I woke up at eight o'clock. I passed a bundle of laundry to the desk clerk. I asked for a towel and got one. I showered and shaved. I marched down Kitchener and Serangoon Roads to the Mustafa Centre, where I exchanged 220 Thai baht, 10 U.S. dollars, and 361 Malaysian ringgit for 161 Singapore dollars. While I was there, I bought a padlock for my defunct locker back at Tresor Tavern. All this I accomplished before eleven o'clock. I went back to the hostel and sat in the lobby, sweating, updating my journals and letting my parents know I was still alive. I also spent some time writing down the addresses of everything I wanted to see and eat in this town today (Thursday, July 31). I went to Chinatown to check out the Heritage Centre and was told it cost $10 SGD to get in. I said "Screw that with a pitchfork." I went to the foodie street and had some laksa, a spicy noodle soup in greasy orange broth which is central to Peranakan (Chinese-Malay) cuisine and Malaysia's national dish. It consists of rice vermicelli (though this touristy dump used spaghetti) in coconut milk and curry broth. My bowl included hard-boiled eggs, cockles, bean curd puffs, and bean sprouts, and cost $4.50 SGD. I did not take a food selfie. Too hungry. On an impulse I walked across South Bridge Street and caught the open-top sightseeing bus for $25 SGD. We swung out west, down shady, tree-lined Havelock and Zion Roads, curving up to the Botanical Gardens (the one thing in Singapore that I didn't see and wish I had). Then we went dead east on Orchard Road. As clean, bright, and shiny as this city was, dazzlingly clear as it dried from the previous night's rain, there wasn't much to it besides shopping, eating, and authoritarianism. "HAPPY 49th BIRTHDAY, SINGAPORE!" squawked loud orange banners on every lamppost, but on the subway trains were stern admonishments to the citizens to be polite when boarding or exiting, to move to the back or offer your seat to an invalid. Public service announcements printed starkly in black, white, and red urged citizens to perform the vital five-step method to eradicate dengue fever (promptly emptying every container on your property of standing water). What was most jarring was seeing so many Occidental franchises. Malaysia and even Cambodia had KFC and Starbucks, and Seoul has Burger King and McDonalds and Coffee Bean & Tea Leaf, but Singapore was just mad—Long John Silver's, California Pizza Kitchen, Coldstone Creamery, Quizno's Subs, and everything else British or American. I was disappointed. Foreign excursions are supposed to be...well, foreign. And I hated to think that the average Singaporean's idea of western culture was a soggy McDonald's sandwich, some limp fries and a syrupy soft drink.
The Singapore River. Really takes your breath away, doesn't it?
After a short foray north and east to Sungei Road, the sightseeing bus dumped us out at the Singapore Flyer. Think the London Eye, but bigger—"the world's tallest observation wheel," proclaimed the posters and brochures. That was a blatant falsehood, as the High Roller in Las Vegas is actually taller, but I'm not the quibbling type—not when sweat's soaking my collar and the red bandanna I'd tied around my right hand and wrist for mopping and sopping purposes.
Pro tip, kids: this is more fashionable than wrapping it around your forehead and more sanitary than sticking it back in your pocket after every wipe. Just be prepared for lots of concerned fellow travelers to ask you how you hurt your wrist.
I caught the next bus to Clarke Quay and switched to the metro. I went back to the hostel, rested, rehydrated, and wrote some postcards (the fifth of seven batches). At 6:45, a time I judged with a pilot's careful precision, I caught a taxicab back to the Flyer to see the sunset from on high. The Flyer isn't very popular with the locals. According to TIME, they gripe that it's too far away from everything and costs too much. I didn't sympathize with the former sentiment but certainly the latter: tickets were $33 SGD. Concordantly, there wasn't much of a crowd. I rolled up at seven o'clock, bought a ticket, hustled through all the supplementary bullshit they put up to make waiting in line more interesting—planetariums and historical placards and whatnot—and got some fantastic views of the downtown area and Marina Bay.
Then, of course, I went to O'Leary's Sports Bar & Grill—foreigner-owned and foreigner-run, looking like it had sprung from any broad boulevard in the Inland Empire—for a nightcap. What else but a Singapore sling?
It was weak and sickly-sweet and cost $17 SGD, but what the hell. I can say I've had a Singapore sling in Singapore. I'd meant to sample the best that Little India could offer me in the way of eats, but my internal compass was taking a much-deserved rest. I couldn't find my intended destination, Bali Nasi Lemak in Geylang. So I went back to the neighborhood of my hostel and sat down in the same little halal Sri Lankan/Thai cafeteria where that snaggle-toothed Samaritan Singaporean had bought me a bottle of water the previous evening. I had some iced lychee juice and a plate of nasi goreng thai for just $4.50 SGD. For afters I had some sort of fried fish dumpling, also delectable. I couldn't discern the waiter's thick Tamil accent when I asked what it was. Sounded like "kampop." I got an A&W root beer for dessert (you don't see those every day in Asia) and returned to the hostel to update my journals. My time in Singapore was at an end. The next morning I would mail postcards, check out of the Tresor Tavern at noon, and catch the metro for Changi Airport. If you'd like to find out why I hate Singapore, come back tomorrow.
