Sitting in Doms house in Seoul with my feet on his warm heated floor and the velvet underground on the stereo. Coffee and leftover Korean takeaway from last night for breakfast. I don’t know what any of it is called, just that it tastes very different. One main dish accompanied by lots of little side dishes and flat metal chop sticks to flummox me. Reminiscent of learning to drive a manual car about 4 or 5 years after I’d been driving. I can do this but its just not working and I can’t keep a grip on my food. Dom asks if I want wooden chopsticks but I won’t be beaten and besides, life could get very hungry in the outside world! ;-)
Korea is strange. But less so after a few days. I flew out on Saturday afternoon after walking around in circles all day trying to defog my brain. Friday night I caught up with the crew I’d been hanging with before heading south. Really solid excellent people except for that bastard who gave me Thai Whiskey too late in the night to refuse, you know who you are *grin*! Ouch
that’s nasty stuff. But this was a good thing because on Saturday, instead of rushing maniacally to the market in search of a cheap warm hoody I went and got a thai massage instead where my brain could be numb in comfort whilst my body got pummeled. Embarrassed to say it was the first I’ve had this trip to Thailand. My brunswickian friend Tom is coming back for a week
or so and was wondering what to take back home. They have these cool rubber masks and I suggested that maybe he could drop off a couple of osama and saddams at somewhere central like Irene. I figure that in these heady days of international stupidity someone could find a use. Keep an eye out.
So the plane landed 5:30 Sunday morning in Incheon. Tip: Vietnam Air have these really warm and spunky polar fleece blankets now. The govt has also built this HUGE new airport in Hanoi where I had a two hour stopover. Like very architecturally spunky only let down by their cheapness in not redesigning all the signs which are illuminated mustard yellow on a dark
seventies brown background and must have come from the same era. Doesn’t fit in too well with the white and grey and blue late nineties look everywhere else. Butthere’s nothing in this place except for a tiny restaurant, a gift store and a bookshop that only has a couple of English language books in it with scintillating titles like Vietnamese Macro and Micro Economic Systems or A Guide to VAT Law. ???????
Sitting there in the middle of the night with two Canadians we decided they should hire out
rollerblades. Lots of open space, a nice shiny floor - t’would be a riot!
First impressions of Seoul were tired and sleepy. And no one in the airport walking past would smile at me, in fact they’d look at me and then when I looked back, quickly look away and refuse eye contact. Even the westerners do it. I’m sure its some cultural adjustment thing but after 41/2 months in SEA where its rude not to acknowledge people on the street and I
bounce through my days on smiles it was kinda off putting on no sleep. I went from laughing to almost in tears in about half an hour while waiting for dom to show up.
The hour long bus ride to Doms place was an eye opener. The best way to describe Seoul is like some city from a futuristic scifi movie. Most people live in these ENORMOUS apartment buildings which cluster around in groups like aliens having tea. They all have numbers on the outside and many have corporate logos cause the companies own the buildings which doesn’t
necessarily mean that the people inside work for the companies. And there are rows of these things going on forever as far as they eye can see except where the mountains jut up. Seoul is really mountainous. So the horizon encompasses lots of F*#$ off big buildings dictated to by these big peaks with drifts of snow all over. Wow. Stunning. Nature still dictates society no
matter how hard we try!
After breakfast and naps at Doms on Sunday he took me up to one of the monasteries on the side of a mountain. Sitting inside the beautifully carved and painted wooden structure, overlooked by one big and 500 little buddhas, a serenity enveloped me like nothing I have ever experienced. The energy inside is so calming. A brilliant tonic for culture shock. My brain had been reeling all day with things new, determined not to get flustered I tried to let it all wash over me. Everything would still be there tomorrow and not quite so overwhelming. I can see myself spending a lot of meditaion time in these beautifully haunting environments. Very different to the Thai temples which are somewhat more gaudy in design and the older more beautiful ones in Bangkok have been turned into tourist attractions. The Great Hall in Wat
Po is one of my favourite places but its very hard to ground when a tourist group comes through with a guide explaining the history of the place over a megaphone!
After marveling at the temple we walked up the hill, drank from the fresh spring and walked further up past fresh faced and older Koreans alike, pushing themselves through their vigourous exercise regimes. There are outside gyms in lots of the parks and they are well used. Little old men scuttled past us on our hike up to the lookout. Bare trees with abandoned
birds nests, a great view and SNOW EVERYWHERE. Soft flakey beautiful snow like I have never seen before in my life.
YIPPEE.
Necessary snowball fights were had and I’m sure Dom got very over my impulsive need to throw huge piles of snow at him every five minutes in what I thought was my gleefully childish nature but which was probably pretty annoying. I haven’t laughed and giggled and grinned maniacally so much in such a long time. Right now I feel more alive and free than I have in such a long long time. I think the crisp sunny air helps.