed onto my bed and looked up at the thing that was probably going to kill us in the end.

It reminded me of an enormous wagon wheel. It was deep brown and was fixed to the ceiling. The color went with the white ceiling but the thing was monstrous. I had visions of my end- killed by a giant wagon wheel in Korea next to Larry in a room with a condom machine.

The other thing that made me nervous was our fire escape. We were on the ninth floor and our only way out in an emergency was coiled behind some glass next to the window. Our fire escape was a rope. I am scared of heights and if there was a fire I was supposed to throw this NYLON rope out of the window and shimmy down to the ground? C’mon Korea, at least spring for a rope ladder. They might as well have left a Super Soaker 80 in there with a note that said “…sorry”.

Lunch was a disappointment. We stopped at a sit-down Chinese joint and pointed to several menu items that we wanted included in our “lunch special” and got almost none of them. Instead we got a handful of tiny sample dishes of pretty crappy food. The rolls were pretty good though. We should have sgone for the shark fin or the bird’s nest soup, both of which were listed on the menu.

Haeundae Beach looks a lot more socially acceptable in the day. For one thing, there were no obviously drunk sailors or old men from the GEORGE WASHINGTON looking for meat in exchange for cigarettes. The place was swarming with people. It is still strange to see non-Asians with any regularity but a good percentage of people we passed by or pushed through were from the West. The beach was completely covered in umbrellas and people in skimpy bathing suits. Wait, that last part was a lie. It wasn’t until after Larry brought it up that I really noticed, but Koreans aren’t fans of the newest suits with the least amount of material. Nope, Koreans are fans of wearing a full set of clothes, sometimes even an over shirt on top of their T-shirt, when they go swimming. Whatever they were wearing, the place was hopping. Restaurants were overflowing and convenience store patios were full of people enjoying one or several early afternoon drinks.

We walked with the beach to our left on our way to some sort of shore pathway that brought us to an island and back. It was nice. The last time Larry and I had walked together was at the mountain fortress in Cheongju so this was a breeze. A wooden walkway sat atop rocky cliffs and jetties. Below were families drinking Soju and hunting for shellfish or something else. There was no sand for them to sit on, they just perched themselves amongst the rocks.

The path led to somewhere that was pretty unexpected. It led us first to a small lighthouse within sight of a giant bridge, but it then took us to a big modern looking building. It was the APEC building. Just recently there was an APEC meeting held in Vietnam. In 2005 APEC was in Busan, apparently in the building that stood in front of us.

It was a pretty cool place if a little bit dry. It was preserved so that we might feel like we were present at the time. We saw replicas of the meals they ate (plastic kimchi, anyone?) and saw their huge round table and seats labeled with the country of the representative who sat in it. Outside the meeting room we got to see the chairs they sat on as they looked out over the water towards the bridge. Mind you, we weren’t allowed to sit in them. They looked comfortable.



I was looking forward to dinner. Earlier in the day we had walked past a place called Fuzzy Navel. It appeared to be a bar that was packed beyond capacity but I knew (from being pathetic and googling “burritos” and “Busan”) that they allegedly served half decent Mexican food.

We found a spot on the patio and watched as a woman with two yippy but totally obedient dogs walked around. People sat in a tent next to us as a man read their palms and lightning tore the sky off in the distance. We ordered our food and sipped our drinks as we waited. The waiter brought out drinks to us and I, for one, realized that a “lime tap cocktail” was in no way a margarita. It was some dull beer that was loaded with lime flavoring. If mine was bad I felt fortunate that I had not ordered Larry’s Kahlua version.

Finally our food came. Words can’t describe how excited I was. I dug into my beef burrito. It consisted of about a pound of lettuce, refried beans, rice (according to the menu, it wasn’t on my burrito), a few burnt shreds of beef, fake cheese, and sour cream. If I were at home I would have been pissed, but I am not. I was eating genuine sour cream and what was once beef.  All was right with the world.

Larry managed to order the worst burrito on earth. I finished it when he couldn’t eat any more and it consisted of fake cheese and hardening refried-beans. I lucked out on the meal.