Long story short: I was forced to ride a bus from Butterworth to Johor Bahru in southern Malaysia, and thence to Singapore. Thanks to Hari Raya, the end of Ramadan, all the trains were booked up. It was a rumbling, clattering misery machine a bus to Singapore or nothing at all. I woke up at 5:45 a.m. on the morning of Wednesday, July 30, slipped downstairs in the predawn darkness, gave my postcards and 10 ringgit to the night clerk and asked him to mail them for me, and caught the first ferry to the mainland at 7:00 sharp, crossing a calm strait under the pale light of dawn.
What little information I could find online suggested that express buses to Singapore (Woodlands) would be readily available. Apparently those were all booked up too. The best I could do was catch an express bus to the border town of Johor Bahru at 8:30 and figure things out from there. It was a nice bus, at least. It was plentifully air-conditioned, clean, and had seats which reclined fully. I settled in for a long ride and was just getting comfortable when...
A skinny shrimp of a 2nd-generation Chinese-Malay woman kicked everybody going to Gelang and Johor Bahru off the bus. With her hectoring voice, baseball cap pulled low over her eyes, and flicking ballpoint pen, she herded us out of KL Sentral Station and across the street to a pair of considerably older, dirtier, hotter, and less comfortable green buses. A pair of creased, loud-voiced fellows in polo shirts and jeans with walkie-talkies clipped to their back pockets shouted as us to load our luggage and get aboard, and be quick about it. Then the agony began. We'd already been on the road five or six hours, but we happy few going to Johor Bahru would remain for a further 8.5 aboard that boiling, filthy bus with precious few rest stops, no food, and shock absorbers that amplified every bump in the road. You can't imagine how glad I was to stumble off that accursed machine at Larkin Sentral Station in Johor Bahru, wobbly-legged, sweat-grimed, weak-stomached, bleary-eyed, and foul-tempered. For my trials were not yet over: I thereupon boarded another bus, the 170 for Queen Street in Singapore. I got on and off that bus three freaking times—once to exit Malaysia (and get my exit stamp from a callous-looking woman in a black hijab), once to enter Singapore at Woodlands (which necessitated waiting in line for 40 minutes, and I had to go back to the end of the line once because I forgot to fill out a damn entry card), and finally to go through customs inspection. Each time I stepped off the bus into the steamy night air, my glasses fogged up and my pores began oozing sweat. It crusted my hair, soaked my skin and clothes, and soured my mood. I hate sweating and I hate climates like what they've got down in Southeast Asia, irresponsibly warm and humid. Furry mammals—particularly clothed human beings—have no business living in places like that. It's better if we leave the whole cockamamie place to the reptiles. At nearly eleven o'clock, 17 hours after waking up, 14.5 hours after leaving Butterworth, and three hours after arriving in Johor Bahru, the 170 bus dumped me out on Queen Street. I had to walk another five or six blocks (and ask a kindly cabbie for directions) but I made it to my hostel, the Tresor Tavern on Jalan Besar in Little India near Farrer Park. Before entering I tried to buy a much-needed 1.5-liter bottle of water with my debit card, but the Sri Lankan shopkeeper didn't have a card reader. That's when a random Singaporean, a tottering old fellow with a shock of gray hair, bulging eyes, and a broad mouth filled with crooked teeth lurched up to the counter to buy a pack of gum. He and a friend had been sitting and eating and boozing it up for who knew how long before I'd walked in. This elderly Samaritan grokked the situation in a blink. Without hesitation he bought the 1.5 liters of water for me, and handed me ten Singapore dollars on top of that. Then he lurched away without waiting for a thank-you. I honestly didn't know what to do, say, or think, and that combination's rare for me. You hear a lot about the kindness of strangers when you're out traveling the world, but the reality of it really hits you in the old heartstrings. That first drink was the coolest and sweetest gulp of water I've ever had. My rehydrated corpse hit the rock-hard mattress of the Tresor Tavern's third-floor mixed dormitory at almost midnight. The room had twelve beds, bunked and curtained, the frames bare metal and the rings squeaky. The floor was concrete, the walls bare, the ceiling choked with exposed pipes—"Like a jail," said my elderly Indian roommate. Garbage was stacked atop every locker, none of which actually locked. The wireless Internet only worked on the ground floor, none of the upper floors. It seemed I would have to physically place an order for a towel. Two things did work, however: the air conditioner and the light switch. Good night!
