Helpful People

How many Koreans does it take to help me find my guesthouse?  Sounds like the beginning of a joke, right?  At least 5 is the correct answer.  The man who worked at the airport that made sure I got on the correct bus. The woman sitting in front of me, on the bus, that somehow knew what my stop was and informed me that it was time to get off the bus.  This was very helpful because although I thought I was paying close attention I really had no idea it was time to get off the bus.  The bus driver who pointed me toward the correct street once I got off the bus.  The shop owner who saw me studying my directions and somehow knew I had passed my destination was able to find me my 5^th helpful person a girl who knew the area, spoke English and took the time to walk me to my destination, which wasn’t too far away as it turns out.  That was 5 helpful people in under 1.5 hours which I found amazing.

Why all the difficulty you might ask?  Well, addresses aren’t used in the Western sense.  There are neighborhoods and in each neighborhood the buildings are numbered but they are numbered in the order they were built so building number 30 could be between building numbers 9 and 302.  Are you confused yet?  So, everyone gives directions based on what is nearby.  Easy enough except Seoul is a big city that is very beautiful and visually stimulating.  There are many distractions which makes turning left at the 7-11 harder than you might think because there is also a Starbucks, 4 restaurants, a bakery, and a delivery truck parked out front.

Once you come to terms with this system and write down your directions very carefully, give yourself some extra time to get where you are going and enjoy the adventure.

 

No Tickets Necessary

I am in this hotel in Beijing, good price, great location, and not far from a central subway line. Behind the hotel is a field, not just an open field but a highly active sports field. At 7:30 in the morning, after my neighbor’s cacophony of “suffering” and heaving from the previous night’s baijiu fueled adventures finally stops, the games begin. Music, dancing, marching and cheering it’s like there is some sort of junior Olympics preliminaries. One day there was some sort of opening ceremony, which involved lots of music and something to the tune of the Super Mario Brothers theme song. On the second day there was a shorter ceremony and a track meet. The announcer was literally maybe 50 feet away from the front door of my room and by 11:30 in the morning it was all over and the field was empty.

In the afternoon there is often soccer and sometimes flag football. When selecting this hotel I had no idea that a prime view for watching sports was complimentary.

Small Victories

It is important to count the small victories when traveling. Some days have more of them than others.

I had the opportunity to take the Maglev (which stands for magnetic levitation) train to the airport, it is the only one of its type, in the world, and it is located in Shanghai. It travels about 300km/hr and can get you to the PuDong airport in about 7 minutes.

Allow me to take a moment to stress the importance of going to the correct airport to catch ones flight. Having found myself at the wrong airport in Shanghai the practical option was to go to the correct airport and try to get a different flight. At this point I was very grateful to have someone who spoke Chinese with me to navigate this situation. Without it I am sure there would have been a lot of panic and a crying episode in the middle of the airport, which, from what I have seen, doesn’t seem to be uncommon while at the airport. Everything worked out nicely though, as I was easily booked for a flight later that morning. My slightly overweight (depending upon whose scale you use) luggage was checked with no problem and to top it all off I the airline served a full meal on a 2 hour flight and it was decent. This is unheard of and I was pleasantly surprised.

Having made it to the correct city, finding the correct train, and taking the correct subway to the right stop to go to my hotel I only had a very minor meltdown when I temporarily couldn’t find my hotel right away.

With this all behind me my favorite small victory of the day was ordering my dinner entirely in Chinese (without any help) and getting exactly what I wanted. So a toast, to small victories!

No Wonder Your Waiter Hates You

This is a gross one folks. Consider yourself warned.

I have definitely been guilty of complaining about my various jobs waiting tables. Yet nothing prepared me for what I have seen here. People who wait tables don’t get tipped and will even look at you funny if you leave too much money. Now there are some exceptions to this but they usually involve a service charge added into the price and you don’t know who actually receives the money. You get what you pay for and when the waiter doesn’t take tips they effectively reserve the right to attend to you at their leisure, disappear, ignore you, and any number of other things (I also slightly envy their ability to do this). Generally speaking, if you show up with friends a number of times this type of situation can sometimes improve.

So we are at this jazz bar listening to an actual jazz band doing a mix of songs some of which were familiar. They were great, it was busy, and people are eating and drinking and having a good time. The band finishes up and a few tables clear out. Apparently the custom when eating chicken wings, or duck wings, or whatever bird they are is to serve them on skewers and throw the skewers and bones on the floor or leave them on the table. Not on the plate, on the table. Now I don’t think this applies to every place but it seems to be consistent with certain types of places. My inner food server trembles with horror on a fairly consistent basis.

So we are watching this waiter, who doesn’t get tipped, clean up the table and floor of the people that left. This isn’t just a couple of things. There were all kinds of stuff, skewers, bones, cigarettes, straws, napkins etc. It is a medium sized garbage can full of grossness. No wonder you have to flag someone, sometimes 2-3 times to take your order, bring the check, and do any number of things like refill beverages or bring napkins. You are just a mess to clean up after.

On the way out, we made the questionable decision to use the bathroom. I should point out that I have been joking that someone will land in the toilet if they aren’t careful because the floor is always wet. This bathroom was no exception but with one addition as it was Friday night and a little bit late it looked as if someone had already had too much and made a poor estimation of how close they were to the toilet. Remember that this is a squatting toilet and imbedded into the floor. Of course this would be the time that my foot slips and my hand touches the ground. At this point I am eternally grateful that my clothes, bag and everything else was spared. Nothing else touched the ground and I count it as a small victory.

