GYEONGJU

The one thing that amazes me about this place is the way that the public transportation system works. Much of it has to do with the size of the country, which is a little larger than Minnesota, but one can simply go to the bus terminal and jump on a bus to virtually any location for relatively little money. As with most things here it helps if you can read the language, but all you need to do is scribble out the location of the place that you want to go and then scan the schedual and you are off. As I was just paid the other day, I decided that I was due for anoter trip so I did just that. First I had to go to the bank to get rid of my stack of loot.

This proved difficult as I really didn't figure out that the banks weren't opened on Saturday until I tried a few of them. To fully appriciate this fact I needed to walk the half mile or so to my branch office and see that it was closed. Knowing that it was a branch office, I tried to find someone to tell me if the banks downtown were open. From a man on the street, via guestures, I gathered that the downtown branch may be opened so I got into a cab and made that move.

A cab ride from my part of Pohang to downtown runs about $2.50 USD and they will take you anywhere you want to go, as long as you can explain it to them in terms that they can understand. I tell the guy "KB Bank" and "Downtown" and I am on my way. In about five minutes I am there. It is closed. It it still before noon and I am living in a place that, much like myself, really doesn't start to move until after 11am so I figure that perhaps, as it is Saturday, they don't open until noon. Killing time is what bookstores are for so I head there to wait it out.

Long story short, the guy at the bookstore tells me that banks are never opened on Saturday and that the section of books in Engish is over there. It is limited to say the least and I head home, determined to go and see "something" on my day off.

I throw my travel necessities in a little backpack - guide book, dictionary, the note book where I write down the names of things that I like to eat and and other useful words - and catch a bus to the main terminal. On the ride there one of my middle school students is standing beside me. He asks me where I am going and I say "Gyeongju." He says that this is "far away" and I tell him that as far as I could tell it is only a 25 minute bus ride. That, it seems, constitutes "far away." He then wonders who I am traveling with and I tell him that I am going alone. "Ah, no friends." OK, so now I am being told that I am a loser by some kid but cultrually most Koreans would never travel alone. It is simply not done. Everything is done in, at the least, pairs. They hold hands (espeially the girls) and travel and shop and the like. Rarely do I see people eating alone. I have simply had no problem doing this as I am pretty much a loner by nature. I usually have something to read with me so I could care less if I have some one to talk to. My student simply shakes his head and I tell him to study hard for his up coming exams. Now I have his pity.

The bus ride is about 25 minutes long and on it I read about Gyeongju. This is the Silla capital of Korea and one of the oldest sites in the country. I realize that I am getting a slow start on the day but I fiugre I can still see something if I finally get my shit together. If nothing else, there is a park filled with burial mounds of kings that is right near the bus station. This should not be too big of a task to check it out and do some quality wandering before night falls. Besides, it is not like i have any predding engagments. Even my students know I am a loser.


The walk to the mounds is nice and short and, although it is sort of cold outside, I am getting used to it. Growing up I spent most of my off time watching reruns of M.A.S.H. so I had a rough idea about what I was going to expect. I knew that I should have plenty of long underwear and that a still would be a nice addition to my apartment. Med school may be a good idea. I simply had no idea that the wind would be so brutal. It reminds me of . . . well, any place that has a lake nearby in the winter. Pohang may not have snow but the wind ain't no joke and that goes the same for Gyeongju. The wind was fairly fierce. But I am not exactly a sissy and I had enough money in my pocket that I knew a scarf would be one of the day's purchaces.

In the park there are various mounds of earth under which numerous Kings are buried. Some have been excavated and others have not. So they simply put down pavers and made it into a quite place to stroll. But under the mounds there are dead Kings and that is something rather remarkable in itself. The one mound that does have an entrance is rather tall and amazing. They do not allow any photography in the burial chamber but they have recreated how the "Horse King" was laid out and there are some rather nice pieces of gold the acomanied him to the neither world. I don't necessarily want ot be laid out in this fashion, a small gathering of friends will suffice, but I like the idea of a huge mound of earth . . .

