Before I do anything, let me tell you about what I did last night after blogging. I walked up the hill to downtown Seogwipo and bought some shampoo and water. However, on the way back, I paused at a little outdoor arcade thingy that had four small batting cages. I stepped in, pumped in 500 won, and then proceeded to strike out for approximately five innings (with a few balls and fouls thrown in here and there). I got my technique back about the 17th ball and had to pump in another500 won to really round it out. It was fun though; and kind of charming to boot. After dark, stark fluorescent lighting all about, teenage boys tag-teaming the next cage down, little girls jumping on the trampoline, and the old proprietor in his fedora sitting in a shack and watching TV, while cars rumbled past on the road and young couples strolled merrily up and down the sidewalk. Magical, you might call it.
Okay, now on to June 30, 2009. Pop quiz: what's black (or dark gray), full of holes, and holds up the economy of Jeju Island (not to mention Jeju Island itself)?
Give up?
Basalt. Jeju's covered with it. Made of it, really. The island itself is really part of the shield volcano that thrust itself out of the ocean earlier on in the Quaternary Period, of which mighty Mount Hallasan is only the peak. That's one of the main reasons that there's hardly any standing water on this island, because the porous, igneous basaltic rock sucks it all up immediately. Just thought I'd point that out, because I was forcibly reminded today, by the travel brochure, the educational video in the Natural History Museum, and my own eyes that Jeju is inextricably tied to porous basalt rock. The ancient Korean people on this island made good use of it for walls and gateposts. They had an interesting custom: there were three logs placed laterally across their gates, fitted into and held up by round holes in both gateposts. But they didn't always insert all three of them across the gateway. These logs' purpose was similar to the "away message" on an online chat service. If a neighbor came around and saw one inserted log, that meant the owner of the house would be back in a jiffy. Two logs meant he'd be out for a bit. All three logs placed across the gateway indicated an entire day's absence. Ain't that neat?
On tap for today: explore Jeju City. I'd caught a meager glimpse on the airport limousine out of Jeju International, and my guidebook assured me that there'd be sights (and tastes) galore. I was eager to see for myself. So...
I got up this morning after a lovely lie-in. I did my morning exercises while watching Seondeok Yeohwang, a rather cute Korean drama detailing the ascension of Princess Deokman (later Queen Seondeok, ruler of the Silla Kingdom from 632 to 647 A.D.) against the wishes of a scheming courtier. (Seondeok was the name of the queen in question, and yeohwang literally means "girl king," or queen. So the title of the drama translates to Great Queen Seondeok.) The drama mainly focuses on Deokman's largely fictionalized military service, and her alliance with her twin sister, Princess Cheonmyeong (who has a crush on Deokman's commander, and...well, there you have the drama). The whole thing actually ain't half bad.
I am the dorkiest traveler ever, and I love it. Picture me, wearing running shoes without socks, cargo shorts (belted, with my camera in its holster and my umbrella attached by its lanyard on said belt), a T-shirt, a bandanna (the one I got in Jirisan), and that floppy hat I got in the market at Gohyeon. My pockets are stuffed with my wallet, bank book, passport, itinerary, loose change, handkerchief, room key, and guide book. The picture was quite, um, unique, let me assure you. Thus arrayed, I sallied forth and hailed a cab. The Seogwipo bus terminal had been moved from the Jungang Rotary stop (a roundabout in the center of downtown) about five kilometers west to the site of the old World Cup Stadium from the Japan-Korea match in 2002. That was all well and good; on my way to the terminal I could stop off and see the stadium, get some brunch at E-Mart, and maybe even (on the way back) catch Transformers 2 at Lotte Cinema, all within the stadium complex. This I did, with the exception of the movie. I merely assured myself of the movie times and walked back out again. My brunch was barbecued chicken (about ₩5,500), a fruit assortment of cherry tomatoes, grapes, and pineapple (about ₩4,500), and a couple of doughnuts (for about ₩1400). I exited E-Mart and found a nice spot on the steps of a PC bang to eat it. Meanwhile, I watched the skies get halfway to clearing up and then cloud over again. Darn, is it gonna be rainy the WHOLE friggin' time I'm here?
Concluding my brunch, I bought a 3,000-won ticket for Jeju City and climbed aboard. The ride was exhausting. I hadn't realized it would be the scenic route, so I was mentally unprepared for the undoubtedly scenic but quite lengthy three-hour jaunt we took around the western edge of the island. That cut my sightseeing time in Jeju in half, but what the heck? It was only three grand. And besides, more usefully yet, the trip confirmed my suspicions that there was really nothing worth my precious time to see in Western Jeju-do. With the possible exceptions of Sangbangsan, a jungle-clad butte on the southwest shores, and Biyangdo, a hilly island off the western coast (both of which were fantastic in appearance, even from a distance), there was next to nothing of interest during the whole ride.
I was a bit peeved when I finally disembarked in Jeju, as you may imagine. As I mentioned, I'd lost a few precious hours by going the scenic way instead of the more direct route through the center of the island. Moreover, you know where I stand on the intercity bus issue. This driver had been no exception. He was horn-happy. I'd watched him, and he'd occasionally let rip in the middle of the road, with no other cars around, and no stops in sight. He did this too frequently for it to be an accident. The man had a compulsion of some sort.
Irrespective of this setback, I resolved to make the best of it. After briefly checking the bike shop on my Lonely Planet guide book's map nearby (to see if they rented scooters, which they didn't) I hailed a cab and went to the Chiseongno shopping district. My first stop was the underground shopping mall in the center of the city. It has a name, but I forgot it. That's poetically just, as the place was quite forgettable. The only thing even halfway impressive about it was its size, or rather, length. Standing in the center of its main hallway and looking towards either end, the place seemed to go on forever.
That was it. The average shop was the size of Paris Hilton's closet. Moreover most of the shops dealt in lingerie or ladies' designer clothing; not my cup of tea. I exited 20 minutes after arriving and went somewhere much more fulfilling and enlightening:
Jeju Mok, the restored and rebuilt remnants of what was once the central governing office of the island way back during the Joseon Dynasty. The governor's office was still standing, but the stables and the house where they trained concubines (yes, that's correct: geishas were nationalized in South Korea) had fallen. Only grass plots remained to show where some of the buildings had been.
The place seemed to be well set up, though. It retained military and governmental offices...
...training grounds...
...even a humongous building that seemed (according to the placard in front of it) to have no other purpose than to have government officials stand on it and face northward to express gratitude to the distant king in Seoul.
Whoop-de-doo, they built a whole building for that? Couldn't they have just used an overturned bucket or a soap box or something?
Sorry, maybe I'm still a bit peeved about honking horns. Anyway, after that I got a cab for the waterfront district. This was a BIG letdown. Yes, Jeju City has a waterfront, but no beach. There's just a seawall you can look over at the brooding South Sea (the China Sea), punctuated by the occasional staircase to nowhere that goes right down into the water.
I clambered over the wall and stood at the bottom of one of those staircases, right at the water's edge, with nothing but a vast trackless waste of water in front of me...
...and was disturbed by so many visions of some nameless, horrid sea monster lurching up out of the depths and swallowing me whole that I beat a hasty retreat a short while later. I strolled along the boardwalk by the seawall for a little bit, but the view was disappointing. I began to suspect that Jeju City would have nothing to offer me in the way of relaxation or scenery even IF the sun was shining. Oh yes, that's right, did I forget to mention that little detail too? It rained all day today. It was either sprinkling or pouring the entire...effing...day. Nutzoid, trust me and my bad travel karma to come to the subtropical Korean holiday island in the middle of the dingblasted rainy season.
Sighting E-Mart, I bore left and doubled back along the road to reach my next objective: one of the many fish restaurants that dot the waterfront district. I didn't care which, really, as long as I could get a big bowl of seafood. And I hit the jackpot: a little place wedged between two others, enticing photographs of its menu selection stuck up above the door. It was a unique little place, run by an elderly Korean trio (a man, the owner, and two ladies, one presumably his wife) and a Chinese girl. She was an exchange student and her Korean was excellent; her English, she explained, used to be good but had suffered as a result of her learning Korean. As someone whose previously passable Spanish has been reduced to tatters by Korean, I sympathized with her. I was ushered in and seated at the regular table, not the usual elevated floor where Koreans doff their shoes and sit at low tables. They must've figured I was the earthbound foreigner type. It didn't matter to me, as long as I got some seafood, and didn't offend these good people in the process. I gazed over the picturesque menu for a moment before making my decision: haemuljeongol, an extremely chunky seafood soup with vegetables. Twenty thousand won bought me a whopping great bowlful, boiled right at my table (stirred by my good self) and served hot with traditional Korean banchan (side dishes; the kimchi was particularly good). It had everything in it: cuttlefish tentacles, whole prawns, oysters, mussels on the half shell, bisected crabs, and unidentifiable bits that were nonetheless delicious. I strongly advise anyone who is not a dyed-in-the-wool seafood fan like me to avoid this dish. (I eat lobster shells. That's what I mean by "dyed-in-the-wool.") It was pretty darn good, but nothing special. The broth was tasty but not overly flavorful; the highlight of the dish was biting down into some particularly juicy and delectable bit of sea creature. I did my best to finish the whole pan, but it defeated me; I left a helping or two. I must've impressed them regardless; I noticed that after I emptied my water bottle and finished my sides, they started dishing me up larger portions. Anyway, I finished, leaned back, rubbed my stomach, delivered a few well-timed compliments to the chef (in Korean, of course), settled up and took my leave.
Suitably satiated ("dine in Jeju City" had been one of the things on my to-do list), I hailed yet another cab and headed to Sinsan Park, wherein lay the mysterious Samseonghyeol Shrine and the Natural History Museum. The museum was easy to find. The shrine, not so much. After wandering in and out of rooms for an hour and a half, observing everything from the formation of the shield volcano that formed the island to the peculiar stalagmite and lava formations in the numerous lava tubes that dot the island to the incredibly diverse native flora and fauna of the island to the singular culture and history of the indigenous Korean people on the island, I exited the museum and went in search of the shrine.
No luck. For once my Lonely Planet guide book's map was no help. It indicated only that the shrine was somewhere west of the museum; no trail led to it. Paths were not clearly marked. I wandered about aimlessly for a few minutes in a perfunctory search, halfheartedly retracing old paths; all I found was an old man busily humping some cone-shaped statue thingy. If that was the shrine, I wasn't much interested. I also found this:
I later found out that I'd been looking for the wrong thing. Being in Korea had made be believe "shrine" to be synonymous with "pagoda." I was barking up the wrong tree this time. Samseonghyeol Shrine is actually composed of three side-by-side holes in the ground. Why is that sacred, you ask? It was from these holes that three brothers are said to have emerged (way back in the day) and founded the independent Tamna Kingdom of Jeju. Each of them shot an arrow in a different direction and ruled the sector of the island where it landed. (I believe the name Samseonghyeol means "Three Celestial Brothers.") Too bad I didn't know that at the time. I was looking for a pagoda.
