An innocent abroad, in a taxi

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.

Footloose and fancy-free in Cheonan

We're out of quarantine, and the less said of that experience, the better.  It is the closest thing to jail that I ever want to experience.  Necessary, and I am glad the government here takes the pandemic seriously, but not for the faint of heart.

We're in Cheonan now, ensconced in our upscale hotel.  Our room is something like 450 ft², so quite large, indeed apartment-sized, though it lacks some of what you'd expect from an apartment, chiefly a kitchenette and additional closet space.  Not much to be done about the lack of cooking capabilities, though we have a very small mini-fridge and can use the similarly undersized 800-watt microwave in the lobby downstairs.  But we have been able to address the lack of storage, with various storage boxes and folding cubes and trays obtained from the Lotte mall around the corner, so everything has its own place.

Our hotel, despite being very nice, is suspiciously inexpensive, and now we know why: it's in the older part of town, surrounded by love hotels.  If you're not aware of the phenomenon, these are short-stay (three to six hours) hotels where Korean couples go to get away from relations and have relations of their own.  (These exist in Japan, too, as rabu hoteru.)  Because of the Confucian culture and the high price of real estate, people live with their families until they marry, often into their 30s.  The love hotel is how young people manage to get away and satisfy an adult need.  Some of these hotels have off-street entrances, and automated check-in, to minimize the risk of being observed.  Unfortunately it's all a little seedy, though by no means is the neighborhood dangerous.  South Korea has very little street crime, probably due to the Confucian shame-based culture and stiff sentences handed out by the vaguely authoritarian regime here.

Speaking of authoritarianism, I generally lean anarchist, but I am grateful for the strong response to the pandemic here.  Everyone wears a medical-grade mask at all times except in their own homes or when eating, enforceable by the police.  The government keeps everyone apprised of nearby cases by use of Amber Alert-type mobile alerts, and it seems like testing and isolation are not optional in case of exposure.  Social distancing isn't really a thing, but the ≈600 cases a day in a nation of 50,000,000 people would indicate that social distancing is a poor substitute for good masks and rigorous contact tracing and testing.  This means one can dine out with relative ease of mind.

What do we eat?  Well, we do have a box of snacks here in the room, and if we keep up with shopping, I can avoid going to look for food midday.  If we do get hungry and don't want to venture very far, we can go to any number of the convenience stores ubiquitous here.  There is a 7-Eleven or similar on every block, sometimes opposite each other.  These are better than convenience stores in the U.S., and one can get a fairly generous bento for $4.50 or so.  But we've had a few very good meals out, including a Korean soup restaurant, an American-style sandwich shop, a Vietnamese restaurant, and Korean-style fried chicken sandwich concession.  If you don't recall from our 2014 trip, the Koreans have taken our fried chicken and topped us by a mile.  Some things on our list we haven't yet managed is pizza and Korean barbecue.  Typically, you walk into a restaurant and point at a picture, as staff speak little or no English.  Translation apps can help decipher menus, and you can go back and forth with waiters on your respective phones as necessary.  You sign in on a contact tracing sheet, wait for the food to be served, unmask, eat perhaps a little more quickly than you otherwise might, and mask up again after your last bite.  If take-out is an obvious option, you might take your meal to go.

We have made some forays into the wider city, and learned to summon cabs with an app.  (Our 2014 trip would have been made vastly easier with smartphones; it's amazing what a difference they make.  Our 2017 stay in Taiwan was greatly enhanced by this capability.)  On Saturday, we went to an English-language used bookstore, and I found a 1902 copy of Samuel Pepys' diary and a novel by Umberto Eco, and Laura found a small stack of Terry Pratchett books she hadn't already read.  There is an Australian bar next door that we understand serves a very creditable Western-style pizza, but unfortunately they weren't open until after we were ready to head home.  We also visited Shinsegae, a six-level luxury mall with public art on the grounds, though the rumored Gudetama store wasn't to be found.  (I understand there is another luxury mall in town, and perhaps that's where Gudetama may be found.)

