We spent our second day in Nagasaki visiting Ioujima Island, a short ferry ride from the mainland. Except for a resort hotel, the island legitimately looks like something straight out of Jurassic Park - jungle-covered mountains and all. We spent awhile on the beach there and then, as part of our 980 Yen (about $10) package deal, we were required to exchange our spa ticket for the return boat ticket. I figured, as any reasonable person would, I think, that I could simply exchange the ticket at the spa desk. That was before I ran into the spa Nazi. She absolutely insisted (in Japanese, and with unmistakable hand signals) that I go into the spa or I couldn't have my return boat ticket. My Japanese is about as good as my Swahili, but what I imagine was said was, "Either you go into the room of nakedness, or you will be marooned on this island forever, and I will feed you to the pterodactyls in the mountains." Determining being served up as dinosaur bait to be a slightly worse fate (SLIGHTLY) than entering the room of nakedness, I capitulated and took a towel. I then proceeded to stand in the corner of the locker room being giggled at while Marina and Katherine took part in the festivities. I'm sure onsens are really nice; the Japanese seem to swear by them. And I am all about trying new experiences while abroad. Some things just cross the line for me, and being forced into a spa locker room under the threat of never returning to civilization is one of them.
On to South Korea. Country #20 on Megan's Lifetime World Tour.
Korea is different. I noticed the second we arrived at Busan Port that we weren't in Japan anymore. We rolled up after 3 hours traversing the East China Sea on our JR Beetle Jetfoil. Google Image this thing. It's sweet. It rises up out of the water and literally sounds like a rocket engine when starting up. It cuts a journey of 8 hours down to 3. In any case, Busan Port is absolutely bustling, full of enormous container ships from ports as distant as Singapore and Dubai. At immigration, we traded the digital fingerprints and photo of Japan for a laser-like device applied to our necks by masked, gloved officers. I'm sure they were just taking our temperatures, but it is also possible that I'm now carrying a secret spy camera in my neck, courtesy of the Korean government. After customs and immigration, we decided to go ahead and book our ferry tickets back to Japan. We were planning on taking an overnight ferry the second time around to save on a night's accommodation. We found the ticket office easily enough and the ticket agent spoke English, so we figured we had everything in the bag. We realized, however, that something had been lost in translation when he wished us a good journey...today. Jose tenderly broke the news to him that we were leaving in a week, not that day. Patiently, the ticket agent changed our date and issued us reservation tickets. Problem solved. Except not. Jose checked them (thankfully) and noticed that they were dated for 7/23 instead of our intended date of departure, 7/27. Once again, he gingerly broke the news to the agent. Ok, so we'll just fix the tickets again...except not. The ferry is full on 7/27. Fairly inflexible with respect to our return date due to future plans, we took a refund and decided to contemplate the situation later.
On to the shuttle that will take us to the metro, and ultimately the hotel. We had stood patiently waiting for the shuttle for about 10 minutes when we decided to take a peek at the schedule. We would have been waiting a long time, as the next shuttle was not for another 4 hours or so. Walking it was. Except the map we had was about as useful a navigation aid as a Monopoly board. And nobody, but nobody on the street spoke English. We wandered around for about 15 minutes before deciding to bite the bullet and take a taxi. We caught two and headed toward the hotel.
Except not. Jose's, Marlayna's and my cab driver drove us about 30 minutes outside the city and proudly pulled up to the Centum Hotel. Except we were staying at the Busan Central Hotel. There ensued a 15 minute conversation in which we tried to distinguish the "ral" from the "um". The difference clearly did not translate, and we were eventually sent in the direction of the closest metro station to our hotel. I was absolutely confident this time that we would get where we were going, as when Jose asked one of the hotel managers who'd been helping us if the station was in such and so direction, the man nodded his head and replied, "Maybe." We continued our tour of Busan and were eventually deposited at our metro station by what I'm sure was a very relieved cab driver. Now, surely, we had things in the bag. Except...you guessed it...not. Our hotel was theoretically a 2 minute walk from Exit 16 of the metro station. A few words about this. Exit 16?! 16 exits?! Continuing on...we walked down what looked like a promising street...one of the eight radiating from our metro station's intersection. No Busan Central Hotel on the horizon. We realized with amusement at this point that the hotel's name might not even be written in English, and seeing as written Korean strongly resembles crop circles to my untrained eyes, that could prove a bit of a stumbling block. We thus attempted to do what we do when lost in Japan - ask people on the street. Except the Korean reaction to "Do you speak English" was uniformly to either run away in utter fear, giggle and sheepishly slink away, reply in perfect English, "No, I do not speak English. Have a nice day! Oh, by the way, antidisestablishmentarianism is my favorite English word," or, if someone did speak English, they certainly did not know where this hotel was. We were supposedly two minutes from it, and no one had heard of it? Did it even exist?
