Squeezing lemons in Seoul Part 1: Indonesia Dreaming

It all started months ago. Months ago, I downloaded a subway map because I like maps and they use less juice than an app working off of 3G. It had hongdae, gangnam the Express terminal, Cheongnyangni, all the places I needed. 

Yesterday, I consulted said trusty map for directions to Incheon Airport. I found Incheon on the map and started out! I was funneled onto a subway train so old it looked like it was salvaged from auschwitz, and so densely packed that no AC system in the world could ever hope to cut through the dense ether of heat that had formed inside. It was that hot muggy heat that you scooped up like ice cream and threw in a cooler to keep other things warm. After forever and a day, the slow but steady trickle of people started to surpass the number of people coming on and the AC proudly boasted that it was now cooler in there than the light side of the mercury. I sat back, relaxed, and dreamt of Indonesia. Forever and a week later I see we're almost to Incheon. Nothing looks right. I can't explain it, but I'm reasoning myself out of worry. Until we stop. I'm expecting Incheon to be the last stop, it always is. But this isn't Incheon Airport. Nothing looks, sounds, or feels like there's an airport for miles. What's worse, I see the words 'Chinatown' in English. Then I see the dragon arch (think LA Chinatown) and it hits me: I'm in Incheon the city!!!! The world simultaneously implodes and explodes. I have roughly an hour and a half before my flight!! For me, if I'm flying internationally, an hour and a half is late to the airport!!! I'm I don't know how far from the airport!!!!! Cursing, kicking, screaming, livid to the point of red inside, I turn around, mutter a few swears, and carry on back to the subway. I call the airline in a panick. I'm watching the clock between every subway stop. I pace the car. I'm doing what I can to remain positive hoping that the laws of attraction save me from a missed flight. When the doors open I'm off like a velociraptor is behind me and it wants Mexican for dinner. I get to the turnstyle and it blares an angry electronic "THOU SHAL NOT PAAASSSS!! at me. The attendant passes the ticket to the woman behind the glass, who tells me I owe two dollars and change. I only have one one. I lose it. I don't swear, but I yell all over the place that I'm late for a flight. She gives me a sour look that clearly translates to "They don't pay me enough to put up with shit like this" and buzzes me through. Thank you nice lady, I'm sorry I was an asshole and lost my shit. It's now 705 and I'm Usain Bolt's fat beaner half brother. I fly up stairs so fast that even I wonder if I'm levitating. Backpack, schmackpack, it's only 15 lbs. I get to the ticket counter so winded I almost puke, and hyperventilate my story to the lady checking bags. 

It was seven ten. My flight was at 725. We all know how this story ends. 

Fifteen minutes later I'm at the CU on the way to the subway entrance. I lay down an ice cream, then get an idea and come back again with a beer. She says to me "not inside" I ask why not. She says "just". I'm so angry, so frustrated, so downtrodden, I don't respond. I don't even look up. I hand her my card and continue to act like she's not there. A certain silence hangs. The wheels haven't started spinning yet, they're too seized with emotion. I take the ice cream, beer and go sit down. 

Things slowly move towards normal, but do so slowly. After the ice cream there was water, because I needed it. Then the calling card. A new ticket was to be had. This vacation was happening. At the end of the night, I'd managed to start the refund process and un-froze my debit card. No ticket was to be bought, that would happen in the morning. The important thing was getting back to Wonju so that I could drink myself blind and numb wih my friend Dan. 

An hour or so later, I arrived at the bus terminal it was around eleven, and the last bus was always midnight. I go to the ticket counter and ask for a ticket to Wonju. 

No. She said. 

I shouldn't have been surprised. I shouldn't have been mad. I should have recognized that this was just not going to be my day. At. All. A part of me did. It just accepted it, the way a battered wife accepts that her husband is going to demand sex, finish all too quickly, and fall asleep without even trying to cuddle. The other part of me was livid. Again. I was like the guy that walked into your place of business angry, and was just told that he couldn't be helped. I wondered if I should just start breaking things. Not to resolve anything, but just because I'd be able to do something and get it right.

 Not having eaten anything since just after lunch, I sat down at the lunch counter nearby. The express terminal is littered with them. I ordered the most decadent thing I could think of. Ramen with cheese and dumplings. It wasn't on the menu, but I didn't care. The nice lady looked at me with a smirk in her eye and repeated what I said to confirm it. The guy next to me was poring himself shots of soju, and that's when I remembered the unfinished beer. I needed it *NEEDED* it right now of all times. Nothing was going right. I contemplated canceling my trip. I contemplated going home after this contract. I thought about how single I was (I an currently a little too single for comfort). I listened to see of the fates were trying to tell me something. After I finished eating I got up, contplated my next move; thought agains partying til dawn and crashed at a jimjaebang. 

