So!
I've decided to stop using this blog. Not that I use it all that much anyway.
Why, you ask? Because I have fallen in love with the concept of micro-blogging. The problem with regular blogging for me is that I don't like writing big blocks of stuff, by the time I get half way through I've forgotten what I was thinking and it becomes a huge effort to write anything that isn't just a jumbled mess.
So I've switched to Twitter. The idea that limiting yourself to only a few dozen words per blog helps you refine what you want to say is a pretty sound one, (in less than a week I've logged nearly 40 updates.
So if you are the kind of person who every so often checks this blog to see what I'm thinking, I urge you to check my twitterings. AND THEN WE CAN BE FRIENDS.
Sunday, 14 December 2008
Thursday, 30 October 2008
They say travelling makes you learn things about yourself, and I have learnt that I am not a traveller...
For as long as I can remember I have made the following assumption about myself: that, deep down, I am an interesting person.
Now I've come to realise that that just isn't true.
Whenever you leave where you are used to you are forced to meet new, and unusual, people. I've done that over the past month, and my previous arrogant assumption that I could compare myself to these people has been shattered. These people are people who have opted out of society, people who have said 'fuck that' to everything their culture holds to be conventional. That, evidently, is not me.
Like, I've met people on this trip who have no fixed address, who surrendered that months, or even years ago, in order to just drift around the world, completely devoid of any kind of support, just... them, on their own... against the world.
Fuck sake, that's just not me. I thought, nay, hoped, it may have been - but no. I'm just weak. And like, yeah, I bet people are reading this thinking 'blah blah blah, another self-pitying blog, but I don't even mean this in a self-pitious way, I mean this in a revelatory way. I am revealing to you, my audience, that I, Tom Deery, am weak. I cannot handle things on my own. Like, I thought this month away from everyone and everything I'm familiar with what let me discover an inner strength that I had all along, but what its showed me instead is that I just can't handle any of this; that I need to have people around me, for support and shit. Because otherwise, what? I sit around on my own all day. I make token efforts to socialise but my constant fear that other people despise my company stops that from ever really working, (while normal people experience emotional rewards from relating to people, more often than not it just leaves me feeling miserable). Like, I've spent a depressing amount of time either in front of a computer or over a bottle of booze.
So yeah, that's me. Apparently.
I've decided to cancel all of my other travel plans, fuck all that, I'm never leaving on my own again, I can't handle it. I'm settling down. I'm embracing the dark side, the dark side of proper work and social conformity, because I don't have the courage or the character to be a social opt-out.
Now I've come to realise that that just isn't true.
Whenever you leave where you are used to you are forced to meet new, and unusual, people. I've done that over the past month, and my previous arrogant assumption that I could compare myself to these people has been shattered. These people are people who have opted out of society, people who have said 'fuck that' to everything their culture holds to be conventional. That, evidently, is not me.
Like, I've met people on this trip who have no fixed address, who surrendered that months, or even years ago, in order to just drift around the world, completely devoid of any kind of support, just... them, on their own... against the world.
Fuck sake, that's just not me. I thought, nay, hoped, it may have been - but no. I'm just weak. And like, yeah, I bet people are reading this thinking 'blah blah blah, another self-pitying blog, but I don't even mean this in a self-pitious way, I mean this in a revelatory way. I am revealing to you, my audience, that I, Tom Deery, am weak. I cannot handle things on my own. Like, I thought this month away from everyone and everything I'm familiar with what let me discover an inner strength that I had all along, but what its showed me instead is that I just can't handle any of this; that I need to have people around me, for support and shit. Because otherwise, what? I sit around on my own all day. I make token efforts to socialise but my constant fear that other people despise my company stops that from ever really working, (while normal people experience emotional rewards from relating to people, more often than not it just leaves me feeling miserable). Like, I've spent a depressing amount of time either in front of a computer or over a bottle of booze.
So yeah, that's me. Apparently.
