Now, I know seeing a title like that written by me leads people to believe that I'm gonna set off on some self-indulgent emo bullshit, but fortunately for you, this is not that. I just finished my last day at work and the only thing between me and the airplane heading home tomorrow night is one last dinner and drinks with Jamie and the capoeira crew and then some packing tomorrow morning. Has it really been 2.5 years since I dropped in? It sure doesn't feel like it. Apologies if this rambles on, but I'm still not sure exactly what I need to or want to say to wrap up this whole Korean venture. As I write it, no less.
I guess since everybody in the last few days here has been asking me "Why are you leaving?", that would be a good point to start the rambling (err, I mean discussion). The interesting thing is how my reasons for wanting to leave Korea have changed over my time here. My reasons for wanting to bounce back in the first few months? Everything. I mean everything. The job frustrated me to no end, the country frustrated me, I was bored, had nothing to do, had no friends, you name it, I was struggling with it. But slowly many of those things dropped away. I got a friend or two (which is alot for me), found some things to do and life settled out. Still the job was frustrating me so I had two choices: switch schools or leave. I changed jobs and things improved and for a time I was content. I was traveling around, keeping myself occupied, seeing new stuff. Everything was good. But then I began to get bored and I absolutely knew that I had to leave Korea because it was too boring. But then I had a change of perspective. Up until that point, I had been trying to travel and see shit every weekend, to have some crazy adventure, so to speak. When I ran out of places to run to, suddenly Korea became boring. But then it occurred to me: I wasn't traveling or embarking on some grand adventure every weekend back in America, so why wasn't I bored there? I didn't treat it as some exotic adventure, I was just living, that's why. So when I took the foot off the pedal, so to speak, and just went about enjoying the everyday, everything seemed to work out.
Which brings us to today. So why then am I leaving? To be 100% honest, I could have stayed for longer and would have enjoyed myself. Korea is a stable place, a safe place, a solid place. Sure, I have a lot of complaints, ranging from the petty (people spit all over the place, too many people on the subway, etc.) to the legitimate (my apartment sucks, my job isn't stimulating enough most of the time, etc), but every place has its flaws. It's not like I can't find stuff to complain about back in Wisconsin (cough Gov. Walker and his anti-union bill cough cough). The reasons why I have to leave, why I couldn't stay here forever, why I couldn't settle down here are twofold: 1) No variety 2) No space.
I've thought about it long and hard and that's as simply as I can break down my issues. It's not really Korea's fault for either of the issues, but that's how it breaks down. The "No variety" one is pretty easy to figure out. When the overwhelming majority of the population is of one ancestry, one ethnicity (99% of the population has Korean ancestry and only 2% of the population are deemed "foreigners" even though half of those are Chinese of Korean ethnicity), variety is gonna be hard to come by. I've been spoiled by living in America where I have numerous sub-cultures at my fingertips. Want food from some rando country? Done. Want to watch TV programs broadcast in a language that isn't English? Easy as cake. Wanna rent a movie from wherever? Done. And what about the color, energy, and effects of all these cultural interactions (obviously not all cultural collisions turn out so well...)? Face it, I have a short attention span. I need different stuff or I start to get bored and tune out after not too long. So when I go out in the street and hear the same lousy K-pop songs time after time or when I turn on the tv and see the same cliched soap operas and celebrity driven gag shows over and over or when I walk in the street and see people dressing in the same style, with the same haircut, with the same body type and the same facial features, I lose it. I pray to God that no wacko like Hitler ever achieves some dream of a master race by wiping out everybody different, cuz it would be the most bland, uninteresting, sad world ever. Variety is the spice of life, they say, and I badly need that spice to enjoy myself.
And the space thing? Well, that's pretty easy too. There are simply too many people crammed into too small a country. Nothing you can do about that. Even when I would travel into the countryside and try and enjoy some nature to myself, I faced crowds. I never thought you could have bumper to bumper traffic hiking up a mountain, but I've seen it. And it was awful. You want to get away from it all, just you and the woods or the mountain or the ocean? Impossible. There is always gonna be a gaggle of other people there. There are no such things as "secret" areas or "undiscovered" spots. Me, I grew up in Wisco where the cows greatly outnumber the people and for me to be comfortable, I need that space. Space to run wild, run free, to let loose, space to get away, whatever. Here, no matter the location, I can't fully extend my arms without hitting 2 or 3 people. Obviously I'm exaggerating (am I?), but you understand the principle of it. And I'm forced to deal with a Catch 22. If I want space, then I can live in the country, but then the variety of stuff I need is nonexistent. But if I live in the city and enjoy the variety, then I have to sacrifice the space. I'm a selfish guy. I want both. Sorry.
