Joshua Johnston's Journal

As I mentioned before, it’s not good to be a fat guy in Korea. From floor seating in traditional restaurants, to small chairs when you find them at all, to the beds made of cardboard… it’s difficult to be big and in Korea.

Yesterday, it was difficult to be big and sick in Korea.

I haven’t slept all that well since we arrived, with the beds being designed in such a way that a thin, firm mattress simply rests on the floor or a bed frame.  Here, the bed frame is simply a wooden slab on top of a base.  If you’re a bigger person, your joints are going to take a serious level of strain in this arrangement, which doesn’t feel all that much better than simply lying on the floor. With all the exercise I’ve been doing, adding those aches and pains into the mix has been making the situation far worse.

To top it off, the ill-advised late night consumption of some orange juice the night before last led me to having a stomach acid issue, to the point where James went out at 6AM and got me a bottle of unsolicited milk to try and settle my stomach.

Huge mistake.

Korean milk tastes totally different than what you’d expect back in the US, and this particular batch of it seemed to border on “dangerously different” even as I drank it. Though I finished my glass, I determined quickly that it was not necessarily a good idea.

Two hours later, both myself and the hotel bathroom discovered just how bad an idea it really was when I vomited all over the place.

I spent the rest of the following day sitting in the hotel room, aching and wishing I were home.  I still feel pretty badly that way, and we seriously need to find a way to make the accomodations more survivable. If I had it, I’d pay a hell of a lot for a ticket home or a good hotel for the rest of this trip.

Yes, the major mall I’ve gone to a few times in the last couple of days is actually the Hyundai mall. At least, that appears to be the name of it.  I think another might be “The Young Mall” but I don’t really know, as translation and signage seems to be… well, typically in Korean.

To get to this mall, you take the 5 train all the way to Omokgyo station where you meet up with a moving walkway that takes you to the mall itself – and one of the world’s shortest escalators, which I think I forgot to get a picture of.

But, let’s resume our tour with these pictures of the area near Hotel Amigos.

Songjeong 1

Hotel Amigos Alley

We then move on to the subway, which uses pre-loaded cards rather than any kind of token system. Tokens might be rather quaint, but they’re not as useful as being able to flop one fold of your wallet flat against the turnstile and pay your fare.  Though, this also lets them charge you different rates for different trips as you need to flash your card at both ends of travel.

Fare Rechargers

Below is a map of the Seoul subway system.  It’s pretty daunting if you’re not used to subways at all, or if you don’t know Korean, but fortunately there’s a nice little iPhone/iPad app available for free downloading that provides you with English translations of the various stops.  It’s helpful if you know where you want to go, or if the station is named in such a way that it’s easy to guess what it is.  Gimpo International Airport and Incheon International Airport are two easy examples of this, while another useful one is “Digital Media City”.  If I knew what a city of Digital Media would be like.

Seoul Subway Map

I’m not sure if this is something most modern subways have or not, but I would assume so.  Useful maps of the station, with numbered identifiers for each exit which makes it easy to find your entrance or exit if you’re in an unfamiliar spot.  Our hotel is a quick right down the alley after Songjeong station exit 5, for example.

Songjeong Station Map

Moving walkways are a Big Deal in a lot of the subway environments here in Seoul, as far as I can tell. The trip to Gimpo International’s various sections; “Sky City” which appears to be one shopping complex attached directly to the airport, and “E-Mart” which is something I may cover in more detail later, has a number of very long moving walkways.  These easily rival the largest I’d seen before, at Hartsfield-Jackson International in Atlanta.  Also known as “That goddamn hellpit of a hub.”

Gimpo Moving Walkway

On the wall near the end of this long walkway you find…

The King in Korea

Burger King is a pretty significant force here.  I think I’ve seen three Burger Kings and only a couple of McDonalds locations.  The beef is mostly from Australia, which explains why a double cheeseburger with bacon is the equivalent of five bucks by itself.

Movie Theater

You might be wondering “What does this mall look like from outside?”  The answer to that question is that I’m not completely sure yet.  I’ve gotten a bit of a view as Minh, James and I went to sushi one evening, but it was in a bit of a hurry. I plan on going there again one of these days soon and I’ll get pictures this time.  To start though, let me just explain that the “Mall” portion appears to be at least halfway under ground.  Several stories of mall are on subterranean levels of a large skyscraper, which seems to be a mix of shopping, office space, and residential apartments.  Even the building Home Base is located in has a number of small loft-style apartments on its upper floors.  Friends were going to try and put us up there for ease of travel, but we couldn’t get anything on such a short term.  The picture above is the main waiting area and ticket booths for a large movie theater complex in the middle of the mall’s lower floor.