I've decided to cancel all of my other travel plans, fuck all that, I'm never leaving on my own again, I can't handle it. I'm settling down. I'm embracing the dark side, the dark side of proper work and social conformity, because I don't have the courage or the character to be a social opt-out.
Tuesday, 21 October 2008
Back on the Mainland
Screw islands. Islands are a bunch of gays. And you can tell Otto von Bismarck I said it!
I got the ferry back to mainland yesterday. Not the same ferry I took from Busan, but a different ferry that went to a place called Mokpo. So now I am in a place called Mokpo. The first thing I realised upon arriving in a place called Mokpo was that I hadn't bothered to find somewhere to stay, so I went to the nearest PC Bang, (that's what they call internet cafes over here), and looked up upon the internets for hostels. Mokpo doesn't have any hostels because it thinks its too cool. So I went one step up and started looking for motels, I found this one motel that was like, 22,000 a night, which isn't good, but it'd do.
So I wrote down the name and address and logged off and then went to find a taxi. I found a taxi and showed him my little piece of paper, "Suite Motel, Jukgyo-dong", and he looked confused for a while and then he was all like, "Ah, Suwiti Motel", and then I was all like, "Uh, ineyo, Suwiteu Motel", and then he was all like, "No no, you Korean very bad, is Suwiti Motel". And I took him at his word, because yes, my Korean is very bad, although usually, the rule is when koreanising a word, the last consonant gets extended with an -eu sound, the word he seemed to be saying was 'Sweetie', which is pretty different from 'Suite'...
Then we got there, and it wasn't the Suite Motel, it was the Sweetie Motel. It was a sex motel. My first hint that this was the case was when I entered reception and found that there was a bookcase full of porn videos in the corner of the room, my second hint was when the receptionist asked me twice whether it was just me staying in the room, my third hint was the general sleazyness of the decor, and my fourth hint was the fact that the light in my room was red. Yeah... Of course by this time it was far too late for me to find somewhere else to stay and the taxi driver had already charged me 4,500 won to get me there, so I had to fork over 30,000 won(!) and stay the night alone in a sex motel. I mean, I guess it was nice and everything, and this morning, before I left, I did basically steal everything from the room that a) wasn't bolted down and b) would fit in my bag, but I'm still pretty annoyed at the taxi driver for being incompetent. I mean, if I had just given him the name of the place I could forgive him confusion, BUT I GAVE HIM THE ADDRESS! What made him think that after giving him the exact address I would instead want to go to somewhere completely different, what made him think that I, a penniless backpacker quite clearly unaccompanied by any kind of lover, would want to go stay at a sex motel? The likeliest outcome is that he didn't understand the address I gave him, and like... I know I've said this in every blog so far, but I really don't understand how this country can even function when NOONE knows where ANYTHING is.
Also its raining. This is the first time its rained since I got here. I can hear the envious groans all the way from here!
I got the ferry back to mainland yesterday. Not the same ferry I took from Busan, but a different ferry that went to a place called Mokpo. So now I am in a place called Mokpo. The first thing I realised upon arriving in a place called Mokpo was that I hadn't bothered to find somewhere to stay, so I went to the nearest PC Bang, (that's what they call internet cafes over here), and looked up upon the internets for hostels. Mokpo doesn't have any hostels because it thinks its too cool. So I went one step up and started looking for motels, I found this one motel that was like, 22,000 a night, which isn't good, but it'd do.
So I wrote down the name and address and logged off and then went to find a taxi. I found a taxi and showed him my little piece of paper, "Suite Motel, Jukgyo-dong", and he looked confused for a while and then he was all like, "Ah, Suwiti Motel", and then I was all like, "Uh, ineyo, Suwiteu Motel", and then he was all like, "No no, you Korean very bad, is Suwiti Motel". And I took him at his word, because yes, my Korean is very bad, although usually, the rule is when koreanising a word, the last consonant gets extended with an -eu sound, the word he seemed to be saying was 'Sweetie', which is pretty different from 'Suite'...