Recognizing defeat as well as the onset of night, I called it a day and hailed a cab for the bus station. I paid another three grand. During the ethereal bus ride home (through the dark and the thickening mist) I noticed with profound relief that I was, in fact, on the short bus. Ha ha, no, seriously, I was on the bus that was taking the short route, the 5.16 Road (that's not the number of the road, it's the name...I think May 16th is a famous date here for some reason I haven't discovered yet). It connects Jeju City and Seogwipo directly, curving around the eastern side of Hallasan in the center of the island. In short order I was disembarking at Jungang Rotary in downtown Seogwipo. Though I knew I was within a mere kilometer of the Jeju Hiking Inn, having not visited this part of the city yet and being too tired to be bothered asking directions, I simply hailed a cab and rode to the Sunbeach Hotel. From thence it was a short stroll back to my place, where I started writing this.
So, all in all, I think I accomplished my mission. I'd wanted to check out the National Jeju Museum as well as the Natural History Museum, not to mention a few other sights and sounds and drinking establishments in the greater Jeju area, but thanks to that dratted indirect bus ride I'd taken earlier I'd been precluded. That having been said, I'm not chalking this up as a loss. The point was to go to Jeju City, not to conquer it. I accomplished my general objectives: check out the shopping district, eat somewhere along the waterfront, and visit the park. That was done. I'm now going to go back up to my room and be Princess Deokman's newest cheerleader. The actress who portrays her, I Yo-Won, is rather cute...
Having completed my contract at Reading Town, somehow weathered the storm of the final week (with a lot of sweat and a few tears), outlived the guilt of occupying Adam and Elaine's couch for the weekend (excuse me, I mean setee), and moved all my garbage out of my old apartment...I was ready to go.
Go, on two weeks of sightseeing around Korea to desperately try to catch up on everything that I missed. I'm going to try to update this every day. It should be easy the first week, 'cause the hostel where I'm staying has a computer lab, but I don't know how things will fall out later on. Bear with me.
Oh, and one more thing: I had to amend my previous plans, unsurprisingly. I've got some things I absolutely MUST take care of when I get back to Gohyeon, like a police background check and the final withdrawal of all my money from my Korean bank account. So, to that end, I have to be back in Gohyeon no later than the night of Thursday, July 9th. That cuts, like, three whole days off my roamin' and viewin' schedule, which means I had to completely excise Gangwon-do from my list of things to see. I'll still get to see Jeju and certainly Gwangju, even if I have to cut my time in Mokpo a bit short. So, all in all, I'll be happy with the holiday island and the mysterious province of Jeollanam-do. I guess I'll kip on the setee for the remainder of the time, if A and E will still have me...
Alright, down to business. I was all packed up and had pretty much settled my affairs (as far as possible) by the time the weekend rolled around. I spent a relaxed couple of days at Adam and Elaine's place (Jeff and Kevin came over a lot)...which was nice, seeing as how we're going to be parted for a while. Then I got up at 6:00 a.m. on Monday, today, checked through all my belongings one more time, made sure I had all my documentation with me, snarfed some more of A & E's food, and then headed out.
...into the pouring rain. Yep, a storm front had moved in overnight and it was bucketing down. And there's me, the stupid Samaritan, donating my spacious man-sized umbrella to my successor. In a dilemma, I finally set my things down on the threshold of Adam and Elaine's building and sprinted down to the nearest GS25 to buy a tiny, cheap replacement. It was this umbrella I cowered under as the wind drove sheets of rain all over my pants and shoes and ungainly duffel bag, while I marched down the road to the main drag to hail a cab. I finally got one and managed to make the station, but I was a little irked. Normally I don't let the weather get me down, but normally my socks and pant cuffs aren't soaking wet, either. I also slipped walking down the steep, smooth sidewalk by Meat Home (now Meat Rak) and scraped my knee something fierce; it throbbed for a long while afterwards.
Meteorological and physical setbacks aside, however, I made it to the bus station, bought my ₩9,000 ticket, boarded, and spent the next two hours in a lurching bus trying to dry off. I had to the backseat to myself, so I was fairly successful, but I could barely keep my eyes open. We'd been staying up late and partying all weekend, and having to get up at six o'clock was only compounding matters. Even pleasant daydreams about myself and Keeley Hazell alone on an inexplicably deserted Jeju Island didn't help; I nodded all the way to Masan.
There, I easily secured a cab to the airport limousine terminal. "Limousine" is a bit of a misnomer: it's actually just the airport bus. Perhaps that was an error; perhaps it's customary to label any shuttle vehicle that links up with an airport a "limousine," and I wasn't aware of it. I think some Korean didn't read the American travel brochure very well when he was looking for inspiration. Anyway, I bought a ₩6,500 ticket and within a half-hour we were rolling toward Gimhae, reaching it at about 11:00.
So, I was at the domestic terminal at the required airport after a trip that had gone incredibly smoothly compared to what I was used to...so swimmingly, in fact, that I trapped myself. Check-ins for my 2:30 flight didn't even begin for another three hours. (Insert weak laugh here.) So I just kind of lounged around the terminal, stopping off at the Sky View Restaurant upstairs for a quick meal of haemuldwenjang, a spicy, chunky seafood-and-tofu soup. With side dishes the bill came to a whopping ₩6,000 (about $5.50). Then I just plunked myself down and read my trashy adventure novel until it was finally time to go. (Oh yeah, I logged on Facebook at the airport cluster and wrote a rather vitriolic pamphlet against the intercity bus system, but I've spoken liberally about that elsewhere, too, so I won't go into detail here.) But for a slight setback that occurred when I forgot to put my Swiss Army knife in my checked baggage, and had to return to where I got my boarding pass to check it, I made it through security smoothly. I sat around in the concourse a bit more (in the tiny, tiny Gimhae domestic terminal; so much smaller than what I was used to in domestic terminals, unsurprisingly), and then boarded. My ride was a de Havilland Q400, better known as a Dash-8. I was so pumped to be riding in one...it was the first time I'd flown (commercially) in a propeller-driven aircraft! It was really neat to look out my window in seat 3D (which on this lovely cheap airline, Jeju Air, only cost me ₩34,000, or around thirty bucks) and see that massive propeller spinning around at blinding speed.
Our flight was a paltry 45 minutes, up above the snowscape of clouds, jarringly beautiful. (I realized with a shock that it's been over a year since I've flown, period.) We landed and taxied. We weren't at a terminal, so a bus had to pick us all up from the ramp and take us to the gate. That was a new one on me. We reclaimed our baggage (my black duffel bag, and my Swiss Army knife in the orange-and-white livery of Jeju Air). I waltzed out of the airport, consulted my guidebook briefly, then caught the ₩5,000 airport limousine for Seogwipo. It was a long ride, but smooth and scenic (but for the fog, clouds, and mist). I got off at the Sunbeach Hotel, per the instructions on my room reservation at the Jeju Hiking Inn, and found the place without any difficulty at all. Checking in was a snap, even though I had to hit the pause button to run out and find an ATM to get the necessary 140,000 won in cash to pay for the full seven nights of my stay. (I'd found the Jeju Hiking Inn on Hostelworld.com, at a ridiculously cheap rate of $18.00, or 20,000 won per night; I'd booked the entire week right then and there.)
That concluded, I dumped off my stuff, sallied forth into the downtown area (a steep climb up the hill away from the harbor), and just sort of cast about. I visited the covered market and bought some unhealthy snacks (meat on a stick and triangle gimbap, mmmm) at Family Mart. I then strolled down past the harbor to get a look at Cheonjiyeon Falls, a massive and beautiful waterfall hidden up a gorge a little ways down the coastline. It was gorgeous, but its effects were somewhat muted by the gathering dark and the mist and sullen skies.
I concluded, right then and there, drawing on evidence that had been accumulating ever since I exited the airport in Jeju City, that Jeju Island was only meant to be seen under the clear light of day or a starry night. It should never be cloudy here. The palm trees seem to wilt, the people's faces seem to cloud over and even the sea becomes gray and grumpy. This place needs a warm breeze and a sunny sky constantly to have any cheery effects whatsoever.
Anyway, those are my first impressions. I'm going to take another shot at the waterfall when the weather clears up; in the meantime, I familiarized myself with the location of some bars and restaurants in my guidebook which I'll also assay later. When I finish this I'm just going to pop out for some shampoo and a bottle of water, then hit the sack for the night...though the football (soccer) match is on between the U.S. and some other country in some Cup or other, so I gotta get back and see how we've done. We've beaten Spain and Italy so far...
I woke up the morning of Friday the twenty-sixth of June with a slight hangover. The previous night we'd taken Kevin out to the sogogi restaurant. Andrea and Melissa, two other foreign teachers, came too, as well as Jeff. So there we all were, partying hearty at our favorite restaurant until closing time. Then we bought some more booze and went back to Adam and Elaine's and kept it up until four o'clock. It was a blast, but tiring. I woke up at eight, looked at my watch, mumbled something negative under by breath and went back to sleep until nine, when I saw fit to get up. I had errands to run. First I received a visit from Jacob (to determine what needed fixing around the apartment; I'd told him that the light was out in the laundry room and the panel had fallen off the switchboard). Then I went down to the bank, paid some final bills (the ones from last month; this month's were subtracted from my paycheck), and put together a fruit basket for Jacob and Lily down at Homeplus. That having been done, I went into work.
Picture this: the teacher's room, with Kevin sitting at my desk correcting papers, the once-gigantic stash of candy on the top shelf dwindled to almost nothing, and kids clamoring at the door like usual. That was pretty much my last day, organized chaos. First, let me say that I think Kevin is and will be a much better teacher than I. He has prior experience, and he's game. He was stepping up to the plate even as early as yesterday and starting to teach, and his methods are tried and true. The kids, having difficulty pronouncing the word "wave," were immediately corrected when he taught them the v sound and then taught them to ignore the e (writing it on the board as "wav" helped). I see now that I was never really creative or imaginative (or strict) during my tenure at Reading Town. I think Kevin's going to be a breath of fresh air for Jacob and the parents.
I think the kids will still miss me, though. Remember how I said they were clamoring at the door? The ones who weren't doing it for candy were repeating this:
"Teacher! Miguke gaji maseyo!"
