Beep, beep, beep, beep beep beeepebbeeeeppebbbeeeeeep; ugh, and then I'm dragging myself out of bed at 630 in the morning to go hop a bus to Gangwon-Do province, a rafting trip and, wait for it, bungee jumping. My hangover has rendered me less than excited though and the 3 hours of sleep I got after stumbling back to my apartment at 330 are just enough of a tease to really piss me off. "I guess I'll pay for it today," I think, knowing that I would but consoling myself with the prospect of sleep on the 2 hour bus ride waiting for me at the Express Bus Terminal. Liz and Natalie are waiting for me in front of our apartment building and we shoulder our backpacks and head to the road. I haven't eaten, but I imagine I'll be able to find something by the bus stop, I mean come on I'm in the second largest metropolitan area in the world, why wouldn't I be able to. That thought helps my bad mood a little too. Jeremy didn't make it home yet, so he isn't coming and Natalie went home early from the wedding to get some sleep, but Liz and I are exhausted having stayed out for our friend Matthew's 28th birthday party the night before. It was a bit of a banger, we had gone to several different bars, a Noribong, and I had slaughtered all comers at darts. Somehow the sweetness of that victory hasn't lingered as much as the alcohol has, and I've rolled my window down to help with my headache.
After an excruciatingly uncomfortable ten minute cab ride we get to the bus stop. I use the bathroom in the subway because it's the closest one and according to Liz there is also a Family Mart down there. The bathroom is great, miraculously it cures my hangover, but the Family Mart is nonexistent and I have to make do with the slim pickings of a mini food . . . place, not even a store. Digestives it is, Jori you'd be proud of me, ugh. Oh well, I think were going to stop at a rest stop I should be fine, they might have food there. We meet Andrew at the bus and get in. He sits next to a girl in the seat on the other side of the aisle;
"Come on man sit over here," I say. He's my friend, me mocking him is why he's here at least he should sit by me.
"Oh yea sure, thought you'd want to sit with Natalie or Liz, no problem."
We sit for two minutes. I'm fiddling with my ipod looking forward to a nice rejuvenating two hour nap when . . .
"You're going to have to entertain me you know, I'm wide awake. You made me wake up at the ass crack of dawn to come on this trip so if you try to go to sleep I'm going to poke you until you wake up."
The little bastard, of course, this makes sense. I sigh, resigning myself to the fact that I'm going to be the groggiest white water rafter ever and we leave.
We talk about school, work terrorizing small children, comment on the differences between Seoul and what we're passing at the moment, mostly mountains dotted with small towns and farms. Andrew wakes up the entire bus singing along with the CD and my annoyance with him is complete, oh well. My eyes have been half open the whole trip as I've drifted in out of debilitating exhaustion but not anymore. Sweet Caroline has proved to much of a classic for Andrew to resist screaming BAH BAH BAAAAHHH, GOOD TIMES NEVER FELT SO GOOD, what an ass.
I figure if I'm going to be up I might as well make the most of it. I get out my camera and start trying to get good shots of the mountains at 65 miles an hour, no such luck. I delete most of them as they are crap. A motorcyclist stares at me though and I get a decent one of him, that will have to suffice, an hour and a half has run its course and the rest station is outside. Out of the bus, noodles for breakfast, they're delicious and along with the Powerade I get clear up what little is left of my hangover and even wake me up a little bit.
After twenty minutes we get back on the bus and the remaining half hour of the ride flies by, I'm awake now and getting excited. We reach the departure point for rafting ahead of schedule, gear up and get ready. Our trip manager (?) has had us make groups of ten on the bus and we put together a pretty solid group of 9. Liz, Andrew, Natalie and I, three Koreans, Barra, an Indian man who works for Samsung, and Ellie a really nice Canadian who also works at a Hagwan. We pick up one more girl as the other two buses arrive and get ready to go. A guide comes and gets us, we grab paddles helmets, lifejackets and our raft and carry it down to the river. After taking a group photo of the Adventure Korea trip members we leave. The rafting guide speaks no English and has struggled to get us in the water. He gets impatient with us almost immediately as Andrew and I have insisted on splashing as many people as we can right away. He's not the only one upset, the girl we added to our original group of nine is furious that other groups are splashing her. She remarked earlier that she was uncomfortable in a bathing suit and had no desire to get wet. Really? We're going white water rafting, what do you think is going to happen here? We're in a small boat, floating down a river dotted with rapids, and you have two idiots splashing everyone they can, sorry, you're going to get soaked.
