first of all, i need to get something out there. the MIA song “paper planes” has pretty much become my litmus test for douche bag status. if you like the song, i see you as a douche. at least partially. i just don’t get it. it’s the most irritating fucking song i have heard in a long time (and i live in the land of k pop, so i DO consider myself an authority on this matter). when she sings, she sounds like she has some sort of neurological disorder affecting her speech. and i’m sorry, but the addition of gun fire and cash register sound effects does not make the song hardcore or any more interesting. i really fucking HATE that song. to the point where when i go onto my american friends’ myspace pages and hear it or walk into a bar here in korea and hear it i actually get a little angry. of course, you’re not really a moron if you like the song. but i will judge you.
anyhow, on to the important part.
saturday, december 27th was the first day of my winter vacation. it was a day i had been looking forward to for a long time, because not only did it mean i was getting on an airplane and flying to warm and sunny bangkok, but it also meant that jeremy would be waiting for me in bangkok when i arrived. i’ve been in korea for 8 and a half months now, and haven’t seen my boyfriend of almost 5 years the entire time. that gets a little shitty from time to time.
on friday the 26th, i got off of work and ran home as quickly as i could. i had bought a new backpack for the trip as i didn’t want to be burdened with luggage while jeremyand i made our way around. the backpack was already packed, with the exception of the toiletries i had used that morning. i made sure i had everything i needed, and then i began to panic.
this was the first time i had flown OUT of incheon international airport. my initial plan was to either sleep in the airport or find a cheap place around it, but i had since learned there really weren’t any cheap places near by. i talked to my friend devika who lives in the city of incheon, and she told me which daejeon bus terminal to go to to get a bus to her city. she told me to hurry and get on the 11 PM bus and she’d meet me at the bus terminal.
during this phone conversation, my prepaid phone ran out of minutes, making everything even more difficult than it already was. but i climbed in a cab, told the driver to take me to the bus terminal. i got there, fought off all the cab drivers who were trying to convince me that the buses had stopped running and my only option was to take a cab, and bought a ticket for the 11 PM bus. after waiting a bit, i got on the bus, plugged in my ipod, threw my ski jacket over me as a blanket, and slept for the 2 hours it took me to get to incheon.
when i got off the bus, i found a payphone and called devika, who met up with me. now, at this point it was about 1:30 am, i was an hour away from the airport, and i had a 10:30 AM flight to catch. so what did i do? i went out! we went to this awesome bar in incheon and ate some tofu and kimchi and drank a few beers (my goal was to make myself sleepy again…). after maybe and hour and a half of that, we went looking for a love motel for me to stay in. we found one, checked in, discovered the sex toy vending machine right outside my room, and went back outside so devika could show me where to catch a bus the next morning. then, devika went on her way, and i went back to my love motel.
at 4ish i fell asleep, giving myself a whole 2 hours before i had to be up. since it typically takes a sonic boom and a team of elephants to get me out of bed any time before 9 AM, i was worried that i’d sleep through my 6 AM alarm on my phone. this led to me not sleeping very well at all. i did wake up, though, and by 7:15, i was out on the street, walking toward the bus terminal.
i decided to save some cash and take the city bus to the airport rather than the airport limousine bus. it showed up to the stop in front of the bus terminal, and i got on, threw 1,000 won in, and sat down. about an hour later, i was at the airport!
and now, i was excited. i found out where my airline, cathay pacific, had their check in desk and began the fairly long walk over. i was happy to see that every check in desk i passed had short lines. when i got to cathay pacific’s, however, my little happy bubble was burst. the queue line was zig zagging all over the place, and even extended past the ropes they had set out, around a giant tree planter, and down a hallway. great.
i got in line, but only stood there for about 5 minutes before a woman came over and told me to try the self check out kiosks i had walked by without even noticing. the line for those was short, so i went over, typed in my information, scanned my passport, and before i knew it, a shiny new boarding pass was spat out for me. laughing at the saps standing in the other line, i walked to security.
security was boring. much like this entire post, actually. i went through security, stopped at the terminal’s paris baguette for a bagel and some coffee, and had about 20 minutes to hang out and wait until boarding began. when instructed, i got on the plane and was soon in the air, flying toward hong kong.
