Worst Hotel Ever

The Russians and I hopped from the bed of the pick-up and said our goodbyes to Mary (or whatever I named her, I forgot) and her friend. Her friend, a heavily tattooed American gave some recommendations as far as places to stay that were either closer of further from the hotspots, depending on what we were looking for.

I found out shortly thereafter that what people in Pattaya are generally looking for, is sex.

I followed the Russians into a hotel run by Russians. Girls sat on a dirty couch and looked at me. The guy at the desk disappeared for a time and I listened to pumping techno for a while until I decided I wanted to try my luck elsewhere.

This was the situation: My bank card was sitting under my bed (or what was until recently my bed) in Korea. My cash was starting to dwindle. I was searching for a cheap motel that I could put onto a credit card so that I wouldn’t have to worry much about what would be the largest bill in Thailand.

No luck. Cash only. Apparently people don’t want others to know they were in a place like Pattaya. I walked over a mile down the only stretch of road near the coast that was barren of hotels. Occasionally I would pass these weird combo gym-hotels but I didn’t fancy the look of any of them. By the time I found a place I was covered in sweat, my arms hurt from dragging a couple of pieces of luggage, and I was frazzled and close to losing it after trying to avoid the constant rush of scooters.

I finally walked into a wide open room, asked for a room for the next handful of days. I was stuck behind a fat, bearded American biker guy as he waddled up the steps. I found my room, opened the door...

The room was actually quite large. That is all it had going for it. As I turned on the light a lizard scurried across the plaster ceiling. This is not a lie, nor is it even a slight exaggeration. My hotel room had a fucking lizard in it. The funny thing is that didn’t bother me at all. Grain and dirt covered bits of the linoleum floors. A bound menu sat atop a broken table. The menu, it turned out, was to some other hotel that had room service / a kitchen. I turned on the TV for a little background noise as I looked for the remote to the air conditioner. CNN was on and talking about some compound in Pakistan. I turned off the TV and headed out for some food.

I returned with a plastic baggie full of cellophane noodles, chili peppers, tripe, sausage, and vegetables bought from a vendor outside. It was delicious. The whole atmosphere of Pattaya that night was of a wild party. Foreigners shouted from scooters and in bars amidst bright TVs and the prospect of cheap sex, I could hear cheers. I was missing something maybe.

The bathroom was the worst part of the entire room, maybe even the worst part of Thailand in general. It existed on the same level as my bathroom in Korea in that the shower was not separated. The millipedes that sat dead in the middle of the tile should have tipped me off.

I turned on the shower found that the drain was clogged with all manner of black, mucky debris and that as the water level was raised, all of this shit just floated along the bathroom floor. I turned off the shower and tried to do some laundry in the sink and found that this water also drained into the same pipes and soon there was an inch of water on the floor and a bunch of gunk floating around. I did what I could and hung my clothing to dry on the balcony.

I then turned on the TV, popped opened a mini-bar beer and discovered that Osama Bin Laden was dead.

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Chuseok

Chuseok. To the best of my knowledge it is a kind of Korean Thanksgiving. I tried to ask my students what Chuseok really was and what they would be doing but I didn’t get too much out of them. I should start wikipedia-ing this stuff. Perhaps this blog could be more than ramblings, violations of student-teacher confidentiality rules, and uninformed (and largely in factual) observations. But, I didn’t.

The Senecal apartment too early in the

morning

The vast majority of my students, when asked what they would be doing answered one of all of the following:

I will play with my cousins.

I will go to the hometown of my father.

I will eat songpyeon (a kind of rice-cake with sweetish fillings; which I incorrectly imagine as a weird jelly munchkin).

My coworkers tell me that it’s a harvest festival that occurs according to the lunar calendar. Surely, it has some decent history of traditions and customs but the important thing is that it is a time for family: both living and dead. Families make the trip home during Chuseok if at no other time if the year. Kids play with cousins they might not see regularly and adults catch up. Gestures are made towards those who have already passed. Tombs are cleaned and honored and food is left in remembrance.

Another Chuseok tradition is that Korea basically shuts down for a couple of days to the dismay of waygooks trying to take advantage of a significant time off from work.

Want to hear about a trip to what might be the most boring place in Korea and a night in what might be the creepiest motel I have ever stayed in? Keep reading.

