First time in asia
Trip Start
Apr 10, 2005
1
2
Trip End
Ongoing
Deokso-ri, Korea Rep.
Monday, May 16, 2005
after basically sleeping through most of the long-assed flight over here, i got to customs and tried to speak with the stonefaced immigration officer to get the passport stamp...he made no eyecontact or attempt at speech whatsoever...i thought that it was just as well, as there is nothing i hate worse than answering questions from authority... i have taken the approach to always initiate talking and have a question or two ready, so hopefully they will get distracted and forget to interogate me, thereby just sliding thru...not that that theory works more than one time in ten...
next i claimed my baggage and prepared myself for my nemesis-- "customs"...getting into the area i saw a few signs, one of which was "nothing to declare" and thinking about it for a minute and trying to decide whether that applied to me or not, i was promptly waved to a lane by an officer...thinking that "oh shit" here it comes and expecting to be grilled and have my bags exhaustively searched, i was absolutely astonished that i passed thru the sliding glass doors and into the lobby where i immediately spotted my friend who was there to pick me up...could it really be that easy???, i thought to myself...i half expected to be chased down by someone screaming gibberish that i didnt understand...but there was to be none of that, i was a free man, and they were none the wiser that i had just smuggled three midgets and a half kilo of uncut colombian cocaine into the country in my bags, and a half ounce of canadian maple syrup in my rectum...okay not really, but i could have...i had that much luggage for f#$ks sake...but i did get my fruit in...oooohhh, not some fruit---what a rebel hey???...but i have gotten in shit for that before...it may not have been drugs or a midget, but i still felt slightly rebellious,as if somehow, smuggling a banana, an apple, and a couple oranges was really "stikkin it to da man"...
as of june 13, i became an english teacher in a private hagwon, teaching kids in the grade 2 to 8 range...not wanting to rush straight into the world of full time work, i arrived in korea about 5 weeks before my start date, and therefore had plenty of time to move in, clean up the apartment, get a feel for the country, generally waste time and take many trips into seoul to visit old friends that i havent seen in quite some years...
as far as moving to a foreign country goes, this one was way to easy...my buddy aaron did most of the work for me, and then some...all i really had to do was show up at the airport, and everything else was pretty much taken care of...the living accomodations are a brick building with 5 bachelor suites for each of the 5 foreign teachers employed at the school...though i didnt start for a month or so, there was an extra room in the building available because they were short one teacher...my buddy had came up a couple weeks earlier to visit (he had worked at this school previously) so he was using the room when i got here, and subsequently i moved in early as well, which was sweet as i didnt have to get my own temporary accomodations until my start date...
expecting the accoms to be nothing special, i was pleasantly suprised to discover that they are actually quite good...and more than comfortable....they are one room suites with a bathroom as well, and everything is fairly newish...they probably wont last many years before they start falling apart and turning into shitholes (korean building standards seems to be of the idea that you should build it to tear down in a few years, thus keeping the construction economy going)...but i will be long gone from them before that becomes an issue, so for the time being i am quite content to enjoy them while they are still fresh, and aesthetically pleasing...however, my neighbour across the street happens to be a large yard of power transformers, so that has me quite creeped out...i make a big deal about not using microwaves, yet i live near a power site...not sure what to do about that...so far, im trying not to think too much about it, but i know one day i might freak out....
the first friday here, i was treated to a fantastic traditional meal of sam gyup sal, at one of the korean teachers mothers house, and i was quite impressed...it consists of a grill placed on a gas burner on a slant so that the grease runs off the meat when u cook...bascially it is covered with thick slabs of pork that looks like bacon (but more fat), then is surrounded by beansprouts, kim chi(fermented and peppered cabbage), garlic, onions, mushrooms, etc...you let it cook for awhile, then wrap it all up in a lettuce or sesame leaf, and jam it in your mouth like a little package of goodness...all while drinking copius amounts of soju, which is the local white liquor guaranteed to leave you hungover...i wont even get into its formaldehyde content!!!the number of pounding headaches and hangovers i have had in korea since i got here, already surpasses my total for my entire life previously...