Then we got there, and it wasn't the Suite Motel, it was the Sweetie Motel. It was a sex motel. My first hint that this was the case was when I entered reception and found that there was a bookcase full of porn videos in the corner of the room, my second hint was when the receptionist asked me twice whether it was just me staying in the room, my third hint was the general sleazyness of the decor, and my fourth hint was the fact that the light in my room was red. Yeah... Of course by this time it was far too late for me to find somewhere else to stay and the taxi driver had already charged me 4,500 won to get me there, so I had to fork over 30,000 won(!) and stay the night alone in a sex motel. I mean, I guess it was nice and everything, and this morning, before I left, I did basically steal everything from the room that a) wasn't bolted down and b) would fit in my bag, but I'm still pretty annoyed at the taxi driver for being incompetent. I mean, if I had just given him the name of the place I could forgive him confusion, BUT I GAVE HIM THE ADDRESS! What made him think that after giving him the exact address I would instead want to go to somewhere completely different, what made him think that I, a penniless backpacker quite clearly unaccompanied by any kind of lover, would want to go stay at a sex motel? The likeliest outcome is that he didn't understand the address I gave him, and like... I know I've said this in every blog so far, but I really don't understand how this country can even function when NOONE knows where ANYTHING is.
Also its raining. This is the first time its rained since I got here. I can hear the envious groans all the way from here!
Sunday, 19 October 2008
Bad Jeju
Otto von Bismarck once said that no man is an island. This still remains open to debate, but what is clear is that every island is an island.
I am currently on an island, an island called Jeju. Jeju is famous throughout East Asia for its stunning natural beauty, as well as being, according to the tourist information, an island of world peace... The idea that extraordinary claims need extraordinary proof is completely foreign to Korea, and people basically just claim whatever they want about whatever they want. Some may call it lying, I like to call it making claims of world peace.
I got to Jeju by boat. Which is the best way to get to an island, (yeah, fuck you aeroplanes). I won't tell you anything about the boat 'cos I wrote most of my postcards on the boat so you'll get an impression of it anyway. But then I got off the boat and had to do that horrible thing where you arrive in a new place and have to gather your bearings. I picked up a map and sat down to do some bearing-gathering, and as I did loads of taxi-drivers kept pestering me: "Where are you going?", "Seogwipo", "I'll take you there", "Its on the other side of the island, I'm going to take the bus, it'll cost me 3,000 won", "No no, I'll take you, it'll cost you 31,000 won", "Erm, that number is considerably larger than the one I just said", "Well then I'll drive you to the bus station", "Leave me alone", and so on...
So I got the bus to Seogwipo City, and got dropped off somewhere in that vacinity. I didn't really know where I was so I went into a tourist information place to ask. I got out my map and mimed frantically for the woman to point to where we were so I could walk to where I knew I was staying. She didn't speak any English and instead she got out a map of the whole island and started pointing at Seogwipo, and I was all like, "Yeah, I know we're in Seogwipo, but where in Seogwipo?", (I've had many maddening experiences like this in Korea, none of the streets have names so maps are basically useless, and because maps are so useless, hardly any Koreans have any clue how to read maps), at one point she got out a map of the whole of Korea and started pointing at Jeju Island. I was shocked that she thought I had somehow managed to make my way into her office without even realising what island I was on, so I decided to just walk out and figure it out on my own.
Figure it out I did when I got to the hotel I'm staying at. It is, by the way, a hotel. Despite the fact I found it on hostelworld.com, it is actually a hotel, with actual hotel rooms and actual hotel prices. Its 22,000 won a night, which isn't bad for a hotel, but is bad for a hostel. And this place was bad for a hotel. The place was swarming with bugs and the walls were covered in dead insect stains. Like, from people swatting the insects and then nobody bothering to clean it up. I decided to waste some time by using their computers, which were as slow as fuck and, I'm pretty sure, broke my phone. Ever since I lost my phone recharger in Spain I've been using a USB cable to recharge my phone, this has worked fine, if a bit slowly, for a few months, but when I plugged it into these computers, it just drained all the energy from the battery, to the point that now it refuses to recharge at all. Whenever I try to turn it on the little flashing "my battery's dead" light just flickers and the whole thing just stays dead.