Travel Truth #7: Holidays and festivals can throw some delightful zest into your trip. Or a monkey wrench. Things began to go seriously wrong the moment I stepped off the International Express train in Butterworth, Malaysia, fresh off the overnight ride from Bangkok. While the other passengers took the long walk up a series of elevated ramps to the ferry jetty, I turned right, crossed the tracks, and went to the station office to check on train tickets to Singapore. There weren't any. As in, none. Zero. Zip. Nada. I didn't realize that Ramadan leaped around so much. I thought it was pretty much a winter holiday, and that's that. I didn't comprehend that the vagaries of the Islamic calendar could place Ramadan, say, in the midst of summer, but so it had. It seems that I had arrived in Malaysia right at the beginning of Hari Raya Puasa, the "Day of Celebrating the End of Fasting." Today and tomorrow (July 28-29), every Mohammedan in Malaysia (and Singapore and Brunei and the Philippines) would be home with their family, stuffing themselves silly and giving thanks to Allah. All the train tickets back to Singapore were booked up through the end of the week. Shoot. Resolving to worry about all this later, I hefted by backpack, sauntered out into the broiling sunshine, and traipsed my way along the elevated walkways to the ferry jetty. The line was about 50 miles long. Twin rows of Malays (mostly young men, I noticed) stood upon the cracked concrete of the shady walkway, arms folded, talking amongst themselves as they waited their turn for a ride to Penang, a medium-sized island just a kilometer or two off the coast, its humped green back just visible in the hazy distance. There were a couple of portly, black-uniformed policeman patrolling the crowd, casting disapproving eyes at the loud and boisterous, their keen eyes seeking out any women and hustling them to the front of the line. One of these policemen spotted me. His eyes swept over me, taking in my misshapen hat, sweat-soaked clothes, lumpy backpack, and ridiculous flip-flop tan, and then darted away like a startled fish. A second policeman with dark sunglasses came along a few minutes later and motioned me out of line and to the front. Gratefully, I humped my backpack another 200 yards, past a line that would surely have meant two or three hours of waiting, paid my fare, rode across the strait, and spent about a 30 fruitless minutes searching for my hotel (and nearly melting in the process) before a kindly cabbie picked me up and took me there. I checked into the Red Inn Court, which wasn't as new or modern or large as Boxpackers in Bangkok but nonetheless clean and serviceable. Thereupon I took three hours to cool off, both literally and figuratively. I also had to wait until after 6:00, when the noodle joints opened up. Then I sauntered into the gentler but still sultry evening, found an open-air greasy spoon crowded with locals (always a good sign) and ordered a plate of delicious, savory char koay teow, noodles stir-fried in rich dark sauce. This particular variety had chicken and shrimp. I sat across the table from a Brazilian fellow named Gabriel who lived and worked in Singapore, and found it horribly boring. We talked, mostly of the shittiness of Asian beer and the emergence of craft brew.
I sloped a few feet west down Lebuh Chulia to the Hong Kong Bar, a cramped closet of a place with an eclectic mix of rustic decorations, Chinese paper lanterns and WWII British Army jungle hats being the most prominent. Best bar in Asia, bar none. I sat at one of the tables out in front, right next to a pillar, and had seven Tiger beers (for a total of 77 ringgit, or about $23.50). The sun set beyond Penang Hill, lighting the low, glowering clouds a lambent yellow ochre overhead and a fulgent papaya nearer the horizon. Drag queens, ladyboys, tourists, and benighted foreigners strode past and kit cars and scooters zoomed by at ridiculous speeds. I chatted with the Chinese-Malaysian proprietress, an English man and his articulate Chinese wife at the next table, and a youngish Russian woman named Eugenya. She was a scuba diving instructor and was living in Thailand, but was down in Malaysia doing a visa run. She and I were united by literature—both of us were quite well-read, and we discussed our favorite works, Russian and otherwise. One of the most controversial topics we discussed was the plus side and perks of racism—yes, we thought of several good ones. We shared a few off-color jokes between us, including ones at Russians' and Americans' expense. All in all, it was a magical evening. As I sat there with a bellyful of horrid Malay beer and the fires of a glorious sunset still dying a slow death in the western sky, the Chinese-Malaysian proprietress laughing at my jokes and slapping me on the shoulder, I could see myself happily moving to George Town and sitting in the Hong Kong Bar and doing some of my best writing. And living.