The DJ kicks ass

I'm at Turn, a salsa club in Seoul, and the DJ here is 5'2", 5'4" max. But. He. Is. GOD. Este hombre tiene SABOR y TUMBAO! He's out there KILLING IT on the floor, with his bald patch, goofy tie, big nerdy Emporer Tokyo glasses and technicolor Hawaiian shirt. Fuck all that. He is GOD. He moves, he roars as he pleases, when he pleases (ino, really, on the floor) and his partner never stops smiling. Ever. He's just got it. 

Indonesia, Mr Mike Teacher, News

So, let's start with news. 

I'm resigning. Applied for an Australia visa (and paid the $400 application fee), but the lack of response wore me down. That in conjunction with my renewal deadline creeping up finally got me to say yes to another year. It's a really sweet gig, and I want to grow as a teacher, so it seems like a good idea. More on the ins and outs of how I really feel in another post. 

This weekend I went to Gumi to see my old co workers, Mike and Jim. I decided to take the bus instead of ride, which was good because it's given me time to do some research for Indonesia, and write out this blog. I fly from Incheon to Jakarta the 30th and land just after midnight. Ideally I'd like to spend the next day in Jakarta and take an overnight train to my next destination, Yogyakarta. Might not work out like that. Then the idea is to spend the next few days in Yogyakarta checking out the city and the nearby temples that are supposed to be some of the biggest tourist attractions in Indonesia. Then, fly to Bali and dive!! It's the beach life for a solid five days. I'm really excited to dive Tumbalin (I think that's right), the old WWII wreckage. It's finally gonna happen!! Now I have to shore up what I'm doing in Bali when I'm not diving. Probably not drinking, diving isn't something you want to do hung over. Need to hop on couchsurfing and see if I can land a few couches! I can't believe it's only a fortnight away!!

I'm currently on the bus now sailing past seas of green rice with islands of white plastic wrapped greenhouses. It's been a great weekend. The Wonj (Wonju) was out in force on Friday, which is a rare treat. We have a good crew, but they don't seem to come out at the same time. I'm guilty of it myself. I'm always in another city on the weekends, the. I bitch about how much the community sucks. Friday was great. I'd definitely stick around more if it were like that all the time. 

Last night was a crazy return to some piece of the past but in a parallel dimension. Gumi, hell Korea, seems to have changed so much in such a short time. But there we were, the three co workers back together in the restaurant on the corner. The corner was different. My old corner. It was a brand new 한우 (hanuu - Korean beef, ridiculously expensive because Korea is as conducive to cattle grazing as Alaska is to vineyards) restaurant. The grease and grime that had built up over the years had been ripped out with the old drywall and replaced by shiny new quasi-pseudo-industrial design. We all ate $50 in beef between the three of us - 400 grams, roughly a pound total - and drank  백세주 (bekseju). Mike had been diving deeper and deeper into the culture and was teaching me a few things, mixing the bekseju with soju in a gold/bronze looking kettle. Even though it's twice the price of a bottle of soju, bekseju is still only six bucks a bottle. The locals looked at us like we were popping Dom, in spite of the fact that they were all eating the same ridiculously overpriced beef. 

We were stereotypical Americans, we three. We were obnoxiously loud, belligerent, joke cracking, high-fiving, cackling, unapologetic brutes. It was fun. 

First, let me run down these fellows who I've been so rude asto not introduce until just now. Mr Mike Teacher is Cuban. If you met him, you'd look at me and say, "Really? I don't see it." He's about half a head shorter than myself, but about as wide as he is tall, but only in the shoulders. The man is built in a way that gives brick shithouses inferiority complexes. He's also bald as a baby's ass after laser hair removal, with a jaw so square it's used by engineering departments at research universities to calibrate important scientific equipment. This is augmented by a mean streets facade, with eyes that never stop scanning the room. In short, he's a Man. And he acts as such. He can be loud, blunt, obnoxious, intentionally maliciously direct, confrontational, and generally not give any fucks at all. Sometimes I don't know how we do, but we get along. He is a solid individual though. Salt of the earth, hardworking, genuine, honest (even when you'd rather not hear it), outgoing, personable, energetic, fun, and loyal. Other times I'm really glad to know the guy. 

It's kind of like that line in that one movie about the different kinda of people in every actor...

