Episode 47: In Which DFM Goes On 7 Dates, And A Bell Rings 33 Times

Some readers are probably wondering what happened to me last week. Last week was a continuous blur of meeting friends to say good-bye for the last time (this trip). To compound matters, my access to Internet has been sporadic. To make up for my absence, here is the entire week in recap, in one post.

On Monday, December 28th, I met Mitja, my Slovenian friend, for dinner in Itaewon. We went to Don Valley (the same place I went with Tae-young back in March) to have some galbi. Despite Don Valley being a Korean restaurant, it was obvious that no Korean would be caught dead coming here twoice.

Mitja has a Korean girlfriend and he has been living in Korea off and on for about a year. He says he has eaten more than his bodyweight in galbi in that time, and so he could tell that we were being ripped off - the lettuce was unfresh and the ssamjang minimal. I would be lying if I said I didn't feel a little bit of justice when I could tell that the restaurant owner was disappointed that Mitja understood Korean dining culture and demanded his side dishes refilled. Mitja, for his part, felt not the least bit embarrassed about constantly calling the waiter over to give him refills. He later told me, "if they had a cart at which I could refill my own side dishes like the other Korean restaurants, then I wouldn't need to bother the waitresses so much."

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On Tuesday I went to Insadong to meet Elise. She took me to a restaurant called Koong, which is famous for its North Korean mandooguk (dumpling soup). The founder of the restaurant is Mrs. Lim, who has made the Kaesong recipe traditional dumplings for 75 years (Kaesong is a city in North Korea).

The restaurant is now run by Mrs. Lim's granddaughter, but I assume the mandoo still tastes the same. If I'm honest, mandoo of any variety doesn't look that hard to make, so I'm sure Mrs. Lim's granddaughter couldn't have messed up the taste too badly. Unfortunately, I've never tasted the original mandoo of Mrs. Lim, so I have no basis for comparison. Consequently, I could have been sold horse manure wrapped in dough, told it was "award winning," and I wouldn't have known the difference. A free meal is always delicious though, so I'm not complaining.

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On Wednesday, December 30th, I went back to Jeungsan at 7:00 PM to meet Shin Seung-hyeun (formerly known as Sin Seung-hyeun, but I changed his name to make it easier to pronounce). Mr. Shin, The Fruit Guy, has been wanting to take me out to dinner for the last two months, and so even though I had to move I told him I'd come back, and we made the arrangement for this night.

We walked a few blocks to a local gamjatang (pork ribs and potato stew) restaurant with his two young sons who came along. I couldn't stay too long though, and so after stuffing myself on giant pork ribs, potato, and ice cream for desert, I headed over to Ace Climbing Centre where Choi was waiting to take me out for yet another good-bye party. And so, for the next two hours I tried to find every spare cubic inch of stomach room left over after my first supper to fit in even more galbi.

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On Thursday I visited Woojin at the newly built Times Square mega mall near Yeongdeunpo station (near Ace Climbing Centre). Woojin later helped me ascertain that banks in Korea will buy my Korean won back at rates roughly 25% higher than those of Royal Bank in Canada. With this information I went back to my hostel to rest up for the New Year's Eve festivities.

A couple of days ago Mr. Lee (the manager of Jin Guesthouse) told me that 8 teachers from Daegu were coming in and had wanted to book one room. Since I was staying in the only 8 bed room, I volunteered to move to free up the remaining bed.

My new room had six beds, and I was sharing it with two Norwegian blokes, currently on a break from studying in China, and Klaire, an Australian teaching in Japan on holiday in Korea. With nothing much to do inside the hostel, we all decided to check out the "famous" bell ringing down town at Bosingak.

(Left to right: Harald, Klaire, and Joe.)

(Harald was very popular with the locals, and these high school boys fell all over themselves with excitement at the chance to have their pictures taken with a foreigner.)

(There it is, the bell that all the fuss is about. The bell in Bosingak gives Jongno and Jonggak - the nearby street and subway station respectively - their names, as "jong" means bell in Korean. Every New Year's Eve, and only on New Year's Eve, the bell is rung 33 times to represent the 33 Heavens of Buddhism.)