Sunday we went to a mountain park, the weather being vernal (a few days before it was 19 F, so highly variable), with winding, very muddy trails up to the top and along a ridge.  At the top was a pagoda-like gazebo and various outside public exercise machines, all of which were in use by a surprising number of people.  The "mountain" itself is no taller than Pine Hill in Alfred, and much less steep, and probably only exists as a park because it couldn't be built upon, as it is surrounded on all sides by development.  (South Korea is a continuous sprawl of concrete and neon, large hills being the sole exception.)  Along the ridge were several Buddhist-type tombs near but off the path, and it was unclear to us how old they were or how they ended up in a park.  Coming off the hill, we encountered a small temple that seemed to be run as an advice and counseling center, if Google translated the sign correctly.  We then walked a couple kilometres, stopping along the way for a bite at the Tous les Jours French-esque bakery, before catching another cell-conjured cab back to the hotel.

That's about it for now.  I spend my days reading, mostly, or watching Marc Maron's daily coffee casts and his attempts at intervention with his nip-addicted cat.  I have projects I could be working on, but my usual routine has been interrupted and hasn't quite sorted itself out, and I lack the right work surface—the "desk" in the room being more of a vanity, without a chair.  With the 14-hour time difference, our days are bookended by messages from folks back home, and in the middle of the day, we can watch the hamster on a webcam Rachel has graciously allowed us to set up in her home, as his primetime is now our daytime.  A deserved shout-out to her for watching our precious fuzz bijou while we're away.

Tous les jours

So just how do I fill my days, locked as I am into a small hotel room?  A week in, I think I can reliably answer.

Well, meal times provide structure, and it's something to look forward to, even if they're like as not to disappoint—perhaps this time you'll get lucky.  Also, someone comes by to take your temperature in the afternoons, and though the entire interaction is maybe 10 seconds, it's seeing somebody that isn't through binoculars, even if they're head-to-toe in Tyvek and PPE.  This temperature we enter into a mandatory government app on our phones, and we take our own temperatures in the morning, for a total of two readings a day (Laura does this just once a day and it's entirely on the honor system, with no fleeting visitors.)

I usually wake up between 6 and 7, and listen to NPR for a couple hours.  I do my morning grooming and take my pills, put on the tea kettle, and make up the bed.  (Coffee here is in a pour-over filter pack, but it doesn't work either with the flimsy Dixie cups they gave me or the rice pots I save from meals to make my tea in.)  I poke around on the internet and catch up on Gudetama Tap.  Eventually I put on music—opera last week, but '20s jazz today—and read.  One source of fun is an internet nanny cam Laura's sister Rachel has allowed to be put in her house, trained on our hamster.  For once, with the 14-hour time difference, he's on the same schedule as us humans. 

After lunch, more internetting and reading.  I may put on NHK World, which is one of the few TV channels in English, or stream France24, in French, for a challenge.  Yesterday I had a nap, but I try to avoid them so I sleep better at night.  Today I did a little light laundry in the sink, and of course I'm writing this now.  Next I will probably read, or gaze out the window, until dinner.  Laura and I will chat a few times a day over Google Hangouts, though her internet connection doesn't seem great for video calls.  Could be the particular protocol, as she seems to use Zoom fine.

I don't have the greatest view, but it's better than Laura's view of an interior courtyard.  I am above a marina drydock, with all manner of boats put up for the winter or repair.  Beyond that is a channel, which runs under a major highway overpass, and has a lock.  The bit of the harbor I can see is frozen over, but the channel is clear and frequently features ducks.  The channel is blighted by industrial infrastructure.  Beyond the highway, Seoul can be glimpsed in the haze.  Sometimes high in the sky I can see dueling seagulls.  I have small birdwatching binoculars, and I watch the boat yard workers, usually the same 2-3 guys, as they go about their business.  Sunday I had a treat, when ordinary people walked down the access road towards the hotel, or visited the boat yard, maybe to shop for their first boat.  Here was the people watching I had hoped for.  It was the first time I'd seen any women, apart from the occasional temperature-taker under three yards of Tyvek.  Yesterday I saw a cat, possibly in search of li'l smokies.

