Well, it's Sunday already here, so I have a candle and some incense going for the icons. Laura's working this weekend—indeed, every day—as she may be doing for the foreseeable future, but maybe tonight we can do Communion. I have a small pyxis full of consecrated wafers, which is the way you want to do it traveling, in a pandemic. If there wasn't a plague on, I might link up with some Anglicans, but there aren't a lot of them in Korea, mostly it seems at the cathedral practically on the grounds of the British Embassy in Seoul. Only Anglican church I've seen in the whole country, in as much of the country as I've seen. A warm hello to our friends back home at Church of the Redeemer, thank you for your prayers, sending some back your way, and looking forward to seeing you all again, whenever that will be, if only virtually. (Special regards to Mrs. Boland, who is keeping an eye on things back at the manse.)
So Saturdays are the day I have appointed to get out of the room for the afternoon to let the maids do their work. Having worked at two hotels, I can tell you the management gets nervous if you don't let them in sometimes, even if the place is clean and you don't need linens or supplies, because they want to check on their investment and make sure you're not doing dangerous (say, open flames, candles, incense, etc.) or immoral things. Yes, if you thought you were just paranoid, the maids really are spying on and judging you. (Another tip from a former hotel auditor: bring your own pillow. And the sweetest smell in a hotel is not flowery air freshener, it's bleach.) In ordinary times, I don't want to be in the room when they're making it up, just because I don't want to be underfoot or risk a mutually unintelligible conversation. But in Year Two of the Great Coronaplague, I don't really want to be in an enclosed space with a stranger, and understandably so.
With Laura off at the plant doing her science-y things, I decided to get out for three hours (the window I specified with the desk) and get comfortable with the cabs. I've never lived in a major city where cabs are a prevalent way of getting around, so they kinda make me nervous. But boy, have smartphone apps taken a lot of stress out of getting a cab in a foreign country. You can have them pick you up and take you to any point on the map right from your screen, without any language difficulties or having to write out addresses in Korean, as we did in Chinese in Taiwan. (Really didn't do many taxis the last time we were in Korea.) The cabs all take credit cards now, and there's no tipping here, so you really don't need cash. I paid for a pizza in cash last week (we had pizza and watched Groundhog Day, as is our usual custom for that holiday), but I didn't need to and it's the only cash I've spent this whole time.
The destination I picked was the Cheonan city museum. It's a fairly impressive edifice, and what's there is very interesting, but it's underdeveloped. Still, you can see some ancient bits and bobs dug out of the ground from around here, including paleolithic axes, neolithic and Bronze Age potsherds and some pottery, and old bronze horse tackle and weapons, some old books written in Chinese script (hanja, as Koreans call it). There's a giant bronze bell in the style of the Chou/Zhou, which is from a local Buddhist monastery and designated National Treasure Number 280. There's a fun little display of people (mannequins) dressed in traditional Korean clothes, doing Korean things, as it might have been any time in the 500 years preceding the Americans and Japanese. Cheonan was and remains a bit of a government hub, at a convenient proximity and remove from Seoul, and at the confluence of three provinces. Giant dioramas with tiny buildings show what it might have looked like in the medieval period. Outside, there are some traditional houses with thatched and tiled roofs, but they were closed up for the season, it looked like.
However, for all the stuff, it barely filled an hour, even though I photographed practically everything to show to Laura. However, I noticed a trail headed up the hill behind the museum, so I decided to check it out. It was fairly vertical, and by the time I got to the top, I was fairly winded, because winter inactivity. All along the way, there were CCTV cameras. South Korea is one of the most heavily surveilled countries in the world, and there are cameras everywhere, including some bathrooms. The only time you're not liable to be videotaped is when you're in your own home, and I imagine even that is conditional, depending on your reputation with the state security apparatus. So, not fully knowing what the mask laws are here, and being in need of air after my climb, I wandered off trail a bit and found a stump to sit on, take my mask off, and even smoke a pipe, the first since entering the country. (Mind you, lest you think me irresponsible, there was no one on the trail except the cameras. Even in the museum, I only saw two couples with a child each.) The weather was 12 or 13°C (mid-50s Fahrenheit) and sunny, so I was able to take off my fleece and hang it on a twig while my shirt dried from sweating up the trail. Being refreshed, I still had two hours to kill and decided to magically summon another cab.
This cab dropped me off at the Galleria, which in Korea is high-end Western brand names, as at the Shinsegae store we visited the weekend before. Scarcely a lick of Korean script to be seen on any of the signage, which is unsettling as it is comforting. Apart from being gleamingly white and well-lit and sparkling, it is a very tall, 9-story structure, on a more compact footprint than Shinsegae but with two extra floors. We had been disappointed not to find the rumored Gudetama store at Shinsegae, so I thought perhaps someone was mistaken and it was in fact here. Up the escalator, around the floor, up the next elevator, and so on, until finally I got to the 8th floor, which is restaurants (9th floor is customer service and offices, so Gudetama isn't at the Galleria, either). I had a look around, and although there was a fancy American-esque buffet, I didn't want to be one of those Americans, so I decided to go to a Chinese restaurant, for something familiar and yet probably different, with a distinctive Korean spin, as it was with the Vietnamese last weekend, or the Groundhog Day pizza.
