Ten Days in NZ: Piha Beach & Lion Rock

September 13, 2016June 3, 2017 / Gallivantrix / Leave a comment

One month after I landed in the Land of the Long White Cloud, on the eve of the Chuseok holiday here in Korea, I finally finished the rough draft of the entire 10 day trip. So far, I’ve written 72 pages of small font, single spaced stories. I knew my vacation was packed, but this was really a revelation. Don’t worry, though, I won’t try to make you read it all in one place. Now that I have my thoughts and memories down in bytes, I hope to publish a couple stories a week until I catch up, possibly somewhat mixed in with my Chuseok trip to Jeju Island. The posts are geographically organized rather than a day by day retelling and although I started this adventure in Auckland, I’m going to start my stories with Piha Beach, only an hour outside of the city and my first tiny taste of wild Aotearoa.

PIHA
Piha is a beach about an hour outside of the city of Auckland, but what makes it special is the sand: it’s black. Most beaches (and in fact most sand) is a kind of pale brownish, yellowish color, but a few places in the world get special treatment. I used to live in Panama City, FL which is famous for it’s white sand. It really is white, like a beach full of sugar. I’d heard of black sands in Hawaii, but still haven’t made it down there, so when I read about this black sand beach that was so conveniently on the way to my first “real” destination in New Zealand, I decided I had to leave Auckland early and make the detour over. This was a good call for two reasons. One, Auckland doesn’t actually have that much to do in the city itself, and two, I ended up with the perfect preview of all the beauty NZ would unfold for me in the coming days.

THE DRIVE

This was my first glimpse of the crazy twisting roads that would mark every journey for the rest of my vacation. More than that, however, it was my first interaction with NZ flora. The drive made me feel like I was zooming back into a prehistoric age on earth. Familiar evergreens and less familiar variations of deciduous trees were mixed about with giant ferns and palms. Grasses grew in tufts taller than my car. The pictures don’t really do the forests justice because you just can’t see the enormous scale of these plants that makes you expect to see a triceratops around the next bend in the road. It didn’t take long before I got my first view of the ocean, either. The rugged coastline often included mountains and trees growing right down to the thin strip of sand marking the delineation of land and sea. The sea itself is crystal shades of blue and aquamarine, dotted with rocky islands or jutting peninsulas from further along the coastline. Because of the Queen’s Chain, the beaches remain undeveloped by private enterprise. Even right outside of Auckland, the beautiful, pristine coast just goes on and on.

The road into Piha has a couple of look out spots to allow drivers to safely pull off the side of the road and take pictures of the view below. The area itself is not highly developed and consists of a car park, a few private structures (well off the beach), a surf shop, a cafe, and the public restrooms.

Between these and the beach itself are a few sandy, grass growing dunes. I took my shoes and socks off and carried some sandals with me in case, but I wanted to feel the earth on my bare feet (an urge I would later find out had more significance than I knew at the time) The dunes were a little rough and the grass was brown and bristly, but once I emerged onto the black beach, I found myself on the softest sand my feet may ever touch. I’ve encountered many textures of sand from a rough grade exfoliant to a fine grain almost silky texture, but walking on this black sand at Piha felt like nothing so much as having my feet caressed by bunny fur. The sand was black, but not the shade of black we think of in say, a new iPhone. It was blue and purple from some angles and soft grey from others. There was also some invading tan sand that rested on top, being lighter and coarser, which created interesting effects in the wind and tide as the lighter sand was pulled into patterns above the darker black sand.

I soon noticed a line of shells along the beach, a tide line of sorts, but instead of seaweed and drift wood it was mainly composed of tiny white spiral shells. The shells were perfect miniature spirals and so delicate, they broke under the slightest pressure (two I took from the beach did not survive). Their former inhabitants had no doubt been dinner to some of the local sea birds, but the fact that the birds had managed to extract their meals without damaging the fragile shells by the dozens was impressive.

The path I’d taken in from the car park led nearly to the exact center of the cove. There were high rocks on either side, but the right side also had a small stream leading down to the sea, so I decided to start in that direction and eventually do a complete circuit of the cove before moving on. It turned out that the large rock to my right was Lion Rock, known as Te Piha by the Maori who lived there before. The Maori named it for the patterns the waves made breaking across the rock, and later the British apparently decided the rock looked like a lion. Closer to the stream and the rock, I noticed there were people climbing on it, but I thought to myself, “that looks like a very steep climb, maybe I’ll just enjoy the beach”. I found the lake that the stream was coming from and a larger collection of what looked like private homes up in the foothills further back from the shore.

As I rolled up my pants to wade across the stream and explore the other cove, I noticed the base of the stairs that led up Lion Rock. “Perhaps just a few steps up, up to that platform there to get a better view?”, I thought. There must be something strangely wired in my brain because for all that I dislike climbing, I *love* being on top of high places. After I reached that first break in the stairs and took some pictures, I noticed there was another platform looking the other way, so I had to climb to that of course, and soon people coming down were telling me I was more than halfway there, so why not keep going? Next thing I knew, I was as high as the path goes, admiring the not-quite totem pole and the stunning view. I hung around the top taking pictures and chatting with other climbers, one of whom took quite possibly my favorite picture of me on the whole trip sitting on the edge staring out at the sea and sand below me.

When I had spent sufficient time admiring the view and conversing with the other climbers, I returned to the beach and headed back toward the left rocks. I found some fools gold in the stream. I watched the strange galaxies that formed in the sand as the different colors swirled around, and the comets that resulted from a stone or shell stuck in the surf. I played tag with the waves and admired the reflections that the wet black sand offered of the rocks and sky above. The left side of the cove held a tide pool of sorts with volcanic rocks strewn about, covered in teeny mussels. The rough rocks claimed some skin from my toes, but the cold sea water was quite soothing, so I didn’t mind. As the tide came in, the surfers came out, clad in wet-suits against the cold, but enjoying the large waves.

Finally, the rising tide chased me back up the beach, and as the light of day grew dimmer, I enjoyed a toasted cheese and onion sandwich from the cafe. My hands and feet were red and partially numb from playing in the winter sea, but the warm melty cheese was heating me up from the inside. As I stood one last time on the small dunes looking down at the pounding waves and dark sand, my heart filled with gratitude for the opportunity that had brought me there that day and I thought, “If the rest of my holiday is even half so good as this beach, it will be one amazing adventure.” Little did I know it was only the opening act.

Piha Beach is to the west of Auckland and labeled on my trip map. From there I drove to Dargaville to spend the night before embarking on a forest exploration in search of the oldest Kauri trees. I hope you enjoyed the beach with me, and don’t forget to see the rest of the pictures on my Facebook page!

International Perspective 9/11

September 12, 2016June 3, 2017 / Gallivantrix / Leave a comment

Yes, I’m working on the much more fun New Zealand stories, but they aren’t ready to publish, so here’s a little thought for the 15th “anniversary”.

Two years ago (2014) I was in Saudi Arabia for 9/11 but I had only arrived a few days before. I didn’t know enough to feel comfortable asking too many questions and I was assured that discussing it on any form of public social media would be grounds for reprisal. Were there people in Saudi who celebrated 9/11? Yes. But that just makes those people immature jerks who enjoy schadenfreude and every culture has some of those. Please don’t judge a whole country or religion by it’s worst representatives (Westboro Baptist, anyone?) Were there people in Saudi who grieved for the loss of life and for the perversion of their faith? Absolutely. I’m a little sad I didn’t get the chance to write about it at the time, because it was a surreal and thought provoking experience to be American in the country that spawned Osama-bin-Ladin during that time.

For most people outside the US, 9/11 is just another day. For most Muslims this year, 9/11 isn’t about terrorism, but the biggest holiday of their calendar, Eid al Adha, that only coincides with September 11th every so often because it is decided by a lunar event. While it’s important to remember our own history, it’s also good for us to be able to see through the eyes of those who are different from time to time.

I spent my September 11th this year with a family of Canadians at a UN Memorial for the Korean War here in Busan. It didn’t even occur to me that it was 9/11 because, living on the other side of the date line, my Facebook feed was still set to “normal” instead of “super patriotic reminder day”. It wasn’t until I woke up on Sept. 12 that I saw the flood of memes telling me to “never forget” that I realized the actual date.

Sometimes, I get a little frustrated with America for being so sensitive about 9/11, but then I have to remind myself, everyone’s trauma is valid. There is no scale of objective judgement for how a traumatic event affects someone. One of the worst things you can do to a victim is to diminish their pain by telling them how much worse someone else has it. So, it’s not helpful to tell America to get over 9/11 because other countries have more terror attacks or more deaths.

However, when I look at the Korean War Memorial here and realize that I am living in a country that was 90% flattened 60 years ago and is now one of the most technologically advanced democracies in the world, I am astonished. Korea did not forget what happened to them by any means, but nor do they treat their aggressors with spite and hatred. Even though the North decimated the south, leaving a landscape of ash and rubble, South Korea does not seek retribution and instead implemented things like the Sunshine Policy. Even after that policy ended due to continued rejection and aggression from the North, South Korea has refused to use force or invasion to punish the North or bring them back into the fold.

What is the point I’m getting at? Well, victims of trauma have a choice. Do we collapse in on ourselves with self-pity while lashing out at the world in anger, or do we learn to be strong and use that strength to practice compassion towards others who have suffered in a way we now uniquely understand?

After 9/11, America lashed out hardcore, starting a war in a country that had nothing to do with our trauma because we were so hurt and angry and scared. But it’s been 15 years. Kids in high school don’t know what it felt like to watch the towers collapse in flames, to stare at the devastation played over and over on every TV and try to reconcile the fact that it wasn’t a movie effect, to wonder if your loved ones in New York and DC were alive but not be able to get through because the phone lines and cell towers were so overloaded. In a few more years those kids will be adults, old enough to enlist or even be drafted into the military that is still fighting in the aftermath of that lashing out.

So by all means, never forget, but think carefully about what you want to do with that memory. When we look at countries, including Muslim ones, who are devastated by ISIS or other terrorist attacks, do we ignore their plight in order to nurture our own homegrown grievance, or can we say, “Yeah, I know how that feels, let’s help each other get through this.”?

Ten Days in New Zealand: An Overview

August 29, 2016June 3, 2017 / Gallivantrix / 1 Comment

Having spent the last few days recovering from the cold I managed to give myself at the end of my trip, I’m now feeling much better and ready to tackle the slightly overwhelming task of writing about these 10 awe inspiring, action packed days and the truly daunting goal of winnowing down the over 2000 photos I took into something that is beautiful and interesting rather than something that resembles the family holiday slide show from hell. As you can imagine, this might take me a bit of time. Furthermore, I’m starting school again this week, and I have an upcoming long weekend trip to Jeju Island. I also don’t want to dump a novel on you all at once. So, be patient. The stories will come, and they will be no less wonderful just because you read them a few weeks or even a few months after they happened.

My Route:

I made a little road map to show you the relatively small section of NZ I managed to explore, and here’s the basic itinerary. (As they get written, I’ll be linking the full story to each counterpart in the short list below).

Day 0: Auckland (arrival, rental car, sleep)
Day 1: Auckland (Onehunga), Piha (black sand beach), drove to Dargaville (sleep)
Day 2: Waipoua Forest (giant Kauri trees), drove to Piahia (sleep)
Day 3: Piahia (Bay of Islands, dolphins!, Haruru Falls), drove to Whangarei (sleep)
Day 4: Whangarei Falls, Waipu Caves, drove to Hot Water Beach (midnight low tide)
Day 5: Hot Water Beach, Cathedral Cove, drove to Rotorua (sleep)
Day 6: Wai-O-Tapu – hot springs (Kerosene Creek, Hot & Cold, Waterfall Spout Bath)
Day 7: Rotorua (Saturday market, Kuirau Park), Wai-O-Tapu (geothermal park), Maori
Day 8: Wai-O-Tapu (hot springs), Matamata (Hobbiton), drove to Waitomo (stars!)
Day 9: Waitomo (glowworm caves, black water rafting), drove to Auckland
Day 10: Auckland (shopping, Planetarium, Cornwall Park, One Tree Hill), Airport

It was a jam-packed holiday to be sure. I intend to breakdown the stories based on geographical region and/or type of activity, therefore while it will mostly be in order, it’s not a strict blow by blow of the 10 days. In the remainder of this post, I want to share a few interesting things I learned about New Zealand that are useful if you want to travel there and are just generally neat.

Tipping:

This bizarrely internationally inconsistent cultural habit changes drastically from country to country and making a mistake while you’re visiting can be awkward or even offensive. Quick guide to NZ tipping is that you don’t. It’s not a tipping culture except…

1) let taxi driver’s keep the small change. It’s not precisely a “tip” it’s just inconvenient to make them dig out exact change.

2) similarly, tip jars if present in cafes are not looking for anything more than the small change (under 1$).

3) exceptional service – if you feel like a waitperson has just gone above and beyond, leaving a tip is a way of thanking them for that, but it is not expected at most restaurants or meals.

4) fancy restaurants – I didn’t go to one, but I hear a 10% is standard at these. Every place I ate at did not have a tip line on the credit card slip, thus it was actually impossible for me to leave a tip if I wasn’t paying in cash. Maybe big fancy places are different, I can’t say.

While I do cough up the cash where tipping is standard (don’t even get me started on tips as wages), I prefer non-tipping cultures because there is no awkward math or trying to judge my server’s performance. I typically find that I get better service when tips aren’t on the line because my servers aren’t busy calculating which of their tables is going to make them the most money. Plus, having done food service before, I’m convinced tip wages are some kind of anxiety induced torture because staff never know how much money they’ll actually make. So just be polite and courteous to your servers, say please and thank you and don’t worry about dangling a financial reward in front of them for doing their job well.

Driving:

For some reason, despite all the research that I did before going to New Zealand, I did not realize that they drove on the left until the day before I got on the plane. I even read about NZ traffic laws because I planned to rent a car and drive around, but somehow the government sponsored website failed to put that in an obvious place. As a result, when I landed in Auckland and got the shuttle to my rental car company, I was frantically trying to watch the traffic and the driver as closely as possible. On top of that, it was dark by the time I got my car, so I had to navigate my way to my airbnb in this backwards car on the wrong side of the road and in the dark. I do not think I have gripped a steering wheel that hard in years.

It turns out the hardest part of driving on the left isn’t the left lane, it’s the car itself because the driver’s seat is now in the right and everything is backwards. The turn signal and windshield wipers are reversed. I cannot tell you how many times I accidentally turned on my wipers while trying to signal. The gearshift is on the left. Thankfully, I had an automatic and the only times I was shifting were in parking lots, but I often found myself reaching for a steering column mounted shift that simply wasn’t there because my muscle memory found that to be the default when there was no gearshift to my right. Good news, gas and brake were still the same, otherwise I might have had some nasty accidents.

Driving on the left is mostly just a matter of staying in your lane. If you’ve ever driven in a multi lane highway, you’ll have experience with driving on the left as the passing lane (although here the left is the slow lane and the right is passing only). Oncoming traffic was terrifying for the first two days, and I spent about 4-5 days chanting “left, left, left” to myself every time I made a turn to help me land in the correct lane on the other side of the intersection. NZ doesn’t have many of “highways” as we think of them in America or even Europe. Much of the country is made of tiny winding wooded mountainous treks. It was a relief to get out of Auckland and have less traffic, but it was a whole new challenge to drive down roads that twisted with scant visibility and narrow lanes that ended in cliff-sides or sheer drops. I pulled over frequently. Partly because a line of impatient Kiwi drivers behind me wanted to go faster than I felt safe driving, but largely because the scenery in NZ is incredibly breathtaking, and I needed to stop driving so I could look at it properly.

There are a preponderance of roundabouts. All the roundabouts. I usually only saw “intersections” in the more pastoral areas. In anywhere with civilization, the preferred interchange was the roundabout. These were quite intimidating at first because there are no stop indicators, only “give way” or yields. You have to check to your right to see if anyone is already there, then go. Then count exits to find yours and trust that everyone else is going to yield to you once you’re in the roundabout. I made several mistakes, but no crashes.

Lastly: one lane bridges… I don’t know why. Maybe it’s too much infrastructure? Maybe the bridges were built at a time when all the roads were one lane? Maybe kiwis just like driving dangerously? I lost count of how many one lane bridges I crossed. There are helpful signs that tell you which lane has right of way. It’s based on who has better visibility of the bridge. If you can see the bridge, you have to give way. Only once did I have someone fail to yield to me when they should have, I assume another visitor confused by the rules, but I managed to stop in time.

As crazy as all of these things seemed when I started my journey, by the time I got to the end, I was entirely adjusted. I found myself driving at (or just above) the speed limit on those curvy roads. I barely slowed entering roundabouts with no oncoming cars. I learned how to pass the other slow drivers on the road, and was able to confidently navigate Auckland by the time I returned there on day 10. I met other travelers who were busing it, and a few who had rented campers. It became apparent that the busing travelers were highly limited in schedule and in events. They had to rely on tour groups to go anywhere outside the cities. I think the camper might be the best way to go, being able to park in free parking lots (of which there are many) and cheap campsites wherever you like is liberating, but I got turned off RVs when my dad explained the septic tank process. I think for my short trip the car was ideal. There are hostels near every point of interest that are cheap enough and I still had the freedom to track down some out of the way places at some less popular times. Conclusion? Driving on the left is challenging but worth it for New Zealand.

Insurance:

Ok, insurance isn’t exciting or glamorous, but most of us know it’s an important part of travelling because you never want to find yourself far from home with no way to pay for any liability you may incur due to accident or injury. Turns out NZ is one of the most traveler friendly nations in terms of coverage, so if you’re tired of expensive traveler’s insurance, this might be a good alternative.

Fortunately, I did not have any need to visit the healthcare system in New Zealand, but I did learn while I was preparing my travel plans (including insurance) that all accidental injury (regardless of the Darwinian nature of the cause or who is at fault) is 100% covered for anyone in NZ. ‘Anyone in NZ’ doesn’t just mean residents, but literally if you are injured in NZ, the government will pay for the healthcare you need. Obviously there are some limits, like long term care which you would get in your home country if you’re just visiting, but it was still good to know that if I got into a car accident or slipped and fell in a stream and broke my arm or something similar, that at very least the financial side of my imaginary tragedy would not be a burden.

Canadians reading this are probably going ‘well, duh’, because you guys never worry about healthcare costs it seems, but the Americans will get it. Accidental injury is one of the great banes of our existence where a trip to the ER can wind up costing thousands or tens of thousands of dollars. I often get some kind of traveler’s insurance that will keep me from bankruptcy and get me back to my country of residence for real care, but those policies don’t cover too much and can still leave you with poor care choices and large bills.

It’s never fun to have to limit your adventurous activities for fear of medical bills and thanks to the NZ government, I didn’t have to! Of course, I still didn’t want any broken bones. I was careful, but it was a serious relief to know that I was covered.