That literally translates to "You can't go back to the U.S.!" They were asking me to stay. Little Eileen, who's always looked at me as if I'm some kind of zoological curiosity, was hollering the loudest. Classes were pretty chaotic, too. Aside from their usual demands for water and use of the bathroom, the little kids kept asking me if it was my last day. Their eyes widened and their mouths opened when they saw me nod or heard me say "yes." I think Bad Arthur finally repented. He slipped me a voucher on his way out of the door. Leslie demanded twice the usual number of "one-two-thlees." Mary, in AP1-5, desperately wanted to play rock-paper-scissors (kawi bawi bo). She plays for keeps, too: losses are punished with two fingers to the forearm, usually moistened with one's breath and delivered at high speed. My arm's bruising up nicely.
But everybody wanted my phone number or e-mail. I felt like a movie star as I scribbled on countless Post-It notes and scraps of paper. (Just this morning I got an e-mail from Helia, a precious little girl in AP-1, who asked me how I was doing.) I can't describe to you the feeling I had when I was filling these bits of paper out. I've said goodbyes en masse before. I survived the final yearbook-signing frenzy in high school. But this was different: these were kids, and I was an adult. I'd spent a year with them, teaching them, playing with them, tickling them, laughing with them, yelling and screaming at them, whacking a few of them over the head with textbooks and dispensing more than a few noogies. And furthermore at the terminus of my time in Korea we'd be separated my 5,000 miles and an entire ocean. There was something intangibly different, more emotionally charged and bittersweet about our parting. The very fact that they wanted to remember and keep in contact with me, a teacher, a foreigner...well, it touched me to the very soul.
And that's not even mentioning some of the letters and gifts I got. Christy shyly came by the teacher's room and gave me a wrapped gift (with the words "bye bye teacher" written on it in marker). It turned out to be a build-it-yourself music box shaped like a church which plays "Silent Night" when you turn a crank. The letters are no less precious to me. I finally did crack up (like I was predicting I would) that final evening after work, when I opened young William's letter and read it. I got as far as "I will miss you" and almost broke down right there. Even now, writing it, I'm feeling the tears welling up...it doesn't help that I'm such a sentimental ham.
Classes were a bit more subdued than usual (they were a bit shy around Kevin) but for the most part they were still their old selves. Little John kept playing with paper instead of listening when we were reviewing for the test (when Kevin was reviewing; that class I just sat back and let him do his thing). As a result his scores were quite bad. That boy's never going to get his head out of the clouds at this rate. But the rest went along just fine. Kevin and I did a joint review and then administered the tests, and (helping me out marvelously) he corrected some tests as well. TRP2-1 was a bit of a trick, since nobody had done their homework (as usual), but Kevin stepped up once again and put the fear of God into 'em. In a very authoritative way, totally unlike my usual thrashing and comically indignant manner, he informed them that starting next week homework would be done, and done well. Incomplete homework was unacceptable, he stated quite clearly. The message got through. Even Ken, a rather surly reprobate at most times, sat up and said "Yes, teacher." XT2 was fun, as the two of us coached Albert though creative sentence construction (compound-complex sentences, no less). Debate class was a shambles, as nearly everyone was out studying for school tests and only Sarah, Albert, Catherine and Lisa showed up. But we still split them up into teams to marshal their arguments for the great debate. The topic that night was "Is it better to spend the money you earn or save it for a later date?" Not too hard, right? Uh-huh. The actual debate itself was unstructured and desultory. Everyone sort of stood up, gave a few disjointed statements, then sat back down again and goofed around. It was fun, though.
All in all it was rather a confused sort of day, not without its rays of hope for the future and a glut of poignant moments. The goodbyes were the most difficult. It was even harder after the last bell rang, when I gathered all my belongings, took one last look around the teacher's room and the lobby, and walked out.
It was perhaps fortunate that I wouldn't be spending the evening alone. I was slated to meet Brian at the Local at 10:30. I invited Adam, Elaine and Jeff along, and Julia and Gaia came too. I called up Tonya (the new South African girl) and she promised to come as well. YES! I'd sworn to introduce Brian to an eligible young foreigner and now I finally managed to come through. We all had a splendid party at the Local, talking and laughing and even having a rock-paper-scissors tournament (same stakes as Mary's game, in fact). Then we went to WaBar for a bit, but that's where the exhaustion kicked in, and in the end I had to call it. I fell back into bed and slept until ten, when I awoke and began writing this.
And now I'm just sitting here, waiting to move my stuff out of my little studio apartment to Adam and Elaine's (who have kindly offered to look after it for me while I'm roaming around Korea), thinking to myself...
Did I really do all that? Yes.
Was that real? I hope so. Will I ever see any of those kids again? Of course. I have to come back and buy more snacks for Bella.
나는 모든 나의 좋은 학생을 사랑해요.
It's been proceeding better than expected, I should say. I'm still discharging my duties in a timely manner. I've completed some major cleaning projects this week in my apartment: I rinsed out my garbage can, washed out the inside of the refrigerator, vacuumed under the bed (a solid mat of hair and dust), and even scrubbed off all the grease from the stove and the wall behind it. Whew! As we speak, I'm washing my sheets in preparation for Kevin's arrival; I just need to clean the bathroom this morning and do one last spot-treatment of the apartment floor with the vacuum cleaner and then it should be all set for him. I'm also going to buy some groceries. When I got here there was some butter and some hot dogs in the fridge, and that was about it. I'm going to buy the fellow some familiar, home-comfort foods (as far as is possible) to fill the fridge with so (a) he isn't starving when he gets here and (b) he won't feel so homesick. He arrived sometime last night, and was put up in a cheap motel just like Adam and Elaine were. He probably feels lower than a snake's belly in a wagon rut, what with being alone in a foreign country while jet-lagged and whatnot. So I'll do what I can for him.
Second, my duties at Reading Town are proceeding splendidly. Jacob and I went by the pension office Monday (during a rather hefty rain shower) and got all the paperwork filled out for my pension refund, which should arrive in my American bank account sometime in July. Now I just have to close my Korean bank account and pay my last bills and I should be all set to go. Stupid as this sounds, I'm thinking about...nah, I'll tell you later.
The real tricky thing, so far, has been saying goodbye to all the kids. Dang it, I went and got attached to most of 'em. Bella in particular. Have I told you about her? She's a wonderful little girl, I'd say six or seven. She just loves us foreign teachers. First thing in the morning she runs up to us and jumps up and down, or grabs our hands, or feeds us candy. She's always poking her head in at the door of the teacher's room to say hello. She's darn cute, too: about four feet tall, shoulder-length black hair (usually sweaty this time of year), and a round, jovial face. She gives us apple-flavored sour candies or strips of dried squid, sometimes spicy. I bought a bunch of candy on Monday and have been slowly distributing it to the kids by way of parting gifts all this week. I gave Bella a bunch of it, and a letter saying how much I appreciated her kindness and attitude and thanking her for being such a good student. And get this: yesterday she came in, handed me a box of cookies, and a letter of her own. I had Charles translate it. It reads something like this:
Hello teacher! I'm Bella. You are leaving soon? Why are you going? Even though you are going to the U.S.A., you have to come back soon and give me more candy. Bye bye! —Bella
Man, I tell you: I misted up reading this. But when it got to the part about the snacks, there was a hearty laugh that echoed around the whole teacher's room. I felt better after reading it, actually. Bella's made it so I have to come back to Korea at some point, find her, and buy her some more goodies. I will see her again. But in the meantime, I'll miss that little girl like crazy.
I got a few other letters like this, too. I'm surprised I haven't busted out crying yet. I'm worried that's going to hit me hard on my last day. That'll be embarrassing, as I'll be in the midst of training my replacement. Today is the day I get to meet him. I'll also start training him. Yikes! That always makes me nervous. But I can't tell you how weird it is to be on the other side of the fence now. He's in exactly the same position I was when I got here nearly one calendar year ago. Well...he's slightly worse off, being in a motel, but I imagine he feels the same way: Where am I? How the heck do things work at this academy?
Maybe I'll be able to help him with that if I'm able. We're taking him out to dinner tonight; we'll find out some more about him and make him feel as welcome as we can. Poor guy's probably having a tough time. Tonight's just the start.
Yesterday night Adam and Elaine invited me around to their place for dinner (seafood and noodles, delicious), which was very kind, considering I had nothing to eat at my place and likely would have spent a very lonely evening there. You know how awful it is to be spending a night, alone, in a place that's all packed up and bare, regardless of whether you've just come or will soon be leaving. It was a good night, and we passed some interesting talk as we drank wine. Tonight, we're all going out for sogogi; Saturday night about six Jacob is taking the whole staff, incoming and outgoing, out to dinner. Big three days! Sunday will likely pass quietly as I pack and make sure all is in readiness for Monday, when I take off (EXTREMELY early) for Gimhae Airport and my flight to Jeju (departing at 2:30) and the start of my two weeks' furlough. So, in the meantime, I just have to finish cleaning, finish packing, make sure to clear out enough room in my stomach for all these meals, purchase groceries for Kevin (oh yeah, and a gift for Jacob and Lily, I forgot to mention that)...and somehow get over the emotional trauma of leaving these kids of mine. They've made this year of my life infinitely better, with their smiles and their jokes and their laughs...yes, even their punches to the gut or their fingers up the wazoo. I won't soon forget them.
I don't know what I was expecting, exactly. A monastery? Doors closed to the outside world, not a single modern convenience in evidence? An ethereal, transient dream-like ecstasy of mind-opening and soul-searching, courtesy of the Enlightened One and his disciples? A simple overnight stay at a Buddhist temple in Busan, South Korea?
What I got wound up being something completely different. I came with a mind I'd opened myself and came away with a mind that had been opened by experience. And it may have been in the cards.
Beomeosa is Korean for "the Temple of the Golden Fish." Somewhere on Geumjang Mountain, where Beomeosa was built over 1300 years ago, there allegedly lies a golden well that never dries up. Legend has it that a heavenly golden fish, straight out of Nirvana, once came to play in that well. Thus the temple that was built there was named for it.
It's difficult to believe that Beomeosa is within shouting distance of Busan. Just a few kilometers up the side of the mountain, it is effectively closed off from the city, sight and sound, by forested ridges of rock and earth. The only trace of the bustling metropolis nearby is the weird green glow in the clouds at night. Touted as "Busan's best sight" in the Lonely Planet guidebook, the temple also hosts temple stays, programs wherein both foreigners and native Koreans alike, non-Buddhists all, can sign on to stay at the temple for 2-4 days ("enlist" as it were) and live the life of a humbly enlightened monk, seeing firsthand how affairs in a Buddhist enclave are conducted. Jeff and I heard about this, and had talked airily for months about trying it, but finally made the time (and the effort) to reserve two spots on the June 20-21st slot, for ₩50,000 apiece. And so the date arrived...