The issue with space works on multiple levels too. The "ceiling" is too low here, both figuratively and literally. My head scraps the ceiling on buses, I have to duck to leave buses and subway cars and sometimes buildings. As for the figurative "ceiling", think about a future here in Korea. How high can I possibly go? My teaching job is stable and okay, but can I ever really move up to a higher pay, higher/better position? Sure, I could maybe move to a university, but what then? What could I accomplish if I stayed longer? Settle down and marry a Korean woman? Start a family? I'm not sure I want that, period, regardless of country. Because I have no Korean blood, I'll never be Korean, always an outsider, so can't really expect to be "accepted" or feel at home, so to speak. And my occupational options are limited, again due to my race. I could improve my Korean even more, but to what end? I've lost my motivation at present because I can't see where Korean would take me. I mean, it would certainly help take me places, especially in the business world, but I don't think I want to go to those places. Hmmm.
And because I am an outsider, I never feel completely comfortable stretching out, relaxing and just being me. Everyone's eyes are always on me, so I can't ever really let my guard down. So there is no space for me to be myself.
Now, from reading the last few paragraphs, one could reasonably draw the conclusion that Korea is a horrible place. I sure have been critical of it, but that's just me rambling and whining about shit. Korea is a solid place, all the way through. The easiest way to describe our relationship is that Korea and I are just poorly suited for each other. We are not a good match. Too different with not enough stuff in common. We disagree in our way of thinking, in our tastes in food, in our tastes in music, in our tastes in culture, in our societal preferences and our tastes in women (that's a biggie). We just aren't meant to be together. That's not to say either of us is bad or hopeless or to be avoided. We were young when we hopped in bed together, tried to make it work for a time, but eventually we had to concede that we are just too different to make it work as a couple. So now its time to move on with our lives in separate directions.
So before I close, I should toss out some thank yous. Thank you to everybody in our little group that helped hold shit together for me (especially for that first year). You guys rock and the last 6 months was not the same without all of you around. Thank you to everybody at Cordao de Ouro Seoul and Capoeira Korea for letting me train with you guys. You folks aren't my group and you don't play with the same style, but you all love capoeira and that's all that really matters. Thank you to all the wonderful folks from my Korean classes. Sure, we didn't speak as much Korean as we probably should have in class, but damn was it fun with you guys around. And finally, to Korea itself, thank you. While you weren't always "good" or "nice" or "wonderful", you were always interesting and I learned and experienced and grew so much because of it. Thank you all. Goodnight.
P.S. I'm still gonna keep writing posts from time to time. It isn't really the end. Obviously I'm not done traveling and getting into mischief.
Ohhhh woe is me. Too much shit and not enough money. Why is it that I always seem to find myself in this situation? Perhaps its time to look over my choices and decisions and make some serious changes to my horribly hedonistic lifestyle. Maybe tomorrow.
My final morning in KL began with me trying to find the famous Imbi Market from some tasty breakfast choices. This market also happened to be just a 15 minute walk from my hotel so off I set on foot. Now, I imagined this market would be easy to find, given how accessible it appeared to be on the map. I honestly don't know why I thought it would be easy to find....nothing is ever easy with me. It turned out to be impossible. I wandered the area where it should have been, hell I even found the "Imbi Street" where I assume the market was supposed to be, but there was nothing there. Hmmmm. No idea why it wasn't there. However, there was a large restaurant nearby with multiple food vendors, so it was an adequate consolation prize.
At this point I only had 3ish hours left before I needed to check out of my room and thus leave KL, as I had no intention of carrying my bag around town while I explored. The obvious final destination was the Petronas Towers. These twin monstrosities used to be the tallest buildings in the world, I think, until Taipei built Taipei 101, which was then dwarfed by Dubai's Burj Khalifa. Since being built in 1998, the Petronas Towers have also been dwarfed by the Internationl Commerce Centre in Hong Kong, and the Shanghai World Financial Center. So, now relegated to 5th place would be a point of national shame and misery, no? Wrong. While its true 4 other countries are packing bigger pieces than Malaysia, Malaysia was smart and went with quantity over quality. They knew in time some other self conscious country would come along and try and make itself more attractive and desirable to the ladies with an even bigger tower, and Malaysia stumbled upon something genius: 3 is greater than 1. Yes, sure one massive shaft is great, but 3 pretty large ones are even better. Its simple math. Without further ado, the Petronas Towers and KL Tower.
