In line with my New Year's resolution to tell you more about Korea and the things that happen to me here, I've got some news for you.
I might as well start with the building I'm living in. You caught a brief glimpse of it a year ago when I arrived here, in this post (the tall one on the left).
But the surface of a building, as with most other objects, only tells part of the story. In the year that's passed since I first came to this city and started living in this Estima Officetel, I've gotten to know it rather well, and I'd like to describe it here.
First of all, I should explain what an officetel is. Like the Wikipedia article sez, it's a multi-purpose building. It has both commercial and residential space available for rent. People like to have business in officetels because they're cheaper to rent out (I think) than a spot in a purely commercial building. The tradeoff is that their business is not very visible.
Up until a few months ago, the utility bills in officetels were calculated using a system of averages. Instead of each apartment paying for what it used in heating and electricity, the utility use for every apartment on a particular floor was averaged out, and each person on that floor paid the average. This wasn't exactly fair, as you've probably already realized. I hardly use any heat in winter, though other people run it 'round the clock. Conversely, I run my A/C all the time in summer, where other folks hardly use it at all. Fortunately that law was recently changed, and now people who live (or work) in officetels pay their for their own.
Okay, enough of the boring stuff. Let's talk about the building. Then I'll talk about the people in it, which is where it gets really interesting.
Estima has 15 floors above ground, four parking floors below, and an open rooftop common area. The view's pretty good all around. Something like this:
My apartment was meant for a couple to inhabit, and is palatially spacious compared to the tiny studio apartment I was living in down on the islands in 2008:
Now, I mentioned that this is an officetel, which means that commercial space rubs elbows with private residences. On the second floor there's a brand-new home furnishings store, mostly sofas and coffee tables and stuff. It's pretty sparkly and tastefully appointed, but otherwise nondescript. Putting a shiny store like that in a beat-up old building like this is like hanging a pearl earring from a swine's ear, anyway.
There's some more scattered businesses on the other floors. I think there's a music instructor over on the north side of the ninth floor (mine). And just down the hall from me is something called "Georgia Immigration Services." It's run by a young woman and I never see anyone going in or out. There's a few other business on the third floor (which is where Avalon's lunchroom is, also) but I don't know what they do, since the signs are all in Korean.
On the first floor are the usual corridors, lobby, mailboxes, and elevators (three of them). The hallways are frigid. For some reason the Koreans decided it was a good idea not to heat the lobbies or entry spaces of their buildings (at least not the cheap-ass officetels, anyway). There are three entrances on the north, south, and west sides of the building, each defended by a double pair of slender glass doors. Those are the interior's sole protection against the elements. The tile floors are perfectly flush and become treacherously slick when wet—which, in wintertime, they always are. Mats are sometimes laid down, but sometimes not. Your only chance of warming up is when you finally walk over your own threshold and into your warm apartment.
There are seven businesses on the first floor of Estima. On the south side (the main entrance, off Gilju Street) there's BHC Chicken and some fancy-pants bike shop that sells ridiculously overpriced mountain bikes to windburned fitness freaks in skintight polyester. (Seriously, they're like $5,000 apiece.)
BHC Chicken is just one of a dozen national fried chicken franchises. Koreans are nuts for fried chicken. You can find a chicken joint on every corner. They usually deliver, too. You'll see the suicidal delivery boys (usually young guys working their way through college) swooping through traffic on their scooters, blowing red lights and mounting sidewalks, the little red cargo box riding high on the seat behind them.
Over on the north side of the building, at the back entrance to the building (across from the police station, on a quiet little side-street) are some more businesses. Embedded within the northern exit corridor, right across from each other, are a convenience store and a Chinese apothecary. The convenience store is called Good Mart, and it's open 24/7, which is handy for us apartment-dwellers if we get the midnight munchies. Though small, it's got everything: six-packs, Q-tips, lighter fluid, ice cream, chewing gum, canned tuna, and a bazillion different kinds of ramen...not to mention a few small bottles of blended Scotch.
The Chinese apothecary really defines the first floor, though. That's not because it has an imposing façade, though. It's mostly just because it smells funny. The thirtysomething woman who owns it is always brewing up some foul-smelling medicine in there, often inundating the entire ground floor with noxious odors. Sometimes I'll see the proprietress sitting in the waiting room with her friends, space heaters cranked up and glowing red, chatting and drinking tea as something that looks eerily like witch's brew simmers away in a stainless steel pot over a blue flame. Behind the counter are dozens of wooden drawers excitingly labeled with mysterious Chinese characters. It doesn't matter to me what they mean. They could read "gout" and "pox" and "boils" and "chlamydia" for all I care. They still look cool.