I was a bit delayed getting out of Siem Reap. I'd asked the front desk of the King Boutique Hotel to book me a ticket with Nattakan, the bus company which ran the direct Siem Reap-to-Bangkok route (and for just $30!). Well, the price was right. Nobody showed up to get me at eight o'clock, so the hotel manager made a call. Twenty minutes later a tuk-tuk showed up to get me to the bus, and a harried-looking young Cambodian woman in business casual took my name and money and helped me stick my luggage in the cargo compartment. The seat I'd reserved was taken, so I sat in the very back of the bus near the lavatory, which suited me just fine. We pulled out of Siem Reap at 8:20 (twenty minutes late). "Looks like this company couldn't find its ass with two hands and a flashlight," I wrote in my journal. Matters improved by 10:45, when we hit Poipet. The Thai-Cambodian border was one of the few things about the trip I'd been dreading. I'd heard that Poipet was about as seedy as Cambodia gets, with scammers and four-flushers and pickpockets on every street and around every corner. Worse yet were the rumored passport scams and false visa sellers. Our faithful bus crew spared us that hassle. They steered us dauntlessly through the milling crowd of Thais, Cambodians, Vietnamese, Laotians, Indians, and Chinese at the border, lined us all up in neat rows in front of the actual, factual visa office, and then led us down a kilometer of dusty road, through a series of impressive gates, and over a bridge (which the Brits had paid for and the Thais had built) and into Thailand proper. I was one of the first of the bus passengers through, so I had to wait around in the hot, breezy, overcast day on the much cleaner Thai side for everyone else to pass through. I remember having to pee very badly as I watched heavy trucks loaded with manufactured goods and timber lumber to and fro along the unpaved road and across the border. After a microwave lunch aboard the bus, I began to nod off. We breezed through eastern Thailand, which was far cleaner, better kept, and spacier than Cambodia had been. Landscaped medians lined the highways and there wasn't a single piece of garbage in sight. The skinny Brahman cows had disappeared, as had the hammocks; now we saw neat condominiums and farmhouses with green and well-tended rice fields beside them. The only evidence of the coup was the occasional roadblock, where a uniformed military policeman with a crisp camouflage uniform and a pistol at his hip would clamber aboard, give us all a hard look, and then wave the bus onward. I have no idea what the purpose of these roadblocks was. Security? Searching for fugitive insurgents? Keeping tabs on the movements of people around the countryside? I suppose I'll never know, because I was soon distracted by our arrival in Bangkok. The place was huge. It took us 30-40 minutes to get from the city's eastern limits to the northern bus terminal. On a highway. The skyline was quite impressive, too: whereas most cities are just a cluster of skyscrapers surrounded by squatter suburbs, Bangkok seemed to be an unending sea of four- and five-story buildings with the occasional impressive spire of a high-rise thrusting up out of it, some of them so far away from the center of town that they were barely visible in the thin blue haze. At the northern terminal I leaped off the bus, grabbed my pack out of the storage compartment, and tried to get ahead of the press for taxicabs. Fortunately there were enough hot pink cabs outside the station gates to ferry a convention downtown. One brown, skinny, middle-aged gent with a baseball cap and a polo shirt, whose license card proclaimed him to be a Mr. Senkham, snatched me up and led me to his car. I could barely understand his friendly questions ("You from Rob Angelit?"). I dumped my stuff in the back seat and climbed into the front. With his crooked teeth showing, Senkham handed me his rate card. Yep, Thailand was definitely a richer country than Vietnam or Cambodia: a simple ride into town would be 1200 baht, or nearly $40 American. My jaw hit the floor. Even the Skyliner from Narita Airport to Ueno Station in Tokyo didn't cost that much. My hand clamped down on the door handle and I was about to bail out when Mr. Senkham said "No better rate, boss. All standard." It didn't even occur to me to argue or haggle. Tired and bedraggled and just wanting to get to Bangkok already, I closed the door and nodded my head in defeat. Off we went. Forty minutes and forty dollars later, I was standing outside of my hostel, Boxpackers. Mr. Senkham happily took my money and rocketed off. I didn't have enough Thai baht, so I gave him forty U.S. dollars. I didn't tip him, but since 1200 baht was $38.72 in July of 2014, he got a tip and he knew it.
I had to fill out some silly questionnaire and a thousand other forms at the front desk, but then I got my key and headed upstairs.
I climbed into my surprisingly spacious cubicle, closed the curtain, updated my journals, remembered that I was thirsty and hungry and went back downstairs and around the corner to the 7-11 for some water and snacks, and then came back upstairs and went to bed. The next day would prove to be a very aggravating day...with an unexpected reward at the end. Stay tuned.
You know you're living high when you wake up in a roofless room in an abandoned church, a hangover splitting your skull and the pale Scottish sunlight beaming down on you like the reprehending finger of God Himself.
You also know that, once again, you've been a sorry bastard who stayed out too late, spent too much money and drank too much booze.
