seoul

It's no secret that teachers expose themselves to an unusually high amount of infection causing bacteria and viruses. Every time one of my students coughs or sneezes, I cringe and try to hide behind my podium. Unfortunately, these high-tech attempts at disease control appeared to have failed miserably, as I was made miserable two weeks ago by some sort of Asian super-cold. Rather than stay home and nurse myself the first weekend I came down with the illness, I was whisked away on a weekend trip to Gyeongju and Daegu by my boss. (A journey so bizarre it could only be related through some sort of Pynchonesque story-within-a-song-within-a-story in some future post.) By last Friday, I was producing green phlegm in silver-dollar-sized dollops. However, once again, it was time to travel, so instead of resting, I hopped a bullet train for Seoul.

Now, everyone is grumpy when they are sick, but I have a very special talent of insisting on doing something (like traveling to Seoul), and then having a bad attitude about it the entire time because I'm sick. As you may have guessed, negative attitudes tainted much of our trip.

There's nothing in principle, or in practice, to dislike about Seoul right off the bat; it's big, exciting, happening, and easy to navigate. That said, stepping off the train from Daejon in Seoul Station is much like arriving in Grand Central Station fresh from Portland. The speed of the city astounds you so much that you feel everyone around you can literally see your eyes bugging out of your face. I felt like a country bumpkin peeling and eating my mandarin oranges (kyul) in the packed and crammed subway line. Of course, the shock and awe wears off as soon as you've completed your first successful multi-line subway trip without incident.

Our first destination was Dongdaemoon, the east gate market district. I love markets, and was hoping for some crazy-exciting wares that cannot be found at the Joongangno market in Daejon. It was a real shame that poor planning brought us to Dongdaemoon right as the final rays of light were disappearing from the sky, the bitter dry chill was setting in, and the marketeers were shutting down for the evening. As an unfortunate side note, what we did see of the market seemed to indicate that it contains exactly the same cheap goods peddled in Joonangno, just more of them. By the time we were getting back on the subway, I was already making snide comments like "I don't even know why we came here."

The next stop was Itaewon, the "Little America" of Seoul. Already, we had been seeing far more westerners than we are used to, and feeling a little off put by it. But Itaewon, whoa, that place is foreigner central. Some things are annoying, like the hordes of silly white people (in no small part due to its proximity to a major US army base), but many others things were very cool and refreshing. Examples include an all black hair saloon, and a rocking English bookstore. We had a delicious (if extremely expensive) Greek dinner before it was about time to leave Itaewon.

Hongdae is the really cool district of Seoul; it is the happening University area, where bars, shops, and art schools all combine for a hip neighborhood. Taylor was ecstatic to finally see stenciling in Korea. (I am slightly suspicious that most of the stencils were Westerner-made, though Taylor disagrees with me on this point. Unsurprisingly, not our only disagreement of the trip.) Luckily, Ben X happened to be in the neighborhood, where he was working on shooting a short movie with a gay Venezuelan filmmaker he had met in a Spanish chat group. He was able to walk us down the main strip of Hongdae, but it was Taylor who spotted "Bar Da", an inauspicious second floor bar with a seemingly secret entrance. It was extremely small but cool inside. I felt like I was back in Portland. One of the bartenders was even wearing what seemed to be a self-modified sweater. My favorite thing about Bar Da was the shoe-box size diorama of the bar built into the bar wall. (Man I'm a sucker for that kind of thing.)

When it was time to sleep, we slipped into a Ben X recommended jim jil bang (previously called a "jil jil bang"). You may know these as the public baths, but there are also sleeping accommodations, which involve one large room with hard floors that you sleep in with a bunch of clothed (or unclothed) dudes (or ladies). Did I mention I was suffering from a cold? This was not my ideal sleeping arrangement. But, in order to fulfill my ongoing desire to make the world (or at least Taylor) as miserable as me, I decided to assent to staying there so I could complain about it later. Not that I was lacking in things to complain about. The dark communal sleeping room had hard floors, and tough leather pillows. There were only three dudes in there when I crawled into bed around two, and I thought "this could work". That soon changed. Soon the room was full of (mostly) drunk, snoring Koreans, about thirty of them. I finally drifted off around four, only to wake up about five to find that the room's population had nearly doubled, and that I was centimeters away from being spooned by a half-naked Korean man. And I had to piss. I knew that as soon as I got up, my space and pillow would be devoured by the wall-to-wall sleeping mass, so I didn't even bother going back upstairs to the sleeping room. Instead, I opted to try passing out on the floor of the well-lit locker room, as roughly 15 other dudes had already done. I don't think I was drunk enough to achieve that task. By the time Taylor and I met at our appointed time of ten a.m., I was really, really salty, and looking to take it out on someone. (As a pleasant side note - my sleepless hours gave me plenty of time to boil away in the tubs, which actually helped clear out my sinuses and bronchial tubes.)

Our morning was expectedly filled with snappy comments and fights on the quarter hour. This was inflamed by the fact that the Western breakfast place we tried to go to (which, incidentally, is run by the US army) was closed. We didn't have the energy (or resolve) to battle our way through Itaewon again so early in the morning, so we had to bail on our coveted Western breakfast. We instead headed to Korea's version of a fake colonial town where you buy "authentic" souvenirs, Insadong. In retrospect, it was actually a pretty cool place, but Christmas shopping was about the only activity I felt could make me more miserable than I already was. Finally, Taylor dumped me in a Starbucks with a copy of the International Herald Tribune, and set out on her own.

It was actually a kind of blessing that our train tickets home were only available in separate seats. This allowed Taylor to make a new Korean friend, who is in the army, and thus needs a place to stay over the weekends, who will be joining us in our home for Christmas Eve. By the time this was relayed to me as we got off the train in Daejon, I was so burned out on being in a bad mood that I couldn't even come up with any nasty comments to make.