Yesterday was a sport event.  It was a windy day—the afternoon particularly clear, with a good view of Seoul—and somehow, one of the orange biohazard bags they give us for our meal waste, had gotten loose outside, and it was engaged in aerial acrobats, riding the eddies and currents and vents and what-not, tumbling and gliding, even coming close to my window on the 11th floor.  It was sheer delight to see this stupid bag gamboling on the wind.  Then the wind took it around the side of the building never to be seen again.  But while it lasted, it was glorious fun. 

(Addendum: Were I able to get on top of the building,  I could see with the binoculars into North Korea, which is about 20 km away, albeit just barely.  You can tell where the DPRK starts from where the trees end, having been all cut down for fuel.)

After dinner, I have a routine of eating one See's bonbon, followed by a sip of (scotch) whisky, which is technically contraband in quarantine, but it adds a little civilization to my captivity.  I'll read a bit, and maybe take a shower, if I didn't earlier.  A bit before bed, after I do my nighttime bathroom routine, I will watch an episode of Frasier on CBS All Access, using a VPN, to get around region restrictions.  A bit more reading and then lights out around 10.

Wash, rinse, repeat.

I will mention a bit of intrigue here on the 11th floor.  Smoking in quarantine is forbidden—the literature threatens a fine and imprisonment and deportation—but a neighbor keeps getting in and out of his room at all hours to go smoke up on the roof, I think.  What's definitely worse than smoking is leaving your room.  When he comes back, the hallway is filled with the scent of stale smoke, as though this chain-smoker never washes and moves in a Pigpen-esque cloud of his own miasma.  It of course travels under my door, and all I can do to fight it is spritz a cheap Avon cologne I brought.  Every time I hear his door slam, I just know my world is about to smell like an ashtray in continuous, unwashed use since 1963.  I haven't quite worked up the nerve to blow him in to the desk, but I'm on the verge of it (will today be the day?).  At home I'd merely tut-tut such behavior, but here, cooped up, it's become a mild obsession.  It's unchristian of me, but I keep hoping he will step off the roof during one of his late-night sorties.

(Update: I finally called the desk, and they said they'd check on it.  A little more noncommittal than I'd hoped for, but maybe they'll come through.  If they properly understood.  Updated update: haven't heard or smelled peep since I called, so something happened.)

One of the phenomena I find interesting is what I call "prison inventiveness," though doubtless professional psychologists have a word for it.  But what you brought into quarantine is all you have, apart from meals.  You begin to save any bit of packaging that has potential use.  I have a bundle of chopsticks, rice pots turned tea mugs, fruit cups turned drinking glasses, a burgeoning rubber band ball.  When LEDs on all the switches were keeping me awake, I peeled apart my luggage routing sticker, cut it up, and covered all the lights.  This provides a measure of satisfaction in my own ingenuity, until I think about the parallels with making do in prison.  This whole experience has given me just a tiny taste of what it must be like to be a prisoner—less the gangs and constant danger of assault, sexual or otherwise.

So yes, the mental health toll is real, and I wouldn't do this again or recommend it to anyone else, but here we are, and thankfully nearly over the hump.  Thank you for all the check-ins, e-mails, notes, social media comments, etc., that help maintain my sanity a little.  It's very much appreciated.

Quarantine so far--Laura's post

Dramatic, no?  It was a tough trip in, especially that last bit, and it really threw me for a loop.  Ultimately, the Ramada is fine.  All the hotels have small rooms, with very limited amenities.  The view is interesting, the room has good climate control, the bed is comfortable enough, and I got normal towels.  My bag was delivered the next day, and I have all my stuff.  Ian got his negative COVID test, and he ended up at one of the nicer hotels, Marina Bay.  Other than a more picturesque view and some actual art on the walls, our rooms are substantially similar. 

Services are a bit different.  At the Marina Bay, guests are temperature-checked once a day by the staff.  At the Ramada, they make a loudspeaker announcement at 9:45 am every day telling us to log our temperatures and symptoms in the app.  At the Marina Bay, Ian can’t get anyone at the desk to pick up the phone when he calls.  At the Ramada, I’ve had pleasant well-spoken attendants happy to talk with me about whatever I needed.  One time I didn’t get an answer and they immediately called the room back to see what they could do for me.   