Down at the end of the northern corridor lie an octopus restaurant, a twigim shop, and a gimbap joint. I've never been to this particular octopus restaurant, though I probably should. I love molluscs and I love the way Koreans prepare 'em even better. Twigim is sort of like Korean fast food: various bits and bobs deep-fried in oil and covered in a delicious greasy crust. I've only eaten at this shop once, and that was with my predecessor, whom I loathed so much that I swore off everything that she professed to like.
The gimbap joint is called Sumirak, and it makes the best stuff in town, in my opinion. Gimbap is sort of like Korean sushi, but you won't find a hint of raw fish in it. Mostly it's got ham (more like Spam), imitation crab, pickled radish, and slivers of cucumber and carrot, all wrapped up in rice with a seaweed wrapper. This is formed into a roll and then cut into slices, just like roll sushi. Sumirak is owned by a middle-aged woman who has aged as gracefully as Helen Mirren or Julie Andrews. Her face is lined, but in that endearing careworn way we all imagine when we think of our beloved grandmothers or great-aunts. She does not stoop or hobble, but stands tall and proud (at sixty-five inches). She rolls gimbap at lightning speed, sets it down in front of you with a smile, and says 맛있게 드세요 (masissge deuseyo—"enjoy your meal").
Maybe I'll put up pictures, and maybe I won't. Maybe I'll just do like Hemingway would have and let you imagine all this stuff for yourselves.
Now you know a little bit more about my bailiwick. Next up: some of the people who inhabit this place. And maybe a bit more about Jung-dong in general.
Forget all the querulous whining in my last post. Today was fun, fun, fun. I stayed up late last night finishing my book (Ice Hunt by James Rollins)...it was really just a cheap adventure novel but it kept the suspense and the action going pretty darn well. So I woke up pretty late (around nine) and started doing my exercises...
...then abruptly stopped, threw on my clothes and ran outside. Why?
The sun was shining.
Yes, you read that correctly. The sun had finally broken through the clouds, and the day was clearing up. After two solid days of overcast and a torrential downpour yesterday, the weather finally decided to open up and be sunny on this, the first day of July, 2009. What a relief.
So, without further ado, I grabbed some breakfast at Family Mart (a ham sandwich, a cookie, some of those strange breaded nut snacks, and some water and orange juice), then caught a cab for the bus terminal in new Seogwipo, about five kilometers over from the old. As we were pulling up, I noticed something interesting:
Yes, it was a hot-air balloon hanging suspended over the waterfront, tethered to the earth by a long steel cable.
Well, I may as well try it, I thought.
This was Yeolgigutema Park, a fun park of sorts replete with hedge maze and go-cart course. After a little difficulty negotiating all this, I forked over 25,000 won and ascended to several hundred meters above Jeju Island in the strange, doughnut-shaped gondola of the hot-air balloon.
A crisp feminine voice filled us all in on what we were seeing (in Korean); we all ignored her and took pictures. Who's we, you ask? Well, there were a couple of young couples (heh, always wanted to say that) and a trio of elderly folk, and yours truly, single as usual.
That view from the top was spectacular, taking in the finer points of the remainder of the park...
...the pastoral inland behind New Seogwipo...
...the interior of the World Cup Stadium...
...the rocky coast...
...the East China Sea (whoops, sorry, I mean the South Sea)...
...the stadium again, from higher up this time...
...and the rest of the park again.
Then I hopped on the bus for Seongsan Ilchulbong. After a quite pleasant ride through the sunshine (doesn't everything look eighty billion percent better when the sun is shining?), chatting with the driver, I got off at the foot of the gigantic volcanic cone known as the Ilchulbong. The kindly driver pointed me the way to go, so I set off.
I can't express to you just how lovely it was, so I'll just show you instead.