Later, we walked for a time with the beach to our right. We passed a K-Pop concert with 8,000W beers, a mural and about a thousand people at a hundred restaurants. We walked until the bustle of the strip gave way to the port. Fishing boats bobbed in a marina as open air shops cleaned their fish tanks. The night darkened with the lack of florescent lighting and the people became less tourist oriented. We walked through a narrow street and finally came to the end of the way and turned around. On a flat spot on the edge of the jagged rocks before the sea sat a family eating a twilight picnic. On our way back we passed small family fish shops where ladies cleaned or cooked their dinner which was presumably very fresh seafood.

Our Busan experience ended with us sitting atop a lifeguard chair drinking a beer while watching the sea as Koreans laughed and drank soju next to us.

At least, that’s how I would like to think it ended. It actually ended with a lifeguard walking up to us and blowing his whistle so that we would get down. “Damn waygooks,” he probably thought. We then went back to the love motel and watched Independence Day and The Ruins and had one last sip of Mongolian vodka. Before we left I ate an authentic bacon-double-cheeseburger from Burgerking and all was right with the world.  Not a bad weekend.

 
What I ate today: jjajangmyeon (noodles with black bean sauce) and fried chicken.

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Busan, Part I

I spent this past weekend in the southern port of Busan. Larry and I had been planning on heading that way for quite awhile but things hadn’t been working out. Primarily, we were hoping to meet up with my friend Sun Young, with whom I spent days digging in Greece, but she is perpetually on the move or otherwise occupied. This time she was in China. It would have been nice to have somebody with us who 1: spoke the language and 2: knew the city like the back of her hand and could be our tour guide. We decided against postponing because Larry is down to his last few weeks in Korea. We are at the end of the line and he is checking out at the end of intensives.

There was something familiar about our trip to Busan: it reminded me of taking of on an adventure with Brandon. It had this nostalgic feeling despite being basically as far from home as I can get. If I had to put a finger on what kick-started my memory I would have to say is that we had NO PLAN WHATSOEVER.

I talked to Larry in the short breaks between a full schedule. Actually, he had a full schedule; Fridays are a joke on my end. I had three class scheduled and two of them didn’t even show up. I had a total of 30 minutes of classes on Friday.

The furthest along in the planning process we got was that I bought tickets for a KTX train leaving Daejeon, the next city over, at 10:45pm. We would arrive in Busan at about 1:45am. From there we had no idea what we would do. We barely got tickets as Busan is a pretty popular beach destination and figured it would be catastrophic to pay for a motel for two weekend nights. In which case the sensible thing to do is obviously to spend the night in a bar. Problem solved. Done. Worry about the rest after the hangover.

I spent 4,000W on a cab to the Cheongju bus terminal and 3,000W on a bus only to have it stop directly in front of my apartment in Gaesin-dong (my neighborhood). On the plus-side I had Popey’s. The first time I ever had Popey’s in my life was in Cheongju, Republic of Korea. Cool, I know.

From there Daejeon was about 45 minutes with a decent amount of local stops and traffic thrown in for good measure. I had a vested interest in this bus ride as two of my best friends have taken a contract in Daejeon so it is a trip I am expecting to make frequently. It was not bad at all and the way was scenic with the constantly-present mountains raising a bit more dramatically. What is more is that every now and again lightning tore through the black sky and vivid and often repeated flashes. I enjoyed the ride.

Another cab took me from the Daejeon bus terminal to the KTX station. Not too long ago Korea joined the handful of countries with ultra-high speed trains. The KTX has managed to shrink an already tiny country into a more convenient, bite-sized portion. The KTX runs from Seoul in the northern reaches to Busan in the very south with various outward stretches here and there. It’s top speed is 220 mph.

We got lucky with our train. It stopped only once or twice instead the handful of ordinary stops and brought us to Busan in the 2 hours it promised. We were unlucky in that we had to sit backwards the entire way. It is unsettling and a bit disorientating to travel 200 something miles-per-hour backwards in the dark. Further, we had to watch a little Thomas the Tank Engine type show that featured an animated KTX constantly being attacked by an angry train that often sent the KTX flying off the tracks and into the air. It was a pretty stupid thing to show.