(Heads up: out of respect for Buddhism I didn't bring my camera on this trip. So all the images you see here were borrowed from free image repositories, like Wikimedia Commons.)
We met quite casually at the shady chicken place in Gohyeon at nine o'clock. After some initial difficulty getting a cab, we made it to the bus station. I say "difficulty" not because we had trouble flagging one down, but because we just had trouble, period. I slammed the taxi door on the handle of my cheap umbrella as I got in, shattering it (the handle, not the door). The driver thought I'd done his door and angrily got out to check it. Finding no damage (which I cheerily tried to point out to him) he sullenly got back in and drove us the rest of the way, examining the door again when we got out. I'll bet you he's now got a conversation starter for the rest of the weekend.
After scooping the broken pieces of the handle out of the various cavities in the taxi door and into the nearest garbage can, we bought our tickets (₩13,100 for the express bus to Busan) and sat down to wait.
...and wait...
...and wait.
Darn, we'd forgotten to check the times. We'd just barely missed the 9:05, and were now forced to wait for the 9:55. This put us in a serious hole, time-wise. We were slated to be at the temple no later than 1:00 p.m. for orientation and robe distribution, etc. The bus to Busan was two hours, or two and a half at worst. The 9:55 would put us there at noon, or worse, 12:30. There was no way in Hades we'd ever make it from the express bus stop in southern Busan all the way across town to Beomeosa, in the northern outskirts, by subway, cab or jet plane. Things were looking grim.
To compound that little problem, we'd failed to plan for the worst: traffic. Just outside of Masan we got stuck in a hellacious traffic jam caused by bridge construction, which held us up for a slight but nonetheless damning 40 minutes. We sprinted out of the bus station in Busan to grab a cab at 1:00, only to get stuck in ANOTHER traffic jam threading our way north. To compound our frustration, the cab driver was a complete klutz and turned the heat on instead of the A/C, which on a day which was already on the hot and muggy side was absolutely insufferable. Fortunately temple stay representatives contacted us by phone (through Charles) and he contacted us, so we managed to explain where we were and why we were late. We finally rolled up to Beomeosa temple about 2:00, an hour late.
Turns out we'd just missed robe distribution and a little of the opening spiel. We exchanged our clothes for somber gray linen vests and baggy pants, then sat down to learn how (and when) to bow. Turns out there's a trick to it. The regular ol' half bow is nothing, you just have to wait for the accompanying monk to hit the right cadence on his moktak (round wooden drum) before you do it. The full bow is a little different. Indicated by one slap of a bamboo stick across the palm of a monk's hand, you first kneel, putting all your weight on your feet (supported by your bent toes), then bend forward, touching your head, hands, and elbows to the floor. Try to get your hips as low as possible too, they told us. Then, flip your hands over and raise them to about ear level, then put them back down and flip them over again. Push yourself up on your hands, then raise yourself back to your feet again. While you're prone, you can take your feet out of the agonizing kneeling position and fold them over one another. For the final bow (irrespective of whether a single bow or 1,079 preceded it), the monk strikes the bamboo stick against his palm three times, indicating that an extra folding of the hands against the forehead is required when kneeling on the mat, before ascending.
Sounds easy, right? Try doing it 108 times in a row, nonstop. That's what we did. But I'm getting ahead of myself. After we finished the debriefing, the opening ceremony (where one of the monks came in, chanting, and we all bowed in unison a few times), and the tour of the temple, we started in on meal training. The first thing we had to do was carry our utensils and bowls from the temple stay house down to what our guide called "the cantina." (I don't know what Western she got that out of. It was the cafeteria, basically: the grub house for the temple.) Then we had to unwrap them. Dining in a Buddhist temple is rather...intricate. First, you have the tablecloth...a piece of brown cotton cloth, just like a good napkin, though about half as large. This goes on the floor. You never put your bowls directly on the floor, so you hold them in your left hand as you spread the tablecloth out (using only your right hand).
There are a couple of other cloths, which you put on your knee. First, there's the the long brown ribbon-thingy, which you'll eventually use to tie the whole bundle back up again when you're through with it. There's the drying cloth, which is just what it sounds like. Then there's the dust-cloth, which covers the whole bundle, and the soft brown bag with the chopsticks and spoon in it.
There are four plastic bowls, each smaller than the other, set inside each other like those doll thingies from whatever country. You set them out, largest to smallest, counter-clockwise (biggest on the lower left side of the tablecloth, next-biggest to the right, second-to-smallest above that, and smallest to its left, above the biggest). Place the chopsticks and the spoon in the top-right bowl.
Okay, now for the tricky part. First, you get some hot water. That goes into the largest bowl, which is the rice bowl. Since the meal is eaten in total silence, you signal the server (volunteers from the crowd) that you've got enough water by gently swishing the bowl in a rolling circular motion. The swishing also helps to clean out the bowl if there's any dust in it. You then transfer the water into the second-largest bowl, the soup bowl, and repeat the swishing. Then you empty that into the second-smallest bowl, the water bowl, which you'll use for washing at the end of the meal. Then the next server comes around and you take as much rice as you want, and put it in the largest, newly-rinsed bowl. Then the soup guy comes and you scoop out some cabbage soup. Then the side dish server comes and you take as many different vegetarian sides as you fancy. The tour guide, Yoon, a very nice and competent Korean woman, asked if I would mind being the side server, and I said yeah, sure. So I rolled the big tray around the floor (it was on casters, and we were sitting on cushions on the floor, as may or may not have been apparent by this time) to each and every foreign member of the tour group and they chose their own side dishes, just like it was a rolling buffet. (The Korean temple stay participants had their own volunteer servers.)
You eat in silence; you hold the bowls over your mouth when you open it so nobody catches a distasteful glimpse of your open gob (standard Buddhist dining practice, I gathered). No seconds here; you take what you want the first time around. And you'd better not take too much, because you have to eat every morsel. That's right. Not even one tiny grain of pepper powder can remain in your bowl. How do you ensure that you've snarfed every last molecule of comestibles in your bowls? The answer, like the tenets of Buddhism itself, is beautifully simple. Among the side dishes served are semicircular slices of yellow radish. You take a couple, and set them aside (don't eat them). After you've finished all your food, you take some water from the aforementioned water dish and pour it into your rice bowl. Then you take that bowl, the chopsticks, and a slice of the yellow radish, and use the slice as a sponge to scrub away all the rice residue with the aid of the water. Once you've scrubbed that bowl, you pour the water into the soup bowl, and scrub that, then the side dish bowl, and scrub that. It's best not to use too much water to do this...because you drink it at the end. You can't waste any food. We're talking Buddhism here, after all. You have to eat, literally, every last crumb. After you've scrubbed and made sure that you've gotten everything (which means you should have a pool of cloudy, crumb-filled water at the bottom of your side dish bowl, together with a slice of yellow radish, by the end of the cleaning process), you drink the water and eat the radish slice.
Then comes the wrap-up...literally. First, you lift the bowls up and re-fold the brown tablecloth (first in half, then in thirds, starting from the left side, and folding only with the right hand), then place the bowls on top. Put the chopsticks and spoon, re-bagged, astride the bowls, with the head of the spoon facing you. (By the way, all folded clothes must be laid on the floor with the folded edges facing outwards, because that is the good and respectful side. The seams, being the poorer side, should face toward you, respectfully.) Then, place all of that on top the outstretched ribbon thingy, then tie it into a complex ribbon on top. The exact nature of this ribbon was demonstrated personally to the author, at his request, by the monk in charge, but it's intricacies escape him. Finally, place the drying cloth on top of the ribbon, and unfold the dust-cloth and lay it over the whole affair. The whole bundle is now ready for transport and storage.
All of this was a bit tricky (not to mention nerve-wracking) but we all managed to get it down. All except the ribbon-thingy, that is. The tour guide just told us to tie it any old way because the Buddhist knot was too difficult for us to learn. I wondered if it was one of the revelations the Buddha had after sitting under that tree for six years.
Okay, that's enough irreverence. Actually I was being very good. This was my first hands-on, intimate exposure to Buddhism and I wanted to make absolutely sure I wasn't committing any acts of sacrilege or indecency, detectable or not. That meant not asking pointed or derogatory questions, laughing or giggling at certain practices (the way some other weguk temple stayers did)...no dirty thoughts, even. There were some fine-looking foreign girls there participating in that temple stay, and they looked all the finer in their modest acolyte garb. But I kept my mind clean. I wasn't going to trespass on the Buddha's hospitality and sanctity, be it physically, mentally or otherwise, not for kingdoms.
Meals and meal training concluded, we headed to the temple proper to watch a worship service. That was really something. First, outside, a pair of younger monks took turns pounding the enormous drum sheltered in a small, raised pagoda (thereby saving the souls on Earth). Then they ran their drumsticks over a large, intricately carved wooden fish suspended from the ceiling (thereby saving all the creatures of the sea). They chimed a few notes on a cast-iron gong, saving the souls in Heaven; and they rang the resonant, ovoid bell, thereby saving the souls in Hell. Then all the monks filed silently into the temple proper, and we followed.
I've been to Christian church services, and someday I'll attend mass at the Vatican, not to mention drop in on a few mosques here and there, if they don't mind. But this was the most impressive thing I'd seen (and heard) so far. We filed in slowly, one by one. It was a large building with a vast open floor space, looking out of sliding doors that had been flung wide, upon steps leading up to a smaller temple in which an image of the Buddha was ethereally lit by candles and obscured by the smoke of incense. The monks were already assembled, standing with shaven heads and somber gray-and-maroon robes. We took our places by our prayer rugs on the right side of the room and clasped our hands. After a few opening bows, the chant began.
How can I describe this to you? I don't know if you're familiar with Gregorian chants...the religious hymns sung by male choirs in cathedrals halls which amplify the sound so much that it seems as if a divine army were singing and humming along with the tune. That kind of powerful baritone and bass harmony is particularly moving, and it was none the less so with this Buddhist chant sung by perhaps two dozen men in a simple hall. Imagine, if you can, that many deep voices sonorously thrumming with sound...a slow, somber, low-key chant going up and down the scale in half- and quarter-octaves, with the head monk providing a leading, supplemental harmony, the moktak signaling everyone to bow. We visitors did our level best to act in tune with the monks, except for the chanting; as it was in Korean, and the tune unfamiliar, most of us didn't even attempt an accompaniment. But we kept up with the bows pretty well. It was agonizing sitting on our toes for one or two minutes (the length of time between full bows) but I did what I could, sweat dripping down my forehead, remembering, as I attempted to all during my stay, "the tribulations of the Buddha."