Food is definitely different.  The Marina Bay serves what appears to be a very Korean-style menu, with a lot of variety.  At the Ramada, I get a much more stable menu, heavy on salad, pickles, and a few pieces of fruit with each meal.  It’s very predictable.  Unfortunately, the proteins haven’t worked out well for me.  They’ve had too much fat and gristle, and when you stack that with delivery at just about room temperature (or as I’ve come to know it, congealing temperature), it’s very unappealing.  I’ve just switched to my other option, the vegetarian meals, and we’ll see if that works out better for me. 

The internet in the hotel is pretty great, and I’ve been able to do lots of video chats, and even play my D&D game with my friends who gamely moved the whole thing to a time I could attend.  I’ve read two books so far, though most of my days fill up pretty quickly with work, as we prepare for when I get on site in a few weeks.  It sounds like the hotel plans to book taxis for us at the end of our stay, so Ian and I probably don’t need to worry about how we’re getting to Cheonan, we can just take our hotel taxis and meet there. 

I’ve got another week left here, and I think by then I may have just finished shaking off my jet lag!

Arrival--Laura's post

 Ian detailed some of the story of our travel from the U.S. to Korea.  I’ll pick up just before our paths diverged. 

After we went through symptom screening at the airport and had handed over our pre-flight negative COVID test results, we started to walk over to the next area.  Before we could get to the gate, our screener came running over with an in-ear thermometer.  He had forgotten to check us for symptoms!  He stuck the thermometer in Ian’s ear.  He turned and stuck it in mine.  Back to Ian, three checks in a row.  Back to me. Back to Ian.

The screener turned and led us back to the symptom area and flagged down an inspector.  The screener went running back to his booth to get us both green lanyards with cards labeled, "symptomatic," and had us put them on over our heads.  The inspector looked at where our temperatures had been recorded, and took the lanyard back off my head, but he directed Ian to a walled off area labeled "Symptom Investigations."  I stood with our things and made Ian give up his coat and sweater onto the pile of luggage, yelling after him to "Sit down and cool off!"  I had read about people getting flagged for being overheated at temperature check stations before. 

I texted with Ian through the cubicle wall between us and he reported a second temperature check 5-10 minutes later had clocked in at 37.1°C.  Since this was lower than I had tested to begin with, I figured we would be in the clear, but nope.  Apparently he needed to be detained at the airport until he could get COVID test results.  I asked the ladies running the symptomatic inspection area if I could stay while he waited for his results, but they said no, helped collect his bags, and waved me off.  I made sure I wasn’t accidentally in possession of anything Ian would need to navigate whatever came next and wished him luck before heading back into the next stage of immigration.

I was pretty dismayed at being separated as I continued through immigration (install an app—sit while they contact a resident to verify you’ve been requested to come—fill out paperwork about where you’re staying—sign a paper to promise not to leave quarantine or get deported).  Part of the way through, my colleague texted me that one of his pieces of luggage was missing and one of ours was too.  When I arrived at the baggage claim area, Ian’s roller bag and my duffle bag were there, but my roller bag was missing.  Basically, I only had my pillow, some clothing and my work boots.  Everything else I packed was in the bag that hadn’t kept up with us.  Everything I planned for quarantine, everything for work, all my toiletries, and also, all of my socks.  Not great.

At the lost bag desk, they assured me that bags usually show up a day later, and I filled out the paperwork.  My colleague mentioned that there had been a sign saying our bags hadn’t arrived, so it was likely that they were still somewhere that was known, just not here.  I refused to write down an address, since I still didn’t know where we’d be staying and I didn’t want them to deliver the bag to the hotel I’d be heading to in 14 days.  They said I could call the next day to check on the bag, and tell them where to deliver it.  I asked the ladies at the counter to please look after Ian’s bag, because it would be some time until he could come to claim it, and they said they would.

No problems through customs, as my colleague and I walked past the desk and out into a waiting area, to catch a bus to quarantine.  There were two large groups of people already waiting, and about an hour later we were ushered forward outside and onto a bus.  The full bus pulled out from the airport onto the road, and the sun was just coming up. 