as for school, i am trying to get used to the high-pitched girl screams...a little much to take...apparently i am "very handsome" which appears to be the only quality i possess in the schools and students eyes...that was not supposed to be an arrogant self compliment, as almost all foreign teachers here are "handsome" or "a movie star"...u get tired of hearing yourself described in that manner...i have been told i am "like 10 tom cruises", as well as justin timberlake or brad pitt-(maybe i missed my calling???i should be a body double in hollywood for any random white guy, cause we all look the same)...too bad i cant have the same effect on older girls...i would trade 20 school girl crushes for the affection of one hot korean girl in my age bracket...overall, not as many hotties out here as i thought, but the ones that are, are smokin...so im sure i will be okay, once i can learn some of the language, and get my game on...hehe
deciding to take advantage of my free time before i become a work slave, i decided to spend a few days in the southern part of the country...after boarding the bullet train which reaches speeds of 300 km/h, i was treated to a display of a middleaged american man throwing a tantrum at his korean wife...i gather they now lived in the states, but were on a vacation back to her homeland...apparently she read the ticket wrong and they boarded on the wrong car with the luggage that could no longer be moved because it was too large to roll down the aisles...consequently he was whining like a little bitch...i almost came to the point of interjecting and telling him to grow up, but thought better of getting involved in a grown mans issues...he pouted for almost 2 hours on the train...
at a national park area called gyeong-ju, where i took in the sights that mainly consisited of ancient burial tombs (pyramid like, but much much much simpler in design, function, and size)...the dead were placed in wooden tombs and then rocks were piled up on it in such a fashion as to create huge mounds that they would eventually seed to grass...the idea being that u couldnt loot the tomb unless you pulled off the rocks from the top, but then you would be visible to others on the top of the hill...if u tried to get in from the sides the rocks would just keep shifting down...there was one that had been cross sectioned somehow, and u r allowed to tour it, and it was quite interesting....in fact i have decided how i want to be disposed of now, and whoever is responsible for enacting my last will and testament some day, is gonna be busy...but by then hopefully i will have acquired many loyal subjects under my wing, and they will be more than willing to undertake this monumental task...and after they are done, they must drink the kool-aid...oops did i just expose my god-complex???sorry...inside thoughts...need to turn on the thought filter...
while touring these sights, it was apparent that it was school field trip day, and more than once i was surrounded by hundreds of children yelling at me "hello, how are you?"...its a little intimidating when there are that many of them...
the following day, i felt ambitous, and decided to hire a bicycle for the 32km roundtrip into the country side to visit the buddhist temple sites of bulguksa and sochuram...other than a few kms of uphill where i decided it would be more energetically efficient to walk and push the bike than pedal it, the trip was a rewarding way to see the landscape...although i wish i would have adjusted the seat a bit before i left...the seat was pointing a little too much up, and my ass was so sore that i had to stop every few minutes because it hurt that much...kind of felt the same as the the 5 hour horseback ride in ecuador...not good...
cooling down at the site, i was befriended by a jehovahs witness lady, and a few other older men, who were awestruck by my tattoos...they kept trying to rub them off, much like my grandfather does...it was good to see that instead of being freaked out by them, and treating me like a leper, they were genuinely interested...at one stop, a couple of older women even gave me the thumbs up sign and were quite excited by them...who knew???in busan, i had a cop spend about five minutes rubbing me, not at all convinced that they were real...apparently in korea, tattoos are a sign that you are part of the mafia, or have spent time in jail, so there are few koreans with tattoos...except for the ones who get them to avoid the military service, but that usually means they end up in jail because of them anyway, so that seems to add to the stereotype...
the buddhist temples were quite amazing and the intricacies of their construction and painting are quite impressive...i walked around for awhile, took a few pictures before hearing the somewhat annoyed voice of a korean lady in charge of making sure no-one takes photos...how was i supposed to be able to read a sign that was at ankle level???before that point i got a couple wicked pictures of the golden buddhas...felt a little guilty, but not enuff to erase them...as u can tell by the welcome image to the entry...
i then took a bus up to another shrine where i was again continually surrounded by kids and their attempts at communication...i decided to do damage to their knowledge of english, and have since adopted a policy of responding in a mix of spanish and french, with a little pig latin just for good measure...the look of shear confusion on their faces is awesome...
the next day, i headed to busan, to meet up with a friend of a friend who showed me around for a day or two...basically that means, we ate dinner, then walked around the various beaches drinking miscellaneous bottles of liquor till we met up with a group of djs and other foreign teachers who were in town for a club night going down that weekend...the friend i was with happens to be a dj running a club night there, so we had quite the crew for the evening, and the night was quite entertaining and quite late...
while in busan, i checked into a love motel, which is basically a cheap hotel for men to go to when they cheat on their wives...or for foreigners who are looking for sweetass cheap accoms in a country that doesnt have much in the options department for budget accoms...this place was P.I.M.P...one wall was a huge screen for the projector television and dvd player...there was also another large screen t.v. in the room...the bathroom was off the hook with jets and all the amenities in the tub...double bed, and a water cooler...order forms for all the sex toys one could desire (especially when u have rented the room as a single dude!!)...and it was only about $35 canadian...would never be able to stay in a hotel that sweet for that price anywhere else...except for the next time i stay there i guess...
after the weekend was over, i headed back to seoul for a night or two, before packing up my bags again and heading to japan...which will be a new chapter on its own...
