Choo-seok Trip Part I: Arrive in Geoje-do

Here is a typical situation in a Korean office. I booked my bus ticket to 거제도/Geojedo on Tuesday after telling my boss that there were only seats on the 1PM bus. He said it was fine for me to go then. Then at 10AM yesterday (an hour before I was to leave to the terminal in Kangnam) he made mention of a contract we needed to go over...I said, "Well, that's probably not going to happen, is it? It's Choo-seok here for a few days." "Oh no, James, I am in Seoul, Mr. Choi is in Seoul and you are in Seoul these next few days." Hello...I'm in Geojedo...oh ya, that's right.

Then at 11AM I went in to say my goodbyes and he had a task for me. Find something-or-other on the Internet....no problem. 10 minutes later there it was...then 10 minutes to explain it to him. Then I bolted...no time to waste. Missed my Red (faster) bus to Kangnam so took a Green (slower) one. Crap, this won't work...changed to subway (at least then I know how long the trip will take, each stop is about 2 minutes from the next). I then missed the transfer stop. Crap again. Double back, change lines. Get to the station. Handover paperwork, get ticket. Ok...it says 서울(Seoul)=>고현(Gohyeon)...sounds right. Then 09/24, 13:00, 07...hmmm, today's date, time and that must be the bay (place where the bus stops). So I go there (at 12:59) and there's a bus with a similar name on the sign. Then I use my fantastic Korean to ask where my bus is and present my ticket to an 아저씨/ajeosshi...he points down the line of buses. Crap, it's not in #7 at all, it's in #1. Just made it--actually the bus left 3 minutes late (very rare in Korea), so I was lucky. The #7 was my seat number, which a gal whose seat I was in pointed out. Such was how my trip began.


Baseball in da bus.

One cool thing about buses in Korea (especially the deluxe ones, which have 3 seats across rather than four) is they have a TV on...today was baseball, Houston at San Francisco. There's also usually a few kids on board. This gal was especially cute.


Cutie on the bus.


Who could take just one picture?

It took only 5 hours to get to Gohyeon (on Geojedo), which is actually quite impressive for traveling during Choo-seok...but I guess most people left after the regular workday or later into the season. Three others were on their way there and Wendy (my host who is an English teacher on the island) thought I'd be a lot longer so I got to poke around the bus terminal a bit and I got this beautiful specimen of Korean architecture...specifically, how they omit dividers between the men's bathroom and the outside world.


Gohyeon Bus Terminal bathroom...from the hallway.

Wendy has a pretty cool place...a lot bigger than mine. She works for DSME (Daewoo Shipping and Mechanical Engineering, I think), lives in a Daewoo Construction apartment, drives a Daewoo Matiz car and I think pretty much everything else is made by Daewoo as well. (Daewoo is one of the large chaebols or conglomerates that have their hand in everything.) Here's a pic of her car...


Wendy has a reserved parking space near the Admiral Hotel...


...but she prefers the handicap spot.

Anyhoo, we made our way down to what she called "the most happening bar in Ok-po, the Singing Chicken" (Ok-po is a little city on Geoje-do, close to the shipyards where she works. Here's a pic of the outside...you can probably guess that it's not like the clubs in Seoul.


The Famous Singing Chicken

If you need more evidence, this guy was preparing his dinner just down the street.


A good place to fillet fish...on the side of the road.

First though, we had dinner at Delhi, the Indo-restaurant and met Marinos (a Greek guy), his belle Lulu (a Filipina transplanted to Australia...wicked accent!), and Sebastian and Eleanor (a French couple who inhaled a pack of Marlboros between them during dinner). As per usual in a foreign restaurant in Seoul the service was slow but the food was predictable. Funny thing, though, I don't mind having Korean food and people double-dipping their food, but I did get irked a bit when the Frenchies were doing it with the Indo food...no idea why. Maybe I thought they'd get ashes in it or something.

The Chicken was interesting...basically a bar with 3-4 gals pouring drinks and lots of drunk, loud foreigners. There was this one guy from Croatia...funny guy, he was definately a regular there. Crude: yes. Obnoxious: yes. Funny as hell: oh yes.

After that is was off to pick up Phyllis (a Dutch gal), Rodgers (an American dude) and Carol (a Canadian English teacher). We all sacked out and got up early to explore the island before heading to Pusan that night to pull an all-nighter and return again on Sunday morning.