Day 7 Laundry/Shopping Mall from hell/Overrun Aquarium/Bridge
Tour and GI’s
So in the course of six days I’ve managed to baptize ten shirts with excessive
sweat. It was time to do laundry. We observed the imposing lone laundry unit
that sat before us in our residence. All buttons were labelled in Korean but
that didn’t matter to Mary. She never reads instructions anyway so she happily
pushed random buttons.
As the machine began to soak our clothes, we wondered if it would dry it as
well. One and a half hours later, the machine was only finished washing our
clothes. As we discovered later, Koreans have washing machines that put North
American technology in the stone age. Unfortunately, all of the Korean intellect
was used towards how to wash the clothes perfectly, not dry it. We found a
simple laundry rack in a closet and hoped the A/C would eventually dry out our
clothes. Ahhhh, but wait! Every time we leave the room, the A/C turns off.
Bottom line… our laundry was dry three days later…
Koreans count backwards by the way… they start with five fingers up and then
move them down as they count. They also answer only in the positive. Here is an
example: “Does it bother you if I smoke?” They would answer, “Yes” meaning it
doesn’t bother them. Some Korean couples in the height of their “honeymoon”
period dress identically. Usually, the man resists but risk losing the woman if
he doesn’t comply. These are but a few cultural tidbits that were quite
entertaining to us…
We ended up in a modern shopping mall. The entire Korean population decided to
join us. You would literally have to fight your way through people to get in or
out of a store. I did manage to spot one other tall white guy at the over the
sea of black heads. We attempted to wave to each other but were bowled over by
fanatical shoppers.
The shopping mall had the predictable stores but then a stretch of board game
and video game cafes started popping up. Most women carried enormous handbags
and wore gigantic sunglasses. My wife, for many years has consistently bugged me
about my aviator style Serengeti sunglasses. She said they made me look
ridiculous because they were so enormous. I tried to explain that they were
driving sunglasses and were very handy because of their size. I have worn them
happily since their purchase in 1988! Get this though… Mary has recently
purchased sunglasses that literally cover her entire forehead and cheeks. That
kind of proportion gives the facial features of common house flies a run for
their money. Fashion trends are best ignored folks! Hang onto anything long
enough and it will become in style. I win.
An aquarium located within the mall was quite unique. Unlike most zoos and
aquariums where you worry you missed something, everyone here had to follow the
same direction to explore the facility. However, I didn’t realize we were about
to be cattle led off to the slaughter. Image almost 50 million Koreans jamming
themselves into luminous aisles and plastering their finger and face prints all
over aquarium glass. Fortunately, I never became claustrophobic because of my
height. Mary, however, was reduced to human pulp after attempting to grind
through this mass of humanity.
Fish were not in conventional displays half the time. They floated in
microwaves, laundry machines, toilet bowls and sinks. However, the living
creature that drew the biggest crowd, thus blocking the hallway entirely, was a
random chipmunk. I think he had more of a show than the thousands of people
plastered against his enclosed habitat.
Central air conditioning is not common in Korea but stand alone units are.
Occasionally we were able to escape the overwhelming body heat by holding steady
in front of one of these blessed units. Thankfully, moving sidewalks began
appearing along to prod everyone along. However, these sidewalks were calibrated
too quickly as we barely caught a glimpse of the most fascinating fish in the
aquarium. After fighting off the last of the screaming children, we located the
exit and predictably stumbled into the aquarium gift shop. The gift shop exit
predictably led us right back into the mall controlled by Satan himself.
The line-up into the aquarium via mall access had grown substantially since we
entered. This somewhat organized formation of aquarium patrons greatly enhanced
the mass confusion for other non-patrons who simply lined up believing it was
the proper thing to do. A human traffic snarl ensued strategically causing more
Asians to spill into the gaping mouths of sinister stores.
We entered a Kimchi museum (again, part of this gigantic mall) and were told not
to try the samples by our volunteer English speaking guide because they were
quote, “disgusting.” It didn’t make too much sense to us that a museum honouring
the staple food of Korea discouraged consumption of the very food it honoured…
We took the subway to the American military sector of Seoul where all the
inebriated GI’s wandered along the neon-lit streets. One American unsuccessfully
attempted to operate just purchased numb chucks and eventually suffered from
numb nuts. Another was cursing a blue streak wondering why the hell a Denny’s
wasn’t nearby. It actually annoyed us seeing all this nonsense because it felt
we were not overseas anymore. We hastily scurried away and left the Americans to
further inundate another part of the world with their culture.
Dinner unfortunately ended up in this general area. It was a bit unnerving when
we were asked if we wanted fries with our Kimchi.
Sun-ju efficiently rushed us across half of Seoul via subway to catch our night
bus tour. The bus supplied headsets, activated by GPS, for each tourist.
However, the GPS only reacted to the presence of a bridge. A rather pleasant
recorded voice kicked in and enthusiastically explained the history of each
bridge as we crossed back and forth across the river. Ironically, I became quite
disorientated due to the GPS inspired route and eventually was unable to tell
what side of the river I was on anymore. We did cross 11 bridges on the tour and
somehow staggered back to our hotel room and readied ourselves to “meet the
parents” the next morning.