Additionally, all rental car companies must provide basic car insurance with every rental. You can’t decline the basic insurance (although you can choose the included basic over the extra cost comprehensive). This matters for a few reasons. One, lots of credit cards offer insurance if you pay for the rental on the card and decline the optional insurance. I spent some time trying to get a manager at Visa to confirm with me that the insurance in NZ isn’t optional and wouldn’t count against my Visa based car insurance (which would then basically cover damage to the car or other property, but not medical bills). Two, because of the accidental medical coverage, car insurance doesn’t need to include medical. Any injury sustained in a car accident will already be covered. Three, if you’re leaving the cities, you will scratch that car. The damage from small scratches from branches on the side of the road or stones thrown up from the car ahead of you are small and easily covered by the basic insurance and because everyone has it, the rental companies don’t stress trying to get a couple hundred extra dollars out of you for a scratch on the paint.

I’m afraid if your stuff gets stolen or broken, NZ doesn’t cover you for that, but I’ve found often renter’s or homeowner’s insurance has an option to cover your belongings while you’re on the road and sometimes the flight insurance will cover belongings for the duration of the holiday.

Water:

Not the drinking water (though that’s fine too), but the ocean, lakes and rivers. The vast majority of water in NZ is considered public. Water doesn’t belong to anyone. This has actually caused some controversy with the Maori population who lay claim to some bodies of water and the rest of the NZ government who say that water cannot be owned. Take a moment to savor the idea that water cannot be owned and then go write a letter to your congressman about Nestle buying up all the clean water in North America so they can sell it back to us in plastic bottles. The issues with Maori are complex and involve things like land use rights, fishing rights, and mineral rights that give them more exclusive access to waterways in some places, but not actual ownership of the water.

In addition, there is a piece of land called the “Queen’s Chain” which exists around most waterways (sometimes it does not due to environmental or safety reasons to restrict public access, and there’s still about 30% of the coastline the government is working to get back in the public domain, again, it’s complicated). The Queen’s Chain is 20m of land on one or both sides of a waterway that are public land, free to access assuming you don’t have to tromp through private property to get there. I’m told sometimes the farmers get stroppy (with shotguns) about backpackers and kayakers who are following a stream or river from a public access point into their land, so it does pay to be aware of where your river goes if that’s your plan. If you want to read more about the laws, you can do so here.

The upshot of all these laws is that there are almost no privately owned resorts, country clubs or homes that get restricted access to a beach, river, lake or hot spring. How cool is that? I’ve been to many coastal areas with beautiful beaches that have just been developed to death because hotels can charge big bucks for access to their private beach. When I lived in Florida, the small stretch of beach that didn’t cost an arm and a leg to get into was limited and often overcrowded. In tropical paradises in the Caribbean, beaches have become little more than oceanfront bars. In Dubai they are oceanfront dance clubs. In Washington state, when we want to go to a hot spring or waterfall that’s undeveloped, we have to go into a state or national park and hike for several km. In NZ, however, these things are all near roadways with easy public access and safe off road parking. Many of them are even handicapped accessible.

Many of the astonishing places I visited on this holiday were only possible for me to see because of these laws concerning waterways and the land near them. If there were a hot spring on a beach in the US it would be a private resort charging guests hundreds of dollars for the experience, but in NZ it was totally free and natural with no looming 30 story hotels and no one selling margaritas above the high tide line, just a well-heeled campsite on the other side of the highway, a few private homes scattered through the hills, a quaint local cafe, and an art gallery. Similarly, Rotorua has fancy spas that filter the natural mineral water for clean and landscaped soaking experiences, which is fine, but less than 30 minutes out of town I was able to visit 3 natural hot pools in one day and spend a couple hours in each with no rigorous hiking or exorbitant fees.

I support paying reasonable fees to maintain public land (taxes, anyone?). I happily paid my annual public park fee in Washington when I lived there (about 30$ for all access). What I can’t get behind is the total commercialization of natural beauty. I’m not saying visiting cities or man-made wonders isn’t worthwhile too (goodness knows, I go to ancient ruins and modern amenities all the time) but it doesn’t replace a natural experience. The earth is our home and it is full of wonders that we cannot create nor replicate. Of course sometimes that means you’ll get dirty, or get a few bug bites, but it’s worth it and you get to come home to a hot shower after all because that’s the balance. Flushing toilets and hot water can coexist in a world with fresh rain-forests and pristine beaches. New Zealand’s water laws don’t just protect the water, but much of the land around it, preserving the environment and giving us access to nature’s best features. I think a few other countries could take notes.

Lord of the Rings & Hobbits:

All 6 films were made in New Zealand (in case you were living under a rock). Many natural features of the land are now famous Middle Earth landmarks. Most of those beautiful panoramic views were real, and not computer generated. It’s quite popular for Tolkien fans to make a pilgrimage from movie site to movie site. Most of the landscape has been carefully returned to its wild state so you won’t see the Hall of Rohan at Edoras or the Last Homely House at Rivendell. However, walking around the bush in NZ made me feel like an adventurer in Middle Earth more often than not (the rest of the time, I felt like I was in Jurassic Park, more on that later). I also got more excited than I truly care to admit when I realized I could see “Mt. Doom” from the park in Wai-O-Tapu. I didn’t do much LOTR location viewing because most of the sets are actually further south than I ventured on my short trip, but it was fun to go to Hobbiton and see the Shire and I hope that I get to do more of the mountains and forests when I make it back to see the South Island.

Fern Gully:

Yes, that tree-hugging animated feature from the early 1990’s was based on the forests of New Zealand. Both the Maori and the British settlers contributed to a massive deforestation of New Zealand. Estimated to have dropped from 80% to 50% under Maori stewardship and then to as low as 20% under British/Kiwi stewardship, the forests of New Zealand have been under attack for nearly 1000 years. Up until 1985 deforestation was actually encouraged and subsidized by the government. However, the Department of Conservation was finally established and now native forests are protected, making up to about 15% of the land, and a further 15% are replanted forests (some of which are still logged for timber, but at a sustainable growth rate that will continue to increase forestation over time).

As a side note, Batty Coda (the insane bat voiced by Robin Williams) represents the only native land mammal in New Zealand. All other land mammals presently there were imported for fur, meat or milk. The Maori people thought of bats as a type of bird that represented knowledge and wisdom and incorporated it into their tattoos. You can see lots of NZ plant life as well as other unique New Zealand creatures in the movie including the large gecko that tries to eat Zack and the cave full of glow worms that Crystal and Jack go to be romantic in.

Whether Kiwi attitudes toward logging and preservation were impacted by Fern Gully or not, conservation has now become a significant part of life and government in NZ. With care and attention, the beautiful forests and natural landscapes that I was privileged to travel through will exist and grow richer in the decades to come.

I hope this whets your appetite for more tales from New Zealand. I’ll be working diligently to get the rest of the posts up in the coming weeks. Thanks for reading 🙂

Boryeong Mud Festival 2016

July 23, 2016June 3, 2017 / Gallivantrix / 2 Comments

After a month of a bad news fueled fug, I finally got back out. All due respect to the horrors, the death, the downward spiral of the election cycle, but nobody can stay in that headspace for long without going crazy. We all need a balance. It’s also important to remember why we are going through all the hardship, and why we have to keep fighting for what’s right. So I headed over to Boryeong for the big famous Mud Festival. This post is about 30% a report on the festival and the rest is focused on the great things that happened to me there to help me recharge all my joy batteries.

One of the tour groups here (Enjoy Korea) which had taken me to the Namhae Anchovy Festival decided to offer a trip to this muddy event and after some research I decided that it would be overall better to take their chartered bus and let them deal with the pension than to try to do it myself. I saw amazing pictures like this one all over their website, Facebook and the internet in general. It’s on the beach as well, which is always a winning proposition. So I got all packed up, bathing suit, all the sunscreen, extra clothes and of course my towel, and set off for an adventure.

It’s becoming stunningly clear to me that Korea has a subtle disconnect between expectation and reality. Historically, reality has shown me that if you read a great description, but show up and it’s not true that you’re in for a disappointing time. In Korea, however, I’ll read a great description, show up to find it isn’t true, expect to be disappointed, then actually have a great time and walk away wondering why they didn’t just describe the real awesomeness in the first place. This trip was no exception.

The Expectation vs The Reality

Boryeong is on the opposite side of the country, a little south on the coast of Taean, where we went to see the tulips. It took us about 5 hours to get there, but it was nice because we were on one bus the whole time and didn’t have to think about anything. We got there around 2pm, and quickly went to drop our stuff off in the room and change. We also had to go hunt down booze and waterproof pouches for our phones and wallets. So, it was probably after 3pm by the time we got TO the festival. This may be the only real complaint that I have about the tour trip. The main festival attractions closed down at 6pm, so we didn’t have a lot of time to try all the activities before they were done.

Our group (right) expectations were all pretty much the same. We had been led to believe that there would be a giant mud pit on the beach where people went crazy with mud wrestling and mud chicken, and mud races, and that off to the side there would be some pools and water slides. When we arrived, we kept looking past all the inflatable slides, trying to find the mud pit without success. Finally, I stopped a couple of caucasian dudes who were reasonably muddy and asked where it was. I was informed to my shock and dismay that people were basically getting muddy by going over to one of the large pots of mud and splashing it on each other. … Wut.

It turns out that the main festival is on Daecheon Beach, which is a beautiful sandy beach, and the mud has to be trucked in for the array of water slides and inflatable games. No wonder it was watered down. Several of the photos I’d seen online were not actually from Daecheon at all, but from the actual mud flats themselves in Namgok-dong, where smaller events, including a 5k mud run, are held. The mud festival lasts about 2 weeks and we were just arriving in town for the last weekend. I didn’t even learn about the mud flats until after we got back, but we wouldn’t have had enough time to visit them that day anyway. Don’t take this map as gospel, because all I could find was the name of the mud flats, so this is just a rough idea of how far the mud beaches are from where the big party is. And while the mud beach looks totally like everything I was promised, the Mud festival itself looks like this.

At Daecheon Beach, the only way to access the mud was to go inside the fenced in area, which also meant abandoning our booze and shoes. So we chugged our soju and headed in to see what there was to see. What there was to see were lines (or queues depending on where you’re from). Queues forever. As we selected a line to stand in, we looked around with a great deal of skepticism. The mud wasn’t mud, it was more like pottery slip (grayish brown water with some clay dissolved in it). All the activities were filled with this muddy water and people are mostly clean (if wet) because going into an activity means you wash off any of the thicker “mud” you may have acquired being splashed while in line.

The line we were in was for the football (soccer) arena. It was an inflated pool with inflated goals on either end. The muddy water was about mid-calf depth and the ball was an inflatable beach ball. It did look fun, but after the first 30 minutes of standing in line, we were seriously questioning our life decisions . We took turns holding the group place in the queue so people could get out and go pee, and finally it was our turn to get in the arena. We lined up against a group of Koreans and began to chase the beach ball around the pool.

So. Much. Fun.

Something magical happened in the moment we began to play. All of my adult cares suddenly drifted away and the whole world was splooshing through the slippery not-quite-mud with a bunch of other grown ups who were all busily engaged in reviving their inner children. I don’t know how many times I fell down, trying to take a kick at the ball and loosing my footing, but I couldn’t stop smiling. I don’t know what the rules were supposed to be, or how many points were scored, but eventually, a referee came by to stop the game and pronounced the Korean team the winner. We lined up across from each other and we bowed to them and promptly got splashed to oblivion by the winning team.

My jaw hurt from laughing and smiling so hard. I felt like the Joker (pre-Heath Ledger), a permanent huge grin stuck in place. All I wanted to do was get in line for every other game available, but my top goal was the giant slide. My friend described it later as “a dirty inflatable playground for drunk adults. It was all my dreams come true.” And the best part is that there was a dirty inflatable playground for kids in a separate area, so we didn’t have to worry about any rugrats underfoot!

The line for the tall slide wasn’t too bad, but we lost a few people to the short slide and to the bathroom line. Korea has figured out that women need more bathrooms than men, so there’s been a standard 3:1 portapotty ratio at nearly every festival I’ve been to. This has usually been successful, but for some reason, the lines for the men’s bathrooms here were awful.

The weather was also being (at least for me) amazing. I was expecting to spend a day blistering under the sun and worrying about my sunscreen washing off, while using mud like an African elephant to cool my head and shoulders. Instead it was cloudy and barely warm with a lovely breeze. I don’t think it could have been more than 24 C, and I was blissing out on the total absence of heat and humidity, but some people were cold. North Americans formed heat barriers around South Africans while standing in line in an attempt to keep them warm.

I was surprised to find that the giant slide dumped me outside the fenced in area, especially since my shoes were back on the other side at the entrance where I’d been asked to leave them. I reconnected with some of the group and managed to get back inside right before they closed down. We got in one more line for the floating hamster wheel (which is a serious upper body work out, by the way, especially when it’s slippery!) but alas when we got out, the other attractions were closing down.

This is not to say the festivities were over, just that the inflatable pools and slides were no longer open and we had to rely on the simple pleasures of booze, beach and interesting people. The cool weather was also accompanied by some rough seas, so the “no swimming” signs were up and we were limited to wading in the fierce waves. The sea water was surprisingly warm, however, and we lingered around the surf for quite a while.

Your Moment of (Femini)Zen

The girl I was hanging out with is quite pretty and was approached several times by very flirty guys. One very determined guy came over to us in the waves and started chatting. His body language was very much “hey baby” and she was clearly interested in return. It looked like they were off to a good start, but then it got neggy. For those of you who don’t know, “negging” is the tactic of using subtle insults to break down a woman’s self esteem and raise a man’s own social value by comparison, thus making her feel vulnerable and perceive him as desirable. It is widely advocated by pick up artists.

First, he started talking about his sister. How can this possibly go well? Because “you remind me of my sister” is already not a sexy pickup line and he decided to go with “My sister is hotter than you” instead. She was staring at him like, did you really just say that? But she was also doing the thing we’ve been trained to do as women, and not making a big deal about it. She did point out how weird it was, but in a kind of lighthearted “ha-ha” way. I flat up called him Jamie Lannister, but it didn’t even make a dent. He tried to deny saying it, but never actually retracted it even when we both insisted he had said it more than once.

At this point I was not happy about the situation, but I didn’t want to make her more uncomfortable, so I leaned over and whispered to her that if she wanted help ditching this guy to let me know. She was still into him, I guess because she wasn’t looking for a long term relationship here, she was willing to overlook some drunken weirdness. Then he busts out telling her she looks old! Now, I don’t think old people are necessarily unattractive, but in the patois of courtship, telling a woman she looks old is a crazy insult. I can tell she’s still trying to keep it all fun and funny even though it’s bothering her. Finally, she asked me what I thought about going back to this guy’s room. You don’t really want me to say, I told her. (because I’m going to drop a feminism bomb and generally people at parties don’t groove on that) But she insisted.

So, I let it go in the kindest way possible. I point out that he’s using these destructive techniques of insulting her to break down her self esteem and make her a more vulnerable target for the hook up. I also point out how crazy and unnecessary it was because she was into him before he started doing it. I even tried to give him the benefit of the doubt and told him he probably wasn’t even aware he was doing it, but had just been trained to treat women that way in order to fulfill the equally toxic version of masculinity he’d been taught he had to live up to. (the alternative being to accuse him of actively engaging in pick up chicanery) I told him I didn’t think it was his fault, but that he could start changing by being nice to the girls he wanted to be with instead of breaking them down.

I’m not telling this story to toot my own femism horn. I was really nervous to say these things out loud. I was scared the guy would get hostile. Worse, I was scared the girl I was trying to help would reject me, tell me I was overreacting or reading too much into it, or that it was “just a joke”. I’m telling this story because it was scary and hard. So if you think these things and are scared to say them out loud, know you aren’t alone, but also know this:

I watched her face as I was talking and it was like this gargantuan wave of relief that someone else was saying what she was thinking. She instantly agreed with me and after the guy gave up and wandered off (yay no agro), she thanked me for saying those things. And the nice part is, later in the evening, when she eventually found the guy she wanted to hook up with, I felt confident wishing her well because I believe that she’d been reminded of her own self worth and had found a guy that would make her feel good.

Oppan Gangnam Style

Returning from the beach to find the eerily abandoned mud park, it didn’t take me long to get to my other favorite travel activity: talking to new people! I ran into someone I’d met briefly in one of the lines who had also ended up separated from his group. We wandered around the waterfront chatting, and ended up having a great conversation about our lives and travels which was totally unmarred by any awkward flirting. Why I love A-spectrum folks: you can dive straight into a deep and meaningful conversation without all that useless weather-sports-job chit chat.

While we were talking, I found out that the K-pop sensation Psy was scheduled to perform on the beach. Which, again, just goes to highlight how bizzaro Korea is about promoting events, because there had been no mention in anything I read about this. In case you’ve been living under a box, Psy is the singer of the international sensation “Gangnam Style”, so he’s not just famous here in Korea, but nearly everywhere. I mean, imagine if you went to a festival and then halfway through someone was like oh yeah, Beyonce is gonna perform, too.

My newfound conversation buddy had a bus out that night, so was anxious about getting to see the show, and of course, whether or not the number one hit would be performed before he had to take off. When the music started, we were up on the street. The whole bluff overlooking the sea was packed with people, most of them holding up phones to see the stage. Maybe they were recording, but generally they were using the phone screen as a kind of remote lens so they could see over the heads of the crowd.

It was impossible to get close to the railing and get a view, but I noticed through the throng that the beach near the water was almost completely empty. The stage was set up on the beach as close to the bluffs as possible, but it’s not a deep beach and the performance area was less than 30 meters from the ocean. We started walking away from the stage to find a place to break through the crowds and get down onto the sand, and by following the shoreline back up, we got very close to the stage indeed.

I don’t get star-struck too much, but I have to say that it was a highly surreal and awesome experience to be standing in the sand with the waves crashing a few meters to my left and Psy performing a few meters to my right. There’s something intoxicating and fulfilling about a huge crowd of happy people, and I will never get tired of looking around and going, “This is really my life! Wow!” And, in case you were wondering, my conversation companion did get to see Gangnam Style and we danced like idiots in the sand.

Serendipity

After the music, I drifted back to the sea to do some more wading. It didn’t occur to me to take my shoes off since they were waterproof sandals. Unfortunately, the tide was dangerously strong, and in addition to taking the sand out from under my feet, one particularly intense wave took the shoe right off of my foot! After a few minutes of feeling around in the sand with my toes to see if it was buried there, I gave up on the shoe and headed inland where I promptly met some more friendly people who chatted with me and shared their beer, while I looked for a cheap pair of beach sandals to replace the ones I’d lost to the sea.

When they set off, i found myself alone once again with zero idea where any of my original group had gotten to, but I was entirely sanguine about it. As I walked up to the bathrooms before beginning a quest for food, I looked over and spotted my Busan Bestie standing in front of the convenience store chatting with a group of blondes. I can’t even tell you how many thousands of people were there that night, but we found each other without the aid of any social media. My bestie and went down to sit in the sand and one more of our starting troupe wandered up to join us. With our core group reassembled, we chatted about our experiences from the day and generally enjoyed ourselves. After a while of holding still on the waterfront, I finally started to feel the chill everyone was talking about and we got up to try to find food.

It’s not that food is absent from Korean festivals, but they don’t have food stalls the way we might see in the West which are full of food that’s meant to be eaten while walking. Korean food is a very social event, so even at festivals, they serve food alongside a place to sit down with big group and eat it. As a consequence, the mud festival did not have much food on offer because there was nowhere to sit and eat it. Most of us hadn’t eaten since before leaving Busan and had a hefty appetite by midnight.