We spend 10 minutes failing to grasp the concepts of rowing as a group at the bend in the river we've launched ourselves into. Our guide's feeble attempts to get us to row together only serve to make Andrew look like more of an ass and our guide more angry. Great. It doesn't matter though we're rafting and as soon as we figure out how to row we make our way into the steady procession of blue, yellow and red rafts floating down the river. We hit "rapids" almost immediately and in my place in the front I'm grinning as a wave of river water washes over me.
I've missed this, swimming opportunities have been sparse in Seoul and the only wet I've experienced has been the comforting warmth of my shower in the morning. Here though I've just felt the shock of the cool river water right in my face. I'm reminded of the Ocean, standing arm in arm with friends at the beach trying vainly to stand up to the breakers as they crash down upon us. I'm reminded of the cool dirty water at the Laurel Reservoir, littered with leaves and floating sticks, swimming around them and laughing at Jessie's attempts at freestyle. St. Mary's comes to mind, riding Ben's Laser so fast the only part of the boat touching the water is the centerboard, arching my back as I fly across brackish Horseshoe Bend trying to dip my head into the water careening past me below. I remember pulling myself back up onto the boat feeling the water being pushed out of my face by the wind, streaming through my hair, down my sunburned back and pooling around my feet in the cockpit. I remember letting go, letting the boat heel so much it capsizes and I'm thrown out of it laughing. As this new river crashes around me, engulfs me, cleanses me, I can't help but smile and laugh a little bit, hello again my friend.
My reverie complete, I'm back in the boat, as wide awake as I've ever been, listening to the laughter of my fellows, the annoyance of the one girl who doesn't want to get wet. She has a very winey voice, but it's really funny to listen to her complain because she deserves everything she's upset about in my opinion, I mean come on. We resume paddling after we get past these first rapids to counts of "1...2...1...2...1," we're on our very own Greek trireme, a rubber one, that really won't do to well if we were to ram anything but the repetitive calls to dip our paddles reminds me of the drum beat that was used to keep the time on the old Athenian warships. I smile at the thought, and stroke and stroke and stroke until the guide tells us all to stop, we're nearing the next stretch of white water and our paddles will remain in our laps so we don't lose them in the tossing of the boat. This won't be a problem though because our guide has just steered us directly on top of a rock, and we're stuck.
Our guide of course is now furious, I mean as the person tasked with actually directing the boat whose fault could it be but anybody other than him right? He gives us all withering looks and manages to get us off the rock but now he's really angry and it shows in his constant attempts to steer us away from things that look like a lot of fun, like the waterfall coming up. We've all been trying to head towards it for the while against his Korean overtures which only two on the boat understand anyway. The two girls who do understand him are yelling at the four guys in the front, Andrew, Balah, one other guy and I to stop paddling towards it, yea right. We've just watched the boats in front of us all go under the water cascading down the rock walls of the river, I'll be damned if we're not going to do it. So we keep our direction and as we get closer he yells more, the Koreans translate a little more urgently and the girl who doesn't want to get wet wails. This is going to be fun. We make it to the small falls and love it. It's hot out and we've dried from our last trip through rapids so this feels very good. The whiney girl complains all the louder now about how wet her jeans are getting and how we're all jerks but like I said earlier she deserves it.