Swearing inwardly, you put a hand over your face, partly to assuage your throbbing temples, and partly to shield your eyes from God's index finger. In about five minutes, you find the courage to sit up. A fresh whack of pain bolts through your head. Your mouth is dry and cottony. Your hair is greasy; your body grimy; your eyes bleary and reluctant to function.
Water. That's what you need. A nice big glass of water. And possibly a swift kick in the arse afterward.
Edinburgh. June 19, 2010, or something. The first thing I did was drink a big glass of water. That helped put me to rights, as did the Egg McMuffin I had at the McDonald's on the eastern end of Princes Street. Now, under grayish skies, Jeff and I were heading toward the Old Town again, on our last day in Edinburgh. We were determined to make good on it. We'd sampled Edinburgh's culinary delights, its liquors and heady vapors, its cultural bestowal, its arts and literature, its hospitality, and its history.
There was but one mysterious component left to assay: natural attractions. And we had quite the weighty feat in mind: climb to Arthur's Seat, the main peak of the bevy of hills which forms Holyrood Park.
The hill the Seat sits on is an extinct volcano. It was formed approximately 350 million years ago during the Carboniferous Age, which makes it older than the dinosaurs. The terrible lizards were just foot-long wannabes during the Caboniferous, newcomers to the global scene. The world was mainly ruled by plants, amphibians, and scorpions the size of dogs.
Later, in the Quaternary, glaciers shaved and scoured at the volcano, exposing rocky crags, igneous and sedimentary layers, paring the mound to about 820 feet in height and gentling its slopes. This occurrence allowed James Hutton, the father of modern geology, to realize that the layers which formed the hills had been set down at different times, far back in the past, much farther than anyone had previously suspected. This revolutionized Earth science. Up until the late 18th century people had believed the planet was just a ball of rock, which never moved or changed or did anything weird. Hutton changed all that. He realized that Earth was a dynamic, pulsating, glowing thing, whose surface had changed drastically over its long past. Hutton both sired modern geology and allowed other scientists, like Charles Darwin, get their theories off the ground by providing a much longer history of Starship Earth with which they could fiddle.
The origin of the name "Arthur's Seat" is disputed, much to everyone's surprise. Many argue that it links back to the legends of King Arthur. There is an intriguing reference in the medieval Welsh poem Y Gododdin to Arthur, mentioned in connection with a "seat" in the north. But since most of England and Scotland is north of Wales, the truth of the matter is up for grabs. It certainly was an intoxicating thought, however, that the old sentry post up on top of the hill in the center of Edinburgh might've played host to the backside of one of the most famous people in British history.
But all of this is beside the point.
All Jeff and I wanted to do was climb the damn thing.
There's a dichotomy in any natural obstacle or geological formation. In considering it, you must first appreciate its mental or intangible forms. When someone says the word "mountain" to you, you might immediately think of the words "lofty," "beautiful," or "majestic." Those are the pathetic (meaning emotional) buzzwords which the word "mountain" evokes within you. Also there are scientific keywords which trigger certain perceptions within the mind regarding mountains. Your mind may respond with "igneous" or "extrusion"; "subduction" or "convergent boundary" or "tectonic"; "erosion" or "weathering"; or, ignoring the geological, you may think "alpine," "altitude," "moraine," "treeline," or any of the multitudinous biological phrases applying thereto.
Then there is the physical side to the mountain. The rock-hard, ice-cold, vertically-inclined, down-to-earth, gritty sensations which come when climbing instead of considering. Birdsong in the trees. A breeze through the grass. Feet crunching in snow. Sweat dripping down your forehead. Wheezing breath, heaving chests. The beatific gulp of water. Blisters, calluses, muscles aflame. Blood pounding through brains, fingers scraped on rock, sweet mountain air coursing through lungs and nostrils.
It was the physical side to mountaineering and hill-climbing which was foremost in my mind when we started down Princes Street to Holyrood Park, and the climb to Arthur's Seat. I wasn't thinking anything remotely geological, here. I was out to climb a hill.
We weren't quite sure where we were going, but hey—Arthur's Seat was the highest point for miles. It wouldn't exactly be hard to miss. We just followed every side-street and byway we could find until we got to the entrance of Holyrood Park and our way became clear. That's the kind of pioneers Jeff and I are.
The approach was steeper than it looked. And it'd been a while since I'd climbed a hill. But this was Scotland. I wasn't going to leave without surmounting the obstacle, without getting some cool air in my lungs and sweat under my hatband.