We found a chicken and pizza shop on the main road, but then because there were no tables, we joined a couple more military guys at their booth and they promptly shared their chicken and beer with us. We had ordered the cheese chicken, which is not like chicken Parmesan, and is instead a sort of fried chicken coated in the kind of cheese powder more often associated with cheese flavored popcorn. It’s actually not bad, and when you’re starving from a long day of drinking and playing on the beach it’s practically food of the gods. Of course we shared back with the Army guys, and they left us most of a pitcher of beer when it was time for them to take off.

The chicken was really filling and the pizza took foreeeever. Just as I was starting to think it might be worth taking the loss just to get out of there, they finally brought it to us in a box. I figured I’d eat it for breakfast, but then we became the bearers of serendipity rather than the receivers. On the way back to our pension, I ran into some more revelers who were super eager to find out where we got the pizza. Since it was still hot and untouched, I offered to sell it to them for what I bought it for (no pizza profiteering). I think the Korean girlfriend was going to cry she was so happy, and just couldn’t believe that a pizza fell into their laps. It makes me happy to know that somewhere, someone is telling the story of how they were drunk and starving at the Mud Festival when this white chick came outta nowhere with a hot pizza for them.

Ondol Again, Off Again

Sleeping arrangements were sparse but adequate. At least this time, I knew I was going to be sleeping on the floor, so it wasn’t a shock. To cut down on costs, the tour group had assigned us all roomies, and we stumbled in sometime after 1am, waking ours up with many apologies. The Korean Ondol is the magical heated floor that I was so grateful for in February and March. However, this has led to adoption of a sleeping “mat” that is quickly becoming one of the great cultural mysteries to me. When I lived in China, I was struck by how hard the mattresses were, and one of my Chinese coworkers even complained about how the mattresses in American hotels were too soft for her to sleep on. In Japan, I had a futon on a tatami frame. The futon was thin, maybe 6-7cm, but it was cushy enough to take the edge off, and the tatami underneath was also a little springy. So, both of these Asian cultures certainly liked harder sleeping surfaces than we do in the West. Fair enough. But the Ondol mat is really just a blanket on the floor. Not even a thick blanket. You could almost imagine that being ok with like a squishy fluffy comforter, but no. It’s a thin quilt. In the winter I can understand not putting much between you and the heated floor, but in the summer all it does is protect you from sticking to the hardwood.

I like the notion of the pension, but the number of nights per year I’m willing to sleep on the floor is shrinking as I age. Just one more reason I really need a TARDIS. Anyway, thanks to alcohol and exhaustion, I did manage to sleep. And woke up the next day with only a mild hangover and several more hours to explore the festival grounds. I hadn’t known that we would still be at the festival for so long, and only had one set of clean clothes. It turned out that the water attractions were closed anyway, so while there were still people getting muddy, it was limited to the mud water jars placed around the plaza.

We managed to stay clean and took the time to better explore the area. As it turns out, the Boryeong mud is famous for it’s mineral composition and use in cosmetic products. The festival was once an advertising campaign for the cosmetics and has since become an epic party. There were several things that seemed to be permanent beachfront statues that were all about the mud, but since the mud itself is a major commercial export for the town, it wasn’t so surprising that they had statues devoted to it.

We also found the performing native Americans again. I feel like it’s starting to become some kind of David Lynch-esque running gag for my time in Korea that there are always guys dressed in intense and often highly mixed Native American garb playing flutes and pan pipes and selling dream catchers. One of them had bright neon fringe this time. And I saw more of them playing at a rest stop on our drive home! What is the deal Korea, seriously?

The Verdict?

Overall, the Mud Festival was a stunning success for me. I still think it could more accurately be called the muddy waters festival, but once I got over the initial shock of how different it was from my expectations, I had an amazing, endorphin fueled, oxytocin generating, dopamine flooding time. (Which is big brain chemistry talk for “AMAZEBALLZ!”) If I go back next year, I’ll make an effort to arrive Friday night or at very least earlier on Saturday so that I have some more time to play on the mud toys before they close down, and I’ll try to find a group that is hitting up the mud flats proper as well. I might also recommend getting a camel pack for water in addition to the waterproof pack for your phone and money. There were convenience stores everywhere, but most of us didn’t drink enough water, and it took me a couple days to fully re-hydrate. As far as fun things to do in Korea, I wouldn’t make a special trip to the country just for this one, but it was definitely a great reminder of love, friendliness, and joy that I really needed. And since there’s no bad time for love friendliness and joy, I absolutely recommend the festival to anyone who happens to be in Korea in July.

As the first semester draws to a close, I find that I’m still completely enjoying myself in Korea and at this job. I’m looking forward to some more fun adventures this summer including a vacation to New Zealand! I’m being joined soon by a dear friend and fellow globetrotter Jane Meets World, who is finally moving to Asia for the first time, so I get to use her arrival as an excuse to do even more fun things in Busan. And I’m already planning our “Korean Thanksgiving” holiday weekend trip in September. As much as I hope that things in the US make a turnaround for the sane, and as hard as it is to watch my friends and family to live there endure the hatred and vitriol that is being propagated, it’s important for us.. for me to remember that most of the things in life have the potential to be great, and that most of the world (including large parts of the US where the cameras aren’t always pointing) is a beautiful place filled with amazing people who can be your friend for a minute or a lifetime if you just open your eyes and your heart. Love is quieter than gunshots, but there is more of it.

Queer in Korea: A review of Pride and Pulse 2016

July 2, 2016June 3, 2017 / Gallivantrix / 5 Comments

It’s taken me a long time to put this post together. The events I’m talking about happened 3 weeks ago which is a lifetime in social media terms. And yet, I feel like for once, it’s good that it took so long. I feel like it gave me and others time to absorb and process, but I don’t think any amount of time will cause this to stop being relevant until civil rights and gun-violence are solved. In the first week after the events, I was riding the emotional roller-coaster and nothing I wrote was worth reading. In the second week, I settled down to some serious writing, but before I could publish, the third week brought me low with that child-borne plague — the common cold. It’s finally done, however. It’s much longer than my usual posts because I just couldn’t bring myself to break this experience up into smaller pieces. I do hope you’ll give it the extra time and read all the way to the end. There’s a love “crust” down there waiting for you… like with pie.

When I first found out about the festival in March, I was excited to see it. When I found out it was the 17th annual one, I was blown away. Try as I might to keep up with real news and world events, I still had a solid perception that LGBTQ+ rights platforms were the domain of the West (and that America might actually be the farthest behind in that race) while the rest of the world lagged far behind in tackling this important civil rights issue. I saw things like Russia banning LGBTQ+ at the Olympics and China striking down gay marriage as signs that the East just wasn’t doing that much.

And, to a certain extent, the East still has a long way to go. These are cultures that haven’t had to deal with the different and the other that often in their history. Or, when they have, they’ve dealt with it by employing the classical Asian two-level system: above-what is acknowledged, seen and talked about; below- what everyone knows is really going on but never vocalizes. It’s a kind of national “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy on all kinds of things from gambling and drugs, to porn and alternate sexuality. The Japanese actually have words for this (“honne” and “tatemae”), but I’ve witnessed it in other Asian cultures as well.

Korea just recently had, for the first time, two (famous) men petition the courts for legal marriage. The case was rejected, but there was some room in the language for future laws to be added to the books that would allow it. Considering it was the very first time that anyone in Korea tried, it’s not really a surprise that it was struck down. But it’s definitely becoming more and more of a public issue, thanks in no small part to a 17 year tradition of publicly celebrating LGBTQ+ pride in the nation’s capital every summer.

Previous years’ festivals have seen large groups of protesters who have screamed at, spat at, taken pictures of, and occasionally engaged in greater displays of violence and harassment toward the festival goers. They’ve reportedly lay in the street to block the march, and even engaged in physical violence against the police to try to get at the Pride participants. Protesters have tried to shut out Pride by booking up the space, nearby spaces, and hotels to keep people out. This year, the conservative anti-gay Christians tried to petition the courts to shut down the festival on the basis of public indecency, but they were denied. However the Korean culture may feel about LGBTQ+ currently, at least the government respects everyone’s right to peaceful assembly, which is awesome. More than merely respecting it, the government issued stern warnings to the protesters to refrain from violence, because violent protests are illegal.

I’m from Seattle, where being LGBTQ+ is more often the assumed state than being straight. Where it’s so normal for people to see gay couples in public that my BFF was often mistaken for my GF, and *not* in the “you’re going to hell” way that happened to me in Memphis. Pride in places like Seattle is no longer a civil rights issue (plenty of places in the US it is, keep marching guys). In Seattle, Pride is one big party with corporate sponsorship. It’s a fun party, don’t get me wrong, but it’s not a civil rights movement, it’s a victory celebration. And worse, because of the division within the LGBTQ+ community, the G (and to a lesser extent the L) tend to drown out the BTQ+. The people who still need protection and help even in a culture like Seattle are the ones being most ignored by their own supposed community.

Because of all of this and more, I was very excited to see what a Pride festival would look like in a country where LGBTQ+ is legal but not common or (to most people here) socially acceptable. I knew it could get ugly because I’d read about the protesters in previous years. I knew it might be small and underfunded because it doesn’t get a lot of support here. I knew it might be full of foreigners who just wanted to bring their own culture into Korea. I knew it might just be a marketplace full of cheap souvenirs and magkoli stands because it was a festival in Korea. But I didn’t care, I wanted to see it. And I’m so glad I did because it was none of those things.

(Ok, one magkoli stand.)

Getting There

My Busan Bestie and I headed to Seoul Friday after work, arriving after midnight and experiencing the very beginning of the Seoul public transportation headache. We managed to find the right bus, but missed our stop and got stuck on the wrong side of the bridge, which I guess technically people walk across, but it was the middle of the night and we had luggage, so we thought, oh hey, we’ll just take a taxi… nope. Scarcely any to be had and none for us. We finally found another bus and got back on the right side of the bridge but didn’t make it to our hotel for almost 2 hours after our train arrived. Why didn’t we take a taxi from the train station? Well, the line for real taxis was 30 people deep and no taxis were coming, the bus ride was only supposed to be 30 minutes, and as we found out later, there are plenty of fake-out taxis waiting to charge you an arm and a leg for a 15 minute drive.

The hostel was nice. I’d sent them a note after the Taean pension disaster to let them know we would be arriving quite late, so they left me a note on the whiteboard telling my my room, and they left the key in the door as well so we didn’t have any trouble getting into the room. I’m torn about this hostel, because they did nice stuff like that, and they helped drive another patron to a place he could catch the airport bus, but they had some advertising issues that could have been handled better, like “air conditioning” which was only central and kept at an uncomfortably warm temperature, and “continental breakfast” which was cook your own eggs and toast in the rooftop kitchen. I think I could have been ok with these things had I not been expecting something else, so it’s hard to say.

Due to the lack of AC, I didn’t sleep especially well, but my excitement woke me up well enough and after a leisurely breakfast that I cooked myself, we headed back out into the city to find City Hall and Seoul Plaza, the site of the Festival.

I have been entirely spoiled by Busan public transportation. I was a little frustrated when I first arrived in Korea that Google Maps didn’t really work here, but I learned how to use the local version (Naver Maps) and have had an easy time getting to most places. For some reason, I thought that the transportation in Seoul would be better than it is in Busan. I’m not sure why. I’ve used the Beijing and Tokyo subway/train systems and so I’m not a novice at complex rail maps. I looked up the plaza on my app and saw it was a short two trains away and we were right next to the station. Lies.

We managed to get on our first train with minimal fuss, our national transportation cards work everywhere (which is so nice). But in trying to transfer to the second train, we somehow wound up going the wrong way. Then waiting at a platform where no train was coming (no signs about this either), then waiting at a platform where trains only arrived to, but didn’t depart from, then finally getting on a train heading the right way, only to find out we had to get off it and move to another train to continue going the right way. I wanted to take the train instead of a bus because train stops are usually well announced in advance while the buses tend to be a mystery and you might not know it was your stop until it’s too late. Buses are great if you know where you want to get off, but subway/train things tend to be easier for the first time traveler. Plus, the directions on the festival website explicitly said to use the metro exit 6 to get into the festival because access was being controlled to keep out the protesters.

Maybe it’s a great train system once you get to learn its idiosyncrasies. But considering the dearth of taxis and the intensely confusing blend of intra/inter city trains and subways, I’m going to say Seoul is definitely a bus town.

Safety First

When we finally emerged from the station, we were greeted by a huge wall of police. I saw the protesters well before I saw the festival. They were set up across the street with a giant stage where they were having speeches, performances, and blasting Christian music in an attempt to drown out the Pride music. The streets around Seoul Plaza were lined with police standing shoulder to shoulder. When the light changed, they parted to allow us access to the crosswalk by which we entered the park. I have to admit, I was becoming anxious, and not in a good way. My heart was aflutter and my adrenaline was definitely going. I’m in no way anti-police. My sister is a police officer, and I have a lot of respect for the men and women who do a necessary and often thankless job. In the US, if I get pulled over or approached by an officer in public, it does not make me nervous. But something about seeing thousands of officers creating a human wall made me more than a little twitchy.

Later, I realized that the police were there to protect us. They recognized the protesters as the threat, not the LGBTQ+ folks. They were keeping an eye on them, and were nothing but courteous to us. It was an amazing feeling. I expect many of the officers did not personally approve of the festival or the LGBTQ+ lifestyle, but they didn’t let it show in their faces that day. They stood around us through rain and scorching sun with no tents to shelter them. They stood facing the protesters so we didn’t have to. During the march, they ran ahead of us to maintain that protection at all times, which was good because protesters followed us too. By the end of the day, I just wanted to give them all hugs and say thank you, because they did so much to make the day possible, whether they agreed with it or not. This is what it means to do your job well and to respect the freedoms of others. Without them, the protesters surely would have entered and berated us up close, ruining what was otherwise a beautiful occasion. Because they were there, festival goers and marchers felt safe to be themselves in a city where that can often be so hard.

Speaking of being free to be themselves, the festival also went out of it’s way to make the space especially safe. In the past, protesters used pictures of festival goers to publicly shame them, or get them fired, or even disowned by family. It’s no laughing matter to be Out here. Homosexuality can’t get you arrested, but there are no laws protecting employment yet. Many families feel it’s shameful and will disown children who come out. LGBTQ+ Koreans mostly have to pretend to be cis-het to get by. A few have managed to make enough money that they aren’t afraid to come out, like the filmmaker who petitioned for a marriage to his lover, like the small community of drag queens that simply make their living as performers. But the average person is hiding. This festival is a chance to be among people who accept and understand, but the attendees probably have to go back to homes and offices where they have to pretend again, and thus, having their pictures plastered on the internet can be scary and damaging.

The festival made it clear that anyone taking pictures for anything other than strictly personal use (eg, keep it on your phone and never show it to anyone) must get a press pass and sign the agreement. I like sharing my pictures, so my first stop upon entering the park was to the press booth. I read a multi page contract that stated the rules for taking and sharing photos. It was heavy on permission. (yay consent!), and very strict about not posting anyone’s face you didn’t get permission from. I asked people all day, and handed out cards to the site so they really understood where the image was going. They also collected our IDs, so they can hold us accountable should someone take issue with my following the rules. I told my school where I was going that weekend because I don’t like lying, so I personally am not worried about it ‘getting back’ to my employer, but I know it’s a real issue for many Koreans and I’m glad the festival took such pains to protect them.

Maybe it’s just me (doubt it), but when I see the US paying lip service to equal rights then doing less than nothing to protect endangered minorities (people targeted for violence, discrimination, etc), it makes it really hard for me to accept that whole “land of the free” shtick. I sure as Sherlock wasn’t pleased about the protesters, but everyone there respected their right to peacefully speak their piece. Not everyone in the government involved in protecting the rights (assembly, speech) and safety of the LGBTQ+s like it as a lifestyle, but they respect us as people. It was more important to maintain the core values of respect, safety, and peaceful assembly than it was for them to express their personal opinions on the subject. America, please take notes.

The Festivities

Seoul Plaza is this big oval lawn in front of city hall.

On the day we arrived, it did not look like that. It looked more like this.

This photo is from 2015, however, so imagine it with 20,000 more people. The main stage is just off the lower right corner and the protesters are on both the left and right on the other side of the street.

After securing our press passes and verifying our reservations for the after party, we slowly started to explore the booths that lined the plaza. Unlike events in the US, there was very little corporate representation. And unlike events in Korea, there was a lot more than endlessly repetitive booths of food and trinkets. Most of the booths were operated by groups trying to raise awareness and understanding for some aspect of the LGBTQ+ community. There was a group called “Dignity for Soldiers”, another booth was from the first (and only) NPO that does outreach and support for at-risk LGBTQ+ youth in Korea. There were booths for just about every shade of the rainbow including Trans, Poly, Pan, Ace, Bi, BDSM… I think maybe the only sexual type not represented were Furries. But it’s ok, I found one in the parade later on.

There were also plenty of booths promoting general sexual awareness through sex toys, masturbation tools and positive attitudes. Koreans are often reticent to talk about sex, even when it’s cis-het, so getting out there to help people take some initiative in their own sexuality is still a big deal.

I was really on the verge of tears to see this. Many booths were selling things, pins or flags, erotic books and drawings, non-erotic books and drawings featuring LGBTQ+s, jewelry, booze, snacks, and so on. But making money wasn’t the point for anyone. For most of these booths, they were simply covering the cost of being there and making the materials that they were handing out for free to raise awareness. I have a stack of literature. Every booth was so full of friendly excited people. Any time we bought anything they cheered. Even just a little 50 cent postcard. Everything was a victory in their goals of increasing the awareness of their cause.

I kept getting distracted from the booths by people in fun costumes. Asking permission to take a picture is not as much a hardship after I got used to the Middle East photo culture. I can’t put all the pictures in the blog, but they are all in the Facebook album. You’ll probably notice that a lot of the people I snagged photos of are Westerners. This does not mean that the festival was all expats. Actually, of the 50,000 people who showed up (record breaking by the way), I’d say less than 10% were expats. However, the Koreans tended to be a bit more conservative in their costuming, and so there is a disproportionate photo representation.

I found this fun lady in rainbows and feathers who, when I asked if I could take a photo, told me she was with the US Embassy. It turned out there was a whole row of Embassy booths there, each country sending official representatives to support LGBTQ+ rights (and promote tourism, let’s be honest). And for just a few hours, I was really proud of my country for making this public, overt, international, diplomatic, and above all enthusiastic statement of support for LGBTQ+ and gentle pressure for Korea to catch up. (Spoilers: This feeling does not get to live long.)

We wandered around the booths looking at the huge array of inclusiveness and outreach. We watched some of the shows on the stage- so very Korean, people doing K-pop dances and such. It rained on us a couple times, but it didn’t slow anything down; everyone just popped open umbrellas or put on raincoats. Even the performances didn’t stop in the rain, they dancers just put on some plastic ponchos and kept right on dancing. I heard later that some of the protesters had apparently been praying for rain to ruin our day. I can only imagine their frustration when we didn’t let it dampen our spirits. If anything, it was a refreshing cool down during the summer heat!