It was a hazy morning, and as the sun played hide and seek with the tall city buildings we passed, it burned a deep stoplight red.  The bus ride was longer than I expected.  After a half hour, I realized that Ian and I were basically going to be on our own to get to our destination in 14 days.  I had heard the hotel assignments were not predictable, and there was no reason to expect we’d go to the same place.  At 45 minutes, I started checking on Google Maps to see if we were approaching any of the common hotels I knew about.  No.  Maybe?  There was one hotel very far out that we could have been heading to—The Golden Tulip.  But before we got there, we pulled in at the Ramada.  I knew people stayed at the Ramada, but I was pretty sure it was the worst hotel of the options.  I hadn’t even mentioned it as a possibility to Ian, because I didn’t want him to focus on it.  One colleague had found her room at the Ramada contained only hand towels, and was told to just make do when she called the desk to ask for a full-size towel.

They unloaded half the bus (and I hoped the rest of us would move on to another hotel), but then unloaded the other half.  It was shockingly cold outside.  They had us place all of our hand carried luggage to the side and sprayed it down with some sort mist.  They conducted temperature checks, handed us rubber gloves and had us pick up our bags again before ushering us into a cold marble entry room.  Our things were piled against the wall, and we were directed to sit at a row of counters and fill out paperwork.  The paperwork was simple, with few questions.  There was not much information, or many options to be had.  Just some passport information, confirm our promise not to violate quarantine rules, and pick between normal or vegetarian meals.  Then we lined up to pay for our stay, receive our room keys, and head up to quarantine for the next two weeks. 

I’m in room 414.

No, I said the gazpacho

 We last left our tired but intrepid neurotic on the threshold of the hotel room that would be his entire horizon for the next 14 days.

Before we continue, it is important to say that Laura and I watched countless videos of people in hotel quarantine in Korea.  The experience varied by the hotel you are randomly sent to, but it was agreed that the Marina Bay was one of the best to find yourself at.  Video after video showed its blessed inmates as having large rooms, well-appointed, with balconies, and generous welcome packages.  The meals shown looked very appetizing, and the internees seemed to enjoy the quiet time to catch up on their yoga and skincare routines and Netflix watchlist.  This looked eminently doable, and here I had won the lottery of hotels.

Now, it goes without say that this is not at all what I found.  Life doesn't work that way, and probably less so for me.  I usually have all the luck of a tree culled for toilet paper hoarded by fat people in Arkansas.

Lesson one: people often selectively present aspects of their lives on social media to appear more glamorous, killing it at life, hashtag-blessed.  You don't see the crying fits, the dirty undies, the shameful online shopping compulsion and crushing credit card debt that goes with it.  Despite being an old hat at the Internet, I forgot this cardinal rule, that people lie in the service of their carefully curated personas, and that what I was being shown was either presented flatteringly, or else wouldn't have made the vlog if the turd couldn't be sufficiently polished.

Lesson two: in the Plague Year, the situation changes by the week.  Most of the videos we were looking at were months old.  It had not occurred to me that the experience might deteriorate as the pandemic wore on.  Our default mode of thinking is that things get better over time, when this year they have run in the opposite direction.  Yes, we now have the vaccine, but more people are being infected than ever, and life expectancy in the U.S. has dropped by a whole year.  All year, I said with the pace of events, I couldn't foresee next week, much less next month or next year.  And yet here I blithely made all my plans and designs and fond imaginings with old information.

Now, having said the above, I may present to you what I encountered.  A small room, in no better shape than one in an aging La Quinta or Holiday Inn, with a view that overlooks a boat yard and a small channel lined with industrial infrastructure.  No sweeping views of the harbor, no people watching.  The YouTube vloggers had been given a prince's ransom in snacks and ramen, slippers, an exercise band for God's sake.  None of these awaited, just toilet paper, a stack of Dixie cups, a few thin towels, and a roll of orange biohazard trash sacks.  Nothing in the way of cleaning supplies, despite maybe wanting to sanitize surfaces, or perhaps in case of spills.  (I later discovered by examining the fire escape diagrams, that there are three different floor plans, and I got the smallest of these.  The videos obviously featured the other floor plans.)

Of course, I was disappointed but desperately tired, ate a small sorry-you-missed-dinner dinner consisting of ramen, a juice box, and a chocolate bar (whatever; real food was coming tomorrow and it was going to be great), and did some cursory unpacking before hitting the hay.