A minor inconvenience you may think, afterall, I'm not going to be making any phonecalls. Well, the thing is that I've been using my phone to take pictures. And the other thing is that I'm on Jeju Island, an island that "is famous throughout East Asia for its stunning natural beauty". So this has put me in a bad mood, because after spending tens of thousands of won to get to, and stay on the island, I now have no way of recording my experiences here. Grr.
Maybe I'll try and find a cheap disposable camera. But they'll probably be a bitch to find...
Anyway, home soon! I'm getting pretty excited about getting home. To the point where I'm probably more excited about going home now than I was about going to Korea before I got here. Not to say that I haven't had a good time here, but, in retrospect, a month is a pretty long time to spend solo-travelling.
I am currently on an island, an island called Jeju. Jeju is famous throughout East Asia for its stunning natural beauty, as well as being, according to the tourist information, an island of world peace... The idea that extraordinary claims need extraordinary proof is completely foreign to Korea, and people basically just claim whatever they want about whatever they want. Some may call it lying, I like to call it making claims of world peace.
I got to Jeju by boat. Which is the best way to get to an island, (yeah, fuck you aeroplanes). I won't tell you anything about the boat 'cos I wrote most of my postcards on the boat so you'll get an impression of it anyway. But then I got off the boat and had to do that horrible thing where you arrive in a new place and have to gather your bearings. I picked up a map and sat down to do some bearing-gathering, and as I did loads of taxi-drivers kept pestering me: "Where are you going?", "Seogwipo", "I'll take you there", "Its on the other side of the island, I'm going to take the bus, it'll cost me 3,000 won", "No no, I'll take you, it'll cost you 31,000 won", "Erm, that number is considerably larger than the one I just said", "Well then I'll drive you to the bus station", "Leave me alone", and so on...
So I got the bus to Seogwipo City, and got dropped off somewhere in that vacinity. I didn't really know where I was so I went into a tourist information place to ask. I got out my map and mimed frantically for the woman to point to where we were so I could walk to where I knew I was staying. She didn't speak any English and instead she got out a map of the whole island and started pointing at Seogwipo, and I was all like, "Yeah, I know we're in Seogwipo, but where in Seogwipo?", (I've had many maddening experiences like this in Korea, none of the streets have names so maps are basically useless, and because maps are so useless, hardly any Koreans have any clue how to read maps), at one point she got out a map of the whole of Korea and started pointing at Jeju Island. I was shocked that she thought I had somehow managed to make my way into her office without even realising what island I was on, so I decided to just walk out and figure it out on my own.
Figure it out I did when I got to the hotel I'm staying at. It is, by the way, a hotel. Despite the fact I found it on hostelworld.com, it is actually a hotel, with actual hotel rooms and actual hotel prices. Its 22,000 won a night, which isn't bad for a hotel, but is bad for a hostel. And this place was bad for a hotel. The place was swarming with bugs and the walls were covered in dead insect stains. Like, from people swatting the insects and then nobody bothering to clean it up. I decided to waste some time by using their computers, which were as slow as fuck and, I'm pretty sure, broke my phone. Ever since I lost my phone recharger in Spain I've been using a USB cable to recharge my phone, this has worked fine, if a bit slowly, for a few months, but when I plugged it into these computers, it just drained all the energy from the battery, to the point that now it refuses to recharge at all. Whenever I try to turn it on the little flashing "my battery's dead" light just flickers and the whole thing just stays dead.