A film crew was hard at work in the fields behind the ticket booth. I couldn't tell whether they were out to film the native Jeju ponies (the jorangmal) or the mass of tourists or the cone itself, but they were filming something. Further along, on my way up the mountain, I saw quite a few things....oodles of tourists, a mixed bag of Koreans and Japanese, striding sedately up the sides of the mountain......charming details of the rolling fields in which the jorangmal grazed......gainful insight into the flora of a parasitic cone such as Ilchulbong......ever-more-engaging vistas of the northeastern coast of Jeju Island......odd pinnacles of ivy-strewn rock......the sides of the cone, coated in green and black......some rather spectacular rock formations......and the town of Seongsan, perched on its sandbar, with the lumpy interior of Jeju Island and its multitudinous parasitic cones behind it.There were people all around; quite the crowd was going up to the crater, even in the muggy warmth of the day and the middle of the week. Japanese tourists jockeyed for position with Korean high schoolers, streaming by the pasture where the jorangmal grazed. These hardy ponies so impressed the invading Mongols that they demanded more be bred for their own armies. Unfortunately the breed has fallen of the grid lately, so much so that Jeju's government has placed them into the racing industry in an attempt to revamp their popularity.
Aside from these sights, however, the sun was shining, the grass was green, the skies were blue, and it was just marvelous walking up that mountain...feeling the cool breeze in your face, exploring the hidden nooks and crannies in the porous basalt, and finally reaching the top with its gigantic crater, the like of which I'd never seen before. It was, if I may understate, quite the experience.
Here's a nice look back down the way I came...from the top, you could see the whole of Jeju's northeast coast (as mentioned above), the whole town of Seongsan, the beach nearby, and all the shipping scudding around the dark blue sea.
And at the top, there was this impressive crater. Here's looking to the southeast......looking dead east......and looking to the southwest. Like I said, it was impressive. I dare you to click on this photo and see it full size....and I also caught a glimpse of my next destination, Udo Island.Udo lay, humped like a reclining cow with its head in the air, to the east. It was there that I would journey next, after I'd slaked my curiosity atop Ilchulbong. After wandering about at the top for twenty minutes in some sort of enthusiastic fugue, snapping pictures right and left, I finally descended the mountain and wandered, in continued ecstasy over the beauty of the day and place, across town. Back in the fields at the foot of the cone, I paused at this vista, of a little sheltered bay carved from the volcanic basalt, housing what looked like a restaurant-cum-boathouse...and a bevy of haenyeo (the proud Jeju caste of diving women) plying their trade.
I continued on past these impressive cliffs......through this lovely little field, on the other side of the paved walkway from the film crew and the ponies......and out through what I discovered to be the back way in! There was a gap in the hedges surrounding the fields; up until this point I had been wandering aimlessly about, making my roundabout way to the main entrance. I spotted a farmer-woman coming out of this gap with a huge basket on her back, however, and, lizard-like, slid past her into it. And then I was in town. It was only a half-hour's easy stroll, nothing at all. I reached the harbor just in time to see one ferry pulling out; fortunately I secured a place on the other, which was departing in twenty minutes. (The fare was ₩5,500, round trip; but I overpaid because the lady thought I had a scooter with me.) Then I boarded my ferry and had a look around, at the harbor front (replete with yellow submarine at bottom left)...
...and the bridge of the nameless ferry I'd embarked upon...My enthusiasm for the sunny weather and the beauty of Jeju, precluded by the previous two days' weather, was making up for its absence and how. I stood on the deck of the massive car ferry, cool breeze toying with my hat, a cream soda in my hand (Korean cream soda tastes more like cream candy, liquefied and carbonated; second-rate quality I'm afraid), and just gazed upon the island and the sparkling waters as though I could never look enough.
The crossing was delightful, and only fifteen minutes. Udo Island, as it came closer, appeared only the more charming. An island of less than 1800 inhabitants, only a few football fields across and a few kilometers long, it was about as pastoral and quiet and rural as it was possible to be. On closer inspection, the place only improved. No skyscrapers, no real town to speak of, just houses and small shops scattered here and there, a few cars and scooters moving sleepily about, horses and cows grazing in fields, farms, trees, hills, waves crashing against the black rocks, bone-white coral-sand beaches...
The word "ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh" seems to describe the place accurately.
Did I mention that the weather was gorgeous?
And so was the coastline of Udo Island, too.The real fun began when we landed. To my absolute joy, there was a scooter rental shop just off the quay. For the two-and-a-half hours we had to see the island (before the last ferry left at six), we had to pay only twenty thousand, which was a cheaper rate than I'd been quoted in my guide book. A scooter would be perfect, we could see the whole of the island in that little time.
