Episode 54: Daejeon

On Tuesday, January 12th, I left Busan for Daejeon to meet my friend Seong-jun (henceforth to be referred to as the name he used in Canada, where I met him – Jun).

Jun was busy writing an important test when I arrived at the station, so I had to wait about an hour and a half for him to come pick me up. However, it didn’t take but one minute after I stepped off the train for yet another Jehovah’s Witness to corner me and try to spread the good news about knocking on people's doors and stopping them in train stations.

I read the man’s Watchtower magazine as I waited for Jun. As I passed the time reading about how important it was to continue to knock on people’s doors, even though the author’s insistence to do so caused him to be kicked out of his refugee colony after WWII, I noticed that the homeless people of Daejeon have their own way of passing the day - gambling games.

Even in Seoul I’ve never seen as many homeless people in one place as I did out in front of Daejeon station this day (Jun later told me Vancouver was worse). Unlike some of those "less fortunates" in Seoul station though, the homeless people of Daejeon weren’t kicking my suitcase or yelling at me. Instead, they were busying themselves by playing a gambling game.

The specific game they were playing was called “coin toss.” Two lines are drawn on the ground about 4 metres apart. Each player competing in that round lines up at the throwing line with his or her 100 won coin (about the same value as a dime, but the size of a quarter). Each player then gets one chance each to throw his or her coin at the line. The player whose coin is the closest to being directly on the line wins all the other coins thrown that round. Not only does this make for a great opportunity for the homeless to earn a little money, it also provides great entertainment for the community's old men who have nothing better to do than stand around at the train station watching homeless people play coin toss.

When Jun finally arrived we went to visit his friend at the pool hall. Because of the suffocating population density, Korean youth tend to become quite adept at games which do not require a lot of space to be played. One of these small space activities is pool (billiards). Almost every street has a pool hall stuffed away on the third floor of some dirty, old building, and consequently Koreans tend to play pool as well as Canadians play hockey.

The type of pool you may be used to playing in Canada - 6 pockets, 15 balls - is also played in Korea, but the most popular type of pool is called carom billiards, or three cushion billiards.

Thought to have been developed in France, during the 18th Century, carom billiards is played on a table with no pockets, and there are only four balls. Each team (of one or two players) has its own cue ball. To score a point, the player shooting attempts to shoot his/her cue ball at the first of two scoring balls, and then have the cue ball ricochet off three cushions before striking the second scoring ball. If the player succeeds in accomplishing this feat, he/she scores one point and then gets to try again. The feat of scoring a point is so difficult though, that professional level players average only one point before failing. Even world class players average less than two points before failing.

To make things easier on ourselves, Jun and I, and Jun’s friend, and Jun’s friend’s friend (a friend of a friend of a friend of mine) decided to simply count a point if you could get your cue ball to hit one ball and the other ball in succession. Even this was incredibly hard, but later of the three friends mentioned managed to score five points in a row during one inning (turn).

(Jun's friend, on the right, and Jun's friend's friend, on the left, during a short break from our pool match - Jun had disappeared to make a phone call just before this picture was taken.)

After a short game of billiards, we left the two pool sharks to go back to Jun’s place for supper. His mother had prepared yet more Korean food for me, and I was again able to show off my chopstick skills and spicy food eating ability, which for some reason always seems to surprise Koreans even when they know I lived in Korea for five months. At about 7:30 PM, Jun drove me back to the train station where he bought me a ticket on the Saemaul train.

Now, this (the Saemaul train) is the way to travel! Not nearly as fast as the KTX, and more expensive than the Mugunghwa train, the Saemaul train I rode on was far less crowded than either of my journeys on the Mugunghwa (to Busan, and to Daejeon), and much more comfortable than both the KTX and Mugunghwa trains. I can’t believe I confused the Mugunghwa train for the Saemaul train; never again.

(This is a structure built for the 1993 Worlds Expo held in Daejeon. The Expo was held in Daejeon to commemorate the 100th anniversary of Korea's first appearance at the 1893 Expo in Chicago. Now though, the Expo site in Daejeon looks like a ghost town, as there were no people there at all on this day.)

Episode 48: In Which DFM Waits Three Hours For A Train, And Makes The JWs Hate Homeless People

I had planned to sleep in and hang around Tyler's house on Wednesday, January 6th, until my scheduled train at 1:30 PM. However, I had forgotten that Tyler had to go to work early in the morning, so I would have to get up early to leave with him at 9:30 AM.