Lest you think that all the churchy-folks were on the wrong side of the police line, we also found a couple of religious booths there embracing LGBTQ+ with signs and slogans about love, acceptance and Jesus. There was at least one Methodist group, and another group of Anglicans. Before you go on thinking that Archbishop Tutu is a crazy Drag Queen stage name, no. He’s a real Archbishop from South Africa whose daughter gave up the ministry to marry her girlfriend. He’s totally a real ally.

We got some mojitos in a bag, took silly pictures with the folks from Lush (maybe the only non-sex related corporate sponsor there, but I really like them as a company so I’m OK with them supporting the Festival to promote their stuff). They had this giant pink triangle people could hold and take selfies in. We took lots of other photos too. There was a girl with a beautiful bird who, when I tried to ask if I could take her picture, instead put her bird on my shoulder and took my phone to take a picture of me instead. There was a giant Kiwi at the New Zealand booth. And there were countless people in fun and adorable costumes.

Among the performers too numerous to count, I recognized one of the Queens from the show I went to here in Busan the weekend before. This time she had a set of 4 hunky dancers in fun costumes with her. I enjoyed the show, but I think even more impressive was the massive audience enthusiasm. The crowds on the lawn came hurtling toward the stage for her performances and fans were screaming and waving hands and signs in the air like a Beatles concert.

It took us over 2 hours to make a full circuit of the plaza and then we realized we’d missed some stuff! I cannot talk enough about how inclusive this festival was. So much representation, everyone sharing love and information. Smiles everywhere. There were also more disabled Koreans there in one day than I’ve seen in the 4 months I’ve lived here. Folks with mobility issues that left them in motorized wheelchairs, and not just old people, young people with a variety of disabilities. Everyone was welcome.

Another big thing here was the sheer volume of Koreans. Yes, it’s Korea, there *should* be more Koreans, but a lot of people, both Korean and expat, seem to think that events like this are led by and dominated by expats. There’s a horrible myth among the anti-LGBTQ people here that Korean’s actually can’t be gay and that any Korean who thinks they are has been infected by outsiders. Many of the protester signs that weren’t telling us that Homosexuality is a sin were telling the gays to get out because they believe it’s a foreign infection and not a domestic issue. The more Koreans co-ordinate events like KQCF, the more who operate awareness booths and distribute information to their countrymen in Korean, the more who show up to support and learn, the better off LGBTQ+ is in Korea. Expats can show up, but we’re like allies here, we can’t change the country from the outside, we can only tell our Korean bros & sis’s that we support them and love them.

The March

The “parade” did have some “floats”, but it was not what we tend to think of as parades these days. There were a few trucks out in front with banners and people in costume on display in the truck beds, but the majority of the affair was much more akin to a political march than a celebratory parade. The walking area had us leaving the plaza, going up several blocks and around a big loop before returning to the plaza. It was around 3km, so not a huge hike, but definitely enough to attract attention, which was the point after all. The trucks out front had a few decorations, mostly pink triangles and rainbows, and the people on the trucks were holding pro-love signs and dancing to encourage the crowd. There was nothing like a “parade float” in sight. Actually, that’s not totally true, the protesters had some pretty swanked up gear on the side of the road, but they didn’t march with us.

The majority of people in costumes (as I mentioned before) were foreigners who are more used to the out and proud attitude of Pride parades in the West. There were a few lovely Korean drag queens and a couple others in interesting get ups, but most were wearing fairly every day clothes. Some had on T-shirts with slogans for their cause, some wore various pride flags as capes, a few dressed in traditional Korean historical garb, lots had little signs or buttons, many people had rainbow umbrellas up to shield them from the sun, some waved giant flags high overhead and one couple even put some rainbow dusters in their packs to look like wings! Just because they weren’t going “all out” Western Pride style didn’t mean they hadn’t put thought and effort into their appearance that day.

I could have speculated that a percentage of those 50,000 in the plaza just turned up to stare and had little idea of what was going on, but nobody marches 3km in the June Seoul heat for a lookie loo. So, I’m sure that everyone marching that day was dedicated. I personally felt incredibly lucky to be involved because it felt more like a march than a parade. I felt like here was a thing that people still need to see. There are no “victory” signs at Pride in Korea yet.

The police continued to be amazing. They flanked the streets, blocking traffic as well as guarding us from the protesters along the route. The march was quite long and there weren’t enough police to line it all from start to finish, so as the tail end passed one group of police, they had to run ahead of us to take their place at the next phase of the route. Dedication!

There were plenty of protesters right at the start of the route near the plaza, but as we went on, their number dwindled and the amount of supportive bystanders increased. I’m so incredibly proud of the marchers that day.
The protesters constantly screamed at us, often with megaphones, words of hate and fear and rejection. However, not once did anyone in the festival or parade retaliate with anything other than words of love. As the protesters screamed “homosexuality is a sin” the marchers yelled back “I love you”. We echoed their “hallelujah”s and smiled at them and blew them kisses. I’m personally a big fan of meeting hate with love, but it’s hard and I’ve never before seen such a huge crowd so determinedly return love while receiving so much hate. I think Jesus would be proud.

As the protesters fell away, we began to notice people on the sidewalk holding signs of support or waving and smiling and giving us thumbs up signs. Restaurant owners leaned out of their second and third story windows to wave down at us. A group at Starbucks had clearly planned ahead, because not only had they gotten seats right by the window, but they all held up rainbow signs reading “support equality”.

I know it’s not up to me, as an outsider, to tell a country how it should be. I didn’t march because I thought my presence would change someone’s mind. I admit, I went to the festival to see what it would be like here, and it completely blew me away.

The After Party

We sat around the plaza until things wound down because we were pooped after the march and we were more than slightly terrified of the public transport while the place was emptying out. The after party we chose to go to was the “official” Korea Queer Culture Festival one, although there were several around and I might choose a different one if I’m able to go again next year.

We bused back to the hostel for a shower and some dinner, but the location of the party was not conducive to public transport, so we had to try for another taxi (where are all the taxis, Seoul?). The nice young man in the convenience store called a taxi for us, but the driver refused to come because it wasn’t a big enough fare. It was pouring down rain and after 10pm, and the poor guy trying to help us is like, oh you can walk there in 20 minutes. No, thanks. Eventually we got a taxi to stop for us and made it to our goal.

The location for the party was stunning: a man-made island in the river. The buildings were huge and fun to look at with sweeping shapes and color changing windows. The party itself was a little lackluster for my tastes, but the one great thing about it was that it was about 98% Koreans. I sound like a broken record, but a lot of events I’ve gone to have had a large expat attendance and that’s fine for fun fun festivals, but this is more than that, it’s a civil rights movement with some party trappings and there can’t be a movement if the people of the country aren’t behind it, so it made me really happy to see so many Koreans there being openly gay in a way they can’t be in their day to day lives yet.

There were some vendors in the main hall selling snacks and t shirts. The VIP lounge was quite classy, but the line for the bar was insane. The mojitos were outstanding, however, and there was a classical quartet performance as well. The dance floor was roomy and the DJs were fun, but he dancing was very Korean. This meant that groups of people got up on the stage and danced the moves to K-pop songs while the audience/dance floor did their best to keep up with the same moves… that they all knew… to all the songs. This is an aspect of Korean culture I may just never get used to.

We danced a while (not the right moves, but it was fun anyway), had some drinks, chatted with the few other English speakers we found and finally headed back out sometime around 2am. The next day was all buses and trains again. I got home Sunday afternoon thanks to the speedy KTX train and went to bed that night with a head and heart full of love and hope.That lasted until Monday morning when I opened my Facebook.

This next part is going to be the sad part. It will be followed by the rant part, and finally the bottom layer in the love pie as previously promised. If you want to skip all or any of it, I won’t be offended. I thought a lot about what to say and while I don’t feel comfortable just ignoring it, I know many people have been over-saturated by the events in Orlando. That being said, I hope you read it.

Monday (the Sad Part)

I think everyone knows about the stages of grief, but I think there is one missing at the beginning: empty. I place it before denial because going “no no no, that’s not real” is a distinct and separate phase from “empty”. It’s happened to me only a few other times, typically when the news hits me first thing in the morning. I remember feeling it on September 11th, because I woke up to 14 messages on my answering machine from my mother making sure I was OK (no, I didn’t live anywhere near NY or DC at the time, but moms). She told me what happened and I was like … “what?” There were no feelings at all for a while. Same thing on November 30th (you can read that post if you want). It was several hours before it started to have an impact.

This Monday was the same way. I read the news, several times. I even went to google to find an actual journalistic report or 20 and not just some Facebook posts. I got dressed, cooked breakfast, went to work. Explained to my co-teachers that I might be a bit emotional that day because there was a horrible mass shooting in my home country and proceeded to get ready to teach classes. I think I made it through 2 classes before I actually started crying. I didn’t know anyone involved. I’m somewhere beyond “colleagues” yet well inside of “lookie loos” on circle of tragedy in the ring theory. After experiencing the love and warmth of the Korean Pride Festival, it was devastating to me to see what my own country had been up to.

Over the next week I went through plenty of ups and downs. I had an upset stomach from the feelings, so I was nauseous even when I was hungry. I randomly started crying, or talking way too loudly as I try to avoid screaming. I tried to explain the situation to Koreans, but things I take as givens about American culture are so confusing to them, I had to back up and give mini-history lessons just to catch up to how f*d up things were before this shooting. Phrases like “so they buy a politician” send my Korean co-workers reeling. When they asked me why we don’t just vote against pro-gun legislators, I had to explain the NRA, lobbying and gerrymandering. But even with that said, I’m incredibly lucky to have co-workers who will listen, discuss and sympathize because I’ve read other teachers here are forced to avoid it entirely at work.

The next day, a gunman was arrested in my hometown before (thankfully) he could shoot up a mosque just 2 blocks from a dear friend’s home. The internet is covered from head to toe with stuff about this event, and yeah, we should be talking up a storm. We should be shocked, angry, hurt, outraged. Stuff like this should not be normal. I started and deleted about a million posts because I couldn’t focus on anything without swaying wildly all over the emotional spectrum and ending up with some all caps version of “wtfbbq stop killing ppl!!!”.

I’ve gotten some thoughts condensed now. There’s plenty of stuff that’s been hashed and rehashed about anti-discrimination laws, gun control laws, immigration, religion, and so on. I’m not going to do those again because so many people on the internet have already said things more eloquently than I ever will (such as John Oliver on the NRA: Part 1, Part 2)

Instead, I’m going to talk about connection, the “or” problem, can vs should as it applies to free speech, and the crab bucket.

The “Rant” in 4 Sets

It’s not a traditional rant, but I’m not soft-balling it either. I’m not going to curse and yell and insult people. That doesn’t help. But I’m not pulling punches and guarding every turn of phrase. I’m pretty sure if you’re reading this, you have an open mind (I don’t have a big enough following for trolls yet) so I’m hoping you’ll be open to some different perspectives on the issues this has brought up and won’t nitpick every detail or metaphor to death in an attempt to avoid the message.

Disclaimer: I have employed the word “you” here as a general term for “a person” or “a group of people” because it’s shorter and more convenient than those phrases, and because it sounds less awkward than “one”. If you (actually you) don’t feel like you fall into those thought patterns, please feel free to observe how other humans do. If you (personally) think it applies to you, then please do the awesome thing and admit your past errors and strive for personal improvement.

Connection

The problem of mass shootings in America has no quick fix. It’s not one type of problem. It’s a gun problem, and a mental health problem, and a male problem, and a sexual entitlement problem, and a loneliness problem, and a homophobia problem, and and and….

The fact that I can’t remember which shooting this came after is a horrible sign, but someone pointed out that socially well connected humans don’t go off and kill a bunch of fellow humans. I don’t mean socially acceptable people, by the way. Not the kind of person everyone says “he seemed so nice” about. I’m talking about connection. Genuine meaningful social connection is possibly the most important thing we can do for another human being. Love and belonging are the third tier of Maslow’s hierarchy, only overshadowed by the need for food and safety and integral to achieving esteem and self-actualization. They are NOT OPTIONAL for humans.

In order to make the connections that provide us with the sense of love and belonging we need so much, we have to feel safe (second tier) and have our physical needs met (first tier). This means things like jobs, minimum wage, enough to eat and no fear the power will be cut off soon are important not just for the person at risk of snapping and being violent, but for all the people around him (yes, him, they’ve all been men) who need to be in a safe place in their lives in order to be available for social connections. It’s not about handouts and food stamps for the lazy or entitled. It’s about creating an environment where people are capable of achieving love and belonging, because only then can they start investing back in that environment in a positive way.

To make social connections we need to be mentally and emotionally healthy too. Mental health care availability and removal of mental health care stigma are a big part of making that happen. Plus, it has the side benefit that people who are really struggling can get some extra help before they feel the need to lash out violently.

We need a social value of peer care. This whole “every man for himself”, “not my circus, not my monkeys” attitude is destructive. A society is dependent on co-operation and co-care for success. It’s supported by science and religion. But I don’t even know how to get this idea off the ground in the US. Rugged individualism (aka “selfishness”) is deeply ingrained in the American identity these days, but it hasn’t always been. Once upon a time, there was a horrible war against some evil men and our country banded together. I don’t know if it takes Nazis to make us help each other, but it does prove that we’re capable.

The “Or” Problem

America is fascinated, hypnotized, enslaved to the idea that every issue has two and only two sides which are so opposed to one another that any form of compromise or middle ground is simply unthinkable. I don’t mean uncomfortable to think about, I mean, people’s brains are actually incapable of thinking the thought. Thought rejected. This is known as the “false dichotomy”.

Example: All the guns or none of the guns. If you are for gun rights, you must be in favor of all the guns. If you are for gun control, surely you want to destroy all the guns. Many of you say, no no, we don’t think that way. BUT, when you tell a die-hard NRA conservative you want gun legislation, all they hear is “‘Bama wants to take our guns” and the next thing you know we’re being moved at state owned gunpoint into UN appointed Orwellian style living blocs. Madness! (I’m not making this up, I wish I were.)

Ugh. I said I didn’t want to have a conversation about guns. Sorry. You can look at many aspects of American life and see that you’ve been sold on an idea that something must be A or B and there simply is no alternative or middle ground. Political parties and candidates are another great example. Republican or Democrat… anyone heard of the Green Party? Many people seem to think that the alternative to hating LGBTQ+ is embracing it wholeheartedly. And, while I wish you would, I also know that it’s totally possible to disagree with a person’s life choices and still not hate them. I do it every day.

Even in this way, Americans are dichotomous. You love it or you hate it. Well, you know what? I don’t love or hate pistachio ice cream. I bet there’s a lot of that stuff in your life and you don’t even think about it. But, when it comes to a hot button issue, you must choose a side. Team Tony, Team Cap. Team Edward, Team Jacob. Team Coke, Team Pepsi… really, that’s what you’re reducing complex social issues like religion and sexuality to when you do this.

And while we’re at it, a side note on false equivalencies. , such as this lovely comparison of Obama to Hitler. Both were in favor of a policy, therefore they are the same? No. Obama =/= Hitler. I could spend the rest of the year finding examples of how this is used in all these polemical arguments, but the ones I want to bring up are: anger =/= hate, and dislike =/= hate.

I’m angry at my sister for staying in a crappy city, but I still love her. I’m angry with my friends when they are stubbornly stupid about writing in a vote that won’t count in their state, but I still love them. I’m angry with my students when they don’t do their homework, but … you get the idea.

I don’t like Donald Trump. I don’t like the creepy homeless guy on the street corner who smells funny. I don’t like Kanye West. But, I still think they all deserve fundamental human rights and that old American goodie: “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness”.

But Kaine, that kind of anger/dislike isn’t the same as what I feel toward (insert group here… oh, let’s say Westboro Baptist, but pick your own if it helps). Yeah, it’s smaller maybe. WB makes me want to pull my hair out. Makes me want to scream. Makes me want to go to a junkyard and smash things. BUT, it doesn’t make me want to kill them. It doesn’t make me want to take away their right to free speech. It also kind of makes me want to make them some tea and say, hey do you need a hug cause you’re clearly very upset about something (though in the case of the homeless guy, maybe not a hug until he’s showered).

We need to stop buying into A or B. We need to ask “why” about everything over and over until we discover the root issues. We need to remember it’s “liberty and justice for all” full stop, not “all white Christians” or “all men” or “all heterosexuals”. And then we need to take a long hard look at “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness” as it applies to everyone. We’ve already decided that taking someone else’s life (murder) or property (stealing) is not a liberty anyone is permitted no matter how happy it will make them. We’ve decided that absolute freedom to do whatever you want is not the path to a healthy society. We already curtail certain actions deemed destructive to the well-being of our nation and its people. Of course we must be careful about what we choose to curtail, but we cannot act like it is an anathema to do so. Ben Franklin said that a person who would surrender freedom in exchange for security deserves neither, but that’s become another “or”: freedom or security. Why? Why can’t it be and?

Freedom and security.

Dislike and respect.

Disagreement and compassion.

Can v Should: As It Applies to Free Speech

When I was living in the Middle East, I learned some very valuable lessons about free speech. I’ve been working on a separate post about that, but the core of it I think is important to this issue as well. But let me be clear: I am in NO WAY advocating for the government control of speech or expression. I am talking about social and civic responsibility that comes with having that freedom. Abraham Lincoln once said that “we should be too big to take offense and too noble to give it.” There are some people out there who are just easily offended by things that are genuinely not damaging to others. There are things that need to be said that will be hard to hear. I will support the legal right to free speech forever. But, the second part of that quote is damn important.

In America, when someone says something insulting (about your faith, your lifestyle, your weight, appearance, gender, orientation, skin color, etc) the result is all too often “You’re an adult, suck it up”. The expectation is that adults should just be able to deal with being insulted or having their feelings hurt (even though arguably many of these insults are signs of bigotry and oppression and not just about hurt feelings).

In the Middle East, when I had conversations about such insults, I explained that we didn’t want the government to police what we could say about religion or anything else for that matter. This is the core of our free speech amendment, that the government can’t punish you for the insult. People understood that part, but what they couldn’t wrap their heads around was why anyone would want to be so insulting in the first place.

Sometimes I get to explain about how important it is to be able to speak out against powerful institutions that may be corrupt or have a corrupting influence, that may be stealing or hurting people. That’s the reason we have the first amendment, after all, not simply to protect the Westboro Baptist Church screaming insults at a funeral, but to protect people like Edward Snowden who tell us when our government is breaking laws, or in a less controversial light, people like Neil Degrasse Tyson who speaks out about climate change and evolution despite how unpopular those things are in the US.

In other words, the right to free speech is protected so we can punch up at those in power who are ostensibly abusing it. Using your words to hurt, bully, intimidate, threaten, marginalize or oppress other people isn’t exercising your first amendment rights, it’s just being an asshole.

When you tell the story of someone who is insulted for their race, religion, gender, orientation, etc and the reply is “You’re an adult” the follow up shouldn’t be “suck it up”, the comment isn’t directed at the victim, it’s directed at the attacker. “You’re an adult. You should know better”. Kids insult each other, bully each other, and call each other names because they are learning. As adults we tell them it’s wrong. We ask them to think of how they would feel if someone called them that name. You’re an adult, you should know better than to insult someone that way for no reason other than to prove you can. What are you 6? Like two kids in the backseat of the car, one sibling holding a finger just millimeters away from the other’s skin. “I’m not touching you! There’s no law against it. I have free speech.”

