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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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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Humidity

The weather in Korea is becoming exceedingly hot. It is not even mid June but already temperatures are hovering around 90 degrees. What is worse than that is that a humidity hangs about that I am not used to. Weather extremes were always a point of pride for me as a resident of New England with often brutal winters (ice storms that change the landscape for years) and summers were generally hot as hell thanks to the humidity. This humidity, though: good god.


I was told upon moving into my new apartment that I would soon be purchased an air-conditioner but to this I shrugged and told my director not to worry too much about it. I hope he knows that I was just being polite because official summer has yet to even arrive but my apartment is unbearable.

I leave my sliding door open when I am home and that seems to work well enough to steal an occasional breeze to circulate stagnant air. However, thanks to crappy wiring, the screen does not seal firm against the door so any bug clever or lucky enough can fly in unabated. To my luck, a smallish spider has set up watch at the to of the opening so that I have not seen more than one elaborately marked moth and one mosquito (who pent an entire night biting me, little bugger).

For a while, when I was at school I would close the window in an effort to keep the heat out. After today, I will not do this anymore. Frequently, these little Korean studios develop a funky smell. It doesn’t smell terrible and seems to come and go but it’s origins have to be the pipes that carry toilet and sink water to god knows where. I do not know for sure but Korean pipes don’t seem to be as efficient at carrying away waste water. In fact, most Koreans seem to employ the “wipe and toss” method when it comes to the toilette so there doesn’t seem to be the pressure for businesses to strive for nice smelling and clean bathrooms.

Anyway, I returned to my place today and opened my door to be greeted by what might have been the smell of a hundred dying zombies. I have no food to rot and I am generally good about taking out my trash so the smell is a mystery to me. In any case, a weekend ago I walked to Uptown and purchased a boatload of incense that I burn almost constantly.

They smell like grape children’s Tylenol. I hate the smell but it beats the alternative.

Each room in school has a ceiling mounted air conditioner that is made of shiny white plastic, turns on with a chirp via one of three remote controllers. Now, I won’t bore you with details about fancy air conditioners but these things are awesome. The bigger units, for example, have several flaps that are constantly opening and closing to distribute cold air evenly. They are efficient and futuristic enough for me to pretend I am on some Star Wars space ship. Thing is we barely use them.

The school is pretty well insulated and the windows aren’t usually open all the way so the temperature is generally reasonable, but it still tends to get a bit warm and stuffy. Perhaps adult Koreans have more of a heat tolerance than I do but that has yet to be picked up by the kids, particularly the Three Monsters.

Classes with them have become more and more difficult, though just as hilarious. Every class that I sit in with Han teaching involves her having to force them to do anything but lay their heads on the desk and every other word out of their mouths is “ice cream?”

For a long time they demanded that Han bring them ice cream. When that didn’t work they tried their hand at extortion.

“They told me that if I brought them ice cream that they would behave for the week,” Han told me.

So, she brought them ice cream that they devoured. They then welched on their end and went back to being little monsters.

“They tell me,” Han said, “that the ice cream was not delicious enough.”

The Three Monsters have become so desperate that they no longer ask Han to bring them ice cream, only that she end class a bit early so they might go out and buy their own ice cream.

This doesn’t usually happen as it is hard to get through any material when you have three boys screaming ice cream at you. The goofier one (the one who tied his hands together with balloon ribbon) took things into his own hands.

A week ago one of the AC remotes went missing. It wasn’t a big deal but we were left having to look for the remaining controllers whenever we wanted to turn on the air conditioners. Assumedly, the missing remote was beneath papers or books in the corner of one of the offices.

Today I was sitting in with the Three Monsters before Han came to class. It was stuffy and Han had already refused to turn on the air conditioner. I watched as the goofy one pulled the missing remote from his pocket and turned it on himself. Turns out he had been doing this for the past few days whenever he felt it was too hot to effectively give you a headache.

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