Ohhh, you wanted to know about my traveling to the towers? Well, there isn't really anything to say. I walked to the Petronas Towers. They were not hard to find, as you might have imagined. I didn't feel like even going inside, as its just a mall and businesses, neither of which held any interest to me. So I wandered around a bit, took the pictures, then left. Nothing more to say. I would have liked to go up to the observation bridge between the Towers, but they only hand out a limited number of free tickets each day (only a few hundred, I believe) and they are distributed at the Towers each day at 8:30am. I wasn't moving that quickly that early and wasn't that inclined to see the view, so I did not take part. But here's some shots from other people I found on Google Images in case you were wondering what it would have looked like. Thank you people I don't know for getting the shots I could not.
Part of the reason I didn't stay at the Petronas Towers longer was because I still wanted to see one of the centrally located parks or nature reserves in the few hours I had left in town. On the way to one particular park, I realized that this goal was unobtainable. For, you see, it had suddenly become quite apparent that I really, really needed to go to the bathroom. And for those of you that thought I might actually get through a single post without discussing some sort of disgusting bodily function....well, you were wrong. Now, normally finding a bathroom wouldn't be so hard, but after my wandering around the previous night I had learned 2 things: A) that public bathrooms are few and far between, you have to pay to use them, and the quality of the facilities are unknown B) Most restaurants/establishments do not have bathrooms. So I had my work cut out for me. To make matters worse it wasn't just a simple Number 1, this was a bonafide Number 2. I was close enough to my hostel/guesthouse, so I naturally went there first for the privacy and ease of access. But as I'm actually taking the time to tell this story, you can imagine that there were complications at the guesthouse. Namely that there was no TP and the toilet also had no lid, meaning I was in danger of falling into the toilet if I used it. Crap, crap, crap. Okay, my area has restaurants, bars, malls and monster hotels. The hotels won't let me use their shit unless I'm a guest, and the restaurants and bars don't seem to have them. Looks like its the mall bathrooms.
Personally, I can't help but take a little bit of pride in the fact that I only set foot in the KL malls so that I could take a dump in their bathrooms. Such is my scorn for malls. But that didn't work out either, as none of their bathrooms had toilet paper. Are you fucking kidding me??? A mall whose ritzy restaurants charge 15 dollars for a beer and whose stores include Louis Vuitton, Gucci, etc can't pony up the cash for toilet paper??? Fuck you malls. So now I needed to find toilet paper before I could do anything else. And we were quickly running out of time. I headed back to my room, as there were convenience stores nearby and I was determined to just use the guesthouse one, even if I had to squat over the damn toilet. At the convenience store, I found the toilet paper, only to have my soul crushed by the fact that the tp was sold only in packages of 30 rolls. GOD DAMNIT. What the hell am I supposed to do with that much tp? Doesn't anybody sell single rolls? Why? Why? Why? I headed to the second convenience store with the resolve that I would not leave the store without a resolution to my bathroom issues. If that meant I would have to take a dump in their store, so be it. As my glorious luck would have it, this store also only sold toilet paper in packs of 30 rolls. Fuck it, I'm just gonna go with tissues. If they are soft enough for my nose, they'll be fine for my ass. So back to the guesthouse I stormed, dead set on what I must do. And finally luck swung my way: my ass was actually big enough to sit on the toilet, even without the lid. Go me, i guess. As for what to do about the tissues that I'm pretty sure can't be flushed......ummm, sorry guesthouse employees....I hope you guys clean your bathroom wastebasket frequently. Otherwise....yeah.
