Snow kept us from crossing the island to some tourist spot or the other and our guide was thrown back on lesser thrills.
GREAT GOD WOOGA BEMUSED BY SNOW
We stopped at a dead volcano - more or less a depression with an attitude and at the Korean Airlines museum. The latter featured hundreds of illy behaved Korean children (there's a book to be written on that topic) and a ridiculous movie.
Then off to a little town called Sung-eup which is supported by the Korean Government to keep an example of the old ways alive. Here is some representative architecture:
EUP, THAT'S MY TOWN
I picture Petey the pig (below) because on the edge of his pen was a slit toilet (I was too cold, sick, or perhaps stupid to take a shot of that). In the "old days" the residents would defecate into the pen to feed the pig. The guide claims these days are over, and I wouldn't be surprised, since human waste might well be barbequable or fermentable. You know what that means!
PETEY (COMING SOON!)
On the way out we had to undergo the usual pitch for the local product. Since it was negative eight-billion degrees outside and the hut was heated, this wasn't all bad. In this case the products were horse-bone extract and a "medicinal" tea In Korea any completely useless thing that can be extracted from an animal, vegetable or mineral will be branded "medicinal" and Ed's dad will purchase it at insane prices.
Finally we stopped at an arboretum and it would have required an imagination more fertile than mine to understand why we would be interested in a bunch of denuded tropical trees shivering bare-branched in the snow.
On the plane on the way back my cold was mysteriously joined by my old friend el grippe. Also on the plane I read the inflight magazine which included an article by my old friend Mike Breen who, in allegedly writing about new year's day sunrise worship, managed to insult Korean sculpture, wax rhapsodic about the sun rising first over Japan, bring up humiliating bits of imperial history that had no relevance to the story and..... and..... well... and get paid for it.
Perhaps my approach is wrong?
Anyway, I foolishly decided to try to bury my stomach issues in a chicken quesadilla and 2.5 beers. Bad move.
POINTLESS PERSONAL NOTE
I don't really throw up. I hate throwing up. The last time I can recall throwing up was on my 30th birthday and I honestly earned that one. But adding the Korean Mexican food to my existing unease resulted in an epic bout of puking.
The Koreans (no parents any longer) cheered this outcome. Really, they cheered and said the felt better for me. This must be some expression of sympathy from the collective mind? As soon as I could reasonably sit upright they offered me another glass of beer.
I am wise to their plan to kill me, and I declined.
Spent the evening rolling around in moderate discomfort and heading to the bathroom every hour or so.
It occurs to me that I have spent at least six of my eighteen days in Korea ill, and two days more or less incapacitated. This is a worse record than I maintained back in my drug abuse days and I should probably rethink my next vacation plan.
Crackhouses don't charge much for occupancy, do they?
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