Past an ice-cream stall, up and over a small rise, and we were on the trail to the top. My legs were aching in about 15 minutes. My breath sawed at my throat, and my lungs felt like they were filled with sandpaper. Nonetheless I thrust doggedly uphill, wondering which would fail me first: my legs, my lungs, or my sense of adventure. I didn't care which of the three propelled me to the top, as long as I got there in the end. Some twenty minutes later, I realized with disbelief that I was being outstripped by a sixty-year-old man with a beer gut. Insulted and mortified, I intensified my pace. Jeff was a much wiser man about climbing hills (as he'd proved during the ascent of Jirisan in Korea a year earlier). He plugged away, not hurrying, but not stopping either.
And so we went during the 800-foot, multi-kilometer climb: me rocketing upward for a hundred yards only to pause, panting, at the crest of the next rise; Jeff stolidly working his way uphill, a look of benign and peaceful concentration on his brow.
At least the view was nice, though.
Vistas only improved the closer we got to the Seat itself.
And totally not before we knew it, we were at the top.
There wasn't really a seat to speak of up there; more of a cairn with graffiti scrawled all over it. The lumpy basaltic rocks which formed the peak hadn't escaped the street artist's pocketknife, either. Nonetheless the view of Edinburgh, the Firth of Forth, Kirkaldy, and the surrounding countryside was worth the sweaty climb and the chill breeze.
And then down we went again.
Jeff, after his wont, did the same thing going down the mountain as he had going up: he plodded steadily, never hurrying, never slowing. I descend hills like a mountain goat trying to start an avalanche. I was often hundreds of yards ahead of Jeff, and had to slow up and wait. Mr. Mountain Goat and Mr. Lizard were racing down a hill...
...so Mr. Lizard could take some nice photographs of Mr. Mountain Goat when there was a photo-op.
I was unable to resist the temptation of the ice-cream vendor on our way out of Holyrood Park, so I paid a chunk and got myself a cone. It helped cool me down enormously as we threaded our way through the winding, hilly streets of Old Town Edinburgh and back to our hostel.
We got cleaned up, packed our bags, and checked out of the Belford Hostel. We said farewell to the roofless rooms, the vaulted church ceiling, the stony brickwork, and the snores of our fellow inmates, and walked down the street to Ryan's Bar for one last pint. It was here that our trails parted ways. In an hour or so I would be taking the train back to Newcastle, to spend a final 36 hours with Adam and Elaine before I left for London and the flight back to North America; Jeff would jump the Channel into France and his seven-month sojourn in Europe and North Africa.
A good-luck beer seemed appropriate.
What was even more appropriate was the song that came on as we sat, sipped and reflected on our adventures of the last fortnight.
Another case of art imitating life. We were suddenly sobered. Whatever buzz the Scotch ale had imparted to us was abruptly dissipated. We were parting, perhaps for a very long time, and we we knew it. The bond between fellow travelers, tenuous at the best of times, was somehow calcified by the dreamy lyrics Jim Morrison was calling from the pub's dusty speakers.
An excerpt from Two Fusiliers, by Robert Graves, came to my mind as Jeff and I shared that last drink at Ryan's.
And have we done with War at last?
Well, we've been lucky devils both,
And there's no need of pledge or oath
To bind our lovely friendship fast,
By firmer stuff
Close bound enough.
We finished, paid our bill, walked to Waverley Station, shook hands, and parted ways. I got on the train and sat, staring out the window at the rolling green of the countryside, my head spinning and my heart about to burst.
Wow, I am really letting this story slide, aren't I? I took this trip in June, and I'm still only half-done telling you about it in October. Hang with me, people. Sometime soon I'll put up some links to the other parts of this story, if you feel you need a refresher.
During the barbecue at Adam's mum's house in Newcastle on June 18, Adam's mate (who I'll call R.P.) said something interesting.
R.P. is actually a native Scotsman, born and raised in Edinburgh. Jeff and I would be departing for that wondrous city on the East Coast train the next morning (fortunately not too early). We were drunk as lords, trying to dose off the disappointment at England's draw with Algeria in the World Cup. The evening was ripe for some funny stories. So R.P. told us about the time when he and a friend were blind drunk in Edinburgh and were stopped by police.
R.P.'s friend was pretty well gone by that time. This was evidenced by his desperate plea to the constable who'd stopped them:
"I swear I've not been cunting, drinkstable."
But getting back to June 19th: Jeff and I weren't nearly so bad off that morning as we'd been three days earlier, departing for Dublin. We'd had as much to drink, but we'd imbibed it more gradually, and done quite a bit to burn it off in the meantime (like running back and forth trying to grill for our English guests, and yelling bone-bleaching obscenities at the TV as the English team attempted to penetrate the Algerian defense).
We got up about 7:30-ish or so, had something to eat (and a lot of water to drink), checked our knapsacks one more time, got in the taxi, and made Newcastle Station in good time. With some creative finagling we managed to procure two seats in car F, and before we knew it the train was creeping northward out of the Toon.
