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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On Dogs and Alcohol

The next day I got lost.

It was bound to happen as it always does. When I moved to Beacon Hill I managed to get all turned around in the brownstones for two hours before I found my way back to Somerset St. I was going to meet Larry from Cheonan at Starbucks in Cheongju and there we would have a reunion neither of us thought would ever happen. Larry found Starbucks with no trouble. I never had a chance.

 

Starbucks, it turns out, was in Uptown while I thought it was in Downtown. This mistake didn’t make much of a difference because I couldn’t find Downtown to begin with. I walked for an hour or more until the people all disappeared and the trendy shops were replaced with dirtier streets and shambled stores.

Being lost in your own country is embarrassing, but being lost in Korea on your third day can be panic inducing. I managed to get so jumbled about that before I knew it I couldn’t even find my way back to where I had come from. I walked and walked until I was pouring sweat in the humidity and more or less wanted to cry.

Eventually I came to the main gates of Chunbuk University. Remembering that Downtown was situated off of the University, I walked a half mile in either direction but never found Downtown. Finally, I plopped myself down against the gates and told Larry that I would not be moving any further or else I might be wandering my way into a North Korean Gulag. If he wanted to hang out then he was going to have to try and find me.

Larry found me in all of 5 minutes. He was a sight to see after not seeing him since my old place at 24 Proctor , and what’s more he was decked out in leather and riding an old black motorcycle. It was good to see him; after all, he was the one who convinced me to pack up and head to Korea.

Together we walked to Uptown as it was the only place we knew the general direction of. It was a long way and it was humid as hell. I would have taken my jacket off if I hadn’t been sweating like a tweeker. We wandered the markets that we came across; almost hidden in alleys. They reminded me of the markets I found while wandering about Mexico: dreary and far off the tourist path but vital arteries of culture. The first was tiny and soon spit us back onto the main road, but the second was something to see.

It was one main throughway on a dingy street. It was dark and a little bit dank but there were so many people! Vendors sold everything: Bugs, crops, sand shrimp that jumped from their baskets, the ugliest fish I had ever seen and bags and bags of this and that. We continued on down the main path until we came at last to a live market.

If people were speaking around us I no longer remember. There were the squawks of chickens and the calls of roosters. One vendor had pens and pens of farm birds, while another had a collection of ducks sitting in tiny wire cages. Another sold rabbits and everybody sold eggs. If only I had my camera. If that was all that was at the market I would have left happy and satisfied. As it was we came into the last stretch and Larry broke our silence.

“Yep, there’s the dog.”

I had heard rumors of this, but I didn’t really believe them, but there was the proof right there. First, it was just cuts of formless meat beneath clouded glass, but finally we came to a few stalls that had de-furred or skinned dogs hanging like sausages in a butcher shop.

It is hard to look down on a culture that you do not understand, and I don’t, but there is something sacred about dogs. Whatever I have ever heard about the historic relationship between man and canine was that it was generally a mutually beneficial sort of thing; but here, there was nothing beneficial going on for Fido who now dangled dead from a chain.

I asked and Larry told me that they got many of the dogs from China as it was illegal in Korea and had been since Seoul hosted the Olympics, but it apparently was not enforced. Still, even he was surprised to see so many openly hanging or laying about.

It was a sad sight to be seen by somebody who misses his dog.

Still, life goes on and I am just a visitor to this place in the end. We wandered for a long time. We passed through Uptown, and through the street with the animal-people and microphones and sound systems and I was once again finding myself dizzy as we walked through the thousands. It seems that always we are walking against the crowd here.

We ate a good lunch in a food court. I had spicy pork, rice, kimchi and soup until Larry informed me that it was essentially squid broth and the once odd flavor and funny little chunks became disgusting. We walked back to the general direction of my place.

I would like to say I went and got my camera and took a bunch of photos, or that Larry and I went and had a cultural outing. I would like to say all of these things but we didn’t do any of them. Like most of my Suffolk friends, the original bond between Larry and I had a high proof. We went to one dark and smoky local bar, then to another where we watched Korean soap operas and ate a potato sampler and drank Cass beer and soju. We ended up at a joint called Vons that had the most wonderful chicken, though I have no idea where it is anymore, where we had one last pitcher. Actually, I had one glass and could not drink any more and poor Larry drank the rest of it.

That was the end of the night.

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