Then we were off!Why do I keep saying "we" you ask? Well, there were other people on that ferry besides yours truly. A whole troop of young couples and families came ashore with me, on holiday or honeymoon. But more than that, though, there was another footloose foreigner aboard as well. Patrick was his name. I met him while we were both negotiating for a scooter. He was German-born, but had lived a long time in Edinburgh, Scotland, and so spoke excellent English (albeit with a heavy Scotch brogue, and a hint of his native German). Seeing as how we were both going the same way, we tacitly joined up. After a little scooter practice (neither of us had done this before), overseen by a likely nervous proprietor, we both throttled up and headed off along the coast road.
We passed stunning vistas...
...crystalline beaches...
...and quaint little towns galore.
How can I explain to you how incredible this experience was? I cursed myself for not having purchased a scooter within hours of landing in Korea last June. There I was, motoring along at 40 kilometers per hour on my handsome little blue Daelim (which spat and kicked a bit, but was all the more charming for it). The wind was in my face, the coast passed by at a calm and stately pace, waves spraying the air as they rebounded from the black basalt of the shore...the grass and flowers inland waved at me cheerily in the wind; happy people frolicked on the beaches or dined on ice cream at roadside stalls...the little one-lane road went gently up, down and around the hummocks and rocks...it was like being in a fantastic traveler's dream. We first stopped at the Tolkani, a series of towering black cliffs that plunged straight down for several hundred meters into the sea below. The waves crashed and seethed, but the cliffs towered as they had since the early Quaternary, one warped and twisted mass of lava that thrust itself up out of the bed of the ocean along with greater Jeju. Below the cliffs, near the beach of massive round boulders, the haenyeo were diving. The haenyeo are the traditional class of courageous diving women who have eked out a living among the coral beds and seafloors of Jeju and Udo (and China and Japan) for time immemorial, scraping shellfish, sea urchins and other delectable seafood off the rocks to sell at market. Able to hold their breath for two minutes and dive to twenty meters, even well into their sixties, the haenyeo are a remarkable breed. They're also dying out. Their daughters have not followed them into the mermaids' life, but are instead finding easier jobs behind desks and in offices (or so says my guide book). Where once there were 30,000 haenyeo farming the ocean beds, there remain barely a tenth of that number. A few years ago there might have been as many as a hundred in that gigantic bay where the Tolkani cliffs plunged; Patrick and I counted only four orange buoys. It was a somewhat sobering sight.
We didn't stay sober for long. We got back on our scooters and rocketed inland. After a few wrong turns and scenic detours, we reached the other side of the cliffs (on the southeast side of Udo) and stopped for a snack. I introduced Patrick to some delicious Korean nibbles: red bean paste, those strange breaded nut-thingies I mentioned earlier, Diget cookies (delicious wheat cookies with a layer of chocolate on top) and some cheesy crackers. He also bought himself some pistachio ice cream. We dined on all this as we viewed the cliffs and enjoyed the warm sunshine. A Korean couple came up to us and asked us to take their picture. They handed me their massive Canon, a true behemoth (sucker must've weighed five pounds). The lady forgot to turn it on first, which explains why the shutter didn't go "click" when I pressed it. I got their picture and then we chatted a bit. Their English was very good. Turns out they'd vacationed in Europe for some months...southern Germany, not far from Patrick's hometown of Dusseldorf in West Germany. We exchanged a few pleasantries and then they took their leave. I experienced a pang of regret in speaking with them. I was reminded, once again, just how lovely a country this is, that you can meet people from all over the world and have a nice chat with them, randomly, without introductions. Back home people are suspicious of foreigners, but here, even if you only give them a quick nod on the street where you live, traveling around you're bound to run into somebody friendly eventually.
It's nice here. I'll just leave it at that.
Snack concluded, Patrick and I mounted up again and went up to the top of the island, the "head" of the cow, the highest point. We had to leave our scooters halfway up and continue on foot; that was all right. We passed another field, where an elderly fellow in an enormous straw hat was giving people horse rides. Four or five jorangmal stood around, saddled up and cropping grass, occasionally being led over to a pair of benches lined up lengthwise and side-by-side as mounting steps. There, a man and his child would get on, or a mother and hers, and then the elderly fellow would turn them loose for a leisurely trot about the field. For those unfamiliar with horsemanship, I imagine there was a quick briefing, similar as there had been for me with my scooter (though I doubt jorangmal start up with a key and a button).
Further up we passed through a stunted pine forest where I saw a flicker worrying a caterpillar. A little farther on up the hill there was a chain-link fence with some puppies behind it, who ran up and stuck their little muzzles through and licked my hand for all they were worth. (Man, it's been too long since I was around a puppy.) Some things do not change, no matter how far you get from home.