Got on the waiting list, took my temperature and signed the contact tracing form, got my table, and took my mask off to have some of the pot of jasmine tea they brought. I looked over the menu and found a W20,000 several-course meal, which I thought was a tad expensive, but it's in a ritzy mall. Through an exchange of various pantomimes, the waitress let it be known to me that it was a meal for two people, and then flipped to the back for the à la carte noodle soups. The page with the meals in courses was in English as well as Korean; this page was entirely in Korean. So I shrugged and said whatever you recommend, and the lady said "Spicy okay?" and I said sure. Now, let me tell you, I was raised on the Mexican border. I like spicy things. But in Korea, the tap water is spicy. If a Korean asks if you want spicy, always say no. Whatever "mild" thing they bring you, it will still be a little spicy for the average American.
Foolishly having said, Sure, please melt my face off, they brought me a bowl of liquid that was red as the Devil's aft scupper. No, it was not tomato-based, that's red Korean chili paste. Floating in it was kimchi, onions, scallions, and some unidentified sea creature cut into various shapes. I don't know what it was, but it had a somewhat uniform, rubbery texture, white color, and fortunately not too much of a fishy taste. Under this was noodles, and under that, a couple surprise jumbo prawns, which were nice. It would appear, as Laura had observed, that I had gotten the equivalent of a cheeseburger at a Chinese restaurant at home, this being definitely a Korean concoction, and the kimchi a giveaway. Overall it tasted good, what part of it I could taste. The major flavor note was a lake of fire in hell. The tea was useless as relief; only the pickled daikon banchan on the side offered any cooling. I tried not snotting too much, but by the end I had a great wad of biohazardous napkins from dabbing at my nose and lips. In Korea, as in all of East Asia, blowing your nose is considered terrible table manners, which is a bit unfair when you consider how spicy Korean and sometimes Chinese food can be. After I had paid and left, the first place I headed was a restroom where I could blow my nose all I wanted. (My lips were still swollen by the time I got home.)
After this I went back down the escalators, and fortunately all the down escalators were proximate, so I didn't have to walk around to the other side of each floor. I found a taxi stand, which if you're not familiar, is its own lane next to the curb of largerish attractions, and the taxis queue up for passengers. Take the first cab, and the next cab moves up and they get the next fare. I showed him the hotel business card, he punched it into his GPS, and off we went. He was a little bit of a daredevil, and the suspension on the car wasn't great, so I arrived a little queasy (the bowl of bear spray I just ate probably didn't help), but safely. I should mention here that some of the cabbies are a little nuts, and drive way too fast, and when they merge you're sure you're going to die and the LPG tank in the trunk will explode and all they'll ever find of your body is your tooth fillings and shoelace eyelets. But they really are masters of merging, and do so seamlessly. I think everyone lets everyone in not out of courtesy (Koreans famously pay little regard to strangers), but self-preservation. Everyone is a stunt car driver and also a defensive driver, and so traffic comes together like a zipper.
That was my big day playing with taxis. I'll try it again next Saturday and see whatever I can see. Or eat.
On this note, I should mention that generally I like Korean food, with a few exceptions (squid, uranium-grown chilies), but it often contains a greater share of calories from carbohydrates. This probably isn't helped by eating from the convenience store, even though I only eat the semi-fresh bento boxes. The amount of vegetation is right, but the carbs come at the expense of proteins (which frequently are sea creatures). This plays the devil with my blood sugar and slows my digestion. Ideally I would do Korean barbecue for every meal, which is all vegetables and steaming gobbets of charcoal-roasted meat, but it's not a thing one does by themselves here. Dining alone is actually a bit unusual—it seems Koreans prefer to do everything socially, but especially dining. Korean barbecue will just have to wait until Laura gets on a more normal work schedule, as she rarely gets home before 8 and the restaurants are currently mandated to close at 9. So cold bento it is. It's what I ate in quarantine, and the 7-Eleven stuff is somehow better, so I'm used to it. Just makes you appreciate hot food when some of it comes your way—even if "hot" is also immolation by 1,000,000 Scoville units of fire peppers.
Comparison is not always the thief of joy, sometimes it gives needed perspective—however bad things are, it could be worse, and however good things are, they're better for having once had it worse. I'm paraphrasing here, but Mark Twain once wrote that the value of travel is to teach you the value of home.
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