From the above picture you can see that there were many people there (the Internet says the crowds sometimes number in the 10 000s). However I must say Seoul needs to work on its fireworks presentations. The lone streak you see on the right of picture X is from a handheld stick that revellers could buy at the site, and which shoots really weak mini-fire works about twenty five feet in the air. Joe agreed with my negative evaluation of the fireworks, saying that in Shanghai, where he is studying, there are fireworks every night that defy description.

After the freezing cold "party" that involved watching poor Korean pop stars having to dance and perform in significantly less clothing than is advisable for -13 degree centigrade weather, Harald, Joe, Klaire and I went back to the hostel, where Klaire fell asleep, and Joe, Harald and I watched Rambo 4 - one of the few movies that is over 50% killing and gore, but still needs more.

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On Friday I went to see Ms. Yun in Sillim-dong. After some kimbab and a movie I said good-bye, and went to Ji-hyeun's place (near by), where she had invited me to try some of the delicious ddeokguk (rice cake soup) she had made for me.

In the mean-time I had been told by my friend in Ulsan that she was in New Zealand, so I couldn't stay with her the next week, like I had planned. Furthermore, my friend in Busan told me that I couldn't stay with her until Wednesday, so for the next five days I was without a home.

At least I wouldn't have to worry about that for the next two days, because I had already arranged to meet with James from Suwon and spend the night at his house, after a park workout of course. Before I left though, I had to drag my luggage across town to store it in Tyler's house (the other "foreigner" climbing at Ace, who was nice enough to let me sleep on his couch for three nights after I came back from Suwon).

And that brings us to Tuesday, January 5, where I'm now sitting in Tyler's living room, watching his movies, trying to live as cheaply as possible until I head to Busan tomorrow. Check back in a few days for a full update of the journey.

Episode 5: In Which DFM Faces Some Korean Gangsters And Later Discovers Secret Korean Technology

Today Lee decided to take me to the Caribbean Bay water amusement park. It is a massive outdoor water park attached to the massive outdoor amusement park Everland. Both parks are owned by Samsung, and are located roughly an hour's drive away from Seoul. To get there we took a tour bus which cost us only $10 for a return trip ticket. Where I lived in Canada you get charged $10 if you even look at a taxi cab.

Caribbean Bay has some odd rules which are indicative of the Korean government's regulations, so I assume they say something about the Korean psyche, but I am not yet sure what that is. The first rule, which did not bother me but which did struck me as odd, was that every swimmer had to wear a swim cap. I assume this was to prevent hair from getting in the water, or other sanitary reasons and I have no problem with that (or perhaps it was to prevent the water from getting on one's hair, since the Koreans seem downright anal about getting wet). However, Lee told me that if I wore a baseball cap I could get around the rule because I was "making an effort" to follow the rule. This would have seemed incredible to me if it weren't for the fact that Korean media censorship rules work in exactly the same way.

For example, from what I've read it is not legal to make advertisements dealing with sex. However, you can have explicit innuendos and as many scantily clad women as you like making said innuendos, so long as there is a token effort made to not show anyone actually having sex. This leads to some of the most ridiculous, uncreative, "sex sells" advertisements in the world, in which the content of the advertisement has nothing to do whatsoever with the product in question, and in some cases can even work to discredit the product altogether.

The second rule was that everyone was required to wear a life jacket (which you have to rent for $5). This really angered me. It is just another in a long line of examples in which the government treats its citizens like children (and the citizens seem to gladly oblige). Why can I not choose to swim in the deep end of the wave pool without a life jacket? The waves don't break or become dangerous until after the point at which I need the jacket anyways!

You might think I'm overreacting here, but consider the new trend I've seen in which people do not push or shove on the subways or in the corridors, but rather walk nicely and stand on the right side of the escalator holding the railing. When I was nearing the end of my first stay in Korea back in late April I started to notice a lot of films being played on the subway's TV screens telling people to stand on the right side of the escalator and to not push. When I came back the first thing I noticed was everyone standing on the right side of the escalator, not pushing. Now, we've been doing this for years in Canada, but I was amazed that in less than four months the outrageous Korean subway users could be transformed so completely into civilised individuals.