He went through all this and worse, I reminded myself, and strove to maintain my posture as the fully-robed and middle-aged monks across from me did, flawlessly.
Then came the real test of faith: the 108 bows. That number is quite significant in Buddhist doctrine. There are six senses, and six earthly passions that plague humankind. Multiply them together and you get the 36 passions of Buddhism. Multiply that times three (for past, present and future) and you get 108. So we bowed 108 times in a row, full bows, down to the carpet, hands lifted, back up again. If I thought I'd been sweating before, I hadn't even started yet. I was leaving stains on the mat, not only from my forehead but eventually my forearms and hands as well. Everybody was soaked by the end of it...the day was still and muggy, and it was hard work, lowering oneself down to the mat, bending forward, straightening, and then pushing oneself back up again with ones' toes and thighs. Even as I write these words, I'm still so sore that I can barely bend my knees. Going down stairs is rather a trial, just as it was after we got through climbing Jirisan (see no use crying over spilled gorp). But I stuck to it. I lost count after about five bows, so intent was I on getting my form and posture correct. Remember, we had to go as low as possible, and our elbows, knees, foreheads and hands all had to touch the mat, and there was a special order to the motions. First we went down on our knees, bent forward slowly, touched our various parts to the carpet, raised our hands, then pushed ourselves slowly back up with our hands into an upright kneeling position, then stood up. It was like a somewhat slower and more dignified succession of squat-thrusts. Losing count actually helped me get my head down (literally) and get on with it. Before I knew it we were finished.
Then the yogi came in.
Yes, that's right. For an encore, we practiced yoga. The yogi was a different monk from the other two we'd spoken with; he was a jolly character, somewhat low-ranking, always smiling at us and ushering us through the exercises in quiet Korean, which our guide Yoon translated. He had us sit with crossed legs, close our eyes, focus on our breathing, and cool down from all the bows we'd just done. We did this for about five minutes, utter silence reigning in the large room where moments before the heavy breathing of dripping bodies and straining muscles (and before that, the solemn chanting of resonant baritones) reigned. I didn't do so well, but I think I at least managed to regulate my breathing as instructed. Then the real yoga began.
The yoga masters have spent untold amounts of time perfecting the ways in which a human body may be bent into unnatural shapes. I didn't even know human beings could bend like that at all...much less that I would have at least some modest success in doing it myself. There were some positions I flat-out couldn't do: the reverse push-up thingy was hard. (You had to lay on your back and then suspend your trunk with your legs and arms, both at right angles. I didn't have sufficient upper-body strength.) It was darn hard to balance when we put our feet over our heads and supported ourselves on our shoulder blades. But apart from that, I did pretty well. The craziest position was definitely where we stuck our right legs straight out, put the left one in our lap, bent our left arms around behind our backs to grab hold of our left feet (wrapping around our waists), and then twisted our torsos to the left, with our right hands used for support. If this is hard to visualize for you, imagine what it's like to try and do it. The yogi, our two Korean guides, and (of course) all of the girls in the group, foreign and Korean alike, were putting us guys to shame. They hardly had any problems at all with flexibility, while the guys huffed and puffed and sweated and strained (and kvetched, too). Somehow we all managed to get through it, being wowed by the yogi, who was able to do the splits sitting down and then (without leaning his waist in any direction) bend down and put his shoulders, chest and head on the floor. He just chuckled good-naturedly when we oohed and aahed at him, or had difficulty copying him. We gave him a heartfelt thank-you after it was over, for though it had been hard, he'd made it quite fun and occluded any embarrassment.
That was basically it for the night. We went back to the main house and washed up. We did not shower; there were no shower facilities, but there were basins and water bowls aplenty and we managed to clean up our heads and necks and hands very well. The girls were lucky; they were staying in the same building that the bedding supplies were stored in. We men had to lug our stuff a few hundred yards up stairs and over bridges to the male guesthouse, then set it up. (The management provided covers to put over the bedding so we wouldn't soil it.) After everybody's bed had been set up (some kindly Korean fellows helped me with mine), and the lights had been turned off, and we'd all done our level best to get comfortable, we drifted off. Andrew (the elderly Scotsman with the broad brogue and blackened teeth) snored a bit, but it wasn't anything to throw a pillow at him over. I didn't sleep too well anyway: it was hot and the setting was unfamiliar, but more than that, my brain was buzzing with all I'd seen and done that day. I could only contemplate what the next day would bring, as I dozed fitfully throughout the night.
The moktak gently brought me into wakefulness at 3:30 a.m. the next morning. We folded our bedrolls, turned 'em in, then trooped back through the pitch-darkness and the early morning drizzle to the temple for morning services. These were basically a repeat of the previous evening's. The monks' chant had lost none of its power and majesty. However, instead of doing 108 bows afterward, we did Zen meditation. Nobody was surprised when the yogi walked in to conduct the proceedings. Seems he was a real jack-of-all-trades, in the Buddhist sense. I hope that guy gets a reserved seat in Nirvana for donating his precious time to training us non-canon dunderheads the fine art of Zen meditation. There were two varieties, he explained: sitting and walking. Yes, that's correct: Zen meditation can be done just as effectively while in motion. I found this difficult to believe, but fortunately it was put to the test immediately. We all got up, formed a single-file line, and under the monk's instructions (translated by our dutiful Yoon), we slowly moved off through the temple, still in the predawn gloom, with the drizzle dripping serenly from leaf and cornice.
It was quite tricky. Our job, according to the yogi, was to think only of ourselves. Just think about yourself, Yoon stressed. To do this, she expounded, it might be necessary to focus on your breathing. Breathe deeply, from the diaphragm, as intently as possible.
"Try to feel every breath," she said.
Feel every breath? Eh? This was going over my head already, but I took a shot at it as we all sat in the temple and practiced. My body was stiff from the night I'd spent on the floor, and though I wasn't as sore as I'd expected from yesterday's bowing, my thews were throbbing from that morning's services. Concentration, as well as strictly regulated breathing, proved troublesome.
So you can imagine the trial I was having mustering up the necessary concentration outside on the temple premises, trying to simultaneously to control my breathing and reflect upon myself while avoiding treading on the heels of the person in front of me or stumbling over something in the dark and the wet.
Remember the tribulations of the Buddha, I thought to myself for the 108th time.
After threading our way through most of the temple, we reached a square courtyard with another temple building and an impressive obelisk in front of it. The courtyard, fortunately, was level and packed hard, with only the occasional rock poking up. This minimized the footing difficulties I'd been having. Now I just had to worry about the people in front of me. I was near the end of the line, and as per the monk's instructions we were going rather slowly, one foot in front of the other. That was all fine and dandy, but in practice everybody walks "slowly" at different speeds, which meant that I was often on the verge of bumping into the guy in front.
This is about when the revelations started coming, around the third circuit of the obelisk or so.
This would be so much easier if I was by myself, I thought. I wouldn't have to worry about smashing into anybody.It's so hard to think about oneself when you're staring at someone else's back, I thought a little later.
Maybe I could close my eyes, I considered a little bit after this.
Nah, I'd definitely trip then, I mused.
Then...
How easy it is for the blind man to see himself, I thought to myself.
Hey, I thought to myself a nanosecond later. That sounded like Zen!
The rest of the revelations I had, about ten revolutions later (after I'd finally managed to stop thinking so articulately and just reflect) were all pretty self-deprecating. I came away from the experience not necessarily with a greater understanding of the Buddhist intellect nor a more disciplined mind, but with a brand-new set of New Year's resolutions. Oh well, I guess I'll take what I can get. Anything that inspires me to better myself can only be good. I've resolved, actually, after having done this, to continue doing yoga (when I can) and definitely Zen meditation. I pretty much do the same thing when I'm out for a walk anyway, only I reflect on everything, not just myself; I figure I'll improve my mental discipline and also air out the ol' brain cells. I'm ever so glad I got the opportunity to try these things, both of which I'd never done before (and had wanted to).
Dawn was breaking as we headed back in. We had about 30 minutes' rest at the temple stay house before breakfast, which was spent in quiet reflection as we watched the gray skies lighten up and fill the valley with beguiling mist and muted bird song. Breakfast was the same ritual as the dinner before it, only at the end we tied up our bowls more securely as we would be transporting them back to the temple stay house. After finishing breakfast, we went on a brief hike up Geumjang Mountain. About half a kilometer up the side, through the dripping, verdant, silent forest, a gate suddenly loomed out of the cloying mist. A small temple came into view, as well as a statue of the Enlightened One (with a donation box in front of it). We all got some pictures (and Yoon took some group photos) as we stretched, digested breakfast, and looked off the balcony at what surely must've been a stunning view, even without the mist. It was a nice time to reflect, discuss interesting events with friends, and have a little time to oneself.
This done, we reconvened back at the temple stay house for the grand finale: the stringing of yeomju. I believe I may have explained elsewhere what yeomju are, but they need to be redefined before I go on. They are strings of round, wooden beads, some with intricate Chinese characters carved upon them, some of longer length than others, some with bigger or smaller beads. Yoon called them "thinking beads." You carry them strung around your wrist. You can stroke them when you're contemplating or making a wish, and the revelation or desire you seek (as long as it's well-meaning and doesn't harm others) will come to you. They also grant limited protection; in Korea, you most often see the larger yeomju wrapped around the gearshifts in cars to guard against accidents. The principle and idea (not to mention the article itself) are fascinating to me, and I was eager to make my own.
...even after I found out we'd be bowing 108 times again as we made them. Yep. We were making yeomju with 108 beads, and to commemorate them and imbue them with power, it was necessary to do a full bow with every bead strung. We spread out our prayer rugs in a semicircle around Ms. Moon (the middle-aged Korean guide who spoke no English, but was the resident yeomju expert), received a small plastic bag with 108 small unadorned wooden beads and two lengths of string, made a knot in one end of the longest string, then went to work. Ms. Moon would keep time by slapping the bamboo stick against her hand, signaling us to bow, string a bead, then get up again and stand at attention in the Buddhist fashion, hands folded in front. We had the technique down already; but on the floor it was a desperate race to string our beads. This was awkward, given the fact that we were on our knees with our chins practically on the floor and our backsides in the air, and our hands were increasingly sweaty and the end of the string increasingly frayed. None of us wanted to be the last person on the floor, holding everybody up. Some people's strings frayed so badly that Yoon or Ms. Moon had to go around the floor with a lighter and torch those frayed ends back into submission. Except for those slight holdups, we kept a good rhythm going, and almost before we knew it (we kept count by keeping an eye on how many beads we had left to string) we were finished.