A minor inconvenience you may think, afterall, I'm not going to be making any phonecalls. Well, the thing is that I've been using my phone to take pictures. And the other thing is that I'm on Jeju Island, an island that "is famous throughout East Asia for its stunning natural beauty". So this has put me in a bad mood, because after spending tens of thousands of won to get to, and stay on the island, I now have no way of recording my experiences here. Grr.
Maybe I'll try and find a cheap disposable camera. But they'll probably be a bitch to find...
Anyway, home soon! I'm getting pretty excited about getting home. To the point where I'm probably more excited about going home now than I was about going to Korea before I got here. Not to say that I haven't had a good time here, but, in retrospect, a month is a pretty long time to spend solo-travelling.
Tuesday, 7 October 2008
Five
Man. I was feeling miserable last night.
I didn't go out yesterday, which was probably a mistake. I was thinking of going to the Natural History Museum, and maybe sneaking a peak at the river, but then decided that it would be better if I stayed at the hostel all day. 'I'll go out in the evening,' thought I, 'I'll pop into the living room and ask if anyone wants to head over to Hongdae for the night'.
Then the evening came and I was miserable. I didn't want to do anything. I was lying on the downstairs sofa watching 'True Lies', which is a stupid film. And then I was in bed by 8.30.
Why did I come here on my own? Surely I knew this was going to happen. I am aware of my own strengths and weaknesses, my strengths include being able to scratch the entirety of my back and knowing all the original pokemon, and my weaknesses include finding it almost impossible to socialise with people I don't know. Like, last night, the rest of the hostel was in the living room, listening to musics, drinking soju and generally having a good time; they didn't all know each other but they were managing okay. What did I do? I slammed myself into the dorm room and tried to sleep.
UGH.
I didn't go out yesterday, which was probably a mistake. I was thinking of going to the Natural History Museum, and maybe sneaking a peak at the river, but then decided that it would be better if I stayed at the hostel all day. 'I'll go out in the evening,' thought I, 'I'll pop into the living room and ask if anyone wants to head over to Hongdae for the night'.
Then the evening came and I was miserable. I didn't want to do anything. I was lying on the downstairs sofa watching 'True Lies', which is a stupid film. And then I was in bed by 8.30.
Why did I come here on my own? Surely I knew this was going to happen. I am aware of my own strengths and weaknesses, my strengths include being able to scratch the entirety of my back and knowing all the original pokemon, and my weaknesses include finding it almost impossible to socialise with people I don't know. Like, last night, the rest of the hostel was in the living room, listening to musics, drinking soju and generally having a good time; they didn't all know each other but they were managing okay. What did I do? I slammed myself into the dorm room and tried to sleep.
UGH.
Sunday, 5 October 2008
Travelog the fourth, I guess?
Yeah okay, so here I am, blogging up a blog. I said I probably wouldn't but then I got bored, and with only 700won to my name, (my cashcard isn't accepted here and I can't cash my travellers cheques till monday... sigh, banks!? Is there anything they can do right?), I haven't really had much option to go and do anything.
So I shall provide you with some commentary. I've been in Seoul for four days now, (wow... that's flown by...), and all in all, I'm enjoying myself. My first thoughts of the city were negative, as I travelled along in the airport bus from Incheon (the main airport, built on a island several miles away from Seoul in the Hangang delta) I despaired at the state of the city. The whole place seemed too modern, a swarm of characterless skyscrapers arranged around a grid of wide boulevards, (there is a road in central Seoul that is fourteen lanes wide... FOURTEEN LANES WIDE! There are roads in Britain that even that long). 'Oh lord,' I thought, 'what have I let myself into? This place is a soulless urban sprawl, devoid of any culture and dedicated purely to coroporate capitalism...'
