The day was spent more or less recovering from the illnesses of the previous day. We went to Seoul and had Udo noodles which are always a good thing. Then we headed across the Han river to find the Imperial Palace Hotel. Which, oddly, the cabbie could not identify. Several phone-calls (cellular of course) later we discovered that the hotel used to be called the "Amiga" and the change in names had not yet taken in the brains of the cabbies. Nice hotel though, and we got a room upgrade because our rooms were not ready and it was already mid-afternoon. I hied myself hence to my room and first boggled at all the booze available at the minibar and on the shelves above it. Booze, of course, I was still to sick to even try.
The bathroom was a thing of beauty and the toilet was as complicated as the space shuttle. Here are two pictures of the control panel attached to the thing. It even had a built in clock in case you are evacuating yourself on some kind of timetable.
The side view
The top view
I played around with the various controls and got several cheap thrills and very clean. Cleaner, perhaps, than I should have been.
I lolled around the room and watched Van Helsing. A truly horrible but entertaining movie. At about 4 Jae called me on the room phone and asked if I wanted to go out to eat. I was still illing, so I said no. Jae said she would call me back at about 6 and some group of us would head out on the airport bus to Incheon to pick up the POSSLQ. I actually drank a beer and got away with it and then started dressing. Got a panicked call from Ed on the room phone. He said he had called me 6 times. Well, on the cell phone which I had turned off. I had already missed the 6:05 and so I raced to the lobby.
ED - THE PRINCE OF LIES
Here Ed's proclivity for lies kicked into action. I get down to the lobby and he says, "there is just one problem, you needed a reservation made yesterday. The bus is probably full." I started thinking frantically about how we were going to deal with this. We talked about who would go if there was just one ticket (me) and who would go if there were two (Jae's brother). We talked about how we would contact the POSSLQ if we couldn't get on the bus. We talked about all kinds of plans and schemes to get around the full-bus problem. In fact we talked about all these problems until THE COMPLETELY EMPTY BUS PULLED UP AT THE HOTEL!!!
I turned to punch Ed, but unnacountably he was sitting in a lotus position on the floor humming. I didn't have time to figure this out and lept onto the bus. We headed into Incheon and other than waiting for Yvonne at the wrong gate everything was good.
On the way over I talked with Jae's brother about Korean architecture and after we both became exhausted with the language barrier, we slumped into our seats and silently watch the Han and all the pretty lights spin by. If I came back to Seoul alone I would certainly spend more time out with the camera. This is an amazing city by night.
We got back to the Hotel at about 9:30 and stepped into the bar. I ordered a Gin and Tonic and Yvonne ordered a green tea. The Gin and Tonic was perhaps the best one I have ever had and I assume the green tea was equally good. It better have been because the Green Tea cost 15,000 Won and the G&T cost 13,000 Won. The first outrageous thing about this is the price. The second outrageous thing about it was the fact that the Tea cost more than the Gin & Tonic.
What kind of country is this?
We rolled a taxi-cab into downtown and found a Mexican restaurant that also served clam-chowder and hamburgers. Everyone chowed down and the day was over.
PREVIOUS FOOD FIGHTS
A couple of days before this I was out with Ed, Jae and brother eating lunch. We ordered a variety of things including some kind of soup straight out of the first scene of Macbeth. It was called Kimcheegogeegee, or something like that. Anyway, in traditional Korean fashion it went into the personal bowls and then food and chopstix flew like Bruce Lee kicks. Ed would take nasty little morsels from the small bowls, dip them in his soup and eat them with relish (the attitude, not the delicious condiment from the United States). I watched for a while while I chewed on a bean-pancake. Pretty good, the bean-pancake. So I took a piece of it with my chopstix and dipped it in the Kimcheegoogle (name still approximated).
It was like that moment in a Western Movie when the gunfighter rolls into town. The entire restaurant went quiet and stared at me. People with their backs to me stared, people in the bathroom stared at me, people who streamed in from North Korea and people who rose from their graves all stared at me. In that one second I was the complete center of attention of all Korea.
Ed stared. Hissed, "don't do that!"
I have learned better than to ask, so I just pulled my chopstix out of the Kimbochi-chi (I'm no longer even trying) and quickly swallowed the bean-pancake.
Air slowly came back into the room, flows of urine resumed in the bathrooms, the universe spun once again.
I was puzzled and finally asked why I shouldn't have dipped the bean-pancake into the soup. Ed dipped into his bag of Confucian "reasoning" and said, "they don't go together."
Oh, that explains it again.
A day later I asked why they didn't go together and Ed responded that they just don't. I tried again, "why is it against the rules to do that?"
Ed responded, "It isn't against the rules. There is no rule against it because no one would ever do it."
I would have explored this further, but Ed was lighting incense and preparing to sacrifice a white ox.
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