Mr Jim Teacher is much like Mike. Also enviable in his looks, even though he's knocking on 40, he's still built better than most 20 year olds I know. Also a Man, but He's kind of the opposite of Mike in a way. When I met the guy, he was fresh outta Miami and had a twang of the whole Miami superficial. Something about him was too nice, too inviting, it seemed almost fake. Like a used car salesman. But it turns out that Jim is just Mike without so much edge. Where Mike is reserved, Jim is sincere, where Mike is suspicious, Jim is understanding, where Mike is outraged, Jim is also outraged, but more patient about things. They're a fun pair when paired together. We rained terror on the ears if the patrons across from us as we came up with creative ways to complain about work. I swear the wait staff hated us. The table behind us was filled by some acquaintances of Mike. For all his hardass-ness he's really good with making Korean friends. His secret: sit outside 711 and drink alone. Oh yea, and be extremely ripped. Works for him. It was an older guy and his wife. We chatted with them, and their son came by eventually. I tried my best to keep up in Korean, which to my surprise was pretty good. While Mike and Jim went on, I hit the switch and tried to come down to their level. The mom (who spoke no English) complimented me something along the lines of her liking my vibe. I think. Vibe or disposition. They were good people. I kept going back and forth between the two groups (even when they were together, there were definitely two distinct levels within the same conversation). I was quite proud of my ability to fit into both. 

At one point I looked over and saw Mike do what Mike is famous for doing in the sneakiness of ways: pay the whole bill by himself. Mind you, we just ate $50 in meat and probably drank $20 worth of alcohol (alcohol is ridiculously cheap in Korea). We wrap up conversations and head over to the train station. Jim Teacher had had enough, and had to hop the train back to Daejon. We stop into Corona and have a round there. I ran into a few choice frisbee peeps which was cool. A few hours later, I'm chuckling to myself as I swim over a ridiculous wall of vegetation. Literally, swim. It was like crawling up a pile of grass at a 45 degree angle, except crawling required contact with a hard surface. This was swimming. Jim had made his train, Mike had bought two tickets to Daegu leaving in an hour, and he decided we should kill that hour in a bar near the bus terminal. We get there, and we don't go into the bar. Mike Teacher has decided he has needs, and those needs will be met. Thing is, typically in Korea, the areas near bus and or train stations often have houses of ill repute near them. Daegu is out the window. And I'm along for the ride. Now I've never paid for it, but the two times I've come close to have been with Mike. This was #2. We end up at a massage parlor where a pretty Korean greets us in disarmingly decent English. She opens a menu and we see packages ranging from $40 for a foot massage to over $250 for the "VIP Special Package A," two and a half hours of everything massage, plus a facial. Yea, we made that joke too. I knew I was low on funds, so I went for something cheap enough to plausibly be just a massage. Card came back declined. I went cheaper, declined again. I chuckled nervously and said I'd go visit the ATM. I was three bucks why of the second option, which meant it was time for me to go home and crash. I was in no place to spend any money frivolously. I come back, and Mike has chosen to go with the second most expensive option, and was in his private room waiting for the masseuse to arrive. He hands me his key and I'm off. I sit outside at a food stall pondering how bad the female situation is in Wonju while enjoying delicious steamed mandu (dumplings) for a minute before walking home. I hit the Great Wall of grass, and am just drunk enough to not want to go around. The Great Wall of grass is a barrier on both sides of the train tracks. The street I was on was about ten feet lower than the street on the other side of the tracks. On my side there was a low groomed hedge, a ditch, the Wall, then the train tracks, another wall, another ditch, and an incline up to a chain link fence. Suddenly, nothing else matters other than traversing the Wall. Not the rampant spiders, insects, falling, cleanliness or even dignity. I'm getting to the other side if it kills me!! So, I realize that nothing less than swimming up this grassw will do and, TA-DAAAA!! I swear I felt like I could do anything! Of course, that was just the beer talking me up, but it was a great feeling. 

Back at Mike's place, aka my old apartment, I run into a snag...I can't remember the door code!! After living there for 14 months, I can't for the life of me remember what it is! I remember it involves two sevens and an eight, but I can't get it!! I get so desperate I go buy some wet wipes and scrounge a hanger. My idea is to try and trip the motion sensor by waving something wet around inside the building. No luck. I sit down, and like a holy of lightning, BAM!! It hits me! I head upstairs, go inside and pass out. 

Next morning, it's off to Dunkin Donuts for horrible-for-you-hangover-cures. Come to find out, the most action Mike got was when he shook it after taking a wizz! He dropped over 150 on a fancy ass massage. Even I felt sorry for him.