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!