something weird happens to me when i’m on flights alone. i get all zombified. i pay no heed to the free headsets or the personal tv screens in front of my face. i always pack books, magazines, and an ipod, but they usually all go ignored. sometimes, i’ll pull out the ipod, but i don’t bother with podcasts or movies, i only listen to music. i tend to not eat or drink anything. i just stare straight ahead, until i reach my destination. that’s what i did on this flight.
we landed in hong kong, where i had around an hour and a half to kill before my next flight. unfortunately, since i had used the self check in kiosk in korea, i didn’t get my boarding pass from hong kong to korea. i got to stand in another longish line, where a lot of my time was eaten up. i got my boarding pass, and as my stomach growled protest against my weird, trance-like behavior on the previous plane, i looked for an exchange window so i could get rid of some of my won in exchange for some hong kong dollars for food. i found one, turned 20,000 won into about 100 hong kong dollars, and went looking for what i could find to eat.
i was starving and in somewhat of a hurry, so I wasn’t going to be too picky. on my way to my gate, i found a starbucks, which happened to sell hot sandwiches. i got a glass of tea and a vegetable sandwich for something like 60 or 70 hong kong dollars. the sandwich was gross and the tea was…tea. i then found a smoking room, had a cigarette, and went on to my gate.
of course, my gate was located right next to the biggest damn food court i have ever seen in an airport. i kicked myself for eating that gross sandwich earlier, sat down, and waited for my plane to board.
the initial boarding time came and went, and nothing happened. the actual take off time was drawing nearer and nearer, but we were still sitting around waiting. i was getting nervous, and i kept checking my boarding pass and flight number to make sure i wasn’t at the wrong gate waiting for the wrong flight. finally, they changed the sign and informed us that the flight was going to be delayed until 5:30, or about an hour and a half from when it was supposed to take off. awesome. i listened to all of my podcasts, i read a magazine, i spent the last of my hong kong money on some coffee, i visited several different smoking rooms (those things are foul). again, the clock was creeping up to 5:30, the new departure time, and we weren’t going anywhere. just as i began to get hungry again and started to consider trading in some more money to eat, they announced that boarding for my plane was to begin.
i got on the plane, which was packed, and got settled and ready for coma-mode. only this time, i was hungry enough that when they brought meals around, i took one. i forgot to ask the coworker that booked my flight to ask for vegetarian meals, but luckily for me, they had a fish dish. yeah, i never thought i’d consider myself lucky to be offered airplane fish. as much as i hate to admit it, it was a pretty good curry sauce and rice fish concoction. i ate that, and then i stared at the little airplane on the map on the screen in front of me, representing our position on the planet, slowly, we inched closer and closer to bangkok, until we finally landed. i got off the plane, went through immigration, walked past the baggage claim since i had carried all of my stuff on, and began to look for a taxi.
now, here is where i made a poor decision. i knew it was a poor decision, but the consequences ended up being more of a pain in the ass than they were supposed to be. i had read that the hotel jeremy was waiting for me at was kind of out of the way and very hard for taxi drivers to find. i had also heard so much of the “don’t trust these cab drivers and don’t trust those cab drivers”, but I had never really heard who was supposed to be legitimate. but, i was tired, my back hurt, i wanted to get the hell out of the airport and into bangkok, and i was very ready to reunite with jeremy. knowing full well that this was on the list of people not to trust, i gave in and walked up to a girl behind one of the counters set up for taxi service.
i told her where i needed to go, and she said it would be 1100 baht. now, at that time, i had no idea what a reasonable rate would be, but i knew over $30 USD was way too much. i mean, a cab ride from one side of daejeon to the other is only like $13 USD, and that’s in KOREA, which is nowhere as cheap as thailand. anxious to get moving, though, i just agreed to the rip off price like a push over and was sent outside to find my cab.
i got in the cab, gave him the piece of paper i had been given at the counter, and sat back. i was pretty impressed with the way bangkok looked at night, but there was something about it that reminded me of driving down i-45 in houston. suddenly, my cab driver exited the highway, took a few turns, and was in the middle of a very modern, very busy area with lots of tourists and hotels lining the streets. something was off. he stopped at the siam at siam hotel. i, however, had a boyfriend and a room at the siam societyhotel. he said “here”. i said “no, not here”. we argued for a bit, and he got out and asked a policeman that was parked nearby. then, he came back and told me the policeman said the siam society was inside the siam at siam. totally unconvinced, i agreed to get out and ask one of the door people if i was at the right place. the second i stepped out of his cab, one doorman grabbed my bag from me and another woman was pulling me onto an elevator. i finally had the chance to spit out “this is not the right hotel! is this siam society?”