I was overjoyed with the transformation at first, for I thought everyone was standing on the right to allow a lane on the left for people who wanted to walk (you know, courtesy). However, I was later informed by a Korean friend that it is "dangerous to walk on an escalator" and that the posters and videos I saw were telling people so. When I questioned my friend why, I was told that the escalator is very steep, and that if it were to suddenly stop I could fall all the way to the bottom. I was prepared to shrug it off as just one person, but I asked two other friends and they both subscribed to the notion of escalators being dangerous.

Really? My neighbourhood has no sidewalks and I walk on the street with two way traffic on a one lane road, and the government sees fit to make a fake propaganda film about people falling down and getting their hair caught (could happen I guess, but the simple solution would be to cut your hair) and now you're trying to tell me that a healthy young male like myself cannot cope with a "suddenly stopping" escalator? Escalators move so slow that I frequently out pace them walking up four floors of stairs coming out of the subway tunnels. But I digress...

Back to the story. Lee had told me that the food inside the park was overpriced and that I would need to get a refundable bracelet that I paid for and could use to buy things inside the park. While the food was more expensive than I could normally get it on the street, $7.50 for a pork cutlet feast hardly classifies the Samsung company as "gangsters" as Lee called them. In Itaewon that would have cost me at least $15, and if Lee went to a movie in Canada he'd have to declare bankruptcy. (Note: I was refunded the unused portion of my bracelet.)

The first ride we tried was the new Boomerango. This ride involves standing in line for 2 hours (not a joke, there was a sign that said the wait time was 120 minutes), for about ten seconds of thrill. The thrill was indeed immense, with the drop sending your stomach up to your throat, but I'd say it was hardly worth the two hour wait.

After waiting for the ride in the everyone was so cold (the weather decided to choose today to be less than sweltering for the only time all summer) that we had to find a hot tub fast. Caribbean Bay also has an indoor water park, but it's mainly for the kids and their parents and I'd never compare it to the West Edmonton Mall's World Water Park (although I guess I just did). We went inside to attempt to find some warmer water. Lee and his wife went to the sauna, but I went to find an overpopulated hot tub into which I could squeeze myself.

After I had warmed up I went exploring the indoor section a little further and found a tube ride that looked exciting. This ride required standing in line for half an hour to get an inner tube, and then walking up the stairs with your tube so that you could stand in line for another half-hour to get on the ride. On the way down I decided to get some extra speed by balancing myself on top of the tube so my feet and backside would not touch the ground. My plan backfired though when I carried so much speed into the final corner that I moved too high up on the side of the wall and flipped backwards, landing on my head (this ride is dangerous, they should have made me rent a helmet too). When I got to the bottom of the ride ahead of my tube I was a little worried that I'd get in trouble. However, when I made the "flip over" sign with my hand, the attendant just asked if I was alright (in English). This gave me the chance to say "it's okay" and "fun fun" (which I had just learned to say in Korea that day). The attendant laughed.

After the tube fiasco I tried to body version of the same slide. You stand in line for an hour to find out which tunnel you will enter (I suppose the second time on the ride you'd know). I was in the "small" tube line (the small referring to the diameter of the tube). I thought I'd be in for a less enjoyable ride, with less sloshing up the sides because of it, but it just so happened that the small diameter of the tube allowed for a more efficient ride (with less of the aforementioned sloshing to slow me down). Because of the incredible speeds I could both obtain and maintain through the corners, the G-Forces created by this ride were some of the highest I've experienced on a water slide before. I'd say I loved every minute of it, but I don't even think it lasted one minute.

I had to close my eyes to keep the water from spraying in I was going so fast, so I didn't realise until after the fact that I had exited the tube. Before trying the ride I had watched all of the other riders fall below the water and flounder around for breath, becoming disoriented. I wondered how a simple water slide could have such an effect on so many people. After I came up from under the water on my turn though I was pointed in the wrong direction and completely disoriented myself. The attendant on staff repeatedly said "wah wah wah wah..." (supposedly to draw my attention) until I managed to steady myself and start moving in the right direction with a huge smile on my face.