The bows and stringing turned out to be the easy part. Then it was a matter of actually tying off the string ends and finalizing the yeomju, as it were. We undid the knot we'd tied at the end of the long string (to keep the beads we were stringing from falling off the other side), then secured both ends of the long string together by means of a "tri-way" bead and a smaller "keeper" bead. Then we took the second loose string, thicker and shorter than the other, and tied it to the top of the "keeper." Then we laid the whole affair on the floor, such that the four string ends were pointing in four opposite directions (radially symmetrical, or whatever; that had no religious significance, it just made the tying part easier). Then we threaded String End 1 (hereafter referred to as SE1 for simplicity's sake) over String End 2 (hereafter referred to as...well, you can guess), SE2 over SE3, and SE3 over SE4. After some initial difficulty in understanding what came next, we threaded SE4 through the loop in SE1, made by looping SE1 over SE2. (Don't feel bad if you're confused; I was standing right there watching the woman demonstrate this and I was still confounded for a bit.) Pulling all four string ends tight simultaneously yielded a knot on top that resembled, in Yoon's words, "four little squares." We were instructed to keep doing that knot until the resultant pile of knots was about the length of the nail on our index finger. After that, Ms. Moon came by, cut off the excess string, threaded a hard plastic band over the ends to keep them from unraveling, and cauterized the whole affair into invulnerable wholeness with her lighter.
And there we had it, yeomju manufactured by the work of our hands and the sweat of our brows. Jeff and I reveled in our achievements briefly as Ms. Moon finished torching every last apprentice's string ends, and then we all changed back into our street clothes. As we lounged on the floor, waiting for the closing ceremony to begin, grateful for the opportunity to rest our aching muscles, we compared war wounds. Mark, the burly, stubble-headed Canadian in front of me, was busy showing his buddy Craig the rug burns on his knees, acquired from the 216 nonconsecutive bows we'd performed.
"You got nothin'," I said. "Check this action out."
I pointed to my own knees, where amorphous red blotches marked my own struggle against the prayer rug.
"War wounds," I bragged. "Buddhist boot camp."
Indeed, it had seemed that the temple stay closely resembled a crash-course in Buddhism. "Boot camp" seemed an appropriate term. We were getting re-taught how to live according to the rigid rules of an elite society; the parallels between a Buddhist monastery and a military base were undeniable. Both required uniforms, codes of conduct, stringent observance of protocol in dining, sleeping and behavior, as well as punctuality and a somewhat masochistic sleep schedule. In the presence of elder monks, junior order members stood fast, clasped their hands and bowed in salute. For morning prayers we stood at attention with our hands clasped in front, at attention you might say. We were awoken ridiculously early in the morning for services, or drills if you like. We went on hikes, were taught the ironclad rules of dining, made up our own beds, even cleaned up after ourselves when our visit was done (vacuuming the floor of the temple stay house and taking out the trash). That's roughly analogous to boot camp. All that's missing are the weapons and the loud voices. All of the monks were extremely soft-spoken, as a matter of fact.
Presently, the same familiar monk who'd done the opening ceremony, led us up Geumjang Mountain and taught us how to eat properly strode solemnly in. The chant and the moktak started up again, this time in farewell. There was a surprisingly moving speech by Yoon, about how she hoped that our minds had been opened even just for a little bit, and that she hoped we wouldn't forget Beomeosa; then one last group photo op. We then hit the road.
Jeff and I caught a cab from the temple to the subway station, rode the subway to Jagalchi and the fish market, and caught some McDonald's, just to get back in the game. We got a Shanghai Burger for Elaine, and Jeff picked up a Mr. Wow for Adam. Then we headed back to Okpo on the New Arcadia, a somewhat larger ferry than we were used to (and nicer, with a snack bar and two TV sets). We got a cheap cab from Okpo to Gohyeon and that was the end of it.
AUTHOR'S NOTE: Mr. Wow is this totally amazing street vendor selling what appear to be large spicy bratwursts grilled over a gas flame. We first encountered them as we wandered drunkenly through the back alleys of Sinchon, Seoul, during Seolnar (Korean New Year). They're served on a bun with ketchup, mustard, hot sauce, and/or some form of cabbage. Jeff somehow found out that there was a scion of Mr. Wow in Busan, but all the previous times we'd ventured into Nampodong to find him, he'd been closed. This time we got lucky and managed to procure one of these massive spicy bratwursts to slake Adam's craving for sausage.
Zowie. That weekend wound up being quite a bit more intense than I ever could have suspected, and I knew in advance that we'd be doing 108 bows (I just didn't realize how exerting they truly were). I did and saw more that weekend than I've ever done on any weekend trip I've made in the States. That even gave the three days we spent in Seoul during New Year's a run for their money. I truly feel enlightened. I now know just what those stout-hearted and persevering Buddhist monks willingly put themselves through on a daily basis: getting up at three, stretching themselves silly, memorizing chants, and eating vegetarian meals in complete silence. I understand the technique of Zen meditation a little better now, and also some of the more basic tenets of Buddhism. But more than that, I did indeed catch a glimpse of myself during that sojourn in a Buddhist enclave: Andrew Post, the wanderer, the explorer, the seeker of knowledge, he who lazily seeks to improve himself, dissolute but trying to do better. I scratched the surface of my inner self, and whetted my thirst for a deeper search, as well as commenced to satisfy my hunger to know myself better. I captured some form of my being in my mind, my past and my future, as well as my present, fair and foul.
And that was the point, wasn't it? To open my mind? I thought I was supposed to open it to the world. In reality I opened it to myself.
Hello? Yes? Anybody there? Did this come through? Ah, splendid. I'm just testing to make sure whether this remote e-mail blogging business really works. I set it up a few days ago but haven't had occasion to try it.
I also thought I'd get you some updates on a couple of things.
First off, I have my itinerary for my flight home. Since I'm now going to Los Angeles first (I'm still headed to Anchorage, but as I wrote, Mom and Dad thought it'd be a good idea to come pick up my effects at their house initially and make it a one-way trip), I'm heading back the same way I came: Gimhae Airport (in Busan) to Tokyo (Narita) and thence to L.A. I'm flying Japanese Airlines. I thought that'd be a little better than China Air but Byeong-Jun, my filthy-rich free-talking student (the son of the Samsung bigwig) says it isn't. Rats. At least my reading material (Candide, All Quiet on the Western Front, etc.) has arrived in the mail.
On a related note, Jacob has secured a second extension of my visa, to July 13 (the day my flight leaves). Whew! Now I'm legal once again!
Second, with Jacob's help, I managed to get my flight to Jeju booked for the 29th of June. It was a measly 34,000 won...yipee! Plus I'll be flying a Q400, a de Havilland Dash-8! This is the first time I've ever ridden on a propeller-driven aircraft (commercially)! HOORAY! I finally get my chance. Sorry, in case I haven't filled you in, I prefer propellers to jets. More character.
Anyway, the flight's all reserved. As an encore I reserved my hostel, seven nights at the Jeju Hiking Inn (as seen in Lonely Planet guides) in Seogwipo. Byeong-Jun tells me that the establishment isn't in a nice place 'cause it has no ocean view, but then again, he always stays at the Hyatt or the Lotte Hotel, five stars and deluxe accommodation. Lucky bugger. So now my entire on-week vacation in sunny, subtropical Jeju has been legitimized! Sun, sand, and lava tubes galore! Hiking and dirt-cheap scooter rentals! Truck inner tubes in the surf! Palm trees and rolling meadows and wave-washed rocks! YAHOO!
After I finish in Jeju, I'll catch the ferry from Jeju City to Mokpo (on July 6th, a Monday, so it won't be jam-packed), a city on the west coast of Korea in a province I've never before set foot in: Jeollanam-do. I think I'll check out that port town, as well as Gwangju, the major city in the area (despite the fact that a man murdered a 10-year-old boy he hit with his car there to disguise his drunk driving a couple of days ago). I wanna check out the night market, dang it. Plus, not far from Gwangju, there's a little traditional village that Erica clued me in about it, Damyang, and southeast of Gwangju there's a tea-making village, apparently. Both of those might be worth a look...
That'll probably take at least three or four more days. Depending on how much time I have left, I might just make it up to Daejeon, or I might head back to Geoje early. I don't know. I've decided to skip Seoul and the DMZ, due to lack of time and funds. (I don't want to worry my mother, either; she's all in a sweat about me being in Korea since things between Uncle Sam and North Korea have gone south and those two women journalists got captured and sentenced to 12 years hard labor.) I'll spend the night of Sunday the 12th of July at Adam and Elaine's, say goodbye to them, pick up my luggage that they've graciously offered to hold onto for me, and then depart Korea in the early afternoon from Gimhae airport after one year, two weeks, one day and eighteen hours.
So, in the meantime, I just have to get my bank account closed, my pension forms filled out, my stuff all packed up, a last package sent off to Mom and Dad, and the apartment cleaned from top to bottom in preparation for the entrance of my successor, Kevin, from Illinois. I can't wait to meet him. He's probably going through the same things I went through, one year and a lifetime ago...
Charles and Anne tied the knot this weekend in Masan, just north of the island of Geoje, on the mainland, west of Busan, in a beautiful ceremony on the fifth floor of a wedding plaza which overlooks the spacious, sparkling harbor.
To clarify, Charles is the head teacher at my hagwon, and a close personal friend and mentor. He invited Adam, Elaine, Jeff, and myself up to his wedding to his girlfriend Anne, whom I have also had the pleasure of meeting, and who is a very lovely young woman. They've been engaged for a while; I'm just glad the wedding occurred before my contract expired, and I was able to attend. We'd planned in advance to get the bus to Masan on Saturday (the wedding was at 11:00 a.m. on Sunday morning), shop around for some gifts and see whatever sights there were, and then clean up in the morning and don our spiffy duds. Here's what happened.
We rode the bus up (a very equable ride compared to the last one, and for only ₩9,000; they kept the A/C on the whole time, at least), and managed to find a cheap motel with a little creative wandering. It was the Nox Motel, and the price was similar to our usual base of operations in Busan: ₩35,000 per night. The only difference was, this place was nice compared with what we were used to. It was still, technically, a love motel. There were tissues by the bed, condoms in the top drawer of the nightstand and porn on the TV, but the sleaze ended there. The bathroom was up to scale with anything seen in Motel 6 or Super 8, back in the States, if not better; the bed and room were both clean, bright, spacious, and tastefully outfitted. There wasn't much to speak of in the mini-bar, but hey.