she said no. she hit the number one on the elevator. back down we went. of course, by this time, my $30 cab was long gone. so now, i was tired and pissed. the people at this hotel, however, were very nice. they called my hotel for me, got directions to it, write them in thai, flagged down another cab for me, gave the driver the thai directions, and even write down the driver’s number for me in case he decided to mess with me. i only had giant bills on me at that time, so i wasn’t able to tip them. i felt terrible about that…still do. anyhow, i got in a cab, went right back past the airport, and finally saw the sign for the siam society. i walked into the lobby, asked where the room number i had was, and they whisked me away in a tuk tuk to the other side of the hotel grounds. i walked into the bungalow-style-yet-not-a-bungalow room, where i found and subsequently scared the shit out of my poor jet lagged, sleeping boyfriend.
all night, i kept thinking, “holy shit holy shit holy shit…i’m in bangkok!”
anyone out there?
November 23, 2008 · Filed under Uncategorized · Tagged bangkok, BARACK OBAMA, broken ondol, christmas, cold, comments, costco, costco pizza, creepy indian guy, electric mattress pad, family, friends, get the fuck away from me, greg, halloween party, homesickness, jeremy, november, obama, paparazzi, pattaya, pescatarianism, thailand, thanksgiving, transporting dogs, turkey
is anyone even reading this thing anymore? hello? HELLO??
the hits i get have dwindled. at one point i was getting close to 300 hits a day. now i’m lucky to break 20.
could this have anything to do with me being horrible and not ever updating this? naaahhh.
really, though, as childish and attention seeking as it may be, when the views and comments i receive dwindle, so does my drive to write in this thing. i know that years from now, it’ll be awesome for me to go back and read this. shit, it’s already a little insane to go back and read what i wrote right before i left and when i first got here. but that doesn’t motivate me. i need instant gratification. attention motivates me. if you’re reading this stupid drivel, speak up. please.
so it’s the end of november in korea. it’s cold. like, below freezing most nights. it even snowed a little earlier this week. i know that compared to winnipeg or russia, the winter here is mild, but come on. having lived in houston for the past 22 years, i don’t know what it’s like to function when it’s this cold. plus, it’s only NOVEMBER. everyone is reassuring me it’s going to get much worse. i’ve already got my winter coats out and in use. i bought two very awesome scarves from a vendor in a subway station in seoul and i’m using them. my mom sent me a package, including a beanie with earflaps that i’m already wearing.
what in the hell am i going to wear when it gets colder?!?
to make things more awesome, the heater, or ”ondol,” in my apartment does not work. miraculously, it’s staying at a cold but liveable temperature in here. i think i’m getting a little free heat from my downstairs neighbors. i invested in a new thick comforter that is seriously uglier than sin, but is soft and velvety and plush and wonderful. I also bought myself a heated mattress pad, and i think it’s the single greatest thing i own. i don’t want to leave my bed. ever. seriously. which is a problem, as the plan was to clean my apartment this weekend and have my boss come over to look at and fix the heater during the upcoming week. lo and behold, i couldn’t get out of bed all weekend. i seriously spent all day saturday in bed watching tv shows on my computer. i only got out of bed to smoke, pee, and to make spaghetti for dinner. this morning, it took me 3 hours to get up and into the shower for the costco trip i promised myself i would go on this weekend. so no cleaning. no heat.
along with this dilemma, i have to deal with thanksgiving here. which is to say, not having thanksgiving. i’ve been invited to a turkey dinner at the church my two american coworkers go to. it’s on saturday, not thursday, so i don’t really see that as placating me. plus, i’ve agreed to help transport 75 dogs from a shelter here in daejeon to a new shelter outside of seoul on that saturday. given my nearly 12 years of “pescatarianism” (which, i admit, has gotten incredibly lax while living here…i’m not munching on giant hunks of meat, but i find myself picking meat out of my food and still eating it and/or consuming soup and other foods in mystery broth that i know damn well is probably of animal origin but really, i don’t KNOW so it’s ok), i’d rather be playing with dogs than awkwardly sitting there watching other people eat turkey.
