Got up and finally, after several dips in various hot tubs, left the jimjillbang. All that steam had helped and my headaches were already feeling much better. It was also, finally, a nice day in Korea, not too cold, and sunny. I realized that the dead trees I'd seen from the train actually weren't dead at all, just a very dark green and I could start to imagine that it might actually be a beautiful country.
I went to the Busan Museum, which was quite interesting, especially the section on Japanese relations with Korea in Busan, but also quite depressing, as there was a section on the Korean War at the end.
I think part of the reason I'm not all that fussed about Korea is because, even with North Korea attached, it's still very much in between. In between in that it's always been fought over by someone and so those cultures have seeped into Korean culture. It's in between China and Japan geographically, financially. This point is getting very convuluted but what I mean is that I like extremes, and South Korea is as middle of the road as it gets. Also, I'm not particularly interested in the Cold War. Even more generally, I'm not very interested in ideological conflicts because they just seem so ridiculous to me.
Practically next door was the U.N. Cemetary, which was also sad, though it was pretty. Though I still had quite a bit of time, I went over to the Ferry Terminal and waited. The ferry itself was quite impressive- almost like a small cruise ship. There was even a public bath, but I'd had enough of that for a while. The trip out of the port was quite pretty all lit up at night. My berth was another pad on the floor in a large room- still uncomfortable, and I was once again, wildly grateful for the Ambien, which is becoming a life-saver to me.
Other random thoughts or things I wrote in Korea:
It is nice to see some attractive men again. I'm not saying there aren't any, and everyone has different tastes, but I don't think I saw a single (native) attractive man in all of Southeast Asia. Fortunately, a fair amount of Korean guys are cute, and not nearly as short as people always say. Most were average, not tall, but average.
I don't have too much homesickness overall, but I do miss people, and certain things, places. It seems to work one subject at a time, and lately the category I'm missing like crazy is my friends. I had a dream the other night, and when it started, it was about a hot guy in a bar who was going to hit on me and we'd go out. Obviously I had to be in a bar for this to work, so in my dream, I walked into the bar and met with my Seattle friends and started talking to them, while the hot guy was at the bar. Somehow, my dream just turned into me chatting and laughing with them. At one point I even went up to the bar to get drinks and had a mini-conversation with the hot guy, but then just went back to my friends- I couldn't help it, I just wanted to hang out with them and talk to them more than I wanted to meet some guy- they were just more interesting. In short, I ended up having a very long, vivid dream about having a conversation with my friends in a bar and I think that was when I realized how much I miss them.
In Korea, several cultural practices are based in Confucianism. The one I noticed was balance. Sandra explained to me that drinks in bars were always accompanied by some kind of snack, and more interestingly to me, flavors in food all have to balance out. Koreans take this to mean that you have to have kimchee or something bitter with every meal. I took it to mean that after eating at any point, I had to keep the balance by having dessert.
Busan Tower at Night
Leaving the port, quite lovely at night
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