A Shop

Apple Computer does not have official stores in Korea yet, which really surprises me.  With the Korean interest in technology, and the ways that Koreans have tended to innovate in several areas over the last couple of decades, I expected Apple to have at least one store in Seoul to sell iPhones, iPods and now iPads.  Though Apple itself isn’t selling products here, most current Apple items that are sold internationally do appear to be available at “a Shop” locations throughout the country. These shops are styled similarly to the clean, spartan layout of an Apple location, and stock a limited amount of merchandise in opposition to the rather packed manner that a lot of shops here tend to use.

Netbooks

Netbooks, or compact laptops seem to be quite popular here.  With pricing that appears – at least at this upscale mall location – to be close to or maybe even a little higher than American prices for similar models.  The variety however, is far greater with brands like the universally recognized – and nationally ubiquitous Samsung offering models we rarely or never see in the United States.  Samsung even sells cars here, and I hope to get enough pictures for a Cars of Korea post soon.

Toilet Seats

Toilets here have the potential to be fucking awesome.  Seriously. There is a reason why this big display of toilet seats is in the middle of an upscale Galleria-style mall and not sitting in the middle of a Home Depot between air vents and shower tile.  Also, pay special attention to the name lit up behind this display.

People of America, THIS is what we are known for in the far east.

Oh, the Toilet

This toilet seat will do everything including wipe your ass; with water.  And it costs around $350.  If I could get this and put it in my baggage, I would seriously consider it. Call your local Home Depot and demand the AMERICAN STANDARD of places to poop.

Bed Frame

I don’t know how much it costs, and I don’t know how comfortable the mattress on it is, but I like the style of this bed.  The cats would destroy it in five minutes.

Crass?

I don’t know who looks like it got raped more, the “bear” at the end of the last post, or the woman here in this one. I think I’d heard about this ad online as “controversial” someplace.  I think I can see why. But unfortunately, I did find something a little more terrifying on a recent quick trip to Gimpo.

Doesn't look like Tijuana

Yes, that is a giant advertisement for “The Donkey Show”.  And I don’t know what scares me most, that they call something the “Donkey Show” at all, or that there don’t appear to be any donkeys. The mind reels.

Today, I decided to take a solo trip to one of the local malls here in Seoul.  This way, I had a chance to take some pictures and see some of the sights without slowing anyone else down every time I whipped out the camera.

The Hotel Amigos

The above picture is our current hotel, and shows the fairly cramped quarters of our actual room. Considering how rarely we spend any time there, it’s not _that_ bad. In fact, I’m even dropping its Stankometer score down to an 8.  They actually came in and cleaned the room while we were gone yesterday, though that might be because they thought we were checking out.  We’ll see if the rating stays that low tomorrow when we return.

Not exactly high-tech

The TV, water dispenser, air filter and mini-fridge are functional as far as we can tell. The air conditioner however, is not.

Three-Mode Shower

Body sprayers, hand sprayer, and overhead fixed sprayer.  Yep, that’s a shower.  Note the shelving…

Toothbrushes... And Toothpaste

Nope. Still not touching them.

Hotel Amigos

This is the outside of our hotel this morning when I left for my trip to the mall.  Not pictured: The curtains hanging over the entrances for cars. Also not pictured: Desperation and sweat.

Victim?

I really have no idea what happened to this stuffed… bear-thing which was lying directly across the alley from the entrance to Hotel Amigos.  Considering where the tear is, I really don’t think I want to know. What I do know?  I feel cold inside.

Korea, as my previous posts may have implied, has a fairly broad but still unofficial “no fatties” policy.  People don’t seem to take all that much particular notice of my size – though on the first night, there was one child of around 5 years old who looked at me as if I were Godzilla (Does Korea have its own Godzilla, or is that Kim Jong Il by default?), mouth agape and eyes wide open as I passed by. The issue is that nothing in Korean society seems able to accomodate people that fall outside what one might consider “normal” sizes in this country.  Store shelves are far lower than they are in the United States, due to the shorter average population. Larger food portions are about half again what we in the U.S. would call “single serving”, though many of the traditional meals I’ve had so far during my stay have been served pot-style with many people using their own utensils to take food from multiple serving bowls so portion control is nearly non-existent.

Seats are smaller, if there are seats to be had aside from kneeling on the floor, and beds are harder which leads to joint pains and aches if your body is distributed at all “lumpy”.

People, so densely packed in this highly industrial county, have little compunction about being in close proximity when walking down hallways or in packed subways.  There’s no intentional contact or brushing, but it’s not uncommon to get your shoulder bumped.  It sounds a lot like New York City, for example, but there definitely seems to be something a little more frantic here. People seem far more inclined to sit next to you on a subway bench, even if there are other spaces available, rather than seek out the furthest point possible from anyone else.