In my defense, when I started planning a trip to Gyeongju nobody told me just how “quiet” Korea became. Sure, Han might have mentioned that some places might not be open and that travel via road might become tiresome (Seoul, a 2 hour trip in ordinary circumstances, can take somewhere between 15 - 20 hours). So, I assumed that maybe we would not be able to be so picky when it came time for bbq. Fine. It took some work but I booked train tickets from Daejeon to Gyeongju. There were three of us. Two of my best friends from the ‘bury are now teaching in Daejeon which is a short 50 minute bus ride away. Given that they have really just arrived and I never got around to getting them a wedding present and it was recently their first anniversary (god, one year ago I was trying to function at a wedding after working until 2am for the magazine and then being unable to sleep) I would drag them along. We would have a scenic train ride across the peninsula, see the sights, eat some food, watch TV, and have a grand ole time.

I should have just bought them a plate.

Rick and Lauren in front of a fake

burial mound.

We were out in the deserted streets of Daejeon before 7am. The place was a ghost town, and what’s more it was a dreary ghost town given that the weather had turned gray. Ordinarily at that hour there would be at least a few Koreans stumbling home from the bar but presently we had the city to ourselves.

A quick taxi took us to Daejeon Station where I picked up our tickets. The next day we would return via a train to Daegu and another to Daejeon. Poor Rick wasn’t given Friday off. As for myself, I would continue on to Daegu and spend a couple of nights there doing absolutely nothing productive.

The train to Gyeongju was just short of torture. It lasted somewhere close to three hours and while it went through some very beautiful terrain I was dead tired. Still, my inability to sleep in a vehicle and the occasional peel of thunder that comes as a KTX train passes by at 200mph kept my semi-coherent mind outside the window.

Sometimes life will have me believe that I am still at home. After 5 months I am well into the routine of wake up, go to work, go home, sleep, repeat. What was once exotic about Cheongju is not so any longer. The scenery outside of the cities reminds me that I am somewhere else.

Daejeon fell behind us as we traveled south. Cities became suburbs and those gave way to outpost towns. Then there was nothing but the mountains, rivers and rice patties. Grey weather gives way to deeper greens and high contrast. The mountains are always in the distance and about them clung a mist that stayed for the holiday.

If ever there was a time that Korea earned its name of “the land of the morning calm” it was then.

After a long time we were standing in the rain outside of a train station in Gyeongju.

Soon after we were in a cab as he took us to Bomun Lake Resort in search of a motel in the dreary mist. I was beginning to wonder about the damage to my bank account with a word like “resort,” but Korea proved me wrong.

Motel Sinla. The first warning should have been that the “l” and “a” were blacked out on the sign. Motel Sin. If you go to an abandoned Gyeongju on a grey and rainy day do not stay at Motel Sin. Just don’t. 80,000 won later (not a bad price for two rooms) and the manager was walking us through dark and abandoned corridors to show us our rooms.

Later on Rick and I made comparisons between Motel Sin and The Overlook Hotel from The Shining. The corridors were long and dark. The flip of a switch in my room revealed bizarre spill-stains on the walls. My bathroom door was cut a foot above the floor, and the stains found their way to the rug in the corridor. Our rooms were separated by an empty room. I was suddenly regretting my decision to have recently read Hell House.

What did we do in Gyeongju? We did basically the only thing there IS to do in abandoned Gyeongju on Chuseok in the rain. We walked.

Pagoda building at the Expo park.

Bomun Lake (which, as it turns out, is actually man-made) is a central point for many things that might be fun if they weren’t half staffed or outright closed. Around which are remnants of the World Expo, a place called Millennium Park, an amusement park and a couple of food-oriented folk villages.

Millennium Park was a bust. It was open but the cost of 17,000W a person and the piping church music coming from behind the artificially ancient walls was a bit of a turn-off. Their photos would have you believe that they are something of a themed replica kingdom with trick horse-rider-acrobat guys. The rain made us believe that we would be paying 17,000W for closed attractions and canceled performances.

A roll of crappy Kimbap later and we were staring at a pagoda cut into the middle of a tall building inside of the Expo park, unwilling to pay admission to walk around inside. What was open? There were no signs and there were few people. I try not to cheap out when I am traveling but the place seemed dead.