Just because you can, doesn’t mean you have to.

You’re an adult. You should know better.

The Crab Bucket

When I was learning how to be happy (another one of those things I keep meaning to write about in more detail), I read a lot of studies, and listened to a lot of psychiatrists, therapists, sociologists and neuroscientists. One day, I’ll make a comprehensive list with links and you can all take the shortcut to the searching I did, but until then, it gets doled out piecemeal.

Today’s piece: toxic relationships & crab bucket tribes. I had to learn about vulnerability from Brene Brown. I had been hurt so much that for part of my life it was easier not to feel. But Brene reminded me that is not a sustainable model for happiness, it’s only a barrier to pain and the absence of pain is not the same as the presence of joy.

Being vulnerable is the only way to experience love, and love is key to happiness. Don’t just take my word for it, watch her TED talks, read her research. Being vulnerable means you open up to people and experiences. You let them in. That means people can hurt you. As a result, it’s really important to back away from the people who will hurt you often and badly. They may have the best intentions. They are certainly worthy of love, but that is not your job.

Additionally, I learned that our mental tracks, our personal narratives if you will, are greatly influenced by the people we spend time with. If we hang out with people who have no ambition, who are negative and critical all the time, who always find something to complain about or some reason not to try, then it becomes harder for us to break out of those thought patterns.

Even worse is the “crab bucket”. I learned this word from Sir Terry Pratchett, but I don’t think he made it up. Basically, there is no need to put a lid on a bucket of live crabs because as soon as one tries to climb out, it’s bucket-mates grab on and pull it back down. People do this too. People who are in bad situations for whatever reason, people who have had to learn to accept those situations (bad job, too many kids, crappy apartment, bad relationship, wrong career, etc), people who are unhappy but unwilling (or unable without great effort) to change it. They are comfortable in their discomfort. Seeing someone else get out, “make it”, improve their lives should be a cause for celebration, but too often it simply reminds them that their own lives are less than they want and it breeds resentment. They will attempt to keep those around them in the crab-bucket for all kinds of reasons besides flat up jealousy or resentment. It could be because they like you and want you around, they want to have things in common with you, or because they don’t want to be alone, but it’s still not good for you.

Whether someone is actively toxic in the sense of abuse and chronic negativity or passively crab-bucket in the best meaning friendly way, they are still an obstacle to your happiness and you can’t be vulnerable to them, you can’t invest your time in them without expecting them to have a commensurate impact on your life.

Excising toxic and crab-bucket people from my life was not easy. It was a deeply painful process. I admit, I didn’t confront many people. I let most of them quietly drift away. Moving out of country helped that a bit. Only the ones I truly deeply cared about did I try to talk to. Sometimes it worked and we improved our relationship. Sometimes it didn’t and it blew up in my face.

Now I’m getting better at making non-toxic friends up front, so hopefully I won’t have to do that again. But I’m encountering a new toxic, crab-bucket relationship in my life that I didn’t really see before: my country.

Your country is a lot like your family. You don’t get to choose where you’re born. I’ve often thought I was lucky to be born in the US. So much privilege and wealth. Such a wonderful history of freedom and innovation. Anything was possible… the American dream.

I learned the hard way that’s not real, but I was still hoping America was going to pull through. I admire people who work tirelessly to improve it, who don’t give up. I said before that even toxic people are worthy of love and I meant it. Just because I can’t be the person who gives it to them doesn’t make them unworthy. I guess I feel the same way about America. I’m starting to feel like hanging around America is overly negative. I definitely feel like America is turning (has turned?) into one big crab bucket. People tell me all the time “every place has problems” as a way of minimizing the problems in America or somehow trying to equate them with problems in other places. People tell me all the time, “not everyone can just leave” as a way of reasoning out why they can’t.

Every place does have problems, just like every relationship has problems. You don’t stop talking to all humans because of it. You don’t give up on vulnerability or love. But you don’t stay in an abusive or toxic relationship either. Yes, in case it wasn’t clear, I’m comparing the US to an abusive or toxic friend/partner. I hear people in bad relationships say things like “no one’s perfect” and that’s what I hear when people say “every place has problems” in the wake of the Orlando shooting. Places that have problems like that are the national equivalent of abusive spouses. If you’re comparing yourself to central Africa to find something worse, it’s like saying yeah, he slaps me around sometimes, but at least he doesn’t cut me up or break any bones like Betty and Paul down the street. Neither one is ok!

And yes, it’s probably true that not everyone can leave the way I have. But more people could leave than are doing so. Countries like Germany are struggling with record low population growth and are desperate for immigrants who can contribute to their society as well as their population numbers. Places like Korea are giving away scholarships (transportation and living expenses included) to people who want to come here and commit to a multi-year study of Korean language. Furthermore, the people who are going to stay should be doing so because they want to fight for America, to work and toil and loose sleep and gain gray hairs to rebuild a place worth living in. That’s worth doing, oh gods yes.

Not every bullied LGBTQ+ leaves the bigoted southern towns they were raised in as soon as they turn 18. Some because they don’t know how, can’t afford it, think they have no place to go. But some because they want to stay to work to improve conditions for the next generation and that’s work worth doing. I met an amazingly bright young lady while I was teaching in China. She could have easily used her intelligence and education to get a job and move to a great city, or even leave China which is the dream of so many there. Instead, she told me her dream was to go back to her tiny village where people don’t even have indoor plumbing and teach at the local elementary school to give the next generation a better chance. Wow.

There are people in my life I thought were worth fighting for. I haven’t abandoned every relationship that was damaging. But I’ve made choices and worked for the ones I wanted in spite of the risk.

I’m looking really hard at America right now, because I don’t think I can passively live in the crab-bucket anymore. Right now, I’m taking a “break”, travelling around the world, but before I go back for anything longer than a vacation, I have to decide if this is a toxic relationship I have to cut loose, or if it’s a painful relationship I want to work to fix.

Ghandi said we have to be the change we want to see in the world, but only you can decide what that means for you.

The Bottom Layer of Love

Penny: “Sometimes people are layered like that. There’s something totally different underneath than what’s on the surface.”

Billy: “And sometimes there’s a third… even deeper level… and that one is the same as the top surface one…Like with pie.”

-Dr. Horrible’s Sing Along Blog

I promised in my preview that I would end the blog post on a positive note because it’s important to emotional health. I admit I’m not feeling super positive about the situation myself, but I’m going to do my best.

For me and others here in Korea, we experienced the love of the Pride festival before the shock of Orlando, but as the hours and days passed I began to see that in the US, they experienced news of the Korea Queer Culture Festival after learning about Orlando. So let’s start with a recap of the beautiful day. I found this great video on YouTube made by an English speaking Korean vlogger. Enjoy!

It’s the 1 year anniversary of legalized gay marriage in all 50 states.

The Pentagon has lifted the ban on transgenders serving in the military.

Kim Davis’ acts are now officially illegal and court clerks have to issue marriage licenses whether they like it or not.

Despite how dark it may seem in the wake of tragedies like this one, we need to remember the singular rallying cry “love conquers hate”. After the shooting, one friend still in the US sent a link to me of a news article about Korean parents who came to the festival to give out hugs and tell the festival goers that they were loved just as they were. She told me it gave her great hope after reading about the news in the US to see that love was still fighting around the world, so I’ll just leave you with this message of love.. like with pie.

Pride & Pulse (a Preview)

June 14, 2016June 3, 2017 / Gallivantrix / Leave a comment

This weekend, I went up to Seoul for the first time in order to attend the Korean Queer Culture Festival, better known as Pride. Sunday night I made it home, exhausted but happy and full of love and optimism. Monday morning, however, was a different story. While I slept, dreaming dreams of love, equality and inclusiveness, a young man so full of hate he could no longer contain it took two substantial killing machines and a bomb into a nightclub known to be friendly to LGBTQ+ people, held them hostage in a standoff with police for about 3 hours, shot more than 100 of them, killing 49 in the single largest mass shooting in America by nearly double the body toll.

I thought I would spend this week going through my photos, writing down my memories and feelings about the amazing gift that was participating in KQCF, and sharing them with you. But instead, I woke up to a Facebook feed full of sadness, anger and grief, and I can’t pretend it didn’t happen.

I still want to share everything about this weekend because, as the most common slogan I saw there says, “love conquers hate”. I want to remember what love looks like and I want you to remember, too. It’s so important that we do not retreat into fear or fall prey to the temptation to hate back.

I want to share my thoughts about the tragedy because I need to process it. I need to work through it and get it out there. Many people are angry and confused. If reading my thoughts helps you process your own, please do so. If you aren’t ready to read it, or don’t want to read any more negative news, that’s ok too. I’ll be clearly labeling each section so you can read only the parts you’re into.

I’m not a journalist. I’ve never been great at responding at the speed of social media. I rely on real journalists for my facts and statistics, so I’m often behind the curve when it comes to posting about any big event because I’m waiting for the real journalists to do the heavy lifting. I’ll be spending at least the rest of this week working on the full post because I’m physically exhausted from the joy of the festival, and I’m emotionally and mentally exhausted from the sadness of the shooting. This post is all I can muster on short notice, so I hope you’ll come back and read the whole thing when it’s ready.

Best of all, I’m planning to write this as a “love sandwich” because the first and the last thing we read leave the biggest impression. So I’m going to start and end with stories of love, pride, freedom and hope because that is the world I want. That is the change I want.

A friend of mine in America messaged me to tell me that the news of the outpouring of support in Seoul at the Korean Queer Culture Festival helped her to see that there was still love and hope after the Orlando shooting. Although many of us in Korea felt the news in the opposite direction, the festival did have a positive impact, not just here, but abroad as well. It’s so important for us to remember too keep showing up, to keep loving and smiling and sharing in the face of these tragedies because our love is the only thing that can heal the mental and emotional wounds the violence causes.

So please remember: you are not broken, you are not alone, you are loved — always.

Translation: “Hate is not a religion”

Sandcastles, Speakeasies & Queens

June 8, 2016June 3, 2017 / Gallivantrix / 3 Comments

My summer is kicking off to a great start. There are still more festivals and events than any one person could ever hope to keep up with. The weather is heating up, but I’m learning some native tricks on how to keep cool (and avoid the sunburn!). In preparation for the out of town trip next weekend, I’ve been trying to take it a little easy, but that doesn’t mean I didn’t get to see and do amazing things. Last weekend, we went to the Sand Sculpture Festival at Haeundae Beach, and this weekend we found a visiting Drag Show and a secret speakeasy bar.

Sand Sculpture Festival

Haeundae Beach is one of the most famous beaches in Busan. It’s a little small compared to say… California beaches, but it’s beautiful and full of fun activities. For example, the Holi Hai Festival I went to in the spring was held there. In this case, it was a sand sculpture festival. Artists from around Korea came to the beach to build gigantic sand sculptures and people from around Busan came to admire the art, eat fun snacks, and have fun in the sand and surf.

As soon as we stepped off the subway, we were greeted by a parade. This is the second one I’ve seen at Haeundae and I’ve only gone down there a few times. I’m not sure if it was for the sand sculpture festival or the Port Festival, but it was fun to watch. There was a pirate ship, some movie characters, dragon dancers and plenty of people in random costumes.

When we arrived at the beach we were greeted with banners, flags, a crazy fish/car/bike, a giant cat bounce-house and some para-sailors with giant fan propellers. The first few sand sculptures were smaller, about the size of a car, and were clearly propaganda or advertising rather than part of the art display. Nonetheless, the skill involved in creating a sculpture from sand that had such precise shapes and lines was awe inspiring. I’ve worked with clay before, and it holds a shape well. It has tools that you can use to create super flat surfaces or precise curves and lines. But anyone who has tried to build a sandcastle knows that sand is treacherous, crumbly and not easy to shape.

I did a minimal Google search on the how-tos of sand sculpture and it’s a major undertaking to make any sand structure higher than about half a meter. These sculptures were easily 4-5 meters high. The first one we came across was a giant mound of sand carved(?) with a very simple design of a pillar decorated mansion. Even while marveling at the size of it, I wondered a little about why it was so simple. But later on in the night, it was functioning as a screen for a projector light show part of the festival.

As we continued to wend our way through the sculptures, I realized that each one was based on a nautical literary theme. The very first one was The Voyage of the Dawntreader from the Narnia series (my favorite book from that series, by the way). We could clearly see Aslan, the Dawntreader, Edmond, Lucy, Caspian and Eustace as a dragon. The only sad thing was that the whole wall was in the shade, making our pictures a little lackluster. The other side of the sand wall was a mural scene of Perseus holding the head of Medusa and facing the Kraken as it destroyed a ship.

There were some that may have been based in stories I don’t know, or were simply nautically themed. There was a smaller sculpture with a scuba diver, and another with a man who appeared to be alone on a small boat. But, we also recognized Moby Dick, Gulliver’s Travels, The Little Mermaid, The Odyssey, and King Poseidon. There were a couple of pieces that looked more like they came from Asian literature or history, and I’m sad to say I didn’t recognize them, but the detail on many of the works was simply stunning.

I was particularly taken with the sculpture of Ariel and Ursula. On one side, was the mermaid art, but no average mermaid. The artist had managed to represent both the fin and the legs in the same pose. I knew it was a mermaid at once, even though the fin was not as prominent as it usually is in mermaid art, but it wasn’t until I got to the other side and saw the unmistakable visage of Ursula that I knew it had to be Ariel.

The Odyssey was possibly the most impressive sculpture. Rather than being two sided, it was more conical with images relating the the adventures of Odysseus all the way around it. It wasn’t so much a chronological mural of the tale as a mish-mash of imagery of all the monsters and events with the Cyclops dominating the mountaintop and the wrecked ship laid out below.

At the end of the roped off displays were some much smaller sculptures that were not quite as high quality and also covered in color. There were kids playing on and around them, so they were clearly not being protected or preserved. I guessed that there might have been a timed competition earlier in the day and these were the remains. Famous characters Spongebob and the cast of One-Piece were at least in keeping with the nautical theme. Ironman was there just because he’s the most popular superhero in Korea.

Someone had also built a fantastic hill of sand for the purpose of playing King of the Mountain and also for sand tobogganing. Kids were clambering up the man-made dune and sliding on plastic sleds back down to their parents waiting with cameras below. There was also a walk through sand maze, a dune buggy arena where people could drive rented 4-wheelers around a track marked out in sand, and a whole bunch of tents with activities and souvenirs. We found some artists throwing pottery, some face painting, and other kid-oriented crafts as well.

As the sun was getting low, it was getting time for a snack or even dinner, and just as we were thinking about heading across the street to one of the many international restaurants that line the beachfront, we stumbled into the festival’s own eatery. About a dozen tiny seafood stands had set up shop in a parking lot. This was no small feat, since each food stall had at it’s core a stack of aquariums holding the live sea creatures that would be cooked up fresh. There were many kinds of shellfish, lobsters, fish, and the strange looking “sea penis“. I’m not kidding. That’s really what it’s called. I haven’t been brave enough to eat one yet, but I see them at pretty much every waterfront festival.

We spotted some mussels, of which I am a big fan, but then right next to them I saw some beautiful spiral shelled mollusks that I’d never tried before. I was hopeful that they would be a similar taste experience to the mussels nearby, and I proposed that we split a plate of new experience instead of going for the safe bet. This was not a disappointing choice. I understand that for some, the concept of oysters, mussels, and other sea mollusks is not an appetizing one. For me, well, there’s a reason I loved eating in Japan so much. Most of the animals in the sea are flipping delicious. Especially fresh. These little morsels were no exception. The plate of shells was served with wooden picks for us to pull the flesh from the shell. The fascinating part was that the shape of the meat was the same as the spiral shape of the shell, maintaining it’s spring-like appearance even after it was removed. Instead of garlic butter, the Koreans enjoy their shellfish with a spicy yet piquant chili sauce. So yum. The shells were too beautiful to just trash, so I tucked one away in my bag and now it lives on my souvenir table.

We went for a more substantial meal at a magnificently decorated Indian restaurant with a beautiful view of the ocean. The meal was delicious, and felt so extravagant, but it was really quite reasonably priced. It’s not quite as cheap as the four-star meals I used to get in China, but it’s really nice to live in a place where you can get a high quality dining experience for an Applebee’s price range. Plus, as much as I enjoy Korean food, I get tired eating the same cuisine for too long (no matter what it is) and I love to be able to hop over for another cultural culinary experience so easily.

After dinner and watching the sunset from our table, we headed back out to the beach to see what the after dark part of the festival would be. I’ve learned well enough now that Koreans are a night loving people, and that every festival has a plan for darkness. In this case there were some bright halogens lighting up the sand sculptures with new and interesting shadows. Because the images were done in bass relief and not full 3D, the directionality and quality of the light made a big difference to the way the art appeared. Taking pictures was a little more challenging because the lights were all at human height and people kept walking in front of the lights casting huge shadows on the images, but with a little patience I managed to get a couple decent ones. Please check out the whole day’s photo album here.

As we made our way back toward the main entrance, we spotted a number of night time entertainers. Buskers and fire dancers were drawing small crowds, but the main event was a stage set up on the beach where a DJ was spinning some dance tunes. The greatest part about Korean festival culture is the total inclusiveness. Even after dark, with club music and flashing colored lights, the beach was still full of all ages. Little kids running around and playing in the sand, old grandparents bobbing along to the beat, young couples taking the opportunity to hold hands and dance close.

We couldn’t quite push our way up to the stage, but we plopped our bags down and danced barefoot in the sand to the club music while the Koreans around us giggled a little at the strange foreign behavior, and more than a couple took our abandon as an excuse to dance a little themselves.

When we were all worn out, we headed down to the sea and sat down just beyond the tide line with some beers to enjoy the night. People were setting off small fireworks all over. Despite the fact that the authorities tried more than once to announce that fireworks were not allowed on the beach, everyone around us brought armfuls of tubes to stick in the sand or hold on to and point over the water. The beach patrol came by more than once to stop it, but the Koreans just did not give up.

As the night wore on, people got more and more wild. The fireworks increased in number and in closeness to us. A couple times I was worried that the live sparks might just hit us, but we remained unburnt if slightly ashy. Young men started daring each other to run into the still cold seawater. Young ladies waded in and shrieked at the cold water around their ankles. Soon, all pretense was gone and men and women alike were chasing each other fully clothed into the water, splashing and dunking and having fun. I was tempted to join in, but I didn’t have a change of clothes and I was worried that we might not get a taxi to take us home if we were dripping wet. I think next time we go to the beach I’m going to have to pack a towel and a change or be extra careful to leave before the subway stops running.

When we finished our beer and needed to find the bathrooms, we decided that it was time to move off the beach. After some serious de-sanding, we made it back onto the main road and started trying to find a nice bar to settle into. Unfortunately, all the expat bars were crammed to the gills and our day had just been too relaxing to finish it off with a meat market, so we kept walking, looking halfheartedly at bars and keeping an eye out for empty taxis. Just as we were about to give up, I spotted a sign for The Back Room. It was up on the second floor and looked intriguing.