Like, to put it in a historical context, Seoul has been a really unlucky city. The whole place has been razed to the ground several times, during feudal wars, during the Japanese invasion, during the Mongol invasion, during the other Japanese invasion and most recently, during the Korean war, (the city changed hands four times during the conflict and by the end of it all, less than five percent of what stood pre-war was still there - many historical buildings were deliberately destroyed by the communists). So when the South Korean government actually managed to establish itself they had a blank state to work from. The rubble was cleared away and a grid of wide roads was ploughed down, archetectural developement was strictly controlled, (South Korea was ruled by a fairly nasty right-wing cabal untill the 1980s, and they insisted on building huge monstrous buildings to celebrate state power and scare their pliant populace). Yeah... I had this same problem with Valencia, I just can't stand cities designed by fascists, I do get a real palpatable sense that every brick layed down was layed there with the peoples' worst interests at heart, nothing looks friendly, the roads are all designed for tanks and there's no real individuality to speak of. And, well, yeah... a lot of Seoul is like that. But it gets better if you branch out from the mainroads...
The first place I stayed was a private guesthouse. I was actually staying in a room of this couple's house and it did feel homely, there were antiques everywhere and well-stocked book shelves, and there was a free breakfast in the morning, dumpling soup.
Breakfast was an interesting experience. I came down at 9am and I joined one of the other tennants at the guesthouse. She was from Texas and she was a faith healer. Now, I think faith healing is a despicable line of work, essentially, you are lying to desperate people and taking their money, and in many cases encouraging them to forego actual medicine, (to this lady's defence, she did say that she didn't touch actual diseases, but insteaded focussed on 'spiritual diseases' like depression or bankruprtcy), I mean, ugh, really, its an awful thing, even if you did actually have religious faith it seems to me to be a completely immoral and sacrilegious thing to do. By specialising as a faith healer you are claiming to be given powers by God that other people don't have, (erm, sorry, that's not how Christianity works...), and even if that were the case, it would be downright sadistic to insist that people pay for your services.
Part of me would have really liked to have harrangued this old lady, accuse her of being a charlatan and a thief, an exploiter and hypocrit... but then she was really nice. Like, really friendly and everything. She talked about what brought her to Korea, (thankfully, she is the only faith-healer in Seoul), she talked about her grandkids and actually gave me a couple of really good tips about what to do on my travels. She excused herself early from breakfast to go and watch the VP debate. She was strongly supporting Sarah Palin.
She was in stark contrast to some Americans I met the next day. They were all in their late-teens/20s, and were all 'Liberals', one of them was actually a Daily Kos contributor. And they were all the biggest bunch of twats. They thought they knew every fucking thing in the whole wide world and spoke about anyone who disagreed with them with such contempt. They talked about how much they hated travelling around the world and being associated with the stereotype of Conservative America, and I was thinking... 'Wait a minute. I met a stereotype of Conservative America, and she was fucking nice. I strongly disagreed with everything she said, but she behaved with civility and genuine friendliness. You're all a bunch of arrogant cunts. Don't sit there talking about how you are the Real America and how all the world would love you if they got to know you, because no they fucking wouldn't and its god-damn arrogant to think they would."
I think this is a major reason why a lot of the world hates America. Because America always seems to god-damn angsty about how much it hates itself. One half is forever whining about how much it hates the other half. Just grow up.
Anyway, that's a bit of a jump. I met those Americans at the hostel I moved to after the guesthouse. And this hostel is really nice. Its also in a non-conformist part of Seoul, but unlike where the guesthouse was, which was non-conformist in its traditionality, this part of town is non-conformist in its... modernity? No, not modernity, because all of Seoul is modern... I don't know... in its coolness? Yeah, lets just say that. Its unique in its coolness. The streets around here are narrow and semi-pedestrianised, there are four/five storey buildings surrounding everything, and every floor is filled with businesses, (various shops, restaurants and bars - all of them quite idiosyncratic). The place quite near to a couple of university campuses to its all quite youth-orientated. Overall... yeah, its cool.