By now it was 3:00 PM, and I figured I'd better head for the Sky Screamer-like ride I had seen on my first pass through the park. In the lineup for the ride I met some high school students. While I normally wouldn't hang out with people eight years my junior, under the circumstances I didn't figure I would be able to discuss politics or philosophy in Korean, nor they in English, so it didn't really matter.

The boys were actually quite funny and really helped to pass the over one hour wait time for the ride. At one point, one of the boys asked me who my favourite singer was. Since all of my favourite songs were written before any of them were even born I picked the first Korean "musicians" I could think of, Brown Eyed Girls. The Brown Eyed Girls are a former teen-girl pop band, who are now in their twenties. You'd think that a "girl band" would have a slightly more Y-chromosomeless following, but I've seen grown men with the Brown Eyed Girls on their iPods, and their number one demographic is high school boys (along with all the other girl bands). Therefore, it's funny but not necessarily surprising that when I told these boys that I liked the Brown Eyed Girls (I've only heard one song) they all cheered and gave me a "high-five."

When we neared the top of the ride it came out that none of the boys had ridden the ride before and all were scared. We all joked about how they'd have a heart attack, and one boy's lips were actually turning blue. When we made it to the bottom of the ride we all high-fived again (actually I got a high-five for pretty much anything, including knowing what basketball was). We then took turns calling each other "nam-ja nam-ja!" Which means "man man!" or, "now you're a man" (I found it interesting that the ladies weren't "all up-ons" after that touching moment).

By this time it was nearing 5:00 PM and I needed to find my friend, since our bus was leaving soon. The boys also needed to find a friend, and so we set off on a mission. We were looking for a "Korean man in a baseball cap." In a place where everyone has to wear a baseball cap, and everyone (save me and maybe four other foreigners) is Korean, this was no small order. Eventually I decided to just leave without him and discovered from a text message that my friend was at the nearby amusement park, Everland. Since the boys were going there too, we went together.

It just so happened that it was the last day of "the season" (whatever that means) today and there was a special on - anyone going to Caribbean Bay also got in to Everland for free. The boys really wanted to take me on their favourite ride, the T Express. They told me it was made of "ood" (wood, for those of you who don't speak Konglish). When I said that from a distance and in the particular light that afternoon it looked like metal (not in so many words, obviously), one of them told me "it is Korean technology." All joking aside, the coaster is nothing to scoff at since it is the highest wooden roller coaster in the world, with an inclination of 77 degrees and a top-speed of 104 km/hr. Unfortunately I did not get a chance to ride on it because my bus was leaving in half an hour and the line up was two hours long, but I got a chance to see the cars move around the track from a distance.

On the way to the ride we witnessed a long parade featuring an endless stream of princes and princesses, dancers and mascots. I'm not sure why, but a good number of the women, and almost all of the men were foreigners (i.e., "white" because the other races don't really matter in Korea). I don't know where they all came from, but it seemed like every white guy in Korea was in this parade as either a prince or a flag bearer/marcher. Oddly enough, the Korean women who did make it into the parade all had blonde wigs. It would appear Disney has done its job well and now royalty is synonymous with "white" (who needs athletic glory when you've got the theme park parade market cornered?).

Unfortunately my good time soon had to come to an end, and I had to say good-bye to my "brothers" (the boys asked if they could call me "hyoung," which means brother in Korean). Perhaps I'll get to meet them again, since they live on the East end of Seoul, and my work takes me there on Fridays. I'm sure we'll have an adventure, since they're like "grown up" versions of the young boys I met in the school yard on my way to Ace Climbing Centre on my last trip.

A note: the reason the rides took so long was not because there were too many people in the park (which there were), but that Koreans are Nazis when it comes to needless regulations. I've already touched on the life jackets and escalator issues, but at this theme park they wait until you are not only out of the slide but out of the water before they let the next person down. I told the boys that in Canada we send the second person down before the first person is finished and they told me "Koreans would be too scared." I believe them too.