We couldn’t see a way in, so I thought maybe the stairs were inside the first floor restaurant. We went in to check it out, but when we asked about going upstairs, they directed us to a phone in the wall. I picked up the handset and pressed the white button. I was greeted in Korean, but responded in English, at which point the voice switched into a pleasant European accent of some kind and asked if we were wearing “slippers”. I was a little confused, but Koreans have a kind of shoe I tend to think of as a “sandal” that they wear mostly indoors or in bathrooms. They’re not all obviously plastic casual things, and I’d seen lots of people wearing them around the beach, or just down the street in the warmer weather, but I guess it’s like fancy restaurants not wanting people in flip-flops.

I thought my shoes were classy enough, being solid black with a little decal on the strap, but they didn’t pass muster and we had to move along, vowing to come back later with more appropriate footwear.

Queens of Seoul

During the week, I ran across an add on Facebook for a show featuring the Queens of Seoul here in Busan. The LGBTQ+ culture in Korea is still trying to find it’s feet and there aren’t a whole lot of drag queens in the country. I found Hurricane Kimchi online shortly after I arrived, and I made plans to go up to Pride in Seoul (next weekend) way back in March, but most of the info out there is either coming from expats trying to find each other or just news stories about how LGBTQ+ are being treated, protested against, and ruled against legally in Korea. So when I saw this ad for something fun and friendly, I was psyched to go.

The FB ad said the show started at 10pm, and that cover was free from 9-11pm, so we decided to head over to the bar in time to get in free and get a table before the show. In this endeavor we were wholly successful. The Yaman Joint turned out to be a Jamacian/Rastafarian themed bar with a small stage and tiny dance floor. We were shown to a table and left with a tablet menu. The drinks were a little more expensive than I was used to at our neighborhood dive bar, but not crazy. Plus, they had shisha on the menu. For those of you who don’t remember, I fell in love with the flavored tobacco served in hookahs while living in Saudi Arabia. (I know, smoking is bad. Don’t smoke kids.) It’s not something you find much outside the Middle East, and often it’s not very well made when it is. The Shisha here was a very reasonable price, so we ordered some double apple flavor and a couple of tri-colored frozen rum drinks and settled down to wait for the show in abject happiness.

Around 10pm, a young lady came out and started doing a little light jazz on a piano keyboard. Soon she was joined by a saxophonist and we were treated to a mellow improv performance. Next a tiny little Korean woman dressed in plain black slacks and a white blouse came on stage and channeled the soul of a pop diva. Just when we thought it couldn’t get any better, a big guy came out with a mike and started beatboxing. I’m not a huge fan of this activity unless it’s done well. This man was talented. Not only was he good, but he became the third “instrument” along with the piano and saxophone. If you’ve never heard anyone do a jazz/hip-hop improv with piano, sax and beatbox, I recommend you make that happen.

The performances went on, varying in style. The beatboxer and saxophonist did a duet of “Uptown Funk” that was truly funky, and he managed a solo dancetronic beat that got half the bar out of their seats and on the dance floor. I thought it was just an opener for the drag show, but once people were up and dancing, the DJ took over and began spinning tunes. It was fun for a while. We got up and danced, we ordered another round of drinks, we wandered out on to the porch to admire the view. As midnight came and went, however, I was starting to get anxious that we might have somehow wound up in the wrong place or that the show had been cancelled. On top of that, the fun dance music the DJ started with had morphed into some of my least favorite overly repetitive style of hip hop. Not the kind of stuff I enjoy listening to or dancing to. The glow was fading.

I managed to pull up the ad on my phone and ask the waiters when it was starting. We were informed 1am. Now, I am not a fainting flower, but I do wake up at 6:30 am on weekdays. I know that even if the ad had said the show started at 1am, I would have still gone because the chance to see a drag show here in Korea was too good to pass up. I’m also a little torn, because I might have missed the 10pm musical performances if I’d shown up any later. C’est la vie. We stuck it out anyway and shortly after 1am, we were rewarded for our efforts.

I have to admit, I didn’t even notice at first when the show started because there was no announcement, there was no break in the music and no one left the dance floor. I was trying to keep an eye on it, but the stage was totally blocked from my view by the dancers. My first clue was when I realized no one was actually dancing anymore, and everyone was watching the stage. I stood up on the chair to see over the crowd and spotted someone on the stage, but couldn’t really get any kind of view. Then I decided to take my chances and see if I could get closer.

I’m not a tall person. 5’4″ in shoes, maybe. The stage was barely elevated a few inches off the ground and it felt like nearly everyone in the bar (at least 50% gay men) was taller than me. I joined the shove of bodies and tried to work my way closer, holding my camera up in the air to see if I could get any shots. My first pictures were half the back of people’s heads, and all I could see was the face of the performer (and only then because she was taller than nearly everyone else in the bar).

A super drunk rude dude just started shoving his way up to the stage, leaving a wake of upset people behind him. He shoved me straight into the two Korean girls in front of me, who nodded in sympathy when I pointed at him as I apologized. The first number I caught was Charlotte Goodenough, who did a fun and silly combination of Lionel Ritchie’s Hello and Adele’s Hello (from the other side). She had a prop phone that would “ring” as she was singing, interrupting her performance with some line from yet another song, such as “It’s Brittney, bitch”. Drag queens are famously lip syncers, not singers. But it was a clever combination of songs that made this number so fun to watch.

As the show progressed, the two girls in front of me decided to head back to their table, and I was one step closer to the stage. Then, another expat friend of mine (tall, black man) came in behind me and helped clear the rest of the way. He could easily see over my head (tall) and I was so close to the catwalk part of the stage, I had to put my foot up on it to keep my balance.

After Charlotte’s opener, we got treated to another 4 numbers: 2 by Kuciia Diamant who sports a sort of industrial goth look and is sexy as hell, 1 by Cha Cha who came out in a super fringed dress and ‘sang’ Rollin on the River while shakin’ her fringe and hair all over the place, and another by Charlotte who treated us to a vintage army girl costume and a little burlesque strip tease.

The crowd was wild. Korean crowds are often subdued, offering polite applause. I was surprised by the number of Koreans at the club that night, and possibly even more surprised at how excited and loud everyone was in support. Expats and Koreans alike showered the Queens with cash tips and everyone screamed their cheers at the end of every number. There wasn’t an ounce of protest or negativity. I feel lucky to have had the chance to see something that, while common in my home country, is still rare and often misunderstood here. I’m glad these performers aren’t letting that slow them down. Please check out the links to their pages and see all the pictures from the show on my FB page.

The Back Room

So, remember that secret speakeasy we passed by on our way back from the beach? Well, we went back. Armed (or maybe footed?) with proper shoes, we knew this time to head straight for the secret phone and dial up. They asked how many we were and then a wooden panel in the wall slid aside and revealed a hidden staircase. The stairwell was decorated in homage to the prohibition speakeasies with shelves of empty liquor bottles and art representing the roaring 20s.

We were greeted at the top of the stairs by the handsome young man with the European accent and seated at an elegant little table. The bar itself, like so many, was dark, but each table had a tiny spotlight that created a concentric ring of light on the marble tabletop. The decor was classy and minimalist, the music was fun but not so loud as to inhibit conversation. The menu was full of craft cocktails and a scotch and cigar menu that made me want to cry. I’d just enjoyed some shisha the night before, so I decided scotch and cigars would have to wait until another night, but the cocktail menu was more than appealing.

Sometimes, people tell me they don’t like the taste of alcohol. I wonder if these people have only ever tasted low quality brands, because I can’t imagine not enjoying the smooth taste of good whisky. The best cocktails are designed not to conceal the taste of the alcohol, but to compliment it. Using fresh juices, herbs, spices and other high end infusions to create works of gastronomic art that play into the alcohol of choice. These are not cocktails to get drunk to, they are cocktails to savor.

My eye was drawn instantly to the Whisky Sour which included fresh lemon, sugar and egg whites. Sour mix is a sad abomination of citric acid and corn syrup that can only fool someone who has never tasted the real thing. Aside from the difference that fresh fruit juice can make, the egg white makes the whole beverage rich and a little creamy. I’ve had only a couple in my life, and I was never able to order a “regular” whisky sour again afterward.

When the drink arrived, it was everything I could have hoped for. The whisky was present, neither overwhelmed by the flavors, nor hidden by them. The lemon and sugar balance was spot on, not too sweet at all, and the egg white froth made the whole thing perfect. These were not by any means cheap drinks, but they were very reasonably priced for the quality.

We stepped out onto the balcony between rounds and were treated to a wonderful city view and the pleasant summer night air. For my second, I chose the TBR (the Back Room) Mule. A twist on the Moscow Mule, it was made with ginger syrup (not just ginger ale) and came with a sprig of fresh rosemary and a rough stick of cinnamon bark that was charred briefly to activate the oils. It was served iced in a copper mug and had a light smokey smell from the cinnamon that was deep and savory along with the copper tang and hint of rosemary.

The whole experience was steeped in class and elegance. It’s definitely not a party bar, but I hope to go back there several more times while I live in Busan to continue sampling the amazing menu. There was a selection of tapas as well that we didn’t even start to get into, and if their food is anything as well selected and prepared as the drinks, I know it won’t be a disappointment. Sadly, my camera does not do well in dim lighting, so I don’t have an album to share, but you can check out their website here.

I know these posts make my life in Busan seem a bit like a non-stop party, but I do work at school every day for 8 hours a day. Most of the time my weeks are full of little kid smiles, English lessons, and binge watching shows on Netflix. Five or six days a week, I live a very normal life. Maybe one day I’ll be able to write a bit about that, what it’s like at school or where I go for regular dinner. However, the reason I choose to live and work in another country is to see and experience as much as I can. I know that there are interesting things and cool places in the US, in Seattle, but for some reason it’s so much harder to motivate myself out of a routine to explore them at “home”. I find that’s true no matter where a person is from. My Korean co-workers are amazed at how much I do here in Busan because they’ve lived here all their lives and just don’t think about the city as an adventure any more than you probably think of your hometown as one. It just goes to show, adventure can be anywhere; we just have to take ourselves out of the daily grind in order to see it.

The Long Weekend: Part 3 – TULIPS! At Last.

May 20, 2016June 3, 2017 / Gallivantrix / 6 Comments

In this final installment of The Long Weekend, having survived the farmland walk and been rescued by a kind movie producer, our heroes finally meet their happy ending. See the stunning sunlit flowers and marvel at the moonlit fairyland display! Find out what happens when they arrive at the pension they actually reserved, and see what happens when they try to use conventional transportation! And please, don’t forget to visit the Facebook page where you can see all the photos that wouldn’t fit here. 🙂

Tiptoe Through the Tulips

Finally, we arrived at our goal, a mere four and a half hours after we’d left our hotel that morning! The ticket gate had the prices listed, including a foreigner’s discount. When I asked for two tickets (in Korean) she actually asked me if we were foreigners (also in Korean). I managed to keep in my giggles, seeing as how we’re about as Caucasian as it gets and replied that we were. It was fairly obvious from the parking lot and the tents surrounding the park that this festival was a big deal, and we began to get excited again as we passed through the gate. Our ride-givers had evaporated, but I had seen them buy tickets too, so I was glad that they would at least enjoy the festival after having driven us out to it.

Xi’an Botanical Gardens 2012

The last tulip festival I went to was at the botanical gardens in Xi’an, China in 2012 and it was really lovely. I have a small vault of pictures of the tulips, and of the other natural beauty of that park which upon review has made me question my recent camera choices. Phones are really convenient, but not as pretty for taking picures. Sigh. Anyway, under normal circumstances, I expect everything in China to be bigger (it’s like the Texas of Asia). The Jinhae cherry blossom festival had been amazing, but they didn’t have a cherry park that even came close to the one in Beijing. The splendor came from the fact that the whole town was basically converted for the festival. The tulip festival in China had been in a park that had taken us hours to walk around, but the one in Taean was bigger.

I don’t know if it was actually bigger in square meters, but it was definitely a better show. Not only were the paths lined with labeled examples of countless species of tulip, there were also beautiful scenes created by planting the flowers by color to paint a picture on the ground that we could view from a central platform on a hill. Not quite as intense as the Miracle Garden in Dubai, but a close second. There were structures all around us that were composed of wire, and I began to notice that they were covered in strings of lights that were not yet turned on. The website where I had found the festival said that it ran from 9am to 6pm, but I could not fathom why there would be so many strings of lights if they didn’t intend to have a night show.

Our original plan had been to depart before sunset (well, I thought it closed at 6pm after all) making any challenges to get to our (second) hotel slightly easier, but remembering the awesome difference at Jinhae from day to night, I began to lay the groundwork for our staying after dark. Throwing caution to the wind, I carelessly suggested that we didn’t need to worry about transportation yet, and that we would never forgive ourselves if we came all this way and then missed the night light show.

As we walked around the park, we got to see a wide range of flowers, mostly tulips but also plenty of foxgloves, pansies and some kind of very shiny nearly neon daisy-looking flower I’d never seen before. We saw the form of the giant Trojan horse, as well as many more displays of animals, giant plaster mushrooms, hearts, wings, fantasy islands in the lake, a tunnel of love prayers, and a giant Mona Lisa picked out in tulips. I can’t even possibly fit all the amazing pictures here, so please go see the rest on the Facebook album. The whole time the air was a mixture of the heady perfume of the flowers and the mouth-watering scents coming from the cooking tents.

We found an international food tent where we got some doner kebab (which is apparently the Turkish word for Shawarma). They had booths from several different countries, although the food was not always what I consider representative. Italy had some kind of deep fried “pizza” wrap. England was corn dogs and fried potatoes. Argentina had some serious meat kebabs (the kind on skewers), Japan had takoyaki, and I think America had coconuts. We found some ladies making fresh squeezed sugar cane juice at the Vietnam stand and in a fit of childhood nostalgia I got us a couple of these breezy decadent treats.

There were also several areas selling random stuff, not necessarily souvenirs, but just random stuff. The native Americans from Jinhae (or more likely a totally different group of native Americans, since they didn’t really look the same) were there performing. We stopped and listened for a while before I realized they were singing in Spanish, which just about made my head explode from culture clash. They were selling dream catchers, CDs of their performance, and other knickknacks that were a mishmash of native American jewelry styles. There were also some booths from Peru, India, and maybe Senegal with their vendors, clearly as foreign as we were, selling goods that must have seemed exotic to the local Koreans that made up 99.9% of the festival goers.

As we continued around, I found some shockingly orange tulips. The kind that make you go, “wow, does that color exist in nature?” and as we got closer, the answer turned out to be “no”. They were plastic. I couldn’t, at first, understand why there would be plastic tulips at a tulip festival until I began to notice the thin wires on the ground between them. Looking inside one, my suspicions were confirmed, there was a small light bulb in each one. They were LED tulips. From this point on, I began to notice more and more places that were hiding lights or LED displays until it became apparent that the whole park was set to light up after dark.

On one side of the festival, we came across a small menagerie with goats the kids could feed, an aviary with peacocks, geese and chickens, and a few adorable bunnies that reminded me of my own China-born furball of yore. Next to the animals, there was a tent filled with orchids and antiques. I’m not really sure why these two things went together, but we admired the antique armoirs and old-timey farming equipment alongside the beautiful hothouse orchids, including a room where the orchid pots had been artfully arranged to create a heart shape on one wall.

We’d arrived at the festival around 1:30 in the afternoon, and although we were taking our time, pausing for lots of photos, exploring every nook and cranny and taking regular snack breaks, we just barely felt that our daytime exploration was complete in time to have a short rest before sunset.

Walking in Fairyland

Some few of you have had the good fortune to visit Disneyland at night and you have an inkling of what we were about to witness. For the rest of you, I can only wish that one day you will have the magical experience that is walking through a giant beautiful park that is entirely lit up in colors.

We’d started walking at about 9-9:30 that morning and it was after 6pm when we decided to sit down for more than a quick break and wait for the sunset. It turned out to get chilly rather quickly when we weren’t moving or having the sun shine down on us, and soon we were grateful for the little cafes that popped up around the perimeter. When the first of the lights came on, we fetched ourselves some hot coffee and tried to plot the best path to see everything. Having explored the park by day, we had a pretty good idea where things were and how to get from one end to the other so our night walk didn’t take nearly as long, but it still took several hours.

When we started, the sky was still shades of blue, pink, orange and purple with high stratus clouds reflecting the sunset back at us. The dusky hues made the balance between the flowers bright colors and the lights themselves striking in a way that full dark could not achieve. We oohed and aaahed at the lighted structures set up all around us. We paused every few steps as we walked around the lake, admiring the LED islands and the glowing reflections in the still water.

We walked into a circus tent of light strings and felt as though we’d stepped inside a meteor shower. We watched the glowing swans and flamingos nuzzle their luminescent mates in the lake. We skipped under trees wrapped in lights like giant’s wands branching to the sky. The tunnel that during the day was filled with paper love prayers became a river of lights by night, enchanting us for far longer than the daylight beauty had. A train that had been nothing but a wire frame by day became a full engine with hearts forming a tunnel behind it by night. The boats glowed, the windmill shimmered in rainbows, and the Trojan horse lit the sky like a beacon.

The bridges we had crossed by day were ribbons of light over the water. One was a miniature suspension bridge that the Korean fathers took great delight in shaking and swaying to entertain or pretend frighten their wives and children. The wings we’d seen earlier were now glowing as though they were the very wings of angels and we dutifully took our turn to pose with them. A vast wire structure shaped like a folded paper crane shifted through a whole color spectrum. There was a lighted carriage like the golden pumpkin from Cinderella, pulled by a giant white bird in flight.

Every fresh step brought some new delight and I could not help but feel like I’d somehow slipped through a door in space and time to some Neverland or Fairy Country. The lighted flowers, the shapes of wire and light, the towering structures and the islands of light reflecting in the water, birds of light flying, indistinguishable from their reflections, the tulip Mona Lisa picked out in lights along the ground, and the viewing hill itself glowing as if lit from within from the LED tulips lining it’s sides.

Just as we managed to make our way to the last corner of the park and began to head back to the entrance, we spotted some strange lights off to one side, visible only partially through the trees. Neither one of us could remember having seen anything on that side of the park during the day. We felt sure that we’d explored every part possible, and yet in front of us, near the peacock’s cage, was a giant glowing arrow, pointing our way off to the right and into the woods.

As we followed the path, we found ourselves walking through a tunnel of lights that began to make me feel like I’d entered a psychedelic Alice style Wonderland. Islands and palm trees made of light stood out against the dark forest, pillars of light that swayed as we moved among them made me feel as though we were floating, or at very least, riding along the tracks of a semi-spooky ride in Fantasy Land. At the end of the path we encountered what had to be, at one point in the year, a giant Christmas tree, but it was not lit. Instead, we contended with a small menagerie of glowing and somewhat gruesome animals including a star turtle, some kind of death bunny (or maybe kangaroo), and a couple of who knows what’s trying to be a part of Kiss. Much like the daytime flowers, there are too many beautiful pictures to include here, so hop on over to Facebook to see them all.

The Only Taxi Ride

The final part of the mind-blowing spectacle having revealed itself to us, we noticed it was nearly 10pm and that most of the food stands had closed up and many of the other patrons had left. The parking lot had emptied quickly, and there was no line of taxis or buses waiting to take people away. This reliance on cars was another strange part of rural Korea. I’d become so impressed with and dependent on the excellent public transportation in Busan, it really hadn’t occurred to me that we could be stranded in Taean, especially when the Korean tourism branch of the government gave bus instructions on it’s website.