We slowly left the city, and the multifarious bridges which hung above the River Tyne, their gantries and beams and pylons firmly visible beneath an iron sky. The rows of red brick houses and crenellated steeples faded out, replaced by sheep pastures, hedgerows and woods. As time went on and the train picked up speed, the hills began to multiply, and suddenly the jagged, adamantine coast of Scotland was outside the windows.
The sea was rough and gray, unlike the sky above, where a bit of blue had entered the breach. Wind-surfers nabbed the breakers, dipping up and down like diving birds. The skies cleared further as we rode north, until only a few sullen gray patches remained.
The trip was far shorter than even I had imagined. Remember, now, I spent three days on a train from Fargo to Los Angeles a few summers back. I was smelling pretty ripe by the end, rest assured. But a scant two hours after leaving Newcastle the train pulled into Waverley Station in Edinburgh. Jeff and I bit and clawed our way through a mixed crowd, climbed a massive staircase and emerged into the sunlit chaos of Princes Street.
Stop a minute.
Did you ever have one of those moments when you realize you're doing something you've always wanted to do, and that your dreams are finally coming to fruition, and that you're right where you should be, and all the hard work and waiting has paid off, and you're in for one sweet hell of a time, and the joy and satisfaction and anticipation and contentedness just well up inside your heart and mind and midsection like one of those baking-soda volcanoes at the school science fair?
Yeah, I had one of those moments just then.
We turned left and headed down Princes Street in search of our hostel.
It took a bit of walking and dodging to find it. We strode nearly the length of Princes Street, hung a right on Queensferry, and then a slight left on Belford where it abscinded at an acute angle from Queensferry.
All the while I gazed about me in unadulterated wonder. The city of Edinburgh was like nothing I'd ever seen before. And I was liking what I saw. When I stepped out of Waverley Station I thought we'd somehow gone through the Chunnel and wound up in Eastern Europe somewhere: Prague, maybe. Mind-boggling stone architecture, enormous monuments, statuary of every description, and a skyline besotted with steeples, towers and minarets, all hung under a cottony sky with the blue breaking through. Nothing had prepared me for it. "Flabbergasted" is the term.
And of course, the requisite bagpiper was on every corner.
The hostel itself was a converted church in a very quiet neighborhood a few hundred yards down Belford Street. Its dark steeple loomed over the narrow street like a brooding curate, the ancient stones worn and weathered by time and the elements. It—
Oh, hell, why am I talking when you could just go to Edinburgh and see for yourself?
We checked in and went to our room. It consisted of three two-person bunks and not much else, except for a slip of mirror on the wall and a few notices. There was no lock on the door. There wasn't even a ceiling on the room: above our heads was empty air, stretching up to meet the dark wooden vault of the church.
A holy experience (as in "Holy shit"). I immediately called dibs on the top bunk, you may rest assured. Laying there with my head east and feet west, I was looking straight over the lip of the western wall to the enormous window below the church steeple, thus:
Talk about a room with a view.
Okay, I'm done being smug. I'm also done with this blog post. This is all I have time to tell you about right now. I have to go drill some holes in the sky chasing unmanned aerial vehicles now. I shall relate to you the events of the first evening (and night) in Edinburgh tomorrow, mayhaps. Until then, good night and enjoy the pictures.
And on the seventh day, Andy decreed a day of rest. And so he did rest, laundry, submarines, waterfalls and souvenir shops notwithstanding. Okay, yeah, I said I'd take it easy today, but everything I've done has been within a mile or so of my hotel, okay? I consider that effortless.
First on the docket: sleep in. This I did, until about 8:30, half an hour later than usual. (My body doesn't take a hint. I tried going to the bathroom, swigging some water, closing the shades, every trick I knew, but I couldn't get back to sleep.) Anyway, recognizing defeat, I got up and asked Kevin, the Hiking Inn's proprietor, where the laundry was. He told me to bring it down and pile it by the office door and his wife would do it. Trying to exude an aura of extreme gratefulness, I did so. Kevin said it'd be ready in the afternoon. That little bit of housekeeping now taken care of (how easy!), I was now left to my own devices. I figured since I didn't have time to take the submarine tour up in Seongsan the other day, I'd do it today, especially since there was another submarine company just down the road at Seogwipo Harbor. Seogwipo Submarine is its imaginative name. (The Korean word for "submarine" is jamsuham, in case you're interested.) For 45,000 won you can get a 40-minute ride around coral formations and enough gaily-hued fish to choke a whale. I strolled down to the docks, then turned around a caught a cab back to my hotel. I'd left my bank book in a pocket of my new galot jacket. Not that I don't trust Kevin, but living near Los Angeles for seven years has bred in me an innate suspiciousness. Then I strolled back down to the docks again, entered the crowded waiting room and purchased a ticket.