The company here's pretty good as well. I was hanging out with some Xianggungren (Hong Kongers) last night and this Australian guy and I went for lunch a few hours ago. It had to happen eventually, I've finally met a bearable Australian!!
So yeah, my early opinions of Seoul have been more or less negated. I haven't done much sight-seeing yet. I went to the Royal Shrine yesterday, (photos on the Facebook!), but I'm basically waiting untill I can cash my travellers cheques before I properly go looking around.
The last couple of nights I've been sleeping in a communal area with the windows and doors open. I've been bitten to hell by mosquitos. My arms and hands are quite disgusting to look at. Sigh, I remember in Spain Cassy and Sarah were getting bit all the time and I survived intact. Maybe I need to surround myself with nubile female flesh? For my own protection of course...
So I shall provide you with some commentary. I've been in Seoul for four days now, (wow... that's flown by...), and all in all, I'm enjoying myself. My first thoughts of the city were negative, as I travelled along in the airport bus from Incheon (the main airport, built on a island several miles away from Seoul in the Hangang delta) I despaired at the state of the city. The whole place seemed too modern, a swarm of characterless skyscrapers arranged around a grid of wide boulevards, (there is a road in central Seoul that is fourteen lanes wide... FOURTEEN LANES WIDE! There are roads in Britain that even that long). 'Oh lord,' I thought, 'what have I let myself into? This place is a soulless urban sprawl, devoid of any culture and dedicated purely to coroporate capitalism...'
Like, to put it in a historical context, Seoul has been a really unlucky city. The whole place has been razed to the ground several times, during feudal wars, during the Japanese invasion, during the Mongol invasion, during the other Japanese invasion and most recently, during the Korean war, (the city changed hands four times during the conflict and by the end of it all, less than five percent of what stood pre-war was still there - many historical buildings were deliberately destroyed by the communists). So when the South Korean government actually managed to establish itself they had a blank state to work from. The rubble was cleared away and a grid of wide roads was ploughed down, archetectural developement was strictly controlled, (South Korea was ruled by a fairly nasty right-wing cabal untill the 1980s, and they insisted on building huge monstrous buildings to celebrate state power and scare their pliant populace). Yeah... I had this same problem with Valencia, I just can't stand cities designed by fascists, I do get a real palpatable sense that every brick layed down was layed there with the peoples' worst interests at heart, nothing looks friendly, the roads are all designed for tanks and there's no real individuality to speak of. And, well, yeah... a lot of Seoul is like that. But it gets better if you branch out from the mainroads...
The first place I stayed was a private guesthouse. I was actually staying in a room of this couple's house and it did feel homely, there were antiques everywhere and well-stocked book shelves, and there was a free breakfast in the morning, dumpling soup.
Breakfast was an interesting experience. I came down at 9am and I joined one of the other tennants at the guesthouse. She was from Texas and she was a faith healer. Now, I think faith healing is a despicable line of work, essentially, you are lying to desperate people and taking their money, and in many cases encouraging them to forego actual medicine, (to this lady's defence, she did say that she didn't touch actual diseases, but insteaded focussed on 'spiritual diseases' like depression or bankruprtcy), I mean, ugh, really, its an awful thing, even if you did actually have religious faith it seems to me to be a completely immoral and sacrilegious thing to do. By specialising as a faith healer you are claiming to be given powers by God that other people don't have, (erm, sorry, that's not how Christianity works...), and even if that were the case, it would be downright sadistic to insist that people pay for your services.
Part of me would have really liked to have harrangued this old lady, accuse her of being a charlatan and a thief, an exploiter and hypocrit... but then she was really nice. Like, really friendly and everything. She talked about what brought her to Korea, (thankfully, she is the only faith-healer in Seoul), she talked about her grandkids and actually gave me a couple of really good tips about what to do on my travels. She excused herself early from breakfast to go and watch the VP debate. She was strongly supporting Sarah Palin.
