Advertisement
Seoul1
I think the picture explains for itself... '...And the multiplying villianies of nature do swarm apon him...' - Macbeth. Today we found ourselves lost again in a new city. And it just so happened that this city was rather large and the people were overzelous to try and help us along our way. The only problem is that when you don't know where you are going, it is very hard to find it.
After a four hour bus ride we arrived in Seoul. Usually when we come to new place we go to a tourist information center, get a map, and have them circle on it all of the major things to see. This time was different. When we set foot off the bus, we found ourselves with no T.I. in view; so our hunt began. Through the streets, the underground, and even the high-rises. But to no avail. Or hopes were at their end, when finnally we came to a small shack in the middle of a very crowded market. Sure enough it was the fabeled T.I. we had been so desperatly searching for. We then started with the usual questions, but it was soon very apparent that the women spoke no english. With crude
Seoul2
Lost; confused; and not sure what the thing in the backround is doing in a modern-day mega-metrapolis.... hand signals we managed to get the idea of 'cheap hotel' through the language boarder. She then got up, hushed us out of the shack, locked it behind her, and off we went following her though downtown Seoul.
We went through allies and tunnels; over streets and bridges. On the way she managed to ask: 'American? American?' I said 'Yes.', she got a very pleasent grin across her face. I have never seen the movie 'Hostel', but I know from the commercials that it is about people who kidnap tourists and sell them to be tortured by high paying customers. I also know from the commercial that Americans are the 'crem de la crem' of to-be tortured victims. I disregaurded the comment at first, but shortly after arriving to our 'hotel' a very vivid image of me being tortured became very sureal.
The hotel was in the darkest ally I had ever seen. And the way up to the front counter involved climbing a flight of stairs with very blood-red 'rust' stains in full view. It took me a mire seconds look inside the room to decide it was not for us, not matter how angry it seemed
Korea4
Beautiful South Korean country-side to make her that I had rejected her kindness.
I don't know how close we came to dieing a horrible gut-wrenching death by torture; but I know that I am still alive and I wouldn't have this trip be any other way. The way we found our hostel that I am writing in now, is a whole new story on it's own. But this story only involed Randy. I was sitting down on the side of a very crowded street while I thought Randy had just gone around the corner to find out where this hostel our map pointed to was at (I did manage to pickup a very rough map of Seoul when we first landed in Busan the previous day). About an hour later Randy came running up to me, out-of-breath, with a small Korean man riding a bike after him. 'Now what?!' I thought to myself. 'What could Randy have done to make this day any worse?'. Luckily Randy had done good. He had found a man that spoke broken English, and asked him where our hostel was. He didn't know, but he went around asking other people if they knew. None of them did. He
Korea5
Wow. How pretty. finnally found a women who did and she said he would take Randy there. So Randy went off following a nice Korean woman who spoke of a daughter she has in the USA right now who needs lots of help, so by helping an American mabey someone would help her daughter. Either way, Randy followed the woman to a ally, but the woman insisted he stayout for now. She came back a couple minutes later waving Randy to follow. He did.
This brought him to a nice little guest house, it had everything we wanted but a personal shower. Randy insisted, and the man said he had another hostel not too far with a shower. The woman then took of in one direction, while Randy on foot, and the man on a bike went into the other. After seeing the room and shower, agreed to the 30,000 a night fee for two people in one room (1,000 Won = 1 USD). Randy and the man came to get me.
I didn't really worry about Randy, even though he was gone about 25 times longer than he said he would be, he is a very smart capable person, and I am not one to worry anyway. Long story shorter than it felt: We are alive and well. We learned over dinner that Korean's have much better dinner than breakfast, and that icecream makes everything O.K..
Advertisement
Tot: 0.095s; Tpl: 0.01s; cc: 7; qc: 51; dbt: 0.0615s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.1mb