Around the park the trees were preparing for the on coming winter. There are workers inscattered throughout the park raking up leaves and bagging them (no machines needed). It was not really worth mentioning excect that around this one grouping of trees there was a small mob of women beating the trees with sticks and then gathering whatever it was that fell out of them. I watched for a minute and then came in for a closer look. The trees were covered with little berries and the women were trying to knock then out of the trees so that they could gatehr them up off of the ground. I offered that all purpose "what the hell are you doing?" look and that is when they motioned that you could eat the berries. The problem was that the good berries were all in top of the tree. This is where I help. Oh, I can't find a size 12 shoe in this country for shit but when the little old ladies need someone to shake the berries out of the trees who do they turn to? So I do this for a few minutes and everyone is all smiles, chasing the berries as they scattered all over the ground. No, I didn't try to eat the berries as I didn't need to eat something that needs to be cooked first in some form. But they seemed to be having a good time so I moved on.

Accross the street from the park was some sort of temple but it appeared be closed. I liked the paintings on the doors and wandered around looking at all of the woodwork. By this time I was aging getting cold. My camera was also screwing up so I decided to look around the shopping district of town for a moment. I can kill a day with ease; it really doesn't matter what country I am in.

Naturally, the camera guy thought that I was useless. He basically said that if I kept using the batteries that I was currently using my camera would soon become a paperweight and that if I knew what was good for me I would simply buy the proper batteries for the camera and get on my wretched foreign life. The batteries ran me close to $60 USD and they needed to be charged for about an hour. So I give them the money and do the insanely dangerous thing of leaving the store without the product that I has just bought. Was I afraid I was going to get ripped off? No, I was afraid that if I didn't leave a trail of bread crumbs I'd never find his store again. But I left it, carefully looking for land marks and craving a cup of coffee. A nice second floor cafe was found quickly and I was pleased as there were cute little giggling Korean girls eyeing me as I scribbled in my little notebook and drank an over priced cup of coffee. I mean, in the real world I am simply something that doesn't stand out of the crowd in any form. Here, I am this odd anomaly; I am the piece in the picture that doesn’t fit. Anywhere else I am simply an overweight balding guy who is probably doing something horribly mundane. Here I am a walking freak show and, like any good car crash, people must stop and stare. It would be great if these beautiful young 20 some-things were going to take me back to some red laced boudoir, fill my head with opium and take my body to places that would be illegal in the southern United States but this ain’t gonna happen. At dinner they will tell their friends, hands over there beautiful teeth as they giggle, “A westerner drank coffee in the shop today, blah, blah, blah.” This is the extent of it. It is just a pain in the ass to be a “foreigner” all of the time.

I return for the batteries and then, as my budget is now shot to shit, decide that I need a scarf before I end up with pneumonia. This leads to a series of stores where the scarves are not what I am looking for or leap out of my $10 USD price range. If you spend more than that for something you know damn well you will lose within three months you are an asshole. I have played that role far too often and I know that things like scarves, hats, gloves, sunglasses are quasi-disposable items. They will get lost. You spend $65 on some Ray Bans and you will, in the near future, be kicking yourself as they have walked away with some other guy who intends to take better care of them than you did - you were the one who lost them. That is the way it works out. At least in my world. So I have set my limit and I am on the hunt.

I finally find this little hole in the wall with a big sign that says “The Paint Shop” which I find to be an odd name for a clothing store. I go in and try to indicate to the man in charge that I want a scarf. I get the big “no” but start to look and there are a bunch of really nice sweaters stacked in piles in the center of the room. I am a sweater whore and soon I am trying on these really nice wool things that are around $30 and which seem to make the idea of a scarf obsolete. I buy a nice gray sweater and then, as I am leaving, I realize that I have lost my hat. It is not a great hat but I dropped $15 on it in Colorado and have managed to keep it awhile. So now the owner and I are ripping apart the store looking for this silly hat and he finally reaches into a bag of hats and indicates that I could have "this one." Well, it was brown and I don’t want a brown hat. So he finds a black hat and now I am fairly happy. I leave, new sweater, new hat. He is thinking: IDIOT.