Busan is the second largest city in Korea. It is the largest and most active port in the area and makes an attempt to be the vacation destination of the mainland. We figured that our best bet was to head to happening Haeundae beach; but not before we took a stroll down Texas Street.

We came across Texas Street accidentally. We chose to walk to the right and that’s where the street was. Texas Street, according to guidebooks, was a pretty good place to avoid at night. While it certainly had an appropriately seafaring level of seediness to it, it didn’t seem to warrant a “don’t go” label. The first thing we saw was a banner hanging that said “Welcome U.S. Navy!”

Larry and I picked a funny time to go to Busan. Somewhere, not too far away was the GEORGE WASHINGTON, a nuclear powered air-craft carrier that is currently serving as flagship while the combined forces of the U.S. and South Korea stomp their feet and make other very loud noises to show North Korea what’s what. Busan was crawling with U.S. Military.

For a time we walked with the Shore-leave “police” unit assigned to haul in the too-far-gone and misbehaving sailors on Texas Street. In a few hours that would probably be every sailor on the street, but at this point it all seemed pretty festive. There were Russian restaurants and bars with open doors. Signs written in Cyrillic hung here and there. Clubs pulsed to beckon the waterlogged and Russian whores stood by the doors. Definitely worth a walk through and it didn’t seem to be as far gone as Itaewon.

A taxi took us from Texas Street to Haeundae Beach. We were a lot further than we thought we were. Haeundae Beach was still hot and busy at 2am. Sailors and Koreans walked every which way, from bar to beach and back with a steady flow of booze.

We didn’t spend the night in a bar. Instead we classed it up by walking around the beach, dipping our feet in the freezing water and then spending the night drinking and laughing outside of a convenience store. At one point while we dangled our feet over a sea wall two Korean guys came up and asked if we had accomodations and seemed to be asking if they could stay with us. We replied that our accomodations were the beach and a bottle of horrid Mongolian vodka. Soon after, or during, an older Korean guy joined us and barraged us with drunken Korean and promptly ripped a fart and then we left.

We managed to stay awake until 6am, when we skulked into a BBQ restaurant in search of charred meat. A few minutes before we came across an old guy from the U.S. who was crossing the street with a pack of cigarettes. He told us that he had come from the GEORGE WASHINGTON and was also in search of meat.

“I just bought this Korean guy some cigarettes,” he said, “so hopefully that’ll work.” He then offered to buy us a drink or two with the rising sun but I got the impression we were both looking for different kinds of meat. We wished him luck and he to us and we parted.

The BBQ was horrible. Most likely, the older Korean women had served one too many drunk U.S. sailors and wasn’t too happy to see us walk in at dawn. The meat was pretty terrible and most of the food was tossed onto the table without so much as a smile. Scratch that, they were pretty openly pissed off at us for being there.

Bill paid, we found our way to the cool sand of Haeundae beach and built a couple of sand pillows and tried to sleep. Larry, was successful and was unconscious in seconds. I, on the other hand, have been having a lot of trouble sleeping on my bed, let alone on the sand. Ordinarily this would have resulted in me laying around irritated and grumpy. This time, though, I was rewarded with one of the funniest experiences of my life.

I saw the beach combers, 20 or so people dressed in orange with garbage pickers and little nets to clean the sand for the masses that would soon come, about a fifth of a mile away. I should have nudged Larry so that we might get out of their way or otherwise NOT look like a couple of foreigners sleeping in their clothes on a beach with no tent or sleeping bag- kind of gives off a bad impression. Instead, I said nothing pray Larry would not wake up and took out my camera.

It was everything I could have imagine. Larry laid like a little child as Koreans walked by and picked up the garbage that laid around us. They looked at us and gave us (me) a few laughs as I sat there taking photos and laughing in hysterics. One of them even had the amazing idea to pick up Larry’s glasses with her picker.

Alas, eventually they left and I had nothing to do but lay there and look out into the sea as the sun began to burn off the morning fog.  I guess it's not such a bad place to have insomnia...

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