But, I was simply in too overwhelmingly good a mood for this to worry me any longer. I approached the security guard at the gate and asked her where we could find a taxi. She informed us that taxis had to be called, and with a little more help from Google, I managed to ask if she could call one for us and she agreed. It took about 3 minutes for a taxi to arrive, which was astounding considering how long it had taken us to find the place that afternoon. The driver dutifully plugged the address of our pension into his map app and drove us there. About halfway through the drive, I wondered why we weren’t having another awkward not quite bilingual conversation before I realized it was because we were paying him to drive. Blissful ease. It cost about 15$ and was worth every cent.

Don’t get me wrong, I love meeting new people, and the Koreans we’d met were all exceptionally kind folks. Plus, we’d been chauffeured around free of charge since we’d arrived the previous afternoon, but it’s HARD to have a conversation when neither of you really speaks the other’s language, and at this point in the night it was a relief just to sit back and relax.

Mong and Mong

When we arrived at the pension that I’d booked (for the first time), we realized it too was pretty far off the beaten track. I couldn’t see anything that looked like an office or front desk area, so I called the pension lady on the phone number provided in my booking confirmation email. I used my very limited Korean to ask if this was the correct pension, and to say we were the foreigners and that we were here. They weren’t artful sentences, but they got the point across and she came out to greet us quite quickly.

She expressed massive surprise that I could speak Korean (because we’d been using a translator the day before, aka Mr. Awesome) and I tried to reasure her that we had now exhausted all my Korean. She showed us to our room, which was totally adorable and had a lovely comfy bed. It looked quite like the pictures from the website, which was a relief, and there was even a cute little balcony that was all set up to barbecue on.

Another thing I’ve learned about pensions this weekend, aside from their apartment-like qualities, they are not particularly aimed at car-less people. The nearest place to buy food was not a comfortable walking distance, and it was clear that people here were having great family meals and not bringing in restaurant food. Had we known, we could have done some shopping in Daejeon, or even in Taean before we left the main bus terminal, but I’m so used to holiday resort areas being flooded with restaurants it just didn’t occur to me that we were basically renting a fancy cabin in the woods.

However, pension lady and Mr. Awesome had talked at some length about meals being provided if we needed them, which we did. And the duplex host (or more accurately his wife) had fed us the day before. So I asked rather timidly about the possibility of dinner as she led us out to her car where she’d been storing our luggage during the day. I felt bad because it was really a great deal later than we’d meant to be coming back, but the food stands at the park had all closed and I’d been unable to find any restaurants online that I could direct the taxi driver to. And we’d been walking all day on some ramen, kebabs, and coffee. We were hungry.

She seemed a little taken aback, but recovered quickly and asked if we’d like to come to her home where they were making samgyeopsal. Her small apartment was filled with her friends and two tiny dogs. They’d obviously been enjoying a relaxing dinner and some drinks just before we’d arrived, but they cleaned up the space and set the grill back out to cook a few more pork strips for us. The kimchi she served was cut on the spot from a whole head of cabbage stored in a glass container. I wondered if it was homemade and not store-bought. She filled up a bowl and I thought, there’s no way the two of us can eat that much kimchi, but we did. I tried really hard to use the lettuce wraps to eat the pork, but the lettuce was so huge and crunchy, I couldn’t take bites without it spilling out one end and I finally gave up and just ate the pork with rice and kimchi.

Again, there was no end to the surprise that we liked Korean food, and I’m optimistic that my messy lettuce wrap eating was just put down to ‘cute foreigner trying her best’. I didn’t even realize how hungry I was until we started eating, but a full bowl of rice, half a bowl of kimchi and a couple rashers of samgyeopsal later, I finally felt like a human again. Somewhere in the middle of eating, our hosts seemed to notice that we were a wee bit ravenous, and asked if we had not eaten lunch. This was mostly accurate, we’d only had a snack by Korean standards and they seemed more comfortable once they realized why we were so famished.

Part of the reason that we’d had so many linguistically challenging conversations along with our meals and rides is the deep cultural idea of company in Korea. In America (and I suspect in Canada too) if we were staying in a B&B or something like a pension, our hosts might feed us, but would not be likely to eat with us. In Korea, eating is very communal. At school, I can’t ever eat as fast as my co-teachers and I have to reassure them it’s ok to leave before me if they have stuff to do. If I forget to do this, they will just stay, making conversation with me so I don’t feel like I have to eat alone. So our hosts at the duplex and the Mong and Mong pension wanted to stay with us while we ate and tried their best to stimulate conversation.

I think in general, a lot of people I met were slightly disappointed my Korean wasn’t better until we got to the part of the conversation where they asked me how long I’d been in Korea and I said 2 months. I mean, I feel guilty I don’t do a lesson or review every day, but this trip sure made me aware of how much Korean I’ve really picked up in such a short time while not being enrolled in a class of any sort. And of course, how much more I really need to learn, like all the question words, a few more direction words, and the second set of numbers (cause you know, a language needs two ways to count).

After dinner, we discovered our sunburns in the bathroom mirror and added hats and sunscreen to the list of things to bring on our next rural Korean adventure. The bed was quite comfortable with an excess of pillows (a hallmark of luxury in my book), and our array of ersatz neighbors kept the noise down until around 9am, which is really late in my experiences here. As we were getting dressed and packed, our hostess came around with some ramen and kimchi which she cooked for us in the next room’s kitchen then served us and sat down to eat with us again. During our fumbled breakfast conversation, she indicated that we should return and spend some time with her during the summer vacations, so at least I know she didn’t totally resent our presence?

Home Again, Home Again Jigitty Jog

After breakfast, we packed up our things and tidied up after ourselves then headed outside where our hostess was prepared to drive us back to the bus station. I’m still of two minds on how to leave a review of this place. Double booking our room was a major customer service no-no, but she picked us up from the bus station, would have driven us back from the tulip festival if I’d called her, fed us dinner and breakfast, and drove us back to the bus station. All of which are well above and beyond the customer service I would have expected from a place I booked online. Calling us a taxi or helping us order some takeout would be about what I would have been satisfied with if I found myself too far from the bus stops or restaurants to deal with it on my own. So, yeah, she messed up pretty bad, but then did a tidy bundle of cool things too. I guess I’d recommend the place, with the caveat that you get someone who speaks Korean to call as soon as you make the reservation and double confirm it.

Once we reached the bus terminal, it was a straight shot home reversing our path to get there. We took the very lux bus back to Daejeon where we spent about 15 agonizing minutes outside trying to figure out how someplace so close could be so insanely hot and humid while the coast was still cool and pleasant light jacket weather. I am never moving inland. We’re going to Seoul in June and I’m already trying to figure out how to pack the lightest weight clothes I own for that nonsense. Then we stopped for lunch in the train station and found out everyone was out of ice cream. Seriously, that place was super hot. It’s early May and I can’t even begin to imagine what the inland cities will be like in the real summer. The final leg of our journey was a superfast train that brought us right back to cool coastal Busan and the familiar sights of my newest nest. There’s nothing quite like a crazy rural lost and found adventure to make your new digs feel like home sweet home.

I’m starting to feel like Korea is one giant festival season. I know it’s spring, and basically every new growth plant flower festival is happening, but the summer is full of summer flower festivals and fireworks festivals and beach festivals, and the fall has floating lantern festivals and harvest festivals, and I’m sure the winter has things I’ve yet to learn about too. Even on the odd weekend I didn’t expect to go to a festival, they’ve just turned up where I happened to be.

I’d be more apologetic that it takes me so long between posts, or that they are floods of events when they do happen, but the reality is there’s just too much! Talk about first world problems, oh no! Too many festivals! But seriously, any culture that takes their fun this, well, seriously has got to be doing something right. So here’s to you Korea, 건배! May we never grow weary of your charms.

The Long Weekend: Part 2 – Where Nothing Goes According to Plan

May 16, 2016June 3, 2017 / Gallivantrix / 2 Comments

When last we left our intrepid heroes, they were being driven into the rural fog laden farmlands of Taean by the manager of the pension who had given away their previously booked room! In this installment of The Long Weekend, find out where they end up staying for the night, how the evening progresses with a new host, and what befalls our heroes the next morning!

The Unexpected Stay

When we arrived, after twisting turning gravel and dirt roads, at what looks like a cute little farm house kind of place with a man working on his garden in the front yard, we were told this is where we would stay for the night. He opened up what turned out to be one half of a duplex, and started showing us around the spartan space. There were a table and chairs in the kitchen, and a TV on one wall, though no sofa. The bathroom looked clean and roomy, but the bedroom was completely bare.

I had been holding myself together reasonably well up until this point. I don’t like it when my plans fall apart in an oh-crap-what-now way, and I’m not used to riding in random peoples cars. Fortunately, I had my companion who also happens to be a dude, making me feel more safe than I might otherwise as a woman alone. It was still unduly stressful, and the bare bedroom was the absolute last straw. Did this woman who gave away my beautiful room (it was so pretty) really expect me to sleep on the floor in this shack in the woods!!?! ARGH!!!

Be proud of me. I didn’t yell at anyone. Not once. When confronted with the bare bedroom, I allowed my affable smile to turn dark and my brows to furrow in displeasure. We no longer had a translator, so I was still trying to do my best to explain in simple words and signs what the problem was, and finally they understood I wanted a mattress. She explained that there was no mattress here, but that we would have one tomorrow at her pension. Yes, really, again, (in my head only, or possibly under my breath) this is the reason I booked your room ahead of time, so I would HAVE A BED. The lady and the host opened the closet and began to lay thick quilts on the floor in layers to create a softer sleeping surface for us.

We were in the middle of nowhere, with nowhere to stay and no way to get anywhere that wasn’t dependent on these people in front of us. This was not the time to appear to be the kind of people they didn’t want around. One of my expat/teacher skills is talking in big words to another native English speaker/adult while using a calm and pleasant tone of voice so that no one knows what we’re talking about. I quickly talked over my feelings with my companion, expressing as much of my frustration and disappointment as possible without letting it out in my voice, then taking some time to consider the fact that we’d been rushed from one decision to another, first by Mr. Awesome (who rushed us to buy bus tickets we never used, and rushed us to get into the car with the pension lady without a complete understanding of where we were going or what to expect) and then by pension lady (who rushed us into the car and then into this house, and was trying to rush us into meals and car rides the next day too).

I knew in my heart and my head that all of these people, Mr. Awesome, pension lady, and duplex host guy, all wanted to help us out, but it was still an overwhelming experience. Finally, I came around to accepting our situation, hard floor bed and all, and I agreed to the arrangement. Pension lady took off, saying she’d see us tomorrow, and duplex host guy said something about dinner that I didn’t entirely understand. It seemed to be something along the lines of dinner in his house with his family, and I figured someone would tell us more when we needed to know.

Accidental Dinner Guests

As we stood on the front porch drinking some of the wine my companion had brought along, our host came out to fetch us. When we walked into their side of the duplex, I was rather taken aback by the fact that he and his wife apparently lived in a single room while leaving the two room side of the duplex empty to rent out. Their bed, which was also a thin futon/thick quilt on the floor, was just next to the small dining table, and their laundry rack was set up along side one wall with clothes hanging from it. Korea is a mind blowing combination of developed and developing that I’ve just never seen anywhere else. I’ve probably mentioned before that during the war, close to 90% of the buildings in Korea were destroyed and now they have cities like Seoul and Busan which are full of skyscrapers and ultra modern services. I got so used to the modern life in Busan that it just didn’t occur to me how provincial life here could be in a smaller city.

Our host asked us, via Google Translate, if we liked Korean food. Without exception, every Korean I’ve met has been surprised that we white folks not only can eat their food, but actually enjoy it. We were treated to a home cooked meal of some kind of fish that was cooked whole, some spicy gelatin dish, kimchee soup, other green based banchan and some seaweed wraps. Our host also broke open a bottle or two of soju to share with us, and although they spoke about as much English as I do Korean (maybe even less), we used what we knew combined with hand gestures and our phone’s translating apps to have a reasonable conversation over dinner.

After dinner, we sat out on the porch a little longer, enjoying the country sounds of the frogs croaking and seeing the fireworks from the revelers down on the beach. Despite the comedy of errors that had led us there, as I sat there full of good food and wine, taking in the night, I finally started feeling better.

Diverse Alarms

We went inside as it began to get chilly and started to wind down for sleeping, laying in our floor-bed, reflecting on the day and our plans for the morning, and telling silly stories about our pasts. Finally I was ready to put out the lights and go to bed, but my companion decided to step out to the porch for one last cigarette. From the bathroom, I could hear the repeated whir of the electric lock and the thunk thunk of the door not opening to repeated pulling and pushing. I emerged from my pre-sleep ablutions to see if I could decipher the mystery of the door. I was successful in my attempts to open it, but this was quite unfortunate as the alarm promptly went off. Our host had entered some kind of code when he opened the door for us upon our arrival, but didn’t share the code with us, and we had simply not closed the outer door until after diner. I had no idea it would go off when opened from the inside nor how to silence it.

I sent my companion to knock on our hosts’ door and ask for help, as there was no way we could possibly sleep through the racket. Honestly, I’m surprised they didn’t come running out when it went off, it was earsplittingly loud, sounding with at least two tones on two different rhythms. The jangling noise sadly ripped away all of my nice peaceful post dinner feelings and did basically exactly what alarms are supposed to do, which is to force you into a state of fight or flight in preparation to deal with whatever emergency is about to happen. I sat on the not-bed, listening to music in my headphones (which did not do anything to drown the alarm) and playing games to distract myself while waiting for the hosts to enter the code. I’m sure nearly everyone has experienced that neighbor’s car alarm at 12am, that thing where you tell yourself that surely they’ll go out and stop it any second now, as time is distorted while your nerves slowly erode and you’re sure it’s been going for half an hour but the clock says it’s only been five minutes, and you’re bartering with yourself about how many more minutes you’ll let it go on before you get up and go bang on the neighbor’s door to make them fix it… or possibly before you go to the car and disconnect the battery. So, yeah, all of that, except it was our door.

My companion finally returned with the code, but no combination of buttons or opening/closing the door would convince it to silence and he had to return to our host’s side of the building again. I fled back into the bedroom, and when the noise finally, blissfully silenced, I called out a plaintive apology in Korean to our hostess who had had to come out of her own bed to deal with the issue aparently, I learned later, by removing the batteries.

I’m not sure if it’s the heated Korean floors or the total physical and mental/emotional exhaustion that I endured that day, but the floor-bed was much easier to sleep in than I had feared, and soon I was blissfully unconcious in preparation for our next day’s adventure.

Can You Get There From Here?

In the morning, our two main concerns were what to do with our luggage and how to get to the tulip festival. I’d done my best to explain (using the internet) that we planned to go to this festival Saturday, that it was the whole reason we were in this place. I didn’t want our hosts being confused that we would sit around doing nothing until they decided to give us a ride somewhere else. I’d told Mr. Awesome, pension lady and the duplex host guy at least twice a piece. Maybe I sounded like a nag, but I did NOT want to miss out on the whole reason we were there.

Part of the plan of staying in the same hotel (pension) for two nights is the ability to leave your luggage in the room and go out to adventure for the day. Since our plan had been massively interrupted by the need to spend our two nights in two separate places, we now had no idea what to do with the bags for the day. It was my plan to ask our host if we could just leave them with him and then come pick them up on our way to the other pension later in the evening. This seemed reasonable because pension lady had told us several times that her house was nearby, and the tulip festival was quite far (15km or so) from both of them.

It took me a little while to get my point across through the screen window, but once I was sure they understood me, they said no. There was some further attempt at communication, but it was well beyond our bilingual abilities or the translating app (which is only good for words or short phrases), so we tried to call some better bilingual people we knew. My companion tried to call Mr. Awesome, but didn’t get through, so I called my co-teacher, apologizing profusely for disturbing her holiday and trying to explain the situation as quickly as possible. There was some extensive back and forth, and at some point my companion did get in touch with Mr. Awesome, but as his English was not as good as my co-teacher’s, I think it caused more confusion than it fixed. I had to reassure the host (via translator) that we didn’t need him to get us to the festival, we could take the bus and follow the directions on the map app. There was a moment where he almost called us a taxi (which in retrospect would have been much easier and not that expensive, but I like using local buses, you see more), and we finally concluded all the arrangements.

He agreed to take our bags over to the other pension for us later in the day while we were out, so that we would not need to come back to his place at all. Bearing in mind this long suffering man and his wife had not been hired by us in any capacity, but rather drafted into service by the person whom we had contracted for lodging with, my companion wanted to gift him with the last bottle of wine he’d brought with him. For the first time since arriving in this country, I actually had to go through the three times offering routine I’ve only ever read about in Korean (and for that matter Japanese) gift giving rituals. I held the bottle with both hands because I really wanted to try to get it right, and it wasn’t until the third time I offered it that he finally accepted.

As we set about wrangling our bags into as compact and easy to carry packages as possible, he began to fret again about how we would get to the tulip festival. I showed him the map, and the instructions for the bus (which were in Korean, btw) and he insisted on giving us a ride to the bus stop. Which since he did not know the whereabouts of, he asked his wife who told him, and we were off. In entirely the wrong direction.

Our walk from the pension to the bus stop would have been about 15-20 min and the weather that day was beautiful, and we didn’t have to carry our luggage, so I didn’t care too much, but our very helpful host drove us in the complete opposite direction of our target bus stop and dropped us off in the middle of a fish festival on the coastline.

The Long Walk

At this point, I passed through frustration into amusement, because there’s only so many things that can go non-tragically wrong before you just have to give in and start laughing. I looked up our location on the map app and discovered it WAS a bus stop, but there wouldn’t be a bus for at least 2 hours. Deciding against waiting at the fish festival (remember, we were just at one of those two days ago), we darted into a nearby cafe for some caffeine and decided to try our luck trekking to the correct bus stop anyway.

Now, map software is only as good as the people on the ground finding roads. You may have noticed that dirt roads, driveways, alleys and parking lots tend not to be on your map? Well, Korea is full of tiny roads. In the big cities, most of these tiny roads are actually on the Korean map app, Naver Maps (tho not Google) because they are stuffed end to end with tiny businesses, but Taean is a much more provincial place and these were dirt and gravel “roads” that were lined with homes and farms. Our map app simply had no notion that these existed and directed us in a straight line from point A to point B. It’s not that hard to keep going the right direction via existing roads, but there’s no way to tell if there’s a faster way, or how long it will take.

We walked through the neighborhood, through some farmland, through a national park and campground and eventually stopped for breakfast at a convenience store. My companion du jour is Canadian and share’s my childhood memories of huge vast swaths of national forest. Korea is a tiny little peninsula and so the campgrounds were little postage stamp sections of forest where tents were practically back to back between the trees. On one side of a road would be tents and trees abutting the ocean, while on the other was a large church and tourist information center looking as suburban as anything.

Convenience stores in Korea not only sell cup noodles, but supply hot water, disposable chopsticks and a place to munch your snack/meal. So we bought some ramen and sat down at the picnic table out front to have breakfast. I was starting to feel like we were the only white people in town… maybe ever, the way people stared at us. In Busan, I can go my whole work week without seeing another foreigner, but the Koreans here in Busan are more urbane about it, either simply not caring or being much more subtle with their staring. On top of that, there’s some serious stereotypes about how white folks eat, travel, go on vacation and sitting out front of this convenience store eating ramen broke them all.

