Nalina's Diary: Country

9:30am found me standing with a 20 pound backpack on my back (felt like 50) and a purse slung over my shoulder, waiting at the bus stop to take a bus to the Central City station. I was with my mom, sister, and aunt. After a ride to the subway, we made our way to Central City station where we caught a bus to the country. It was hot and muggy, and poor me I have a NASTY cold. I had coughing fits throughout the entire trip which made me exhausted... you can't tell though can you? :D After several bus stops, we arrived at a seemingly deserted town called Gwang Ju. It had no hotels, no restaurants, and a few poorly kept stores with odds and ends to eat. The bathrooms were squat toilets... It was so filthy in most of the bathrooms that I didn't even bother taking any pictures of the toilets. Honestly I don't know how they comfortably go bathroom in there...

As we were trying to figure out where to stay, an older lady gave me a freshly boiled, chewy, sweet corn on the cob to munch on and said that we could come and stay at her place. We gratefully hopped into a taxi and arrived at her big, old home. Her house sat along a hillside of rice paddies, gardens, other houses, and dirt roads. Once inside we started helping cleaning and preparing dinner. The lady had three bedrooms, one bathroom, and a kitchen. Her house is probably one of the only ones left of its kind, it is that old. Also, for its type, it is a rather large home. The floors were very dirty, but it was to be expected, as she is nearly 80 years old and lives alone, spending most of the day in town gathering plants for food or gardening in the fields. The room we were staying in had a bed, but the blankets were dusty and who knows what was in them... so we slept in our clothes that night. :P The food tasted good, though it was challenging sometimes to swallow if we thought about how long some of the food had been sitting out as a feast to the frequent dung flies that landed on them. As we tried to sleep that night, I heard tiny clicking feet skittering across the ceiling and along the walls. Once I heard it right above my head, so I gasped and jerked upright. I didn't sleep but 1 hour that night. :P Oh yes and by the way, they were rats...

Our room

The hallway and room #2 to the left and #3 further down. Kitchen is straight down the hall.

That's the shower! Yup down there on the floor. That golden bucket....

Yay!!! a REAL toilet! I am GLAD it wasn't a squatter!

See my pretty shooooes? :D The nice old grandma gave them to me to keep me warm.

And introducing the kind lady as she sets the table... yup that's the table.

Her behind me and this is the kitchen. SHE'S GOT A FRIDGE!

Tadaaaa! The house.. door.

Hi! I had to stay in the yard, otherwise the neighbors would notice a white kid in the neighborhood.

Smirk, happy me in the bathroom.

Yes I am quite happy.

I was glad when morning arrived. I hurried to the bathroom and took a bird bath and head shower in some cold water and packed my stuff. We ate breakfast, though I ate rather little because my coughing fits were giving me trouble again. We thanked the kind old lady and left her a small present of bananas and some other fruits and hefted our bags on our shoulders, making our way to the bus station again. We got on the bus for another town by the coast. We asked the slightly annoyed bus driver if there was a decent place to go to the beach and gather ocean creatures. He stopped quickly by a seemingly deserted place and said "get off here, you'll find something." We were booted off the bus in a hurry and the bus driver drove off. Looking around, we laughed, deciding that we had talked too much for the bus driver's liking. Making our way down the hill, we decided that it was indeed deserted and called a local tour guide who might know how we could get out of the middle of nowhere. :P In just a few minutes a man drove in an old car and explained that it was currently closed and that was why it was deserted. He brought us down there so we could have the whole beach to ourselves. He let us keep our bags in a locked area and outfitted us in hats, gloves, mud boots, and red plastic baskets to collect our prizes... oh and homengees :D These tools are like hoes, but instead of being square-shaped, they are pointed and triangle-shaped, and only hand-sized instead of as high as my shoulder. Trying to avoid deep mud pits that I'd sink in, I dug around with my tool for critters. I immediately found tiny hermit crabs. Everyone else was finding fist sized crabs! Embarrassed by my meager catch, I scrambled around the beach and we started a treasure hunt competition. The man who brought us down gave me a live octopus... I was supposed to pick it up but I squeeled and grabbed it gingerly with my tool and ran it to my mom who would know how to take better care of it. :P After getting all the treasures, we headed to a local restaurant where they cooked the catch for us.

Why am I happy?... WE JUST GOT DITCHED

Yaaah we're stranded.

My catch! See???

The lily pond right by the coast.

Could not miss this shot for the world (sissy took it with me Sony)

I want that PUPPY!!!

After the fun hunt and sad demise of the unlucky critters, the man who brought us down to the beach very graciously drove us all the way back to our original bus stop back in Gwang Ju where we could take our next bus to Mok Po. It took a couple of hours to get there, but it was a huge island filled with gigantic buildings and it was entirely city. I had actually missed the city so much I was glad to lay eyes on it! I sometimes wonder if I'm more city girl than I thought I was... :P The bus driver directed us to a local hotel called Plus Motel. It seemed a bit like a clown's decoration of a motel, but once in the room, it was very clean, comfy (though small) and they had internet!! I was so excited! Oh, I forgot to say this whole time I had no internet. That's why I haven't posted anything for so long. >.< Sorry guys! Anyway, we dropped our bags off and went out for a late dinner at a local buffet. The tables were all shin-high, so we had to sit Indian-style to eat. The food was arranged similar to a buffet, but it was... different, I wish I had my camera at the time! My fever had gotten worse by this time, but at least the coughing fits had lightened up. I was in a daze for the rest of the evening. The food tasted like nothing so I didn't eat. We got back to the motel and I took a warm shower hoping to soothe the fever. Blow-drying my hair I headed to bed. My mom and sis took turns putting cold moist cloths on my head the whole night as far as I could tell...

Welcome to Mokpo... reminds me of rush hour traffic in Portland.

Hellooooo civilization!

The next morning I was able to better notice my surroundings and realized that the setting of the room was the same here as it was in Jeju Island. There are two doors, the first door in has a lousy lock hahahah! The second door had no lock at all. Well it didn't matter any more. I was up and nothing was stolen I don't think. :P We went to a different restaurant for breakfast. We had soybean sprout soup mixed with rice. It was very refreshing and I ate the whole thing for the first time since I got sick.

Getting back to the hotel, I packed my bags... or more like bag... and the motel owner allowed us to keep our bags in the back room where it remained locked while we went shopping for fresh fish. Man was there ever so many octopuses!! For the next day or two I've been seeing octopuses instead of stars when I close my eyes! O_o By early afternoon we had bought a few things to take back to my aunt's house and we were extra-loaded... I wasn't sure how we were going to manage to carry it all on the bus and back home. We went to the Mokpo Train station in a hurry to catch the 2:30 train in accordance with one of the employee's instructions. However, we found out that there was no such train in existence! After debating paying approximately $80 more than $110 to catch the 5:00 train (which would take three hours to get us back to Seoul) and have a bathroom in the train for our convenience (VERY important :D) or paying $120 total to take about 5 hours to get home by bus (with only ONE bathroom break in between 0o0). We finally decided on the latter and hurried to get the 3:00 bus which would take us back to Seoul. It was about 8:00pm when we got back to civilization. HURRAY!! I was soooo glad to see civilization again! And at that Seoul. Funny, I've only been here two weeks and I recognize the city of Seoul. Is that bad? I think I've been here too long...

These crabs were eyeing me...