After one last steep push up a thirty-degree grade, we were at the top. From the base of the lighthouse we observed the western and southern prospect, an uninterrupted East China Sea (South Sea), unadulterated until Japan a few hundred kilometers away. Patrick was breathtaken, and I myself was a bit impressed. You could see a vast expanse of blue, sunlit ocean on one side, and the whole of Udo with its tended fields and twisting lanes on the other. There was a trio of lovely Korean ladies in sundresses nearby; I complimented one of them in Korean on her good looks, and was promptly hired to take a group picture of them. This was another cog in the wheel of my arguments for learning Korean while living here...
...the views. Oh, the views...
And so, with the sun getting low in the sky, we headed back down, back past the puppies, the stunted pines, and the horses. We mounted our scooters again and veritably roared out of the parking lot like we were Hell's Angels or something. I'm seriously considering starting a scooter gang now, honestly. Our plan was to head right. We'd cover the eastern coast of Udo along the coast road, hooking back around to the harbor on the northwest side, and so complete our counterclockwise circuit of the island. This we did, in the fading sunlight, through the quiet villages and the picturesque shorelines and the crashing waves and the cool summer breezes. It was our swan song on our scooters, and we knew it. We took full advantage of it, and that last multi-kilometer run around the northeastern side of the island, along the winding coastal lane, was utterly magnificent. Breathless, we turned in our scooters and helmets (I got my Stetson back; I'd asked the proprietor to hold onto it), retrieved our driver's licenses (deposits), and then boarded the ferry. We were inbound to Udo within a few minutes. We spent it inside the ferry cabin (shoes doffed after Korean tradition, reclining on a wood linoleum floor), discussing the next day's plans and eating the remainder of our snacks. Everybody was tired, but nobody was cranky. All of us, Korean and foreigner alike, seemed somehow pensive, as if we were conscious of the little slice of heaven we'd just experienced.
Patrick gave me his e-mail address and told me to contact him; he'd be moving over to Seogwipo to stay after climbing the Ilchulbong at sunrise the next day. (Watching the sunrise from the top of Seongsan Ilchulbong is apparently one of the most magnificent sights in Korea; but I didn't feel like getting up at 4:30 to see it.) We finished all the snacks but four packs of the cheese crackers, and then disembarked. Not knowing where the restaurant in our guide book was located (Gombawi, famous for pheasant-and-buckwheat noodle dishes, and also abalone), we cheated and asked a cabbie to take us there. They were still open: a bustling, middle-aged woman (the variety that seem to make up a good 60% of the population of Korea) and her old, long-haired assistant and chef. After considering the menu, we accepted the proprietress's recommendations: grilled mackerel and abalone rice baked in a stone bowl, with banchan to go with it. Both dishes were ten thousand each, and quite delicious. Patrick and I sat, talked earnestly about our careers (his in business, mine in aviation) and watched the golden setting sunlight reflect off Ilchulbong outside the window.
After dinner I aided Patrick in obtaining a motel; our choice was the Mido Motel, just off Seongsan Town's main drag, with excellently appointed rooms and inexpensive rent at ₩40,000 per night with a PC or ₩30,000 without. Patrick was all for having a drink, and I certainly would have, but I just didn't know when the last bus to Seogwipo was, so I caught the next one out just as the light faded.
On an impulse I got a cab from the Seogwipo terminal back to the World Cup Stadium (second time that day) to go to the cinema there that I'd mentioned earlier. I wanted to see Transformers, you see. As sequels go, it was typical. Same characters, no plot, all action. Did I care? Oddly, no. It was a blisteringly awesome action flick, if nothing else. I never get tired of watching innocuous human machines transform into gigantic alien robots bristling with phantasmagorical weaponry and beat the hell out of each other. This I did, for three hours, without caring a whit. The film let out at midnight and by sheer luck I managed to get a cab back to the Sunbeach Hotel, within easy walking distance of the Hiking Inn. (For the record, the cab ride between Seogwipo and the new bus terminal, World Cup Stadium and theater complex is about five grand, barring stoplights and traffic.) I undressed and slept quite well.
What a blast of a day it had been! (I say "had" because as you may have noticed, I'm writing this the day after instead of the night of, like I usually do; there was just too much to say and I had to get to sleep.) Marvelous views, scooter rides, and a movie to round it all out. Jeju's finally kicking through with the fun factor, and the sun is set to shine until Sunday or so...