The next morning, the loudspeaker crackled to life and announced, first in Korean, then English (why Korean? This quarantine system is for foreigners, not Koreans—they quarantine at home), that breakfast had arrived.  (This is how the loudspeaker works; 30 seconds of static before and after the announcement.)  I had no sooner unwrapped my breakfast and begun to examine its contents when there was a rap-tap-tapping on my chamber door.  I donned a mask, and there was the facility doctor with a COVID swab.  I told him I had been tested at the airport, that I had papers, that the instruction packet said the hotel test was for people who weren't tested at the airport.  He was adamant, this is policy, we must follow policy, etc.  I cut him off midsentence, pulled down my mask and told him to just do it already.  He was gentler than Nurse Ratched at the airport, but it was still intensely uncomfortable.  He screwed the cap on the test and told me to expect him again on the 13th day for more of the same.

Of course, daily they announce by the same crackly intercom that people who were not tested at the airport will be tested at their doors between the hours of 8 and 10.  I double-checked the paperwork, and indeed, only residents of former Soviet republics and a few select other countries require the extra swab.  Why always the extra scrutiny, I will never know.

Laura has an entirely different experience at the Ramada, where she's quarantining about 40 km away, and I will let her describe her own experience, as well as what passes for food where she's at.  

I can only describe my own meals.  They come three times a day, at 8, noon, and 6.  The meals always arrive cold, without the ability to heat them, and the overall quality varies wildly from school cafeteria to prison chow.  Breakfasts are vaguely Western, with cured meat and eggs, or quail's eggs, and then some oddball elements like cocktail wieners, rice balls, fruit cups that also include tomatoes, and some kimchi pickle, usually of daikon radish.  These are generally the most edible meals of the day.

Meals later in the day can be more or less palatable to Western tastes.  Usually there is rice and some protein, be it bulgogi or katsu-fried fish, kimchi, and then an assortment of other items.  Among these invariably are cocktail weenies, which is incredible given that three separate companies at least produce our meals.  There are various vegetables, usually covered in a garlicky red pepper paste and usually tasty.  Then there odd mayonnaise-based salads, containing some combination of egg, potato, macaroni, and apple slices—sometimes all at once.  There are seaweed salads or pickles, which is not my thing, but not unusual.  But then there are some truly odd, insanely pungent relishes—I don't know a better word, mix, medley?—based on dried shredded squid, dried tadpoles, dried tiny eggs, usually with mung beans.  These I have to carefully remove from the tray before I can begin to eat, and often their odor has already flavored everything else in the box.

Each meal comes with a soup, usually some sort of miso-based broth, or corn purée, which is often accompanies breakfast.  Breakfast usually also comes with plain yogurt, and most meals have a piece of fruit or pieces of fruit (and tomatoes).  Beverages are either a 16 oz. water bottle or a juice box, and only at some meals, with no rhyme or reason I can see for their inclusion or exclusion.  Every other day they may tuck a packaged snack of some sort, a cookie or candy.  Some dinners also include dried ramen, in case you get hungry between meals or if you don't care for anything you've been given.  

These meals don't resemble the YouTube videos.  It's not that there's not enough of it, or that it's very bad, but it's just not good.  I honestly like Korean food, but I don't think this is what Koreans eat.  It's quite a let down.  All your adult life, you choose what you eat, you get the things necessary for it and make it, or pay someone to make it for you, but always something you choose.  Here there is no choice, and the quality and variety are so variable.  (As I often quote my old psych profs, the two greatest predictors of happiness are predictability and control.)  I realize the irony of saying this as a citizen of a nation that locks innocent kids in cages (which I oppose with every fiber of my being), but it just seems to me that, when the food and the room are considered, the amount of hospitality owed to people you lock in their rooms for 14 days, utterly dependent on you, is a little higher than this.

Why then the deterioration in the quality of the quarantine experience?  Again, some of it is false presentation by vloggers curating their branded lifestyles, and a pox unto them.  But it really does seem that quality has diminished, and I don't know if that's due to the cupidity of the contractors, or funding cuts, or an attempt to subtly discourage all but the most essential visitors, or some combination of all three.

This entry grows too long, and rambles, so I close here.  I will say more about how I structure my days in quarantine in another post.

