The Good Samaritan

Feeble Humans,

Listen to my words and tremble at their awesome might.

The weekend was most good. On Friday night we had our usual night out with the other expatriates. I tried not to consume too much of the devil’s nectar though. I was incapacitated for most of the previous weekend after having drunk a few too many soju slushies and I have learnt from the error of my heathen ways…

On Saturday the G-man and I journeyed to Tongyeong on the bike. We pottered along the promenade and had a look at the ships and fisherpeople and then continued our stroll beneath an Undersea Tunnel and then onward to the hills. We stayed in Tongyeong overnight and took a ferry early the next morning to one of the nearby islands.

The ferry ride was most amusing. There were no seats above or below deck so everyone just sat around in little groups and had seafood picnics accompanied by beer and soju. We witnessed a rather hilarious showdown over a much coveted octopus that had slipped from the grasp of one of the picnickers on the upper deck. A man on the deck below caught said octopus but when the original owner of the slithery beast demanded his lunch back the man on the deck below acted like he knew nothing of the octopus and indicated that it had fallen into the sea! Then when the pissed-off picnicker withdrew to his party the pilferer who had purloined the prize stuck out his hand and shook his octopus in triumph!  I had never witnessed a battle over a baby octopus before so I was highly entertained by these antics.

When we got to the island we went on a three hour hike in the hills. Atop the hill there was a giant Buddha statue, a smattering of temples and a panoramic view of the rest of the island. The walk was very good but we had great difficulty finding any food that was dead and not a fish when we finished our hike. We therefore had to content ourselves with ice-creams. We were the only foreigners on the whole island so we got a lot of stares as we sat by the pier. There was also some pointing. And some people threw faeces at us. No, I jest they merely raped us with their eyes.

When we got back to the mainland we got on the bike and prepared to take the hour and a half journey back to Jinju. Things started off well: the roads were clear of traffic, the sun was shining in the sky, and the mosquitoes were nipping playfully at my ankles. However, halfway to Jinju disaster struck; the bike met its untimely demise. It started spluttering and gasping, then it took its last breath and was no more. This was a tad inconvenient as it was very hot, we hadn’t eaten anything substantial all day and we were still 33km from Jinju. We were on a highway but the cars just passed us by on perceiving that we were foreign and therefore unworthy of succour. We would have surely perished at the side of the road if it had not been for a kindly Turk by the name of Kemal. He rode over to us on a white stallion with his shirt billowing in the wind and then whisked us away into the sunset to the tune of an uplifting hero-esque soundtrack. By which I mean he drove over to us in his white car and gave us a lift to Jinju. He even put our fallen scooter into his boot and dropped it off at the repair shop. We rewarded this good Samaritan with a steak dinner and promises of undying gratitude. After we had dined together he drove away into the night as the restaurant exploded behind him; but he didn’t stop to look at it because that’s just not what heroes do.

That concludes my story. In other news I am being eaten alive by mosquitoes. Gareth and Eoin appear to be unaffected by the wee vampires but my blood is like heroin to them. Oh how they drain me! My hair has also started to embiggen due to the humidity. I am quite ghastly to behold in my current state.

That is all.

Title.

Citizens of Ireland,

I have news of no great import.

We had a rather dramatic week in work. Three more teachers have run away resulting in much upheaval in the staff room. I don’t blame them though, our boss is a cad and a charlatan and he treats his staff most shoddily. One day his uppance will come!

I shall quit this odious subject now for it wearies me to talk of work. The weekend has been filled with activity. On Saturday the G-man and I ventured to Wolchulsan National Park. It was a place of great beauty and splendour. There was much huffing and puffing on the way up the mountain as I am cursed with the black lung; a condition that has been severely aggravated by Korea’s ‘yellow winds’ that are filled with sand and particulates of industrial pollution blown over from China. However, the view from the top was worth the laboured climb. We were surrounded by the park’s immense craggy peaks on one side and in the opposite direction we could see a patchwork quilt of multi-coloured paddy fields stretching off into the distance. The highlight of the climb was a bright 52m red steel bridge spanning two ridges. Crossing from one mountain to the other via the bridge felt very Indiana Jones-esque. 

Although the park could not be faulted the journey to Wolchusan was laced with peril. Before embarking on our expedition we had sought the wisdom of a tourist information guide in order to plan the swiftest route. The guide led us to believe that we could get to the park easily enough in less than four hours by catching two successive buses. However, it took six hours, three buses and a taxi to get there. The return journey was equally hazardous as we mispronounced the name of our destination when purchasing bus tickets and found ourselves in the far-away town of Gwangju instead of the nearby town of Gangjin. We subsequently missed our last connecting bus home and had to shell out for a taxi. The taxi man was nice though; he chatted away to us in Korean and didn’t seem at all bothered by the fact that his words conveyed little or no meaning to us.

The next day we journeyed to Busan to attend the Sand Festival. The festival goes on for three days so most of the expats were already there. We joined them on the beach for some beer (though some people preferred to drink some rather ingenious ‘cocktails in a bag’ that were being sold by the seaside.) While we were drinking we amused ourselves by watching some trim, well-oiled Asian men play some kind of sport. It was a pleasant way to pass the time but truthfully I don’t actually care for the beach for it is nought but a field of glorified dirt. Most of the people there were pagan types who worship the sun and like nothing better than to cook their flesh evenly on both sides for hours on end. Their tans look good now but in a few years those heathens will look like leathery purses. The Sand Festival did have its merits though; the sand sculptures were very impressive. We saw a small scale sand version of the famous Shinsegae shopping centre, depictions of Alice in Wonderland and The Wizard of Oz using coloured sand and we also saw many a sandy mermaid built for the purpose of luring sailors lost at sea down to a watery grave. We also saw a couple of Korean children who had been buried up to their necks in sand and had then been abandoned by their mothers… After frolicking on the beach for a couple of hours we went with some of the other foreigners to their ‘Minbak’ by the sea. A Minbak is a private home with rooms to rent; people pay for a large room and then make a nest for themselves on any spare bit of floor. We hung out at the Minbak for a while and then went out for some Korean barbeque. Gareth and I caught the last bus back to Jinju that night but most people stayed on in Busan for another day of beach time. 

All in all it has been a good weekend. :) I’m taking it easy today and plan to go to the cinema later tonight. This will be my first time venturing to the cinema here in Korea.  I believe that the only English films that are currently playing are Kung-Fu Panda and X-Men: First Class. Perhapsement Thor might also be playing; the bloggular review of my illustrious friend James has tempted me to see it. I have no idea when films are released in this god-forsaken land  and I am also hampered by an inability to read the Korean film schedules but I swear by the hammer of Thor that I shall not return from the cinema until I have successfully viewed something!

On this note, I shall take my leave.

P.S. I forgot to mention a bizarre incident that took place last week. Jinju has a local heroine called Nongae who is famed for killing a Japanese General during the 16^th century Japanese occupation of Jinju. She is described on information placards as ‘a professional female entertainer’; a polite term for ‘foul venereal diseased whore.’ Anyway, she used her feminine wiles to lure the General to a cliff and then she bravely hurled both herself and the General into the sea. The people of Jinju were having an event to honour her sacrifice down at Jinju castle last weekend. They had rather amusingly set up a blue bouncing castle that was to represent the sea and children were taking turns jumping onto said castle whilst clasping a life-size Japanese doll. This cracked me up; imagine if Irish children were encouraged to take turns shooting British mannequins for a laugh? Anyway, here’s a picture of the children playing ‘kill the Japanese man.' :)