Episode 2: In Which DFM Discovers A Plot To Unleash Giant Destructive Guinea Pigs In Korea, And Has A Mishap With A Hot Glue Gun

My first full day in Korea was a very long day. For the most part this can probably be contributed to the fact that my body had not yet adjusted to the time difference and I woke up at 3:30 AM.

When I arose it occurred to me that I had not yet procured food stuffs for breakfast, and while the bars and clubs seem to stay open all night in Korea, the "food marts" keep fairly "normal" hours.

Around 9:30 AM (local time, obviously) I decided to explore my surroundings and find a food mart. I was amazed at the variety of stores in my neighbourhood. When I lived in Itaewon I could find an overpriced, "over sized" store for giant tourists without a problem, and I could also have a tailor made suit constructed, but other than that and drinking there were very few stores. Here, though, it seemed like I could find anything and everything. I even found a pastry shop that wasn't called Paris Baguette! Most importantly I found a reasonably priced small food mart, and a couple of local food vendors that sold fresh fruit - including the juiciest nectarines I've ever tasted - for a much lower price than in Itaewon. Apparently the harvest season is upon us (er... me) though, so that could have something to do with it.

After some breakfast, Lee and I went to Itaewon to get my "hand pone" (mobile phone) set up. While the Immigration board was being contacted to make sure I existed, Lee and I went to his office close to the Han River. Lee went to lunch with his boss, so I called up Hyeun-A (who shrieked with excitement) to tell her I wanted to have lunch with her (Hyeun-A works with Lee at the same office and used to teach me Korean during my last visit to Korea).

Hyeun-A surprised me when she said she wanted to go to the nearby taco restaurant. I wasn't thinking straight yet though, and thought I would be getting an American style taco, but I forgot that this is Korea and so my burrito contained rice, coleslaw, and some sort of ranch dressing, along with extra spicy pork. It was still delicious though, and since I wasn't sure when I'd be able to eat supper I made sure to stuff myself full.

After lunch it was time to do what I had been waiting two and a half months to do, ever since deciding that I would return to Korea - surprise Ji-Hyeun and Choi at Ace Climbing Centre. When I arrived, I opened the door and proudly proclaimed "hello!" (in Korean). Ji-hyeun and Choi both had their jaws hit the floor, and they stammered a bit before being able to say something along the lines of "how can you be here now?" Later I asked Ji-hyeun about what she thought when she saw me and she said, "I thought, 'I can't believe my eyes.'"

At 3:30 PM I had to leave for a meeting with my boss. The last time I was here this used to involve going to his "headquarters" in downtown Seoul. However, it now required traveling over an hour and a half to another city to reach my "local office." My hour and a half trip this time turned into a two and a half hour trip though, because I accidentally got on the wrong train and didn't notice until I was heading out of Seoul in the wrong direction. Eventually I was able to get to the proper station but then I almost missed my connection because I got caught up watching a Peruvian pan flute band (I hope the giant guinea pigs decide to wait until I leave Korea before they come to destroy it).

I should mention the bus ride from the subway station to the local office, for it was a most incredible experience. On narrow mountain roads with no shoulder whatsoever, this bus raced around blind corners, sometimes even cutting them. At other times, the outside section of our lane was narrowed even further by rock slides, but still the driver did not slow down and neither did the cars from the other side, and what would have been considered a one lane road in Canada was transformed into a Korean freeway. All this happened while destroying the buses suspension and the passengers' skeletons on the copious speed jumps bumps (jumps?).

The meeting went longer than expected, but was mostly uneventful except for when I burned my finger using the hot glue gun (don't tell my mother or she won't let me use a glue gun again either as well as the knives she is already terrified of seeing in my hands). Also, on the way home I could have sworn I saw the Korean David Suzuki (either that or it was just a Japanese tourist), but that isn't really important.

Finally I made it home at 10:00 PM, absolutely exhausted and incredibly hungry since I hadn't eaten since noon. Tomorrow I start my first day of teaching at a new school though so I'm fairly excited about that (I work at two schools). Since no one knows how many lessons in this unit the children have covered I cannot adequately prepare. This makes me just a bit nervous, so I'll just have to do what Hank Hill would do and "fall back on natural instinct."