She was in stark contrast to some Americans I met the next day. They were all in their late-teens/20s, and were all 'Liberals', one of them was actually a Daily Kos contributor. And they were all the biggest bunch of twats. They thought they knew every fucking thing in the whole wide world and spoke about anyone who disagreed with them with such contempt. They talked about how much they hated travelling around the world and being associated with the stereotype of Conservative America, and I was thinking... 'Wait a minute. I met a stereotype of Conservative America, and she was fucking nice. I strongly disagreed with everything she said, but she behaved with civility and genuine friendliness. You're all a bunch of arrogant cunts. Don't sit there talking about how you are the Real America and how all the world would love you if they got to know you, because no they fucking wouldn't and its god-damn arrogant to think they would."
I think this is a major reason why a lot of the world hates America. Because America always seems to god-damn angsty about how much it hates itself. One half is forever whining about how much it hates the other half. Just grow up.
Anyway, that's a bit of a jump. I met those Americans at the hostel I moved to after the guesthouse. And this hostel is really nice. Its also in a non-conformist part of Seoul, but unlike where the guesthouse was, which was non-conformist in its traditionality, this part of town is non-conformist in its... modernity? No, not modernity, because all of Seoul is modern... I don't know... in its coolness? Yeah, lets just say that. Its unique in its coolness. The streets around here are narrow and semi-pedestrianised, there are four/five storey buildings surrounding everything, and every floor is filled with businesses, (various shops, restaurants and bars - all of them quite idiosyncratic). The place quite near to a couple of university campuses to its all quite youth-orientated. Overall... yeah, its cool.
The company here's pretty good as well. I was hanging out with some Xianggungren (Hong Kongers) last night and this Australian guy and I went for lunch a few hours ago. It had to happen eventually, I've finally met a bearable Australian!!
So yeah, my early opinions of Seoul have been more or less negated. I haven't done much sight-seeing yet. I went to the Royal Shrine yesterday, (photos on the Facebook!), but I'm basically waiting untill I can cash my travellers cheques before I properly go looking around.
The last couple of nights I've been sleeping in a communal area with the windows and doors open. I've been bitten to hell by mosquitos. My arms and hands are quite disgusting to look at. Sigh, I remember in Spain Cassy and Sarah were getting bit all the time and I survived intact. Maybe I need to surround myself with nubile female flesh? For my own protection of course...
Tuesday, 26 August 2008
Travelog Three: Tragedy!
I am writing this at an ungodly hour. I have woken up early so that I can ask the man at the reception here in Valencia to ring Barcelona bus station and ask them where the hell they've put my bag.
Yes dear readers, the worst has happened. I have become seperated from my big, have-everything-in-it, bag. My money, my passport, all of my clothes, everything, basically, all because some spazmonaut at Barcelona bus station decided that my bag needed to stay there, (the theory is that they saw the BA tag on my bag, saw that it said that my destination was Barcelona, and decided to keep it, OR, someone took my bag out at some point, and then didn't put it back in again). Some kind of crazy-sounding coach-person got on the coach and started Spanishing at us - probably about my bag, but at the time we didn't know that.
So yeah. This is a potentially trip-ruining event, and I'm really pissed off. Its Tomatina today, but I don't have all the white clothes I bought especially for it. GRR!!!
Yes dear readers, the worst has happened. I have become seperated from my big, have-everything-in-it, bag. My money, my passport, all of my clothes, everything, basically, all because some spazmonaut at Barcelona bus station decided that my bag needed to stay there, (the theory is that they saw the BA tag on my bag, saw that it said that my destination was Barcelona, and decided to keep it, OR, someone took my bag out at some point, and then didn't put it back in again). Some kind of crazy-sounding coach-person got on the coach and started Spanishing at us - probably about my bag, but at the time we didn't know that.
So yeah. This is a potentially trip-ruining event, and I'm really pissed off. Its Tomatina today, but I don't have all the white clothes I bought especially for it. GRR!!!
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