i’m making myself dinner that night: marinated salmon steak, mashed potatoes, vegetarian gravy, stuffing, and steamed broccoli, cauliflower and carrots. i can cook well, so it’ll be tasty. it just sucks that i’ll be doing this after a 9 hour work day and i’ll be by myself. sure, i could invite my coworkers or my friends over, but i’m just not feeling it. i want to hoard all of my deliciousness for myself. MUAH HA HA!
i miss my family. really, i do. my mom got her house sold and moved to alabama. that sucks for me, because i’ll be returning back to houston with no mother to go visit and my childhood home adulterated with the life of a new family. an elderly couple bought the house. they moved from clear lake or somewhere around there to be closer to their grandkids. apparently, they’re really nice. blah blah blah. my only concern is that they’re applying their icy hot and consuming their metamucil and boniva in MY house.
irrational bitterness aside, i’m glad she’s out of there. my brother and my grandparents are in alabama, so she’ll be spending thanksgiving and christmas with her parents, sister, and kid. one of my worries about moving out here was her spending holidays alone, but now i don’t need to worry about it. my conscience is clear.
point being, i miss my family, but it’s been my friends lately that are making me homesick. everyone comes home to houston for thanksgiving, so every year for god knows how long, we’ve gotten together at a bar called molly’s the night before thanksgiving and gotten wasted before spending countless hours with our families the next day. it’s seriously a giant affair, with like 40 or 50 people, and it’s awesome. friends i saw every day, friends coming back home who i only got to see that one night a year, and friends that had drifted off a bit…everyone seemed to show up. not this year.
i hope it still happens this year, but i hate missing out on it.
i guess this is the time of year for a concentration of traditions that i’ll miss out on. first, it was the halloween party. greg and i have spent the past couple of years throwing the most awesome halloween parties houston has ever seen, and this year i spent my halloween scaring children and getting wasted in a bar wearing a dracula cape and a frog head.
next was the election. i was more involved in this presidential election than i have been in any others in my entire life. granted, this was only the second presidential election i was old enough to vote in, but whatever. in februrary, i stood in line with greg for like 3 hours in front of the toyota center to see obama speak. we weren’t even sure that we’d get in, since we had standby tickets and we were in line about 35 miles away from the building. luckily, we got in. weeks later, i stood in line to early vote in the primary, and since texas has a caucus, i went a few nights later and stood around for hours waiting to caucus. i attended a democratic party meeting. i turned down a nomination to go to the state convention because i knew i’d be in korea when the time came. from korea, i jumped through a bunch of stupid hoops to get my absentee ballot sent on time. when i got my economic stimulus check (thanks, dubya!), i turned around and donated almost all of it to the campaign. and where was i when he was declared president elect? was i with the friends i had spent every election celebrating or mourning with since my first year of voting eligibility? no. i was in some park next to a mountain officiating the wonderland school mini olympics, getting text messages every 15 minutes from a friend in seoul that was good enough to keep me updated while he was glued to cnn.
i do need to go off on a tangent for a second and talk about something that has been cool about being abroad for this election. the opportunity to see, firsthand, the reaction from the international community has been kind of cool. my canadian and australian friends are all stoked that obama won. when i was at the mini olympics, getting my text updates, i kept sharing them with everyone out of my own excitement, not because i thought they would really care. but they did care. the koreans were actually more excited about my updates than the americans i work with. both leading up to and after the election, conversations with taxi drivers about where i’m from quickly turn to “ah. america. obama? obama!!!” some of my really young students are even bringing up obama, which shows the excitement in their households about him. and last weekend, i was in seoul waiting for a train back to daejeon when i heard obama’s voice coming from a tv behind me. i got up and walked over, to see a giant group of koreans crowded around the tv listening to his post-election acceptance speach. i looked over at the other tvs, one about 20 feet away in each direction, and no one was watching those. while obama was on tv, everyone’s eyes were on him. when the obama segment was over, everyone went on with their business. it was weird, standing in a foreign country as an american with a bunch of nonamericans completely transfixed by MY new president. and for once, my president wasn’t a source of ridicule.
back to sad, missing-out-on-tradition-time. this week, i’m missing out on all of the thanksgiving fun, both with friends and family. the next big thing will be skipping out on the annual greg and rachel christmas shopping extravaganza. this is an event where greg and i purposely pick the worst days possible to go shopping (the friday after thanksgiving and the day before christmas eve are always top picks) and proceed to be the only two people in the malls and stores that are not frazzled and are having any fun.