So we checked in and immediately sallied forth into downtown Masan to go wedding-present shopping. It was a bit embarrassing: we got into a cab and said we wanted to go to E-Mart. After approximately sixty seconds, we went around a corner and arrived. The cab driver must've been laughing his head off inside as we handed him the fare. Must've been the easiest 2,200 won he'd ever earned.
We had more than a little trouble navigating once we were inside the store, even. It was a five-story building, but get this: the main level was just a convenience store. You know, the quick stuff: cleaning supplies, snacks, batteries, all the things that people want to get in and get out with quick. That makes sense to have that on the first floor. But the parking lots were above this level, and the main store (food section, home supply) was below it. Look me in the eye and tell me that's a logical way to run a railroad. I dare you.
After our tour of the parking lots, we finally wound up where we needed to be (subterranean) and got straight to shopping. E-Mart is like Homeplus, but generally has more departments, more selection, and is larger in size overall. We didn't meet with much success. As far as useful, tastefully appointed wedding gifts go, E-Mart was skint. The best chance we had was the hoidy-toidy home furnishings section on the second floor, but there wasn't much choice. Adam and Elaine picked up a nice set of chopsticks and soup spoons in a velvet-covered case, and they were set. I got meat on a stick.
We then headed to Lotte Mart, with higher hopes. After some similar difficulty locating the main store, which we suffered for a second time despite the eye-opening E-Mart experience, we emerged onto the main shopping floors and had a look-see. Lotte Mart was much bigger than even E-Mart. There was much more selection: sporting goods, electronics, liquor, a grocery store that looked like any major Western supermarket chain we'd ever been in (to the point of inducing nostalgia)...but no hoidy-toidy home furnishings section. We had a look around the proletarian home furnishings section and located some promising potential: a cutlery rack/holder/board (or whatever you call it; one of them wooden things with slots for holding your knives). There were also some wine glasses. We resolved to take note of these discoveries and go nosing around town for anything that might turn up. In the meantime, we looked to our own needs. As you're probably aware, I am (or was) in dire need of a camera since I lost my previous one (a Fujifilm S8000, purchased for three-hundred and twenty-eight thousand won, or about $220, at Homeplus a few months before) on Jirisan. That problem was solved when I spotted a Canon on sale for ₩169,000. It had a whopping ten megapixels instead of the previous eight, and most of the (important) features of its predecessor. It was also light and infinitely more portable. I was fortunate that it came with a similar package that the Fujifilm did: case, two-gigabyte memory card, recharger, instruction booklets and CDs...all included in the list price. The case, most attractively, is tight and closes securely with Velcro, meaning that I stand a better chance of not "losing" this one...
We were getting hungry by this time. We waltzed out of Lotte Mart (pausing to retrieve Adam's backpack from a locker; E-Mart allows you to carry personal bags and packs onto its premises but Lotte Mart is more stringent, and demands that you rent a locker for a hundred won) and into the hazy late afternoon. It was inevitable that we should happen upon a McDonald's. I finally got a chance to try the Shanghai Spicy Chicken Burger, and was not as let down as I thought I'd be. I don't know whether that had anything to do with the quality of the preparation, or whether McDonald's was actually giving a crap about the food it served now, or what. (I will say that I believe Korea is really on the ball as far as fast food goes. Domino's Pizza tastes much better over here than in the U.S., I firmly believe. It makes sense that McDonald's would as well.)
Suitably fortified, and having discussed our options thoroughly over greasy fries, Jeff and I elected to return to Lotte Mart and snag the aforementioned gifts we'd noted earlier. That done, we returned to the Nox, dumped our treasures off, and met up with Charles and Anne, who'd arrived in the city before us and completed their wedding preparations. They were anxious to meet up and say hello. They were also tired, run-down, depressed, and physically sick. Their respective employers had worked them to death for the preceding two weeks in light of their impending vacation (bosses are merciless like that over here), and they were so exhausted that their immune systems had packed up and boogied, leaving them diseased and wretched. Poor Anne got to the motel and collapsed (in the room she and Charles rented; they were without accommodation, so we politely informed them about the competitive rates at our place). Charles stuck around with us and drank a little beer. Then we all went out for samgyeopsal in the thriving "new" downtown area, replete with bright causeways, well-lit shops, and respectable-looking food vendors. Charles and Anne ate, then left (at our urging), citing exhaustion and the need for a full night's sleep before tomorrow's festivities. A, E, J, and I hung around for a bit, checking out the sights, and the market.
Masan was Charles's hometown; he told us that, 30 years ago, the market we were walking through that evening would have been wall-to-wall with people. You'd have had to shoulder your way through the crowd nonstop from one end of the place to the other. Now it was nearly a ghost town. Those same gigantic superstores we'd passed through earlier that day, E-Mart and Lotte Mart, had snatched away the custom from these small-time merchants in the open air bazaar and relegated them to a sort of shadowy, tourist-trap existence. It was really quite pathetic ("pathetic" here having the meaning of "emotionally provocative," not "pitiful"; well, okay, it was a bit pitiful too).
Then we all sat down and had a quiet drink. Or tried to. The first place we went, Billy Western Bar, was way overpriced, despite having enough atmosphere to put Cheers to shame. We went across the street to Beer Mart, and that was better. Shaped and colored like an adobe hacienda on the inside, with faux stucco walls, domed ceilings and exposed rafters, the place had charm. More than that, its imbibing protocol was unique, too: instead of ordering glasses of beer, you went up to the counter, picked out the bottles you wanted (everything from Tiger to Hoegaarden), paid up, took 'em back your table, cracked 'em and drank 'em. It was a rather intimate experience, to be sitting at a comfy table in a comfy seat with a view out the window at the narrow crooked street, sipping comfy cheap beer. We stuck around there for a couple of hours, went and grabbed some mandu (dumplings, remember?) at a stall on the way back, then went back to the hotel to Adam and Elaine's room and sat around and talked. Adam was testing out his new iPod-compatible ghetto blaster (whatever it's called; iSound or something); so we had Kanye West, Curtis Mayfield, Lynyrd Skynyrd and Groove Armada to keep us company as we talked and laughed. We hit the sack at midnight, mindful of an early start the next morning.
The next morning proceeded without a hitch. We woke, prepared and were at the wedding plaza, bright-eyed and bushy-tailed (as Adam would've said) at a quarter to eleven or so. I should stop here and explain exactly what a wedding plaza is. Apparently there's no such thing as a "single" wedding in Korea. All of 'em are doubles, or group weddings. They are perhaps not simultaneous, but you can bet there'll be another party moving into the wedding hall after you move out of it, within minutes or seconds. Heck, there was another bride fully dolled out in her gown wandering around besides Anne, that's for dang sure, as well as another set of relatives hanging around the darkened wedding hall across the lobby from ours.
Upon spotting Charles, who was cutting a dash in a rather fetching white tuxedo and gloves (and obviously sweating in the sticky heat of springtime Masan and a building that wasn't exactly climate-controlled), we made our way over. We shook hands, congratulated him, and then he promptly thrust the camcorder into my hands.
Oh, didn't I tell you? I'd agreed to be the cameraman. I was fairly sweating myself by this time. Agreeing to do the camera work at somebody's wedding is one thing a month or two in advance over beers in that somebody's apartment, but once you actually step into the chapel and take the camera from their hands, the full import of your choice hits you.
If I screw this up, I thought to myself, I'll have ruined one of their most precious memories, the start of their life together...or something like that.
Nonetheless, I accepted the camcorder and went to work. I got some footage of Charles with his mother, and Anne's rather staid and dignified parents. I also got a lot of footage of Anne, who was sitting in her gorgeous wedding gown in a small room off the main lobby, on display, as it were. Seriously, that's how it was. It was just this closet-sized room, tastefully wallpapered and decorated, in which the bride sat in review and people came up to greet and congratulate her, while the groom ran around attending to all the last-minute crises, an attendant following him around and dabbing at his forehead with a handkerchief. That's Korean custom, apparently. I shot some film of her and her friends, and just got some obscure statements from her about how she was feeling and so on, like I was some kind of half-baked amateur reporter or something.
That having been done, the real nerve-wracking stuff began: the ceremony proper. Instead of entering on foot, both bride and groom rode into the hall on a sort of raised trolley-like affair, in appearance almost like a bower, wreathed with flowers and a gate supposedly made to resemble old-fashioned wrought iron (in the European style). It had a smoke machine on it, which was going full blast as bombastic music played on the speakers. Charles and Anne stood straight and solemn as this contraption bore them into the room, traversing one entire wall (tastefully and skilfully painted with some Renaissance-style landscape), bowing occasionally. They then exited (with the help of formally dressed yet feverish attendants who unlatched the faux wrought-iron gates and gathered up Anne's train frantically) and arranged themselves at the end of the aisle. Charles walked down first, bowed first to his mother, then Anne's mother (both of whom were wearing hanbok, traditional Korean formal clothing, and seated on either side of aisle at the very front), then the chaplain, and then waited. Anne and her father then proceeded down the aisle, to the accompaniment of music and applause (similar to Charles's progress), and did a similar amount of bowing. Anne's father joined his wife and Anne joined Charles, and the ceremony proceeded. It was short and sweet. The whole "I now pronounce you man and wife" bit was, needless to say, indiscernible, even despite my five months of Korean lessons. After that, there was applause, Charles and Anne cut the cake, drank wine, and regally exited the hall.
...during all of which I was running around desperately trying to capture it. It was no picnic dashing from one end of the room to the other to maximize my chances at getting the best shots of Charles and Anne as they rode in the trolley, walked up (and down) the aisle, and cut the cake. Matters were complicated (by default) by the official wedding photographer, who was likewise walking about and getting shots; he kept getting in the way of mine. Given the aforementioned gravity of the situation, I also had some difficulty holding my hands steady. I think I did pretty well, though, except for a bit of camera shake and perhaps accidentally deleting the part with the trolley and the first procession down the aisle when I tried to zoom in and instead switched photography modes. (Whoops!) Drenched with sweat, I handed the camera back to Charles and gratefully went with Adam, Elaine and Jeff to snag some eats. The food was delicious, and who ever had ordered the catering had spared no expense. There was tender boiled octopus; real, actual ham; and gimbap and kimchi in plenty, of course, as well as several other delicious dishes I couldn't even identify, both Korean and Chinese in origin. I held myself down to one plate of food. We'd resolved to hit up Meat Home (since renamed Meat Rak), one of our regular haunts, a meat buffet restaurant in Gohyeon, that evening for the last time before my departure from Korea. In the meantime, instead of getting to rest from their incessant labors, Charles and Anne had (per Korean tradition) changed into hanbok of their own and were now meeting and greeting the guests at the dining tables. Charles spared us a few moments to say hello (to our relief, both Charles and Anne looked better, and said as much). When we'd finished eating, we congratulated them once more and left. Within two hours they'd be on the plane to Bali. Maybe there they'll finally get their rest. I hope so.