The time had now come to depart for Singapore, though, so my cabbie took me to KL Central station, home to numerous trains and buses and planes, I think. Seems convenient to have them all together, but the design of the place made for a huge cluster fuck. The various gates for the trains were well marked, so I guess it was just a cluster fuck for those trying to take a bus. I could have gone the train route, but buses end up being faster and more or less the same price, so i went with buses. Even though all the signs were in English, among other languages, and there were numerous maps showcasing the layout of the station, and I asked the information folks at least 4 times where the fuck I was supposed to go, I still could not find what I was looking for. The major problem was that the ladies at the information desk kept harping on about the bus ticket counter being at gate 12 or something. Seemed easy enough, but the station wasn't grouped by gates with numbers. They had some other system. So there really wasn't a Gate 12. Confused yet? I even had the ladies direct my down the proper hallway, saying that Gate 12 is just down that way. But I couldn't find Gate 12. Eventually i found the spot and insanity of the design of the ticket counter was revealed. The area I found it in happened to be the check in counter for the travelers going by plane. So the whole area was desks, with the baggage conveyor belt behind it. This bus ticket counter was stuck on the end of the plane ticket counters. So to everyone walking by (including myself, as I had passed it at least 4 times) it was just another counter for air travelers. No obvious signs or notices to inform people that this is the bus counter. No pictures of buses or anything. And this "Gate 12" that was supposed to be so helpful in finding it? That was just simply the small number thrown up above the desk, like they have at the airport counters, to direct you to the proper person when you are waiting. "Sir, if you'd kindly move to desk 17, we can begin checking in your luggage." That sort of thing. Gates 7-11 were all for the airlines, but little old 12 happened to be for buses. Like anyone would know.
After purchasing my ticket, I had time to burn, so I sat down at a coffee shop and marveled at the fact that the monorail actually runs into the station, just 30 or so feet above my head. Super cool.
There isn't any train going by in this pic, but still the idea of sitting at a coffee shop, inside the train station and watching the monorail come and go was super cool to me. Maybe I'm just lame.
Before leaving on our bus, I found this informative sign. And because I'm 12 years old and always thinking about sex, the sign amused me terribly. "Illegal insertion"? "Spillage"? "Pilferage"? "Inclement weather"? Teheheh. Actually I don't know what that last one would even mean.
The bus ride itself was uneventful, outside of the cute elderly Indian couple that couldn't speak the same language as the bus attendent (yeah, our bus actually had a women providing flight attendent like duties) and thus were always furiously waving for her to come over and help them turn on the TV or put down their tray table or talk to some friend of theirs on the telephone. Super cute.
Back in Singapore, I headed towards Little India straightaway. Since all the cheap hostels and hotels were booked last time when I rolled in on a Saturday night, I wanted to get in as early as possible. But it was Friday, so I wasn't optimistic about my chances. And I was absolutely right. Not only were the hostels still sold out, but the lousy hotel I used last time was also sold out. So I had to settle for a legitimately respectable hotel, meaning I paid way more than I wanted to. Way more. Like twice as much as the lousy $60 hotel from last time. Although this one was probably worth the money spent on it, $120 a night is still $120 a night. Singapore is damn expensive.
Price of housing aside, I loves Little India. That is all.
For dinner, I decided to head over to Clark Quay. Supposedly it was a super cool nightlife area with restaurants and bars right alongside the Singapore River, and given that information there was no way I couldn't have given it a try. They would have hooked me simply with a McDonald's along the river. And this place was sooo much better. The restaurants were wonderful (but expensive), the bars were awesome with varied types of beer (but also expensive), the weather is always perfect (since you are in Singapore, and then you've got the river. Not sure I could ask for much more in a nightlife area. And judging from the crowds, I wasn't the only one who felt the same about the area. After really struggling to select a restaurant (partially due to lack of room and partially due to too many choices for food), I settled on an all you can eat Mongolian buffet. Wonderful, wonderful, wonderful.
My last mission for the evening was to investigate the capoeira studio I had seen when the bus entered town. Lucky for me, it was just down the block from my hotel.
Found it. Don't know anything about Capoeira Bantus though.
My last full day in Singapore consisted solely of my trip to the MacRitchie Reservoir for some nature time. I got up, had lunch, went to the park, came home, bought gifts and went to bed. Really. So the next bit is gonna be very picture heavy. Which will come as a welcome respite for those folks that tire of my long windedness (namely everyone). I will mention that the bus transfer station I took to get to the park was the most organized and orderly thing I've ever seen. Having spent considerable time living in a place where some people would push their own grandma out of the way to get on the bus/subway/etc quicker and then bitch about grandma being in the way, it was nice to see a transport system so humane. People would line up inside the building in one of several permanent lanes. Each lane corresponded to a different bus and when the bus had pulled up and was ready for people to get on, the station's doors would open and people could get on the bus one at a time. Wonderful.