it sucks. it really, really sucks. it’s so strange being somewhere like this and having so much fun but still being so homesick.
but BUT BUT…jeremy’s leaving houston on christmas day and heading to thailand. i have to work the friday after christmas (stupid), so I can’t fly out until saturday morning, but on the 27th, i’ll be in sunny, hot, and humid thailand with my boyfriend. it’ll be awesome. we’re going to spend a day in bangkok, a few days on the beach, and then a few more days in bangkok. on january 3rd, we’ll both fly to korea, probably spend saturday night in seoul, and be back in daejeon by sunday night. he’ll stay in daejeon through the 12th. i am so so so excited about it. i admit, my first few months here, i had so much going on with my new surroundings and the new culture and everything else that resulted in complete sensory overload that it wasn’t too hard to be away from him. but things have gotten routine here, and in the past couple of months i have missed the hell out of him. if anything, us being so far apart for so long and having pretty much no drama or issues come out of it has shown me how awesome he is and how awesome WE are. awwww. go ahead and puke. the blog will still be around after your hurl, blow your nose, wash your face, and brush your teeth.
anyhow. as i mentioned earlier, i went to costco today, and it was ridiculous. the cheapest way to get there is to take the bus from my neighborhood to the nearest subway station, then the subway to the neighborhood costco is in, and then a shortish walk from the subway station to the store. the walk may be relatively short, but it sucks when you’re lugging a heavy load of goods that’s too big to really wrap your arms around and have a purse full of more heavy crap. all i bought was some salmon, some honey nut cheerios, some soup, some starbucks doubleshots, and some fiber rich breakfast bars. by the time i got home, though, my arms wanted to fall off.
the best thing about going to costco is getting to eat the pizza there. they have a small food court area and they sell pizza, hot dogs, clam chowder, drinks, and some other things. but the pizza…it’s definitely the best i’ve had in korea. for one, it contains real cheese, and lots of it. a lot of the time here, pizzas have this rubbery white crap called cheese on it. who knows what it really is. second of all, it’s got real pizza sauce on it that isn’t heavy on sugar. they don’t put corn or anything else crazy on it. 2.500 won for a giant, heavy, cheesy, greasy slice of heaven. the first thing i did was eat a piece. i was starving, and it’s never a good idea to shop at a wholesale warehouse when you’re starving.
at one point in costco, i was pushing my cart past this indian guy and he said hello to me. being the incredibly social creature i am, i acted like i didn’t hear him and kept walking. when he said hello again, this time too loud to have not heard, i said hi back. thus, i got roped into a stupid conversation. after about 15 seconds i said i had to “go find my friends” and ran away.
then, i rounded the corner to the cheese section, and there he was. this time, he wanted to know my name. and if i liked to drink. and if i had a boyfriend. and to show off the crumbs on his mouth from some free sample he had apparently partaken in. my refusal to make eye contact didn’t deter him. the affirmative response to the boyfriend question didn’t get him to go away. before i knew it, he was asking me out on a date and telling me that it didn’t matter if i had a boyfriend in america, i was single in korea.
i finally told him he was annoying me, i was not going to dinner with him, and that he needed to stop leaning on my cart so i could push it away from him. he obliged. i was done with him.
OR SO I THOUGHT! about 10 minutes later, i was checking out some overpriced almonds and he rounded the corner with his phone in his hand. he walked up to me and said “please…” and i thought “can i have your number” was going to be his request. i geared up to get bitchy, but then he said “just one picture”. stupid obnoxious motherfucker wanted my picture?!? blown away by the creepiness of it all, i yelled “NO!” and threw my head down into my cart with my hair covering my face and the cart’s built in baby seat. then, i just stood there, not knowing what to do. with my head still buried, i heard his phone’s camera go off. i said “no, no, go away” and waved my hand around, hitting his phone. i finally picked my head up, and he still had the stupid phone pointed at me. at that point, i literally screamed “I’M FUCKING SERIOUS. GET THE FUCK AWAY FROM ME”, bringing all koreans around me to a screeching hault. he just stod there like a tool, so i finally walked away. i tried to quickly round a corner to get away, but as i did that i heard his damned camera go off again. he took a picture of the side of my face just as i was getting away. i felt like fucking brintey spears trying to escape the paparazzi.
and i was sufficiently creeped out. really. i don’t really have much else to say about that situation.
and now i need to place my weekly call to my mom and thank her for the giant package she sent me.
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