While I was at the station, trying to pass the three hour wait for my train, I made many new acquaintances, despite my best efforts to simply read a book by myself on a bench.

There was the homeless person who, despite my clearly not understanding anything he said, still sat beside me and kept trying to talk to me. Eventually I heard him tell me in Korean that he was hungry, so I pulled out a tangerine I had in my bag and gave it to him. With this he said "I'm happy" in English - possibly one of the few English phrases he knew. After this he tried to say more, but a Jehovah's Witness sat down beside me and told him to go away.

There was also the other homeless person who walked up to me, stuck his middle finger in my face and started yelling at me. He then kicked my suitcase with his boot and yelled some more. I took it all in stride and, after I let him calm down a bit, he stuck out his hand to shake mine and then walked off.

At the same time that the above ordeal was taking place, another Jehovah's Witness who had just been telling me how important it was to show love to my neighbour as Jesus would, told me not to talk to talk to the man and ran to call the police. She later told me that she really hated the homeless people around the station. I guess Jesus only loved white tourists and/or other "respectable" people.

This cloud did have a silver lining though, as the aforementioned JWs bought some lunch for me because I actually let them talk to me. I appreciated this a lot because I was too cheap to actually buy my own lunch, and was planning to attempt the entire 5.5 hour ride with only five small tangerines (mandarin oranges) to tide me over.

When I was finally able to board my train, I was surprised to find all of the cars packed with people. I had assumed the long travel time would have dissuaded most travellers, but I guess there are still a whole train load of Koreans as cheap as me. To make matters worse, at each subsequent station the number of people exiting the train seemed to be matched or, in some cases, even exceeded by the number of people on the platform waiting to get on the train. At the worst of times this meant people were standing in the aisle, while at the best of times I still felt rather uncomfortable. Oh well, with a ticket price of roughly $26, compared to the ticket price of an equivalent length bus ride in Alberta ($55), it's hard to complain too much.

Episode 61: In Which DFM Has His Camera Stolen And Takes The Long Way Home

I woke up early again, but this time the sky was a bright clear blue.

The amazing view from my balcony this morning.  The sky may look white instead of blue to you, but that is only because the sun was so bright.  Plus, in the view from the third picture I could see the sea from my balcony.  It's hard to see it in the picture, but if you look closely you can just make it out at the top of the shot.

Today was the last day of my amazing tour of Korea with April.  So, before I had to head back to Seoul we all went out for one last lunch.  This time it was halibut, so I was happy to finally have a meal I half-recognized (we have halibut in Canada, right?).

I just had to get some good shots of the beach with the clear sky, so Jee-seon and I ran off for a bit while her mother and April sat and waited for us in front of a table full of food (sorry Sun Hee and April, I forgot how much quicker Korean service is than Canadian service).

The second picture is probably the best picture of a sky I have been able to take in the two months I have spent here.

Before Jee-seon and I headed back to the restaurant, I noticed that my camera was missing.  I had put my camera in its case, and placed it on the rocks (which were the same colour as the case) while I used Jee-seon's DSLR for a while.  When I went to get my camera again I could not find it anywhere.  I started to get quite scared that I had lost all the pictures I had taken on the trip, but eventually Jee-seon "magically" found my camera.  It turned out it that it had been hiding behind her back the whole time!  I still have not forgotten about that Jee-seon, and I'm still going to get you back the next time I'm in Korea.  Ha!

This is one of my favourite pictures I have taken in the last two months.  Would you believe I took this picture out of the opposite window of a moving vehicle, with a point-and-shoot low-end digital camera?  I still can't believe it myself either.

For my trip back to Seoul I got to experience the Saemaul train.  This train is the only plane, train or bus in which I have ridden where the foot rests were adjustable - classy.

The trip back to Seoul from Ulsan was much more scenic than my trip to Busan from Seoul for my shark diving trip.  The KTX tracks always seemed to run through the industrial areas of whatever towns/cities they passed, so I was rarely able to get a nice view when I rode the KTX train.  However, the Saemaul tracks took me on a slow journey through the Korean countryside where I was able to see a part of Korea I never knew existed.  So, even though the trip may have taken over five hours I enjoyed every second of it.

Episode 57: In Which DFM Holds A Stack Of Bills Two Inches Thick And Fights A Korean

Today (Thursday) is the day of my big trip.  My train wasn't scheduled to leave until 8:10 PM, which was nice because I had a lot to do before then.

