Pusan

We arrived into Pusan at approximately 2 am. We were sleeping peacefully on the bus. Suddenly, I was shaken. “Get off.” We blinked hard, trying to wake up. We got off the bus. Yogi-ga odi-imnikka? Where are we? “Pusan.” I thought we were being dropped off at the Pusan bus station. I thought wrong. We were on the side of a 8 lane road. About 7 men huddled around us, demanding to know where we wanted to go. Pusan, I sleepily replied. Over and over they told us we were in Pusan. They wanted to know where we wanted to go. I finally told them, Yeo-gwan. Ho-tell. Fortunately, the first taxi in the queue had a kind driver. He led us to his cab. Once in, he started speaking, mostly Korean, but some English. I explained we would be in Pusan tomorrow and told him where we wanted to go – Hay-Un-Dae Beach, the fish market, Tae-Jong-Dae park. He said no problem. We drove for almost 45 minutes. Were we still in Pusan? Red neon crosses shown from the hills of Pusan. The Korean symbol for a Christian church. Somehow, it just doesn’t seem right. Seeing red neon crosses for a church. It seems almost satirical.

The driver took us to “The Phoenix” hotel, right across from the fish market. We thanked him. We checked in. We entered the room. We stepped back into the 1950s. We were in Ozzie and Harriet’s bedroom, twin beds with gold damask bedspreads. We didn’t care. We fell back into our interrupted slumber.

We had planned to get up early. Explore the city. Somehow “early” became 11. From her twin bed, Ida groaned, “What day is today?” I thought for a minute. Umm. Wednesday. Suddenly a bag was thrown across the room and landed squarely on my chest as I laid in bed. “Happy Birthday, girl!” I giggled and opened the bag. New lingerie! In my size! Thank you, thank you, thank you!

We showered, the humidity in the room almost unbearable. Of course, there were no fans. Not in the bathroom, not in the bedroom. There is a widely held belief here that if you fall asleep with a fan on you will suffocate. That the blades of the fan cut, or suck, all the oxygen out of the air. And you die. Really.

We left the hotel and sure enough, there was the fish market, right across the street. The taxi driver did us right. We began wandering. Staring at the various animals, in various stages of life (or death). Fish. Shark. Whale. Tuna. Squid. Octopi. Abalone. Ohhhh, abalone. Have you ever tried it? Ida said she had not. Well, I’ve only had it once. When I went with a group of people abalone diving last fall. Up near Mendocino. It was so delicious. We cooked it fresh, right there over the campfire. Sauteed, breaded, and in burritos. I highly recommend it. Just then Ida gasped. What? “Did you see that?” No, what? “Over there. A rat just ran past.” Really? That’s the first rat I’ve known (of) since arriving here. Surprisingly, I haven’t seen many, despite all the trash on the streets. Hmm. Interesting. We continued to look at the cases of animals. The ajumaa came and took out the various sizes of lobsters, explaining the price. Too expensive. We inquired about the price of the abalone. It was reasonable. Ida, want to try it? “I don’t know girl, that was a huge rat that just ran past.” Yeah, but it was outside. We’ll be eating inside. “Okay.”

The ajumaa led us inside and we sat down on the floor. A dish arrived. On it were snails. What looked like baby dinosaur eggs. A couple of vegetables. And chile peppers. We looked at each other. Then began picking at the plate. Shortly thereafter, another plate arrived. On beautifully polished stones were slices of abalone. We both wondered if they had been cooked. They arrived very quickly. I picked up a slice, dipped it in a sauce, and popped it in my mouth. Chewed. And chewed. And chewed some more. Finally, I grabbed some toilet paper that was on the table and surreptitiously spit out the hard gristle like substance. This isn’t what I remember abalone tasting like. At all. This is rather, rubbery. Ida agreed. We ate as much as we could, chalking it up to a learning experience and agreeing to get something else to eat later.

We continued through the market. We saw endless containers of fish squirming about, platters of fish not squirming, and booths of random necessary items – visors, bamboo mats, bedspreads, just about anything you wouldn’t expect to find in a fish market. We walked closer to the water to look at the ships. As we stood there, two young men in military uniforms stopped. One offered to take our picture. We smiled and gave him our cameras. He fussed with the cameras, while his friend looked on, rolling his eyes. Evidently he’d done this before. As he snapped the last shot, he thought for a minuted, then stammered, “Have nice day!” We smiled, said thanks, and said good-bye. We walked along the dock, staring in amazement as tents full of older people knotted hooks onto lines, one at a time. Thousands and thousands of hooks and lines were carefully placed along ridges in tubs, the tubs stacked ten or twelve high.