During this period, by the way, I, being the odd person that I am, was in my ecstatic zone. I revel in chaos. Things would work out, but in the meantime, a glorious war story was developing, and I loved every minute of it. I kind of felt like we were in the middle of The Amazing Race...
At this point in our expedition, I noticed the location of addresses on buildings, and for three wonderful seconds, we thought that would help us out. Except...1) we absolutely could not read street signs, so numbers didn't really matter so much and 2) the numbers ran in absolutely no particular order. So much for that idea. And so we did what any self-respecting tourists should do. We opened our map in the middle of the sidewalk and stared at it blankly. Sure enough, a pack of people descended upon us in no time. One man in particular wordlessly signaled for us to follow him. Why not? Indeed, he led us directly to our hotel and up to its 3rd floor lobby, then disappeared into thin air like the guardian angel he was. Now, if only the other two girls were here...
In fact, their cab had taken them directly to the hotel, and they'd showered and were already sipping on some beers, contemplating what they might do if we actually were dead, as they slightly suspected we were. In truth, our little adventure proved quite useful. We'd gotten the lay of the land and seen much of the city...which turned out, to our great surprise, to be full of row after row of uniform white ferro-concrete apartment buildings, their addresses labeled in big block numbers on their sides. I've never visited a Communist country, but this is what I imagine it would look like. We found this especially odd considering South Korea's lack of affinity toward
its red northern neighbor. In any case, we'd also spotted an Outback Steakhouse.
So, as it was the 23rd anniversary of Jose's birth, and as his reaction upon sighting Outback was akin to Pavlov's Dog, and as none of us had eaten in 24 hours, to Outback Steakhouse we ventured. I've never eaten so much in one sitting, taking down my first steak in 2 years (don't worry, Hari...I'll emerge back from the Dark Side once I'm back home) as well as half of Katherine's dinner. The wait staff sang Happy Birthday for Jose and brought him their sweet, yet ill-advised attempt at a cake - rye bread smothered in raspberry sauce. It's the thought that counts. We returned happily stuffed to the neighborhood around our hotel, had a few birthday drinks in Jose's honor, and promptly fell asleep, slightly exhausted from our great adventure.
To Seoul next, but for now I notice I'm being properly stared down for hogging the computer. Seoul, the most dangerous city on the planet (will explain later) with a solo field trip to the DMZ and a glimpse into North Korea...
During this period, by the way, I, being the odd person that I am, was in my ecstatic zone. I revel in chaos. Things would work out, but in the meantime, a glorious war story was developing, and I loved every minute of it. I kind of felt like we were in the middle of The Amazing Race...
At this point in our expedition, I noticed the location of addresses on buildings, and for three wonderful seconds, we thought that would help us out. Except...1) we absolutely could not read street signs, so numbers didn't really matter so much and 2) the numbers ran in absolutely no particular order. So much for that idea. And so we did what any self-respecting tourists should do. We opened our map in the middle of the sidewalk and stared at it blankly. Sure enough, a pack of people descended upon us in no time. One man in particular wordlessly signaled for us to follow him. Why not? Indeed, he led us directly to our hotel and up to its 3rd floor lobby, then disappeared into thin air like the guardian angel he was. Now, if only the other two girls were here...
In fact, their cab had taken them directly to the hotel, and they'd showered and were already sipping on some beers, contemplating what they might do if we actually were dead, as they slightly suspected we were. In truth, our little adventure proved quite useful. We'd gotten the lay of the land and seen much of the city...which turned out, to our great surprise, to be full of row after row of uniform white ferro-concrete apartment buildings, their addresses labeled in big block numbers on their sides. I've never visited a Communist country, but this is what I imagine it would look like. We found this especially odd considering South Korea's lack of affinity toward
its red northern neighbor. In any case, we'd also spotted an Outback Steakhouse.So, as it was the 23rd anniversary of Jose's birth, and as his reaction upon sighting Outback was akin to Pavlov's Dog, and as none of us had eaten in 24 hours, to Outback Steakhouse we ventured. I've never eaten so much in one sitting, taking down my first steak in 2 years (don't worry, Hari...I'll emerge back from the Dark Side once I'm back home) as well as half of Katherine's dinner. The wait staff sang Happy Birthday for Jose and brought him their sweet, yet ill-advised attempt at a cake - rye bread smothered in raspberry sauce. It's the thought that counts. We returned happily stuffed to the neighborhood around our hotel, had a few birthday drinks in Jose's honor, and promptly fell asleep, slightly exhausted from our great adventure.
To Seoul next, but for now I notice I'm being properly stared down for hogging the computer. Seoul, the most dangerous city on the planet (will explain later) with a solo field trip to the DMZ and a glimpse into North Korea...
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