We hit McDonald's once more on the way to the bus stop, of course. (Elaine's not too keen on Meat Home and needed something for herself.) But we did board the bus and survived the ride back (which was even more equable than the ride up, unbelievably; perhaps I've been too hasty in my judgment of buses here). We changed out of our things at our respective apartments. Jeff came over to my place briefly so he could show me the ropes of Hostel World, a nice website devoted to the location and reservation of cheap hostels worldwide; and I gave him a super-compressed 20-minute crash course in Korean. His brain was porridge by the end of it, but I think we made some definite progress. Then Adam, Jeff and I hit up Meat Home and took our best shot at making a Bacon Bomb. (I'm too tired to explain to you what that is; look it up on YouTube.) We were marginally successful, despite a deplorable lack of proper equipment. After two hours of feasting, we parted, eminently satisfied with the weekend's proceedings.
It hit me, as Jeff and I walked to Meat Home in the cool, moist evening air, the soft reddish glow of the sun rebounding from the low-hanging cottony clouds, that the curtain was truly closing on my Korean sojourn. I felt regret, be certain of that. But I also felt that I was doing the right thing by getting while the getting was good. I couldn't shake the feeling that re-upping my contract (which I'd seriously considered at one point, and still lightly entertained) would be a mistake. Things would begin to pall for me soon enough. I might as well go before I get tired of it. Still, I got the unshakable feeling that I'd be homesick for this place after I left. That would be a complete turnaround, but I suspect its truth regardless. I'm going to miss going out to Meat Home and having a protein hangover in the morning, or getting invited to weddings in Masan, or having elementary-school kids greeting me at the door of Reading Town with ear-to-ear grins and punches in the gut.
It's been magical, to say the least. Still is.
Concluding my brunch, I bought a 3,000-won ticket for Jeju City and climbed aboard. The ride was exhausting. I hadn't realized it would be the scenic route, so I was mentally unprepared for the undoubtedly scenic but quite lengthy three-hour jaunt we took around the western edge of the island. That cut my sightseeing time in Jeju in half, but what the heck? It was only three grand. And besides, more usefully yet, the trip confirmed my suspicions that there was really nothing worth my precious time to see in Western Jeju-do. With the possible exceptions of Sangbangsan, a jungle-clad butte on the southwest shores, and Biyangdo, a hilly island off the western coast (both of which were fantastic in appearance, even from a distance), there was next to nothing of interest during the whole ride.
I was a bit peeved when I finally disembarked in Jeju, as you may imagine. As I mentioned, I'd lost a few precious hours by going the scenic way instead of the more direct route through the center of the island. Moreover, you know where I stand on the intercity bus issue. This driver had been no exception. He was horn-happy. I'd watched him, and he'd occasionally let rip in the middle of the road, with no other cars around, and no stops in sight. He did this too frequently for it to be an accident. The man had a compulsion of some sort.
Irrespective of this setback, I resolved to make the best of it. After briefly checking the bike shop on my Lonely Planet guide book's map nearby (to see if they rented scooters, which they didn't) I hailed a cab and went to the Chiseongno shopping district. My first stop was the underground shopping mall in the center of the city. It has a name, but I forgot it. That's poetically just, as the place was quite forgettable. The only thing even halfway impressive about it was its size, or rather, length. Standing in the center of its main hallway and looking towards either end, the place seemed to go on forever.
That was it. The average shop was the size of Paris Hilton's closet. Moreover most of the shops dealt in lingerie or ladies' designer clothing; not my cup of tea. I exited 20 minutes after arriving and went somewhere much more fulfilling and enlightening:
Jeju Mok, the restored and rebuilt remnants of what was once the central governing office of the island way back during the Joseon Dynasty. The governor's office was still standing, but the stables and the house where they trained concubines (yes, that's correct: geishas were nationalized in South Korea) had fallen. Only grass plots remained to show where some of the buildings had been.
The place seemed to be well set up, though. It retained military and governmental offices...
...training grounds...
...even a humongous building that seemed (according to the placard in front of it) to have no other purpose than to have government officials stand on it and face northward to express gratitude to the distant king in Seoul.
Whoop-de-doo, they built a whole building for that? Couldn't they have just used an overturned bucket or a soap box or something?
Sorry, maybe I'm still a bit peeved about honking horns. Anyway, after that I got a cab for the waterfront district. This was a BIG letdown. Yes, Jeju City has a waterfront, but no beach. There's just a seawall you can look over at the brooding South Sea (the China Sea), punctuated by the occasional staircase to nowhere that goes right down into the water.
I clambered over the wall and stood at the bottom of one of those staircases, right at the water's edge, with nothing but a vast trackless waste of water in front of me...
...and was disturbed by so many visions of some nameless, horrid sea monster lurching up out of the depths and swallowing me whole that I beat a hasty retreat a short while later. I strolled along the boardwalk by the seawall for a little bit, but the view was disappointing. I began to suspect that Jeju City would have nothing to offer me in the way of relaxation or scenery even IF the sun was shining. Oh yes, that's right, did I forget to mention that little detail too? It rained all day today. It was either sprinkling or pouring the entire...effing...day. Nutzoid, trust me and my bad travel karma to come to the subtropical Korean holiday island in the middle of the dingblasted rainy season.
Sighting E-Mart, I bore left and doubled back along the road to reach my next objective: one of the many fish restaurants that dot the waterfront district. I didn't care which, really, as long as I could get a big bowl of seafood. And I hit the jackpot: a little place wedged between two others, enticing photographs of its menu selection stuck up above the door. It was a unique little place, run by an elderly Korean trio (a man, the owner, and two ladies, one presumably his wife) and a Chinese girl. She was an exchange student and her Korean was excellent; her English, she explained, used to be good but had suffered as a result of her learning Korean. As someone whose previously passable Spanish has been reduced to tatters by Korean, I sympathized with her. I was ushered in and seated at the regular table, not the usual elevated floor where Koreans doff their shoes and sit at low tables. They must've figured I was the earthbound foreigner type. It didn't matter to me, as long as I got some seafood, and didn't offend these good people in the process. I gazed over the picturesque menu for a moment before making my decision: haemuljeongol, an extremely chunky seafood soup with vegetables. Twenty thousand won bought me a whopping great bowlful, boiled right at my table (stirred by my good self) and served hot with traditional Korean banchan (side dishes; the kimchi was particularly good). It had everything in it: cuttlefish tentacles, whole prawns, oysters, mussels on the half shell, bisected crabs, and unidentifiable bits that were nonetheless delicious. I strongly advise anyone who is not a dyed-in-the-wool seafood fan like me to avoid this dish. (I eat lobster shells. That's what I mean by "dyed-in-the-wool.") It was pretty darn good, but nothing special. The broth was tasty but not overly flavorful; the highlight of the dish was biting down into some particularly juicy and delectable bit of sea creature. I did my best to finish the whole pan, but it defeated me; I left a helping or two. I must've impressed them regardless; I noticed that after I emptied my water bottle and finished my sides, they started dishing me up larger portions. Anyway, I finished, leaned back, rubbed my stomach, delivered a few well-timed compliments to the chef (in Korean, of course), settled up and took my leave.
Suitably satiated ("dine in Jeju City" had been one of the things on my to-do list), I hailed yet another cab and headed to Sinsan Park, wherein lay the mysterious Samseonghyeol Shrine and the Natural History Museum. The museum was easy to find. The shrine, not so much. After wandering in and out of rooms for an hour and a half, observing everything from the formation of the shield volcano that formed the island to the peculiar stalagmite and lava formations in the numerous lava tubes that dot the island to the incredibly diverse native flora and fauna of the island to the singular culture and history of the indigenous Korean people on the island, I exited the museum and went in search of the shrine.
No luck. For once my Lonely Planet guide book's map was no help. It indicated only that the shrine was somewhere west of the museum; no trail led to it. Paths were not clearly marked. I wandered about aimlessly for a few minutes in a perfunctory search, halfheartedly retracing old paths; all I found was an old man busily humping some cone-shaped statue thingy. If that was the shrine, I wasn't much interested. I also found this:
I later found out that I'd been looking for the wrong thing. Being in Korea had made be believe "shrine" to be synonymous with "pagoda." I was barking up the wrong tree this time. Samseonghyeol Shrine is actually composed of three side-by-side holes in the ground. Why is that sacred, you ask? It was from these holes that three brothers are said to have emerged (way back in the day) and founded the independent Tamna Kingdom of Jeju. Each of them shot an arrow in a different direction and ruled the sector of the island where it landed. (I believe the name Samseonghyeol means "Three Celestial Brothers.") Too bad I didn't know that at the time. I was looking for a pagoda.
Recognizing defeat as well as the onset of night, I called it a day and hailed a cab for the bus station. I paid another three grand. During the ethereal bus ride home (through the dark and the thickening mist) I noticed with profound relief that I was, in fact, on the short bus. Ha ha, no, seriously, I was on the bus that was taking the short route, the 5.16 Road (that's not the number of the road, it's the name...I think May 16th is a famous date here for some reason I haven't discovered yet). It connects Jeju City and Seogwipo directly, curving around the eastern side of Hallasan in the center of the island. In short order I was disembarking at Jungang Rotary in downtown Seogwipo. Though I knew I was within a mere kilometer of the Jeju Hiking Inn, having not visited this part of the city yet and being too tired to be bothered asking directions, I simply hailed a cab and rode to the Sunbeach Hotel. From thence it was a short stroll back to my place, where I started writing this.
So, all in all, I think I accomplished my mission. I'd wanted to check out the National Jeju Museum as well as the Natural History Museum, not to mention a few other sights and sounds and drinking establishments in the greater Jeju area, but thanks to that dratted indirect bus ride I'd taken earlier I'd been precluded. That having been said, I'm not chalking this up as a loss. The point was to go to Jeju City, not to conquer it. I accomplished my general objectives: check out the shopping district, eat somewhere along the waterfront, and visit the park. That was done. I'm now going to go back up to my room and be Princess Deokman's newest cheerleader. The actress who portrays her, I Yo-Won, is rather cute...