We decided to head to Hay-Un-Dae beach. Except, in my hurry, I read “Hyundai” beach in the guide book. In the cab, I asked the driver to take us to Hyundai beach. He tilted his head to one side, repeating, “Hyundai, Hyundai, Hyundai” over and over again. This wasn’t a good sign. I wrote it out for him. “Ahhhh. Hay-Un-Dae!” and he drove us there. The beach was just that. A beach, full of young people, some lounging on the sand, some swimming, fully clothed, in the ocean, some playing soccer on the beach. Ida and I sat down. We watched the people on the beach, and generally just soaked up the sun for a good half hour. We turned to each other. “Want to see the aquarium? It’s right there…” “I don’t know. The one at Monterey is so good. And I’ve seen the one at New Orleans.” “Yeah, me too.” “Hmmm.” I turned my head. There, arising from the beach, was a casino! Ida! Look! There’s a casino! Wanna gamble? With that, we both sprang to our feet. We walked to the casino, only stopping to wonder as we entered if we were dressed appropriately. As we walked in, the lady at the desk asked for our passports. I guess only foreigners are allowed to enter the casinos here. We handed them over, then continued upstairs.

It was the afternoon, and there was hardly anyone in the casino. A few Japanese ladies at the slot machines. A few Japanese men at the tables. No one else. Our first stop was the bathroom. We entered into separate stalls, but almost at the same time said, “Check this out!” There, right in front of us, were two state of the art Japanese toilets. They had buttons for everything. Spray this. Dry that. We played around and giggled before eventually heading back to the floor.

We decided on the roulette table. We really didn’t have a choice. There was one blackjack table open and all the spots were taken. Roulette was the only other thing open. We played for about half an hour, then decided to leave. It’s not fun to gamble when you can’t talk to the dealer and there aren’t fun people at your table. We weren’t even served complimentary cocktails.

We left the casino and shopped a bit. Then grabbed something to eat. Over slices of pizza, we discussed what we should do next. Aquarium? For some reason, it wasn’t appealing to us. We checked out the floor map. We decided to forego the aquarium.

Ida came up with an idea. “In all the tourist literature I saw advertisements for foot massages. Let’s do that!” Okay! Sounds great! We went to the tourist information center, looking for information about Pusan. As we entered, a young man approached us. “Annyong ha-say-yo.” Annyong ha-say-yo I replied. Pal massag-gee odi-immnikka? He looked slightly confused. I would venture to guess he doesn’t get many requests for foot massage parlors. He looked at us, ushered us to a seat and said, “Wait a minute.” He conferred with the female employees. Lots of talking, back and forth. Finally, he came over with a tourist book written in Japanese. “Do you read Japanese?” Uh, no. I can read some Korean, though. “Oh. Well, here is the foot massage place. It’s near the Lotte department store. Take bus 941 there.” Okay, great. Ida started to interject. I knew she didn’t want to get on another bus. I gave her a look assuring her everything would be alright. Our helpful friend said he would walk us to the bus stop. I told him that was very kind, but we would probably take a taxi. “But, it might be 5,000 won.” It’s okay. Thank you for your help.

As we waited to cross the street, a woman also waiting said Hello. I guess she’d seen the “Smile, Korea!” commercials. She asked where we were going. I showed her the picture in the Japanese guidebook. “Oh, here, I’ll walk you to the bus stop. It’s only a couple of blocks.” We smiled and said we were planning to catch a taxi. For some reason, it seemed comical that people wanted to take us to the bus station.

We found the place with no problem. A small nail salon on the second floor of a nondescript building. We told them what we wanted. Ida was led to one corner of the room to have her fingernails done first. I was ushered to another corner and laid on what appeared to be a gurney. A woman beside me was having done what I assumed I would be getting soon. A serious foot and leg massage, conducted with what appeared to be a wooden torture instrument. It felt so good to be getting a pedicure. Having my feet massaged, soaking in the hot, bubbly water, everything. Pure luxury. I pointed to the woman, still reclining, having her feet massaged. Cho-got juship-shee-yo. I want that, please. The woman attending my feet laughed and put me back on the gurney. She flipped me over and began the treatment.

I wasn’t expecting the piercing pain of the sharp wooden needlelike dagger she held in her hands. I stifled a scream. Okay, I asked for this. This will feel good. This will feel good. Don’t be a wimp. I continued to talk to myself over and over as the pain would start in my foot, then continue up my leg, to my back. Ow, ow, ow, ow, ow. Soon my mutterings changed to Why did I ask for this? Why did I want this? When will this be over? The treatment continued for almost 45 minutes. Surprisingly, it did begin to feel good. My muscles relaxed. There was no tension in my body. I was moved to another station to have pink polish applied to my toe nails. Ida was put on the gurney. Her treatment began. She didn’t stifle her screams. She turned to me, “How did you stand this without saying anything?”

3 hours after we arrived at the salon, we departed. Relaxed and with pretty toes. We arrived to the train station to discover there were only “standing” tickets available for the 1 1/2 hour train journey back to Daegu. We could stand wherever we wanted on the 10 car train. As I bought the tickets, I turned to Ida and said, Well, at least it’s not a bus….