I spent most of the day trying to catch up on my backlogged blog posts, doing laundry and packing for my trip, but I also had to find time to rush over to Lee's office and pick up a package.  Thankfully my tendinitis seems to have settled down a bit and I did not notice an excessive amount of pain in my knees while running there (I had expected to be crippled for a month or more after my half-marathon).

Around 6 PM I took the subway to meet my boss.  I was supposed to get paid on Tuesday but there were some unfortunate bank errors that ended up pushing my payday back until today.  When I showed up, the errors still had not been cleared up yet, but my boss had been given a promise that the money would be ready by 7:30 PM.  

In the mean time my boss took me out for some dalkgalbi (spicy chicken pieces grilled with vegetables and rice cakes in a spicy sauce).  Not wanting to waste an opportunity to learn about Korean culture I asked about, and was treated to a lesson on the responsibilities of the first born son in Korea.  All too quickly 7:10 rolled around and we left to find a bank and get my money.  

After all was said and done I had about $1200 in cash in my backpack.  I did not have time to go back home and stash it, so I was forced to travel around with it.  In hindsight I'm glad I packed all my stuff along with me when I went to see my boss (my mother would be proud).

The KTX bullet train travels at 300 km/hr, so the trip to Cheonan/Asan took little more than 30 minutes.  After departing from the train, April and I took a cab to her friend's apartment where we would stay for the next two nights.

If my trip were to consist only of meeting Mr. and Mrs. Kim I would have still considered it a great success.  Mr. and Mr. Kim are both public school teachers.  Mr. Kim teaches regular subjects in Korean, while his wife teaches English to Junior High students.  With April and myself both teachers as well it made for some interesting conversations around the dinner table.

Speaking of dinner, Mr. Kim is a great cook and served me a great meal of delicious, home-made samgyetang.  My boss and friends had told me that Korean mothers always give young men a lot of food and expect you to eat it all.  Even though I had stuffed myself full of spicy chicken just a couple hours earlier, I pushed my way through the whole bowl and all the rice.  Mrs. Kim looked at my empty bowl and said "good boy."

My bosses lesson came in handy in other ways as well.  Mrs. Kim had told me earlier that she stayed with her parents-in-law.  My boss had told me the first born son always has to take care of his parents, so I mentioned to Mr. Kim that I thought he might be the eldest son.  Mrs. Kim was impressed and told me that April had told her I had a "Korean soul," and that now she understood what that meant.

I had noticed earlier a picture in a newspaper of a ssireum tournament taking place (traditional Korean wrestling), and after supper I asked Mr. Kim about it.  I soon found out that Mr. Kim has the spirit of a young man.  After trying to describe the sport to me in his limited English he had me stand up and we did some sparing.  I wasn't able to take him down, but I was able to block all of his attacks (Mr. Kim didn't count on my past experience as a wrestler).  It's a good thing the Kims live on the ground floor.

Mr. Kim gives me hope for my own middle age.  Not only did he want to wrestle me on this night, but on another night he challenged me to an arm wrestling contest.  I can tell he's as competitive as I am, and it's a good thing someone called the arm wrestling match a draw because both of us would have continued fighting until someone became injured.  

Mr. Kim also showed me his numerous medals for running, including one from a recent Seoul International Marathon and another for running 13 km barefoot through the woods.  He also had a certificate for his successful summit of a 5005 meter peak in Nepal last year.  To put that feat in perspective, the tallest peak in the Canadian Rockies, Mt. Robson, is less than 4000 meters, and the mountains I have been hiking around Seoul are about 700 to 800 meters.

I could have stayed up talking with the Kims all night, but it soon grew late and the Kims had to get up early and teach the next day.

Episode 30: In Which DFM Races Up Baegundae And Gets Some Money And Free Food

When I woke up, I had a nice shower at James' place.  It was nice to not have to worry about getting my clothes wet (at my gosiwon you have to hang your clothes up in the shower stall while you shower).  And then after my showerJames made me a grilled cheese and ham sandwich for breakfast.  I also had a bowl of rice krispies.  Rice Krispies aren't quite rice and kimchi like Koreans eat for breakfast, but as Richard Hammond would say, "am I eating rice?  Am I in Korea?  Then I'm as native and local as you."

