Wednesday, December 28, 2005
Visa Run, Part Two
I was throwing back a cappuccino with E and A when we finally brought it up—the inevitable stages of loneliness.
“You never think it’s going to happen to you,” E said. “When you first get here, all you can think is, I can’t believe I’m in Korea. Everything is so new and cool and you can’t get enough of it. And then there’s the new job, so you don’t miss home that much.
“But then it hits you,” she says, sitting forward, her eyes small as she raises her cigarette to her lips. “That culture shock. You’re never going to be fluent with the language, you’re never going to know everything and you’re never going to fit in. All this resentment builds up, and you begin to hate everything about this place. The food, the weather . . . and, most of all, the people.”
“How long did you feel that way?” I asked.
“Two weeks. But I was desperate. I was begging A to come here. Without her, I would have been depressed a whole lot longer.”
A tapped her ashes into the tin tray, trying to avoid eye contact with the cheesecake I’d ordered. “S—you know, she had your job for two years—had this Korean boyfriend. Didn’t know more than ten words of English, tops. We saw him a few times and it was so awkward. He didn’t say anything! We had to ask her: What are you doing?”
“She said she was too lonely,” E answered. “And then he wanted to marry her. She flew back to New Zealand. He cried that entire ride to the airport, and she didn’t shed a tear.”
“You can’t really blame her, though,” A added. “The alienation really gets to me sometimes.”
I couldn’t disagree. Since I’ve started working in South Korea, I have never spent more than an hour of my waking hours alone, yet I’d never felt the need to connect with another human being. Take my trip to Osaka, for example. One night in an entirely new country and I was swinging back a beer with four guys I’d just met.
There was Lance, the Texan whose halfway-closed eyes were fixed on my face; J, a cute, athletic Canuck who I’d bumped into at the airport earlier (and had come to Korea with his equally attractive girlfriend); K, a former computer technician whose hand was around my waist two minutes into our street shenanigans; and D, an adorable British dork who’d been downing beers the second he’d signed his teaching contract.
Right after I’d chugged my first drink in the street, the boys got to business. “Are you always so timid?” J asked, elbowing me.
K set his face in a rigid stare. “I don’t want to offend you,” he squeaked, “but I don’t think I can trust you.” They roared and popped open more beers. Policemen approached us warily—we could have been arrested for getting drunk out there—but backed away after a few moments . . . most likely realizing I was too awkward to be a prostitute.
“You don’t understand,” I protested to my new acquaintances. “It’s different when you’re a woman. What if you were a part of some child labor ring? You can’t just talk to random strangers.”
“Actually, you kind of have to,” J said. “I mean, how else are you going to meet anybody?”
“It could be dangerous.”
“You are so cute,” K said, squeezing me close. “Is this your first time out of the U.S.?”
“Where in California did you say you were from?” D asked.
“Near Sacramento,” I answered, somewhat defensively.
“Of course you’re from Northern California!” K boomed. “That explains everything.”
It caught me off-guard for a moment as I saw, reflected through beer goggles, the impression I gave people.
For the longest time, I had built up this worldly persona—I had romanticized myself as this sophisticated, independent and open-minded nomad who hadn’t allowed anything or anyone to tether her to the ground.
Yet, to the average man, I came off as a prude. A little girl. A hillbilly.
Minutes before I had devised a way to slip from these guys unnoticed. But N’s words had stung and I could do nothing but finish my drink.
With a battle cry to get as intoxicated as humanly possible, they led me to the first bar we set our eyes on. We were rejected from a few because of our drunkenness. I was sober just enough to feel humiliated by the stares of all the locals, who were probably wondering why a nice-looking Asian girl was strutting around with those loud and obnoxious foreigners.
But once we sat down in a pub (K and J were soon photographed whooping over the Canadian flag), I discovered that they were, for the most part, a nice bunch. (I still had my reservations over Lance, who’d been silently staring at me for the past two hours and pushed a bartender for “hitting” on me. And then there was K, whose paw prints are still on my left leg, waist and shoulders.) Over another round of drinks, we bonded over the affection we held for our students, evil employers, and urban myths of foreign teachers who’d been held up in Korean prison for fake diplomas. J invited us to his Christmas party. We even made plans to tour North Korea together.
I was just starting to feel fuzzy and safe as we left the bar . . . until D threw up, three times. Amid laughter from the locals, maternal instincts kicked in and I insisted we bring him back to his hotel.
“No, no, I’m fine, it’s actually helped me sober up,” D murmured as I rubbed his back. I immediately felt terrible for this guy who, at my age, had drunk through his first two weeks in Korea in an effort to forget he had ever left England.
As I reluctantly followed the group to another pub, Lance stopped me at the door. “Go home,” he instructed solemnly—the first words he’d spoken to me since we’d started drinking. “These guys have been drinking all night, and I’m scared for you. I don’t want to beat anyone up.”
For a minute, I was touched by his concern.
Then he stepped closer and whispered: “Can I take you back to your hotel room?”