Now, I wasn't exactly sure when I was to get off this bus in order to get to the park, but I only ended up being one bus stop off, which is really good for me. Immediately upon entering the park I noticed several signs making clear to the visitors that the park's monkeys should not be feed at all. This lead my mind to ponder just exactly how obese and overfeed the monkeys were here. In my head, I saw hilarious scenes of monkeys so morbidly obese that they couldn't even move. When visitors came up to take pictures, all the monkeys could do was open their mouths and feebly point to their mouths. I was thinking something along these lines:
Sadly, the truth was not as hilarious as my imagination. If you were curious, this particular fat monkey is from Japan and he is obese due to overfeeding by visitors. Moral of the story: don't feed the monkeys. The simians at this park, however, were all the normal size. The ones that lived around the entrance and the restaurant/cafe had developed the nasty habit of walking up to people's tables and trying to steal food or just rummaging through trash bins, though.
Anyways, the park itself is situated around the MacRitchie Reservoir Lake and features all sorts of water activities to go along with the rainforest trails.
Now, when walking by the group of girls kayaking from the first pic, I heard them talking and they sounded especially angry and upset. I started to get a little worried myself, as there is little in this world more terrifying than riled up white women. But as I approached on the lakeside trail, I realized they were just speaking German. Phew. Close call. Sorry Maria, but German is an angry, mean, violent sounding language. Deal with it.
We enter the jungle. Now, look at the picture. Do you see how wide and comfortable that trail is? I did not know this. I prepped for the park like there would thick brush to work through and one would have to guard against ticks and leeches and the such. Therefore, I wore long sleeves and pants, even though it was in the 80s and humid and I hate not wearing shorts in this weather. So when I arrived at the park and saw all the people just jogging through the park in the standard minimal jogging wear, I, well, I cussed out loud for a considerable period. In case you were curious, in the 4 minutes from bus stop to park entrance that I had spent outside the air conditioning of the bus, I had already soaked through all my clothes with sweat. I sweat a lot.
Sweating aside, the park was wonderful and just the proper antidote to all the loud noisy cities I deal with much too often. For the most part, I had the trail to myself and was able to travel and observe with little to no interference.
One group that I did seem to keep running into (I wasn't stalking them, I swear!) was 2 young German girls and their male friend. Upon hearing the girls speak, I immediately had to change my opinion of the German language (although, it could have been Dutch...I really can't tell them apart). Least I appear a hypocrite on the beauty of the German language, let it be known that if girls were speaking a demon tongue from the deepest regions of hell.....I would have still found it pretty to listen to.
After about an hour of trekking I reached what I had come all this way for: the suspension bridge trail across the canopy. Just so cool to be up that high, standing among the treetops and getting to see the view from the animals' perspectives. Understandably, I lingered here for a long time, taking in the view and observing the monkeys, all 100 zillion of them.
I was joined on the bridge by some Chinese tourists, who amused me by talking to the monkeys in English....you know, cuz Singapore is an English speaking country, so naturally the monkeys would speak English. Duh. As for the monkeys, they were everywhere. In the trees right next to us. Running along the support cables leading up to the bridge. Hiding underneath our feet. Running above us on the support cables. Everywhere. They didn't seem terribly concerned with us. Some were definitely more skittish than others but generally if you gave them a few feet of room, they did not care about you at all.
From the TreeTop Walk, I continued around the reservoir lake until I found an observatory post. I know my father would not approve of climbing such a structurally unstable outpost, and yeah, the thing did move and shake more than I would have liked, but really, was that gonna stop me? Exactly. The camera died part of the way through filming at the top, so here is where the pictures stop.
Once back in Little India, it was time to grab some last gifts for people and then grab some dinner. Because I'm an idiot, I purchased all the gifts before I ate, leaving me with a grumbling tummy and very little money to satisfy it. At this point I had 11 Singapore dollars left to my name. I know the subway to the airport takes about 4 dollars, leaving me with about 7 dollars to spend on food. For dinner and tomorrow's breakfast. Crap. I decided to grab some snacks to hold me over for the evening, get to the airport, then spend the remaining money on food at the airport. Sure, I could have used my credit card, but I don't know if my company would have allowed it. They know I'm in Korea, but I had already used it to make a purchase in Malaysia, so I really didn't know if that Malaysian purchase had set off the company's "suspicious purchases" alarm and led them to close down the card. Better to be safe. So no dinner for me. Tear.
Sunday was all traveling, what with a 10 flight and an hour subway ride to get to the airport. The flights back to Korea were uneventful, other than the substantial (for Korea) snow at Incheon that forced our plane to wait on the tarmac for over 30 minutes. Great way to welcome me back from the perfect weather, green and lush environment of Singapore. Thanks Korea.