I tried to ask directions a few more times on the second half of our walk, but the idea of a bus stop seemed to baffle everyone I talked to, which was more than a little worrying. About an hour and half after we’d set off from the “wrong” bus stop, we finally sighted the one we’d been aiming for! The schedule indicated we had another hour to wait anyway, so we settled into the shaded seating area across from the panoramic farmland and reflected on our morning.

Accidental Hitchhiking

The cars that drove by often slowed down to gawp at us through their windows, my companion managed to use his newly learned Korean to find the bathroom at the gas station down the road, and I chatted with some friends on Facebook about the general absurdity of the last 24 hours. When our bus time finally arrived, we stood near the road so we would be sure to see it and to be seen. All the buses up to that point had been clearly charted tour buses, so we were very excited to see a bus with a number on the front, like a city bus, come our way. But then the driver waved a sort of dismissive “no” at us and kept going! I’m not sure if he was supposed to stop or not, but no other buses were forthcoming and I began to consider the reality that we’d have to walk up to the gas station and see if we could convince the clerk there to call us a taxi after all.

As we were debating our options, a car pulled into the dirt lot near the bus stop and the people within proceeded to stare at us quite intently. Although several drivers had slowed down to stare before, no one had actually stopped and it was making me a little uncomfortable. I tried to avoid eye contact and focus on solving the mystery of the missing bus. This is solid proof of my cultural biases. As an American and a woman (often travelling alone) I just do not engage with people who are in a position to do things like kidnap me, force me into a car in the middle of nowhere and lock me in a rape cabin. It’s not something I spend a great deal of time thinking about, it’s just a habit to avoid eye-contact, not go near the strange car, and get to a public place if they don’t push off. On reflection, it’s rather sad that this is my default setting and it makes me despair just slightly for the culture that taught me this as a survival technique. Oh, America.

Finally, the driver rolled down his window and called out to us. He asked us where we were tyring to go. I could see that he had a woman with him in the passenger’s seat, but old habits die hard and I still only walked about half the distance to the car before answering that we were waiting for the bus to take us to the Tulip Festival. He briefly discussed something with the woman and then gestured for us to get in the car.

I’ve never ever hitchhiked before.

I’ve taken rides from people I was paying (taxis, Uber, hotel drivers to and from airports and train stations, ride share, and someone’s cousin who needed 5$), and I’ve taken rides for free from friends of friends (people I don’t know, but the person I’m with does). But I’ve never flat up taken a ride for free from a complete stranger. Would I have done it if I had been alone? I don’t know. There’s a good chance I would have taken a taxi much earlier in the day if I’d been alone. Partially for safety and partially because it’s more boring to walk aimlessly for hours without someone to talk to. But I was with my Canadian companion, who happens to be a rather tall, broad-shouldered totally gay male and is just fine with pretending to be my BF as needed to keep up appearances. Go Beards!

Thus it was that we decided to accept the ride as just one more aspect of our crazy weekend. On the way, we encountered some traffic, so the ride was a bit longer than anticipated. Our driver’s girlfriend spoke better English, but was clearly also much more reticent to do so, and the conversation involved a lot of re-translations. He told us he was a Korean movie producer and we tried to talk a little about our favorite Korean movies, but since I’ve only watched them randomly on Netflix, I couldn’t remember any of the titles in Korean at all. We had the normal foreigner conversations of where are you from, what do you do here, etc. But this soon exhausted our conversational abilities and they set about seriously trying to find the festival.

I showed them the route on the Korean map app I had, but they clearly didn’t know how to read it. Not the Korean, obviously, but the satellite map with GPS part. Instead, they asked every traffic cop we passed how to get there, and eventually started asking people walking on the side of the smaller roads. As a result, we missed two turn offs that would have taken us there, and went all the way around the park before approaching the parking lot from the opposite side. I sort of understood why people in the ME had a hard time with map apps, but Korea is supposed to be one of the most technologically advanced countries in the world, and unlike our hosts from the night before who might have simply been too old or rural to learn, this guy was a movie producer and probably not much older than me. They both had new smart phones and used translating apps, so as far as I can tell it’s more about maps than technology, but it was still a bemusing barrier.

Having survived the night, our intrepid heroes relied upon the kindness of strangers to get them to their final destination. Stay tuned for the final installment of The Long Weekend: Part 3 – TULIPS! at last…

The Long Weekend: Part 1 – Buses, Trains & Anchovies

May 14, 2016June 3, 2017 / Gallivantrix / 2 Comments

Namhae Anchovy Festival (May 5)

This week in May turned out to be a four day long holiday weekend for us. Thursday was Children’s Day, which meant of course no school, but most businesses had it as a holiday as well. For about a week beforehand, there was much debate about what would be done with the following Friday. For a while it looked like we would have to come into work after all, but the Korean government stepped in at the last moment and declared a temporary federal holiday so that we could have a 4 day weekend in order to “boost the economy”. While we were debating what to do with our extended holiday that wouldn’t cost an arm and a leg while all of Korea and Japan were simultaneously enjoying a long holiday, I saw an advert on one of the local FB pages I follow to stay informed.

The Korean government has stepped up their tourism game recently after some flack from the media about Korea’s low tourism income. So in addition to all the English language websites where I find my festival info, and all the English (and Chinese and Japanese) in the bus and train stations, there’s also a budget for treating foreigners to free stuff. In this case, it was a free trip to Namhae Island to celebrate the Anchovy Festival.

I have never especially thought of anchovies as a thing to celebrate, but I like islands and free trips, so we signed up. Namhae is a good distance from Busan, and it was over 4 hours later when we finally arrived at 2pm. The festival grounds were right on the water and provided a wealth of vendors, activities and food. We watched kids play in giant bubbles floating in a pool. Two of our own retinue eventually tried it out, and while they looked like fun devices, they weren’t available on the ocean. We watched young and old try to catch fish by hand in a similar large but shallow pool. They were impressively large fish too, we’re talking a good meal, not a pet goldie. t At one end of the festival, there was a large stage set up a with an array of entertainment and the focus of the festival was, of course, the food!

After our 4+ hour bus ride, we were all quite hungry and so we explored the food booths to see what local anchovy dishes were around. Finally we settled on a mix of grilled anchovies, deep fried battered anchovies and an anchovy pajeon (a kind of savory pancake). Plus, I saw they were serving the dong dong ju that I’d tried in Jinhae so I ordered a bowl for the table so everyone could taste it. We also found a booth selling makoli (막걸리) cocktails, mixing the makoli with grenadine, Hennessy and ginger ale and serving it up at 1$ a cup.

There was a brief display of some kind of water board device (not the torturing one) that basically allowed it’s wearer to fly on jets of water. It looked like nothing so much as a classic Aquaman move and the audience was suitably impressed. There was some jazz improv saxophone music, and a dance performance that seemed to be an imitation of some kind of ancient ritual. Folks were dressed in traditional clothes and made offerings to an actor in a straw beast costume until the offerings were accepted. As they danced around the made up village square, a man in an old fashioned clown costume capered around the performers and audience making ribald jokes and gestures. He encouraged the male audience members to stuff money in the bra and panties he had on over a white shirt and pants set, but under his clown costume, and then he got the ladies attention and made an… amusing shape at his crotch with his wrinkled hands. It was nice to see the Koreans around me laughing along and not being too embarrassed. We took our time walking up and down the seaside, checking out the wares and goodies, listening to the music and generally being relaxed.

Sometime around sunset, the K-pop performance started, and I went in search of the oysters I’d seen advertised earlier in the day. Although I didn’t realize it, the oysters were part of a set meal, so when I tried to order some a la carte (the way oysters in shell are typically served in the US), the servers weren’t quite sure what to do with us. One of them shelled a few so we could taste them, then wandered off before we could pay. It took quite a lot of effort to get someone to come back, and even more to explain that we just wanted to pay for the ones that we had eaten, not to order the set meal. Fortunately, we had Jinju with us that day, so she was able to explain (in Korean) much better than I. Even then the concept itself was so foreign that it took her several tries. Finally, they said we could pay 10$, and they started shelling more oysters. I thought they’d decided that we hadn’t quite eaten 10$ worth the first time and would make up the difference, but they just didn’t stop shelling! Finally, the lady explained she wouldn’t charge us for the rest because she wanted us (the foreigners) to have a good experience! Lovely! They were some of the best steamed oysters I’ve ever had. Jinju had never tried an oyster before and we finally convinced her. She was squeamish at first, because oysters are not the most attractive food especially right out of the shell, but she expressed surprised delight when she finally worked up the nerve.

We made our way up to the stage to see some of the K-pop performance. The musicians did more than sing and dance and I got the impression they were playing their instruments, not just going through the motions. Since it was children’s day, there was a whole stage area near the front just for the kids to dance in and they were enjoying the heck out of it.

After the K-pop concert, there was a light show scheduled on the water, but since it was running a little late, the Namhae government provided makoli coctails and a light snack to anyone who wished it, then we all sat down on the steps to watch the light show over the water.

There was a jetty (or maybe a quay, it was dark) that had some large LED pillars set up on it and the show primarily consisted of a variety of colors and patterns on these pillars, their reflections dancing in the sea, set to some music and interspersed with a few fireworks. It was certainly pretty, and the weather was nice, so we weren’t upset by the lack of grand spectacle or anything, but it wasn’t a jaw dropper… until… Aquaman came back. That’s right, the guy with the strap on levitating water jets now dressed in a color shifting LED suit came out onto the water to do more tricks and dancing in mid-air set against the backdrop of the lighted pillars and fireworks. The audience was certainly thrilled, but you have to know what you’re looking for in a Korean audience. They aren’t really big on screaming cheering support, but the performers and coordinators clearly knew they were into it, because he did so many encores that the jet ski powering his flight suit ran out of gas half-way through the third “last song”.

Enjoy the video and check out the rest of the photos here.

Full of great food and great sights, we loaded back on to the bus to return home. I don’t know if Namhae is a place I would have ever thought to go on my own simply because of the distance from Busan and the remote/rural nature of the island, but I’m glad I had the opportunity to go. I feel like I got a good taste of local Korean culture, the kind of thing they do for themselves and not for tourists or urban sophisticates. I’ll definitely keep my eye on this group (#enjoykorea) to see what other trips they have to offer us in the future. I got home close to midnight, and although I’d originally planned to leave for Taean at 9am the next morning, I gave myself permission to skip the alarm clock and have a late start if my body needed it. Little did I know what the next day would have in store…

Taean Journey & Tulip Festival (May 6-8)

The promise of the long weekend lured me into intercity travel. Although I would have loved to go to Japan, it turns out the two countries share so many holidays that it would have been crazy crowded and expensive, so I found this cool looking Tulip festival instead. As part of the ongoing effort to increase foreign tourism here, the government runs a nifty website that tells you when and where various festivals around Korea are. I simply plugged our weekend into the search parameters and bam! – full list of all the haps. Even the lantern festival we’d attended locally the previous weekend was on the list! My companion and I decided we really wanted a nature weekend, so I looked at the events that centered around nature, and by coolness rating and distance, we narrowed it down to Taean. Taean is on the west coast of the Korean peninsula and much closer to Seoul than Busan. Google seemed to think it would take us about 5-6 hours to get there, so I booked us a room for 2 nights, figuring we could leisurely travel Friday and Sunday, leaving all of Saturday to explore.

To Taean and On

Taean is also covered in beachfront national parks, so even though I couldn’t find anything else attraction-wise in the town, I reasoned if the Tulips weren’t all that, we could go hang out on a beautiful beach or walk through a pretty forest.

I booked our room on booking.com, because I’ve used it a million times and never had an issue. I don’t know if our issue stemmed from Korean culture not being 100% up on online booking, or if it was just that this place was tiny and not well organized, but we’ll get to that later.

Jinhae was my first attempt to travel outside Busan on my own, and Taean was my first overnight outside Busan since arriving in Korea. I’d had some experiences with the intercity buses, and I didn’t really think the trains could be that different, so with our itinerary in mind, we marched down to the Busan train station Friday morning to buy our tickets. Unfortunately (I knew from previous research) we couldn’t take one train all the way to Taean, so we got tickets to go to Daejeon, which was a little more than half-way there. Google isn’t great for intracity directions, but it did let us know a good route to travel between cities.

I heard rumors before I moved here that the inland cities and coastal cities had massively different weather, but Oh Em Gee. As soon as we stepped off the train in Daejeon, we were sticky with sweat and humidity. We moaned and groaned all the way to the intercity bus terminal where we got our next tickets to Taean and promptly went on a quest for something frosty. I found an apple-kiwi-kale smoothie, which made me feel almost at home. I think I could have liked Daejeon a lot if it weren’t for the fact that they already had our August weather in early May.

The bus to Taean was really lux. There were huge comfy seats that reclined and had foot rests, but we didn’t sleep. I decided that the long hours of travel were the perfect time to force my companion to learn the Korean alphabet. I say “force”, but he’s been here 5 months and can’t read the signs, he knew it was time too. To give you an idea of how easy this thing is, I started teaching him letters in Daejeon at the terminal, and we were done with everything except for the “y” sound by the time we got to Taean, with plenty of time for practice and random road trip conversations. So if you’re coming to Korea, you can easily learn the alphabet on the plane ride over and give yourself an easier time of it here.

When we got off the bus in Taean, my directions to the hotel advised me to take a rural bus so many stops over to the something-something stop, then walk for a little while. OK! Rural bus! Adventure! GPS! Can’t find it on the bus board! (which, btw is only in Hangeul, there are no English letters anywhere in this bus station, even the bathroom is only in Hangeul without pictograms– why we should all be able to read the alphabet). Korean people are insanely helpful. I’ve been told that basically all of them want to help us foreigners, but are just scared to speak English. I started showing the directions to people and asking where it is (in my bad Korean), and it seems like it does in fact leave from this bus station, but I still had no idea where or how to get a ticket. Finally, as we were about to give up and hail a taxi (I have the hotel’s address in Korean in the confirmation email) a nice man with good English showed up and asked where we were trying to go.

I showed him the email and he said we could buy bus tickets here; he’d even show us how. He went into the bus station and asked a few people which bus to take to get to where we wanted to go, then bought our bus tickets for us. I tried to pay, and he just would not let me. He walked us outside and showed us where the bus would come. While we were waiting, for reasons I’m still not quite sure of, he asked me to pull up the email again so he could see the phone number of the hotel and give them a call. And just as well he did.

The Case of the Missing Room

When he got ahold of someone there, he was told that there are no rooms. I thought maybe there was some confusion, they thought we wanted a room, but everything was booked. So I told him, ‘it’s ok, we have a reservation’. ‘No, no,’ he says, ‘It’s full, there are no rooms.’ ‘But we booked the room online’, I say again. Apparently the hotelier gave away our room. Even though we had booked it online and received a confirmation. Grr.

So there we were at this rural bus station in a tiny town that we have traveled all day to get to, with no hotel room. The very nice man had more Korean conversation on the phone, then told us that the lady at the hotel would come and pick us up then take us to another hotel for the night.

*blink* Ok.

I should pause here. I keep using the word “hotel”, but that is really misleading. In Korea, there is a thing called a “pension” which has nothing to do with your retirement fund at all. A pension is a house or apartment that a group of people will rent for a night or a weekend to have a party in, or stay in when they travel. It’s a little like AirBnB, in that, you’re staying in a full on home with amenities, rather than just a room with a toilet. So, we didn’t book a hotel per se, we booked a pension.

We waited some more. The nice guy bought us coffee (again, I really tried to pay). He told us that he was an engineer and usually worked in Mongolia. He wasn’t afraid to use his English because all the people he works with have to communicate in English, even though none of them are from English speaking countries (Russia, China, Mongolia, Japan, Korea and the Philippines), it’s the only language they all have in common. He also said his mother and sister were living in Nevada, and that he was working to join them, but that the US immigration paperwork was taking several years.

Soon the lady from the pension we booked showed up and more arguing ensued between her and our newfound defender/translator. I don’t know the full extent of what was said, but I know that she claimed she tried to notify me of the cancellation (which she did not do via the booking.com site). Since cell phone telemarketing is legal here, I don’t answer my phone unless I know the number. Even if I had answered, she didn’t speak English and my Korean is lousy so I probably wouldn’t have understood and ended up hanging up on her. She didn’t leave any messages or try to email me, which I could have at least asked a Korean friend to help translate. This minimal effort on her part meant I had little sympathy for her lack of business acumen in this department, and pretty much still considered our lodging to be her responsibility.

Then she said that she could find us another room, but we’d have to pay extra for it. No, no and no again. I pulled out my email confirmation to show her the amount that I agreed to pay for 2 nights. She apparently bitched enough that our new friend/helper pulled out his wallet (again) and handed her some money!! I pleaded with him not to. We had a deal and we would pay her the agreed amount, no one should have had to pay any extra because she made a mistake and double booked our room. All I can really say out of it, is that Korean hospitality and helpfulness blows me away every time. I’ve helped visitors to my home country, and I’ve even helped tourists in countries I know better than they, but the lengths this guy went to to make sure we were taken care of were truly extraordinary.

Although he never translated it fully, I rather got the impression that her lame excuse for giving away our room was “it’s a holiday weekend”. No really? Could that be why I booked in advance instead of relying on finding something when we arrived? I might be bitter about this.

In the car on the way to wherever she was taking us, she got Mr. Awesome back on the phone and started explaining stuff about food and schedules. We were told that we could get dinner and breakfast at the place we were on our way to, and that since we would be staying in her pension the second night, we should let her know if we need dinner or breakfast there. Ok, cool. I like being fed and this place is straight up in the middle of nowhere. Like, we’re driving past farms and fields and it’s all misty-foggy and there are these creepy AF robotic traffic cops waving at us as we drive by, and we’re sitting in the back seat of this car that belongs to some woman we don’t know from Eve. But hey! It’s an adventure!

Then she told us that she’d pick us up to bring us to her pension the next day. Which seems nice, until she said “at 2pm”. Remember the whole reason we’ve gone through 6 hours of trains and buses and total confusion to get to this middle of nowhere stretch of coast? The Tulip Festival? And Saturday is our explore Taean day because we have to take 6 hours of buses and trains back to Busan on Sunday? And this lady wants us to sit around on our hands until 2pm? Awww heeeeell nah. We have come all this way to see some nature, we are not sitting around at some pension until 2pm on our sightseeing day. I tried to explain this (with a great deal of restraint and politeness), via Mr. Awesome on the phone, but I wasn’t confident about how much got through.

To Be Continued…

What will happen to our intrepid Gallivantrix? Will she end her holiday in a Silent Hill-esque land of small town fog? Will the animatronic policemen turn out to be Autons and come to life in a dramatc tribute to Dr. Who? Will she find a place to sleep??? Will there ever be tulips???? Stay tuned for the next installment of The Long Weekend: Part 2 – Where Nothing Goes According to Plan. The good news is, you know we made it back alive. 😉

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Gallivantrix

Teacher, Seeker, Traveler and Adventurer at Large

Author: Gallivantrix