We decided to walk around Bomum Lake. It didn’t seem too far and further down we would pass through the two folk villages. We had nothing to do but kill time.

My dependence on maps has led to trouble before. I have a tattoo on my forearm of a map that led to one of the most ridiculous and surreal experiences of my life. I should learn my lesson at some point. Point is Bomum Lake is not very small. A long stretch of our walk in the increasing rain was on the side of the road with our umbrellas (Rick didn’t have one and he was too far soaked to use ours- gotta be rational about these things) held out so that the giant black and yellow spiders that are everywhere wouldn’t get us.

Arachnaphobia.

So we walked and walked and we went from damp to freezing and soaked feet until we turned a corner and made the unanimous decision to take a cab before we were hit by a car or killed by spiders.

The folk villages were all closed save for a convenience store.

In the end, the only thing we really did on our vacation was eat and watch TV. It might sound lame but we don’t have TV’s. I haven’t had regular access to one in 5 months now so sometimes it is emotionally satisfying to flip for an hour or ten every now and again.

When we finally found a restaurant that was open we had ourselves a Chuseok feast. On the menu: Donkatsu (fried pork cutlet)

Bibimbap (rice, veggies, spicy sauce, fried egg)

A smaller shabu-shabu (beef that cooks in amazing broth)

Rice

Gamja Jeon (a type of Korean potato-pancake)

Daenjang Jigae (a fermented bean soup - amazing)

Kimchi

Spicy bean sprouts

Cucumber Kimchi

A million other things.

Life was good.

------------------------------

Recently (as in the past 2 years) I have been in a horror kick. At one point in time I was a 5 year old girl in the body of a 20 year old guy in that I was incapable of watching anything scarier than Sleep Hollow. Then I took a horror cinema class at Suffolk and I suddenly realized the girl from The Ring wasn’t actually going to kill me dead at night. At 24 Proctor St. all we watched was horror. The last book I finished (oh how I love you, Kindle) was Hell House. It was a really well written book about a severely haunted house and people who are dumb enough to sleep in separate rooms.

For the first time in a while, I was creeped out. Motel Sin is a fine place but given the weather, it being cut off by a ring of trees in the mist, and the crow that I found sitting on the railing of my balcony; I was a little unnerved. It also seemed as though we were the only people in the motel.

Motel Sinla.

I locked the door to the hallway and then closed the door into my room because obviously a serial killer or ghost is incapable of opening two doors. My window was open and I was watching a movie about a tsunami hitting Busan. Korean disaster movies are different in that they are HORRIBLY depressing. Basically, everyone dies in long drawn out scenes of crying and saying goodbye to loved ones.

At some point somebody in the hotel opened a door that let up a draft and a change in pressure.

I heard a click in the door of my room. I was sitting there with a giant beer as another click sounded and the door shot open and banged into the wall.

I wish I could say that I did something proactive as the door bounced back other than swear but I can’t. A few seconds later I mustered the courage to stand up, throw a courtesy punch into the darkness (for good measure) and push the door as hard as I could into the jams so as to avoid soiling the bed in the middle of the night.

That was my Chuseok. I spent 2 nights in Daegu but did nothing but eat fast food and watch TV. I’ll spare you the details except that I watched the following movies:

Sin City (good)

Wanted (OK)

The Bourne Identity (amazing)

The Bourne Supremacy (good)

The Bourne Ultimatum (awesome)

Jurassic Park (obviously awesome)

Busan Gets Tooled by the Ocean (depressing as hell)

Resident Evil 2 (horrible)

And sadly more…



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Seoul, Part II

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.

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.

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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Seoul, Day One

It wasn’t much of a vacation but it was deserved and welcomed. I was starting to get sick of kids. I found myself beginning to dread certain classes as though I were still a student. Before Intensives I saw each student somewhere around every other day; I now see most of them every day. Sorry kids, I need a break. I need some space, ya know? I mean, you are all sweet children but I can only take so many cute and adorable moments before I crack.

Angry Girl, I am looking at you. I really appreciate you taking a kid friendly game of Guess That Picture and turning it into a death threat that could have made the news back home. Thank you for laughing as you drew a bottle of soju to go along with the fat man hanging from the gallows. Why couldn’t you draw a chair or a pencil like everyone else?

So, after the weekend of my first ever shabu-shabu and screen golf experiences I headed to Seoul, all alone and on a mission.