So I take my contaminated hand to the sink, which by the way is not with the rest of the bathroom but out the door. To make matters worse there is someone gagging over the sink, which I so desperately need to use. This seems unreal. Fortunately, he realizes that the (one and only) bathroom is now available but now I am terrified of using the sink. The same floor-cleaning waiter appears out of nowhere, runs some water in the sink and the sink is now usable and has SOAP. Feeling like it is my lucky day because my clothes were spared and my hands are clean. Order in my strange little world has been restored. We disembark and I explain the turn of events over the past 3 minutes and wonder if using bleach on my hand would be appropriate.

Kafka’s Disco Party and the Haunted Elevator

Next stop is Tun-xi, a town at the base of Yellow Mountain.  I had heard rumors about the hotel the group stayed in last year and was curious if it would be the same bizarre hotel this year.  This hotel is enormous for the relatively small size of the town and somewhat brightly lit.  When we finally made our way to the check in desk located on floor -1 (yes that is right negative one) via the, very dimly lit, 4^th floor we got our room keys for the 8^th floor.  So back on the 8^th floor it is still dimly lit, old carpet for an otherwise newer hotel.  Some of the hallways weren’t even lit.  Yet when we arrived at our rooms a whole different story sparkly, sparse but very modern.  The rooms had hardwood floors, big windows and one sparkly blue wall with a flat screen TV.  This I wouldn’t have guessed from the hallway.

Strange mix of disco party and austerity at this hotel.

The shower was a yet another story.  A glass window separated the shower and the room with an opaque curtain for privacy. Hmmm!  At this point I am trying to not think about the types of parties or adult films that this room might lend itself to and what is the point of a shower with a window and a very thin curtain as opposed to a wall.

What kind of parties do they have here?

Such showers must be hard to build because both the inner walls in the bedroom and the outer walls in the dark hallways of the interior were suffering some mold damage. Well, it’s only for one night.

The Haunted Elevator

At some point in the morning a group of people went down the hall shouting WAKE UP!  WAKE UP!  Confused by this style of wake-up call, and that the “wake-up call” was in English I reconsidered my resistance to using earplugs.  At some point I got up and resolved to go to the breakfast buffet.  I made my way out of my sparkly room into the gloom of the hallway which daylight didn’t improve and waited for the elevator.  The elevator went from -1 to 9 and back down to -1.  This happens a couple more times and the door doesn’t open.  By this time there is a crowd waiting for the elevator when the door finally opens the elevator is full but what is a few more people so I stuff myself onto the elevator and make it down to -1.  When I make it to the door of the breakfast buffet on -1 there is a line pouring out the door and I forgot my breakfast ticket. Damn.  Back up the elevator.  I make it back up to my room and run into my roommate who reports just what I expected.  It is a zoo down there.

Breakfast attempt 2 waiting for the elevator again. It passes again and again and it strikes me as strange that the halls are always empty and the elevators always full.

You might be wondering at this point why I don’t take the stairs.  For whatever reason the stairs in hotels are a small step up from the stairs in a parking garages, sparse, cold, complete with weird sounds and strange smells.  Some of the doors that you would expect to open do not open.  So I don’t take them very often.

With that said I stuff myself onto the overly full elevator again and after a few floors of going down the elevator door opens and I get off only realizing after the fact that I wasn’t at floor -1. I was on the 4^th floor.  That is what I get for trying to do anything before drinking coffee.  I walk down the empty corridor of the 4^th floor looking for the other elevator, which I know exists.  After a bit of a walk I find a somewhat out-of-the-way elevator.  It opens, nobody is on it, It has a button that says -1. So I take this elevator to -1.  When the door opens there is nothing but a drafty construction zone, clearly not the reception area.  So I try for the first floor thinking that I can surely take the stairs from the 1^st floor.  The door opens and there is nothing but darkness.  Wrong again.  Time to retrace my steps back to the 4^th floor.  At this point I am ready to forgo breakfast, I find the other elevator with a crowd in front of it and take the stairs quickly up to the 8^th floor back to my room and have some dried fruit, beef jerky and instant coffee for breakfast. My roommate tells me that breakfast wasn’t very good anyways and I am content with the fact that if I would have eaten the food I wouldn’t be allowed to leave, like in the Hayao Miyazaki movie Spirited Away.  If you haven’t seen it you should.

Traveling in a Group- (mad libs)

Traveling in a group

1. adjective ___________

2. adjective ____________

3. verb _______________

4.verb______________

5. noun, thing ___________

6. noun, thing ____________

7. explicative ____________

8. name of language _______________

9. noun, thing _____________

10. noun, thing ___________

11.noun, thing ________________

12. adverb ________________

 

Mad libs

When traveling in a group it is good to maintain a ___________ (1) and

____________ (2) attitude.  Sometimes it is difficult to make decisions as a group

like where to eat and what to do.  Eventually everyone has to ____________  (3)

and will want to _____________ (4).  It is also important to remember, to use

caution, crossing the street as a group because you don’t want 6 people to be hit by a

______________  (5)or a ______________(6).  They might honk their horn and

call you a _____________  (7)but it doesn’t matter  because you don’t speak

_____________(8).

Going to the grocery store is also another adventure because some people want

_________  (9) while others want ____________ (10).  Finally you make it back

to your room with your ____________ (11)that you found at the grocery store and

you  are _____________ (12) relived to be back.

You are glad that you weren’t hit and happy that small children wave at you.