Of course, my observations are those of someone who hasn’t even been in this country for more than 48 hours so your mileage may vary.

… For 7-eleven. There are two of them within two minutes of home base, and the prices seem really reasonable. The portion sizes are small, which is a mildly frustrating point when you’re packing as much weight as I am and losing so much water due to stairs, humidity and exercise, but with prices being quite reasonable on things it really isn’t so bad. Let me give some examples.

A 300ml serving of Gatorade, which tastes much better than the American formula, is 850 yuan. With the price of a Powerade being a little cheaper at 750. The exchange rate i use in my head is to think of prices as 1000 yuan to 1 US dollar, which makes it nice and easy to drop a zero and think of things in pennies. I will try and get more meaningful cost comparisons for future entries. So far, i haven’t seen a gas station near home base, but I may go walking around with my camera to find one soon.

Last nights hotel was definitely a solid nine on the Skank Stank meter, which I think I’ll just call the Stankometer from now on. It took an additional few edgings upward when I tried to use that really nifty body shower sprayer this morning. Out of all the six nozzles on the wall, only one worked and it seemed to be more leaking than actually spraying anything. It really was a mess. Also the hotel room came with toothbrushes.

Unwrapped ones.

In a cup under the showerhead. Which promptly filled with water as soon as the shower was turned on.

Uhm, no.

The room is also very small, as well as being very high on the Stankometer. There are two small desks and chairs, but they aren’t all that usable. Especially since we have no space to store clothing, as there are no drawers anyplace. I suppose sex hotels don’t have a lot of second sets of clothing being worn after a stop. Even the nightstand has no drawers, which is unfortunate.

One advantage our new hotel has is location. We can walk to the subway in about two minutes, and the subway only takes about another five or eight to get to home base. It’s a clean, big train which we were on this morning during rush hour as home base is in what appears to be a fairly busy business sector. We arrived at home base before just about anyone else, and I’ve been pausing in writing this to make lots of introductions. So far, I’ve had this iPad I’m using fondled by a couple of really curious folks who really liked it. I’m thinking we could have made money buying ones in the US and selling them here. Who knows, maybe I can sell this one and get a higher capacity one back home.

Naw.

Last night we stayed in one of Korea’s aptly nicknamed “Sex Hotels”. Tonight we’re in one I don’t think I really want to risk being naked in. See, there is this thing that all hotels have, which I’m making up right now. I call it the “Skank Stank” factor. On a scale of one to ten, every hotel falls someplace in this range. For example, my mom’s bed and breakfast the Greystone (Hi mom!) would have a Skank Stank rating of right around zero. Your typical “no-tell motel” on the other hand would rank a seven, being just a plain motel with seedy inhabitants.

Tonight we’re in a nine. Maybe an eight, but the lack of cleaning that was able to find and remove the empty lube pouch on the sink. The empty HOTEL ISSUED lube pouch. Yes, rooms here come with free sex lube and condoms. And a toothbrush! Guess which gets the most use?

Well, one use per guest I suppose.

Plus, the Internet sucks.

I’d heard about it, but it was finally time to taste the myth.

pocarisweat.jpg

Andy, Tony, Minh, James, Me

The above picture is from last night, just before dinner.  James and I had been awake 23 and 40+ hours respectively at this point.

All in all, Hotel Sweety wasn’t that bad.  The bed was firm, there were no visible power outlets, and there wasn’t a word of English text in the place.

Hotel Sweety Bathroom

The bathroom at the Hotel Sweety was a fairly large one, with the shower being a simple hose coming off the wall and a drain in the middle of the floor. If you fondly recall the YMCA showers as a kid? Yep, this is the bathroom for you.

I felt somewhat sore when I woke up, but when I did sleep I slept pretty well.  So did James, though he’s still feeling a little under the weather from being tired, but he’s not showing it much yet.

Our friend Inho picked us up from the hotel and took us back to home base, where we met up with Tony. Andy and Minh once again.  After a few minutes here, we went downstairs in our building to a really nice authentic Korean restaurant with food very similar to what we had last night.  Boiled in place at the table, but pre-cooked before we arrived.  Also, accompanied by many side dishes.  There was a leafy dish that tasted like a mint of some variety, some bean sprouts in a very strong dressing, more kimchi (kimchee? kim chee? Too embarrassed to ask)  and again, meat cooked up with onions, vegetables and a soup base of some variety.

Once we finished eating, we once again returned to home base for a short time before heading out to find our new hotel.  This new one is actually further from home base, but it should be a much simpler trip due to the subway station being right around the corner.  It’s actually not as nice as the Sweety, but I suspect the price is probably lower.  This time it’s a pair of beds, as people here haven’t figured out the relationship between James and I, but we don’t really care about it all that much.