Two months earlier, for some truly stupid reason I thought I had some sort of new Xbox power supply that didn’t need a step-down transformer. I plugged the thing into an adaptor and into the wall. Turns out, I do need a transformer after all. I also need a new power supply. Enter Yongsan Electronics Market.

Yongsan is sort of a dream come true and a living nightmare all at once, but I’ll get to that. It is allegedly the largest market of the kind in Asia (quoting Wikipedia / Lonely Planet on that one so don’t quote ME) Suffice it to say that from somebody I do not know’s blog I heard of a guy there who would repair Xbox power supplies that morons like me had gone and fried. The blog was fairly recent so I assumed it would be a cinch to find the guy; probably had a big sign even.

I figured “hey, man. You are on vacation so why not make a few days out of it?” So I did. I left my apartment early Monday afternoon and didn’t plan on returning until Wednesday with a working power supply.

The plan was to take a bus to whatever bus terminal it was in Seoul that I said “nay” to when the cashier asked me. I would then take the subway to Youngsan and find a cheap little Love Hotel to use as a base. I would then find some amazing western food, have a drink, sleep and then deal with the Market on Tuesday.

I talked with a high school girl on the bus. She asked me: “If I go to America, will my face be ugly?” She spent most of the hour and a half trip reading bits of the Lonely Planet guide to Cheongju back to me. I spent most of the hour and a half trip trying not to sweat on her.

I have to say I did pretty well for a while trying to get around Seoul. I had a minute of panic trying to figure out where to transfer subways but I got it all sorted out and was soon stepping out into Yongsan station and straight into the market.

Sometimes, travel is just about trying to get the hell out of a place. I tried like hell to get out of the market but every exit seemed to take me via covered bridge to another section full of appliances, games, and computer parts. I ended up following a sunken alley through convenience stores and shanty grocers and then finally into the open air.

The market is massive and stretches along the roads outside of the main building. In any other area the stores would be selling Kimbap, soju, and cigarettes: in Yongsan they sell tripods, cell phones, and computers to which they might not have selling rights. It was as sketchy as people hawking high-powered graphics cards can get.

The heat proved to be the theme of my vacation. At times, for example between the hours of 7am and 6:50 am it was unbearable. I walked up and down Yongsan with a bag full of clothes and my laptop and my camera bag. I did so for two hours, until I thought that soon I would have to burn my clothes and figured that apparently not too many people are looking for a cheap hotel in Youngsan.

After downing my third bottle of water I pulled out my Lonely Planet and found a neighborhood more apt to give me results in my hotel search: the sun was fading, my feet hurt and I was out of water.

Anguk. A ride on one subway and then another took me to Anguk. When I came to the surface twilight had ceased and night was on me. I was starting to get worried that maybe my vacation wouldn’t be nearly as relaxing as I was hoping. I started to wonder if I’d be spending the night on a bench with a bag of clothes and over a thousand bucks worth of camera junk.

Enter the Tomgi Hotel. I saw its neon through the trees next to the metro stairs and decided that I would be staying at this place regardless of its cost. I walked through a hopping market street, past a soju tent and a dozen of so street food stalls. I passed into smoke and the sound of the night as bars spilled into the road. Alcohol flows readily in Seoul, even on a Monday night.

Tomgi is a love motel but it has class. I paid 60,000W for the night and took the elevator to the dark 8th floor. Soft pop music piped into the hallway as I stuck the keycard in its slot. Ten minutes later I managed to discover that the lights only worked if the card was put into another slot. Things look different in the light. I had been expecting a motel room with cigarette burns on the floor or things growing in the bathroom. I was ready for all sorts of bad things. What I got was shocked.

To start I had a giant, firm queen that sat next to a window that looked down upon the night and her people going this way and that. In front of the bed was a GIANT flat screen TV, a water dispenser, a PC, and a fridge full of Gatorade. In the bathroom was a 2 or 3 person whirlpool that worked, a full-body shower, and a toilet with a heated rim and a bidet.

I remember thinking that it wasn’t such a bad deal after as I sat in the foaming tub with a can of Cass while watching My Name is Earl on the TV.

 

This photo is the fire escape.  Seriously.

What did I eat today?  Kimchi and egg ramen (not good).  Vegetarian curry and rice made by me (pretty freaking awesome).

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