I got a ticket on the cheap train back to Seoul and it was a way better ride than its $2.50 price would suggest.  The seats were relatively wide (although the guy beside me seemed to think that his elbows didn't need to stay on his side of the arm rest) and the train was no less smooth than the KTX.  In fact, if I had a whole day to spend, I'd take this train to Busan and finish a book on the way.

When I got into Seoul I rushed home and got ready to go hiking.  I had to hurry because I planned to meet Lee for an afternoon at the Sauna and then meet Nelson to see a potential new gosiwon, and then after that run to meet Hyeun A for some more Korean lessons.

I think that big mountain at the front is Baegundae.  It is 836 meters high, which makes it the highest mountain in/around Seoul.  The guide book said it was a 6 hour hike, but I figured the author  was working on Korean hiking speed, not DFM speed, so I was banking on less than four hours.  It had better be less than four hours because I still had an hour and a half subway ride back to meet Lee.

On the way up, some of the scenery was impressive, but it had nothing on the view as I got closer to the top.

One of my few complaints about Korea is the ever-present haze around Seoul that always seems to rob the amateur photographer from getting a good picture.  I think this picture does a good enough job though of illustrating just how mountainous Korea is.  There's a saying that if you ironed out Korea it would be the size of China.  I'm not sure about that, but it might just come close.

If you're traveling to Korea, take some time to learn the language before you leave!  I barely know but a few phrases, but on this hike alone I met three separate groups of people so impressed with my pronunciation that they gave me free food.  This woman on the right has a son going to the University of Texas.  He doesn't want to speak Korean though because he thinks it's uncool.  I told her that I thought her son was making a mistake.  She agreed with me and gave me a delicious ham and egg toast sandwich.  Later I met a woman who gave me some sting ray jerky and a man who called me over to share in some soju and kimchi with his friends and him.

Eventually I came to this gate in the fortress wall near the top of the mountain.  A quick turn left after going through the opening and I could scramble up on top of the wall and follow it up to the peak.

That can't be natural, can it?  He must have had a nose job.

I've poked fun at Korean hikers and their need to go way overboard when outfitting themselves for just about anything in the past, and it's like this for everything.  Want to rent a bike to ride along the river?  Better have a racing suit on.  However, I will say this - for a slope this steep running shoes just don't cut it.  The man at the top, taking pictures, was a mountain goat with his special hiking boots and I felt a knot in my stomach every time I saw him walking out on to the mountain side away from the safety cable to take pictures.  One slip would have meant certain death, but it did not seem to phase him one bit and he just trotted around on the 35 degree slopes and steeper as if he were on flat ground.

The peak of the mountain was very crowded and some brave hikers balanced themselves on top of boulders to get that perfect shot.

My favourite image from the day was of these rock climbers finally reaching the summit of a neighbouring mountain.  It made me excited for my climbing trip with Choi on Sunday.

I couldn't dilly-dally at the top after I reached Baegundae's peak, because I needed to get back home quickly and meet Young San.  I sprinted down the mountain as fast as I could, and made it back in a total time (up and down) of 2.5 hours - less than half of the advertised time.

My biggest success though, I felt, was that on the way to the National Park to hike the mountain I got a little brave and took a different bus than that which was listed in the guidebook, because I was fairly confident I had read the sign correctly and that it was going to the same place.  Additionally, I had my first real language break through and figured out that the phrase "anchuseyo?" (or something like that, I'm certain I don't have the write spelling) means "aren't you cold?"  I had taken off my coat and sweat pants and was in shorts and a T-shirt.  I must have been asked this question at least twelve times while people made mock shivering motions at me, and it felt good when I finally figured out what it meant.  I felt like I was developing the language abilities of the girl in my class who picked up "good job" from me.

I love the smell of money in the afternoon; it smells like pay day!  Lee called me over to his office to give me my salary for the week.  Now if only the Koreans had bills larger than 10 000 Won (roughly $10).

Actually, most of my plans for the evening fell through after this.  Lee said he would go to the sauna later, but fell asleep.  Nelson had to work overtime, and Hyeun A had to work overtime too.  However, Hyeun A worked at the same office as Lee and she gave me a quick lesson and some homework.

Lee and Hyeun A were impressed with my pronunciation and Lee told me "I'm not a fortune teller, but I think you will have a Korean wife."  He wasn't necessarily referring to Hyeun A, only that many Korean women are afraid of the language barrier between foreigners and themselves and so shy away from foreign men.  If I keep learning Korean there will be a 9:1 Korean:White Woman ratio, which is why so many White men marry Korean women when they're over there, I think.