We’re back at home base now, and should be settling in here for a while.

I’ve finally been able to get some pictures taken and am going to be uploading those shortly.

Also, any comments people want to post, please feel free to go ahead and try.  I may have to approve them individually, but I’ll get the messages at the very least.  If you have my email address and just want to say something directly, go ahead and use that.  If you don’t have it, it’s my first name at this domain’s address. There. Simple.

Our flight landed about an hour late. After fumbling our way through customs, we finally met our two friends who have been in country and were quickly on our way to the beginning of our grand Korean experience.

Before recapping the night in a way that explains how we arrived at the Hotel Sweety where I find myself writing this entry, let me just say that for a “Sex Hotel” it seems to be a fairly nice place.

This posting is going to be a little disjointed due to my mental state being one of fairly significant exhaustion even after spending six hours – my usual sleep amount – sacked out on a bed ostensibly designed and built to perform more admirably in the role of a supporting player in sexual activities than it is to enable actual sleep. That, and the appearance of things leads one to believe that Koreans have universally good backs. Or universally bad ones and a tendency not to complain, which I would also say is likely.

Our arrival rather immediately turned into a whirlwind tour of the city of Seoul’s subway lines. Passing through the station at Gimpo airport we then transferred to one which dumped us out right in front of where our “home base” for the next two weeks is likely to be. Imagine my amusement at seeing a 7 Eleven kiosk at the top of the stairs and another across the corner.

I’ll be getting pictures soon, don’t worry. As things were heavily rushed, pictures have been hard to come by but that will be changing with today, I hope.

Shortly after being introduced to a couple of people we had long heard about but never met, including the main design force behind one of my all time favorite video games, we were then asked if we were hungry. Thirsty yes, we said, hungry not so much. Well, once we acknowledged that we could go eat despite three meals on the plane, we were bundled up into a Kia Sportage and driven away to a little restaurant a few miles distant to enjoy some authentic Korean dining. And when I say authentic, i sure mean it.

This particular place was authentic right down to the squat-on-the-floor agony. After 12 hours crammed on a flight, spending another hour and a half down on crossed legs and thin pillows was made only just tolerable by the fact the food was an excellent dish. Cooked in place at the table, the food appeared to be a mix of duck and chicken chunks ground up while still on the bone, and cooked in sauce with vegetables – potato and onion mainly – in a foil lined pan. We were given a local drink that tasted much like the sludge left over from producing some of our home brew beers, as well as the local equivalent of Sprite to drink. Surprisingly, all of the above were of good quality and quite enjoyable.

After a couple hours of dining, we managed to wrangle ourselves back to home base and procure a couple of drinks to try and continue rehydrating. We then piled into the car once again to be taken to our hotel which had been arranged by a friend we’ve yet to meet.

Apparently, the hotel she had booked was inconveniently far from a subway line, but that was only the beginning. It was also down a seriously seedy back alley, with plenty of garish neon signs.

“She booked a sex hotel.” said one friend.

“Enh.” muttered the other as he tried to navigate the small van/suv through tight quarters.

“Zzz”, James and I were both thinking, wanting someplace to sleep.

Apparently, a deposit had already been paid and our hotel was expecting us. As we were not expecting it, and we were far from a subway station, a refund was sought and received. We then went on another quest to find a hotel.

At this point we were both running on no sleep, cramped muscles, and seriously dehydrated. James had been up for 25 hours, and I hadn’t slept well in nearly 48. When we were brought to the less seedy but still sex-oriented Hotel Sweety a few blocks from home base, neither of us was inclined to complain.

The bed is smallish, and James is still sleeping. But after nearly six hours of my back and shoulders resting on cardboard, I needed to get up and write some of this down. Photos if the Hotel Sweety will be forthcoming, but here are a few brief notes on things seen so far.

Samsung makes cars. I saw a few really gorgeous sedans in the parking lot of home base, and they really made me wish there was a market for them in the states.

Hyundai is the expensive brand here. Even though two thirds of everything on the road looks like it is one. The new Sonata? Gorgeous.

There were people out power washing the walls of a road tunnel at 9PM. Things seem fairly clean.

The food is pretty spicy, but if you can handle cabbage and meat with hot sauce, that’s a good start.

I desperately need a shower.

If you want a vegetation meal… order one beforehand. The older gentleman next to James seems not to have figured that out. He seems Indian or a very similar background, as he has been trying to make sure he didn’t get any beef. Fortunately “snack” was a ham and cheese.

Supposedly, the best meals on long trips are the kosher ones.

Five or so hours to go. We see Siberia on our maps now.