Well, I have to readjust the contents of my backpack and as I do so, out falls my hat. What to do? Do I go return the hat the guy just gave me? Do I simply consider it a bonus – sort of like the ones that Clinique gives out? Since I have been here I am far too conscious of Karma and decide that I had better give this guy back his hat or the next time I am bicycling downtown I will end up killed by a bus. Piss on that noise.

So I go back to the store and show him my hat and give him his hat and then he gives me a piece of sweet potato and invites me into the backroom, behind the two-way mirror. He is back there with his buddy watching the news, eating a snack of potatoes and mandarin oranges, washing it down with Soju. So I sit and snack and tell him where I am from and where I live. I mention Pohang and he gets all excited and hands me some book which I gather is somehow connected to Pohang and the merchant’s time in the military. He turns on his laptop to indicate that he uses Hotmail and chats with people all over the world. I give him my email address, take a photo and thank him for the snacks. I gave him the $3 for the hat (I sort of liked it) and prayed that I staved off the inevitable bus collision for a least another week or so.

Still no scarf.

I find the city’s central market and it is closing up, so I start to wander around in there.

It is smaller than the one in Pohang but it seems to have stranger stuff to look at. There is lots of octopus hanging from the ceilings and other kinds of seafood that I haven’t noticed locally. There are also butchers that seem to be very busy.
I find some killer things to snack on and then, as luck would have it, I find an Italian wool scarf – who the hell knows where it was really from, that is what the label said, but it is wool and it is very soft – that is right in my budget. So now I am happy. I wanted a scarf for ten bucks; I got a scarf for 10 bucks. I also ended up with $100 worth of other shit that I didn’t know I need but that turn out to be “must haves.” If only I had known.
The only other thing that I really need is a pair of hiking shoes/boots and this could be a real problem when the boats that I call feet are added to the mix. I knew that this would be a bit of a problem but I could not imagine how serious a problem it really is. A US size 12 shoe is like a unicorn – a mythical beast. They simply don’t exist and if you believe they do, you may have bought a bridge in a recent real estate deal. So I have been looking, albeit fruitlessly, for some shoes and when I find a place where I think that they may have something in my size, I venture in. On my way out of town I spy the Columbia store and stroll on in.

Columbia sells some fairly nice stuff and when I worked at Meijer’s one of the things that I did was score as much of their stuff as possible at some serious discounts. Wait until it is on clearance, couple that with my employee discount and I was doing OK for eastside white trash. So I go into this store in the hopes of finding some shoes. I know I am going to have to pay more than I did in the past but . . . “Do you have anything in a US 12?” “I’ll look.” This fool comes out with a pair of boots that are right at the $250 mark. Aghast: “I can’t afford that.” “You look like you could.” RIGHT THERE! He said that I “looked like I could.” So I am wearing a Columbia coat but the damned thing was made in Vietnam(guess we see who’s winning that war) and I basically stole it from my previous employer while trying to be slick. All this cat sees in a “Westerner” and that means “cash.” I wanted to scream: “RICH??!! You simple bastard! If I was rich why in the hell would I be here teaching rug rats English? I'd be getting my knob polished in southern France by some porn star in training.” To some people, dropping $350 on a GORTEX coat is chump change, the tip money after a nice meal. To me it is something that ain’t gonna happen as I really don’t see me climbing Everest, or any other thing that I can’t see the top of, any time soon. I need some boots to walk around in, not prove to others that I have balls made of brass. I leave, thanking him for his time and make my way towards the bus terminal and home.

So this little field trip wasn’t a complete waste of time. I now know how to get to Gyeongju, have more "necessities" that I can use to make my life easier. I learned that in the future I can store my bicycle under the carriage of the bus so this should make my next trip there even more fun. I also have a scarf that I can’t wait to lose and a new friend in another city. As he has “big sizes” I can always score another sweater and maybe a snack. That is something and don’t think it isn’t. Now I just have to find some boots for under $150 USD that actually fit. I think I’ll have better luck finding unicorns.