In ten minutes (well, it's good I had to go back for something after all; it reduced the waiting time) we were boarding a launch for the submarine station. As if riding a submarine wasn't cool enough, we didn't do nearly anything so pedestrian as actually board the submarine at the harbor. The sub was docked at Mundo Island, about a half a kilometer offshore. We had to take a twelve-ton launch out of the bay and to the floating boarding barge moored just off Mundo's sheer, rocky coast.
As we pulled up, the submarine, about thirty feet long and painted white, emerged dramatically from the depths, throwing a gout of water into the air like a breaching whale. Oohs and aahs abounded.
Within fifteen minutes, passengers from the launch had been transferred from the sub (and vice-versa; the previous run had to take the launch back to the harbor); we'd all had our obligatory, individual photo op in front of the sub (the Jiah by name); and we'd descended a ladder down the narrow hatch and taken our seats on the hardened rubber benches in the cabin.
It was wild in there, nothing but huge glass portholes running down either side of the compartment, giving crystal-clear views of the rolling green waters outside.
In another moment we were descending. For the first phase of the ride (viewing the shallow-water fish that flock throughout these waters), all of us on the starboard side had to shift down to even smaller rubberized seats, while those folks on the port side rose to take their places the benches we'd vacated. This was so everybody could see out the starboard portholes.
Then the show began. Divers from a small ship nearby (itself monitoring our progress and ready to aid in case of emergency) swam by our portholes, within touching distance, it seemed. They were surreptitiously sprinkling fish food into the water, and thereby enticing a whole gang of the promised brightly-colored fish to swim after them...right by our portholes.
The result was a veritable icthyoid rainbow, a whole parade of tiny fish flocking in droves past the portholes, wowing us passengers. As they passed, a crewman aboard the sub went up and down to each porthole and took pictures of each of us. Prints would later be made available after we'd landed back at the harbor. It was a pretty neat sight, unlike anything I'd ever seen before at sea or an aquarium.
All too soon the fishfest was over, and the Jiah descended deeper into the green, murky depths. It was a pity it was so murky. The first I saw of the shipwreck was when the rust- and barnacle-encrusted bow loomed up out of the silt like the snout of some shovel-nosed leviathan.
It was a small craft, probably some fishing boat (or perhaps just some junker sunk by the Seogwipo Submarine Company for the effect)...but still, it was an impressive and sobering moment, this rusted hulk sitting on the bottom of the sea, picked at by fish, lost and forgotten. Even if that spectacle was only one-millionth the power that the sight of the Titanic must've been to the crew of the submersible team that discovered it, it was one of the most amazing things I've ever witnessed. I strongly recommend the ride...the shipwreck alone is worth the price of admission.
But the ride wasn't over. After sliding silently and somberly by this decaying remnant, the Jiah came to rest up against a rock formation covered in coral and seaweed. Leafy fronds and lacy growths waved gently in the current, a dramatic sight in itself, but even more so when they hit the orange lights and the whole scene was lit from below with a red-gold glow.
The sub moved itself slowly across the surface of this rock face, making love to it, so close that we could easily have reached out and grasped what we saw, had there not been thick glass in between. It was the final win of the hat trick in that short undersea journey. I really envied the submarine drivers in their job.
And so we emerged from the depths. I watched the sub break the surface with the aid of a small television monitor in the cabin, connected to a camera overlooking the top deck.
We transferred to the launch once again and disembarked at the harbor.
Our free publicity shots (taken in front of the sub as we'd boarded) were waiting for us, and for a small fee (4,000 for card size, 8,000 for 8.5" x 11" prints) we could pick up the photos taken inside the sub as well. I did this...one can never have too many mementos of a submarine ride.
It was a subtle thing. It didn't seem so amazing at the time, but then again, my mind was in a million places at once today. It's my last day and tomorrow I'm checking out, going up to Jeju City and catching the ferry for Mokpo in Jeollanam-do. After the fact, however, the thrill of the experience and the absolute beauty of the spectacle got to work on my imagination. I'll sum all of it up in one word: Wow.
There remains little to tell. I revisited Cheonjiyeon Pokpo, now far more beautiful in the light of day than it had been when I'd arrived in the overcast, as expected.
Then I picked up some gifts for my friends back in Gohyeon (again, I won't say what, in case they're reading this). I came back here, picked up my laundry, and have just been relaxing during the heat of the day (which has remained clear despite predictions to the contrary). I watched Under Siege 2: Dark Territory...one of the better Steven Seagal movies, but that's not saying much. When it cools down a little in the late afternoon I plan on going out again, seeking out a damn good dinner (maybe heukdwaeji bulgogi again) and some more gifts. Then I'll return here, pack up, grab a good night's sleep, and be raring for the road again come Monday morning. Signing off...