The road and the miles to Coree

Greetings again from the "Land of the Morning Calm," Korea.  We were last here in 2014, and my, how changed is the experience.

The journey got off to an inauspicious start.  Our trip was supposed to be 1.5 hours to Detroit and then 14-ish hours to Incheon, depending on headwinds.  Instead, during the preflight check in Elmira, already buckled in, it was found one of the engines was malfunctioning.  It would take 4.5 hours to get a replacement plane, and of course we would miss our connection.  This necessitated a four-hour layover in Detroit, five to Los Angeles, another hour's layover at LAX.  But once ensconced in our business-class seats on the way to Incheon, things began to look up again.

At Incheon the troubles were renewed.  I was pulled out of line for a temperature of 37.5°C, which is a low-grade fever.  What kills me is that I was already hauling two heavy bags and didn't want to carry my sweater and coat as well, and thought it might elevate my temperature.  Well, I was right.  The quarantine officer separated me from Laura (she was sent on to her quarantine facility), and I was taken behind a screen to strip off my outer layers.  I subsequently tested at 37.1°C, which is elevated but usually not considered a fever.  Nevertheless, the quarantine officer ordered a dual-swab test, which she said would take 6-12 hours to return a result.

I was ushered to a carrel and told to wait.  Maybe half an hour later, someone came to escort me to the testing site.  As it turned out, this was outside on the tarmac, and I still in my short-sleeved shirt.  But I found the minus-3°C cold infinitely preferable to the nasal swab, which is the most uncomfortable thing I have ever had happen to me that didn't involve a dentist.  (Yes, ladies, I am aware doctors do much worse things to you, but I can only speak to my experience, which, subjectively, was unpleasant.)

I was returned to my cubicle, where I was given a bottle of water and a mylar blanket, and told I could stretch out on the floor to nap if I wanted.  For the next seven hours, I saw no one except a menial who brought me a fish baloney sandwich—three words that should never occur in sequence, anathema sit.  I am not ashamed to admit that as the sixth hour approached, I was beginning to crack up.  I stood up on my chair to look around and saw the terminal deserted.  I gingerly peeked into the other carrels—16 in all—and found mine was the only occupied one in the place.  Had I been forgotten, left to rot in a low-pile-carpeted oubliette?

A bit after the seventh hour, just as I was looking up the U.S. Embassy, a pert young quarantine officer appeared and asked if I had received the test results in my e-mail.  By God, no, woman, or would I still be here?  I would have raised such a hue-and-cry as to have brought half the airport staff running, so on edge was I.  Why I needed to receive it in my e-mail was never explained, and I never needed it for anything else, but this required half an hour of back-and-forth with their IT department to get it successfully into my inbox.  I was then sent to the immigration desk, and after taking my biometrics and pouring over my documents, the immigration officer, confused, sent me to a back office for her supervisor to handle, and the process began anew.  At least this woman's facility with English was good enough for my nervous jokes to land.

Thankfully, my checked bag was still waiting for me at the baggage claim.  I collected this and the customs officer took my declaration slip, dropped it into a basket unexamined, and waived me through.  The cordons corralled me into another cubicle, this one quite sizeable, erected around a low garden, with a desk manned by half a dozen police cadets, all staring intently into their phones.  One looked sleepily through my documents, and told me to sit on the bench for the bus that would take me to my quarantine hotel.  After a few hours, I asked when the bus might come, and was told it was delayed because of the snow, which seemed doubtful, at least from an Upstate New York perspective.  Anything less than six inches is hardly an impediment back home.

Two hours later, after a large group of arrivals joined me, the bus finally showed up.  I think the real story was that I alone was not enough to warrant a pickup, but they were the critical mass.  We boarded and not much later arrived at our quarantine facility.  It turned out to be the Marina Bay Hotel, much hyped in YouTube videos by internees, and shown to have beautiful rooms and a wonderful arrival package.  Surely I was about to be recompensed for all my sorrows.  After more paperwork, and my documents being examined once more, I forked over my $1,680 for the room and was sent up to the 11th floor to lock myself in for the next fourteen days, in peace and comparative luxury.

I think you know where this is headed.

To be continued.