Sobered by the sight of vomit, Lance’s rat tail and his words, I shook my head. I called an early night to the pack and strolled down the streets by myself, paranoia sweeping over me. Outside my hotel I ate my way through half a package of baby octopuses covered in wet dough, sipped green tea and wondered exactly what I was so scared about.
But I soon realized it wasn’t fear. It was regret—a frustration that I was in this busy, neon-lit, fashionable city and had no one to share it with. I missed South Korea and I’d only been gone for a few hours. But I also knew I would be alone there, too.
Pia at 3:33 PM
Tuesday, December 20, 2005
Visa Run, Part One
Meeting other foreigners in South Korea is similar to gorging on strawberries—both are luxurious experiences that, while not implausible, are rare enough to make one go delirious and desperate.
I’ve approached men and women in airports, subways and bars without the slightest hesitation or embarrassment. I’ve exchanged numbers with people I’ve known for minutes and embraced others in the darkness and stench of neglected alleys. I’ve made sober declarations of lifelong friendship to those who may forget me once they return to their motherlands.
My once severely introverted self has been nearly snuffed out. Or so I thought, until I made my visa run to Osaka.
Thirty days after my arrival in the Pacific, my employer sent me to Japan, alone, for my working visa. My knowledge of the country’s language was up to par with that of my Korean—which is to say, almost nonexistent.
So I was understandably a wide-eyed and jittery mess as I dragged my fake designer luggage to the currency exchange booth. Clutching my passport to my chest like a bible, I dismissively muttered an apology as I accidentally elbowed an attractive blond foreigner (Canadian, by the look of the omnipresent maple leaf ironed onto his North Face backpack). His sleazy-looking, middle-aged friend approached me moments later.
“What’re you here for?” he asked, and I from the slur in his voice I knew he was Texan. As he spoke, he gave me the look-over, and in turn I tried not to stare too hard at the rat tail dangling down his neck.
We hadn’t spoken for more than two minutes when he invited me to see him when we returned home. “We could be friends,” he swarmed, “or more, if that’s what you’re looking for. You should join us tonight—we’ll hit the bars, go dancing, hug . . . More than hug, if you’ll let me.”
Now, I’ve been hit on by a circus of employers, instructors, married men and all-around losers so frequently that it’s a surprise I’m still attracted to men. But never in my life had I felt more disgusted with the opposite gender. I was already edging away when he invited me to join him and two other English teachers on the bullet train headed to the city.
I briefly envisioned them mugging me outside my hotel. Straightening my spine, I bristled and said as coldly as I could manage, “I don’t want to offend you, but we just met and I don’t think I can trust you.”
Shrugging, he scribbled his number and folded it into my fist. “Call me when you get back to Korea,” he pleaded as he scampered away.
A part of me knew they were really English teachers, and my suspicions where confirmed as I ran into them at the embassy. Fortunately, I had arrived just an hour before the office closed (I had lost track of time at the train station bookstore) and had an excuse to dismiss the advances of the leering Texan, “Lance,” who hovered over my shoulder while I filled out my application, “just in case you need me.” He finally left when his companions dragged him out of there, determined to hit the bars as soon as possible.
After turning in my forms, I had oodles of free time and no idea of how to spend it. I had built my entire schedule around the Museum of Oriental Ceramics, but after checking into my hotel (which was only an arm's length away from brothels and porn shops) I discovered all the museums and temples had closed. And in spite of two books, one Japanese dictionary, fistfuls of brochures and streets aglow in florescent lights, I had nothing to do but eat and shop. And think.
Because of my insane work hours and a surprisingly plump social life, I hadn’t felt homesick for those first four weeks as an expatriate. But as I sipped coconut tea in a coffee house that was a block away from the life-sized, bare-breasted doll displayed across three strip clubs, I was suddenly hit with the realization that I was completely alone.
No burying my head into my mother’s shoulder as we watched some awful Lifetime movie. No more lengthy discussions with my father over our fiber intake and strength training. No more geeky chatter over comics with M. No more wasting gas with J as we belted out Mariah Carey's number one hits. No more spontaneous trips for pizza, coffee and chick flicks with friends. No more running alongside those goddamn orchards I’d loved and loathed so much.
I was in a country where no one knew of my diehard belief that Batman could kick Superman on his worst day. No one knew I would sacrifice a baby goat to see Chicago live in concert. No one knew that the prince's library gift to Belle in Beauty and the Beast was my favorite movie moment of all time, and no one definitely knew I was hungry for someone who was just as alone as I was.
After stuffing myself with strawberry cake, I wandered out. Soon after I heard my name, and saw Lance with bleary-eyed foreigners. As I shuffled in their direction, I could see in their expressions that I looked as exhausted as they did.
“Beer,” Lance said, throwing an arm around my shoulders and thrusting a can in my hands. “It’ll warm you right up.” Without a second thought I brought it to my lips and drank it like water in the middle of that perverted little street, with the city’s billboard lights streaming into the back of my head, screaming open, open, open.
Pia at 9:47 PM