At this point I'm ignoring the back half of the boat because they're loud and obnoxious, I'm sick of the guide, the Korean girls only translate for him, and that girl is just mean to all of us. Andrew and I are having a blast splashing everyone around us while Natalie and Liz are doing their best to keep up with us. The four of us in the front have become the ring leaders of this little escapade and we've been dictating our skirmishes with the boats around us much to the chagrin of the back half. They yell, giving me all the more reason to ignore them and splash harder. We head to the next set of rapids and brace ourselves, this one coming up looks rough. There will be no splashing now, paddles in the boat as the boat bucks around in the river. Natalie is laughing and the next thing I know I've been struck quite hard not once but twice right on my head. It's a good thing I'm wearing a helmet as Natalie's paddle probably would have shattered my skull. "I guess that's why we have to wear helmets laugh Natalie and Liz." I laugh suddenly a lot more appreciative of safety precautions, maybe I should be paying attention to the back of the boat, no I don't think so.
The river is calm now, and has been since we passed those rapids. I'm a little groggy from the blows to my noggin but all in all I'm having a great time. The river is really something here, it has cut a canyon of sorts through the mountains and small waterfalls abound. The river is framed by black rock and a surrounding forest. The walls of our little canyon rise as high as 50 feet in some places and some places not at all. It's really cool. We've seen several interesting rock formations and there seems to be an endless supply of these along our way. I'm marveling at it all, the whole scene is breathtaking at points but never less than beautiful. The green of the trees, the living rock we're floating past, the clear open blue of the sky and cool embrace of the water all offer much needed relief from the filth of the city. Seoul is certainly beautiful in it's own right but this experience is similar to the hike I'd taken with Natalie a few weeks ago. It feels so good to be here. It reminds me of home. I'm shirking my paddling duties but I really don't care I'm trying to absorb all of this, trying to internalize all of this. I don't know when I'll be out of the city in a place like this again, I need to fill my cup because I may need to live off of this for a while.
Sometimes the city feels suffocating, the buildings arch over you and the sky seems to be cloudy much more than it is clear. Space is tight in Seoul, everything is sandwiched between everything else and my claustrophobia has been itching a little of late. I never thought that I was claustrophobic except once when I was younger. At boy scouts Colin, Chris and I had taken turns climbing into an old chest. I was last and just as I had done to them they leaned on the doors so I couldn't get out. Colin had yelled until we let him out, Chris had sat quietly until we got bored of the game and crawled out on his own terms, but I took a different route. I sat in the chest for two minutes thinking I'd be stoic like Chris was and get out when I wanted to, but as time progressed I got more and more jumpy. The air was stuffy and smelled of mothballs, I was seated rather uncomfortably in the fetal position, my legs were up against my chest and my back against the rear of the compartment and I couldn't move. I needed to move, I always have, and at that moment I felt this need more than I ever had before or since. I felt trapped, suffocated, chained down and I grew frantic. I kicked on the door to no avail, Colin and Chris were without laughing, calling me a scaredy cat. I didn't care I needed to get out, breathing was becoming a awkward as it was the only action I could do. My body was breathing as quickly as it could as if I had this sub-conscious drive to do something, anything, I needed to be active and breathing was the only thing I had left. I kicked on the door again, only to hear more laughter in return. My hyperventilation grew worse and I decided that this was enough. I braced my legs against the door and back to the wall of the chest, and pushed with all of my might. I ripped the back of the chest from the rest of the container. I had pushed the screws out of the mahogany frame. The chest had been up against the wall and along with destroying it I had pushed it and my friends two feet away from where they had stood seconds before. I climbed out of the back red faced and sweating, looked at my friends who were stunned that I had broken the chest and ended our game. "You broke it man, were gonna get in so much trouble, why did you do that?" I blinked, "you should have let me out."
We didn't tell anybody about that, we just pushed the chest back up against the wall and climbed off of the stage in St. Mildred's, back to Mr. Chrismer yelling at us to join the scout circle, so we didn't get in trouble, but I'll never forget that. That was the most scared I had ever been in my life, and it was the day that I discovered I was claustrophobic. I haven't had problems with it since then, but I've always felt a little it in cities. Everything is so close together and it makes me a little uneasy. The world is a large place and I hate feeling like I can't see it, like I'm encapsulated in monotony. I hate passing the same gray skyscrapers day in and day out. I hate starring at the same cobble stones under my feet every morning knowing there isn't anything there but stone. At home there are trees, at school, the river, Dagoba, and so much more but here there are only high rises that loom like fence posts everywhere, the power lines linking them form the barbed wire and I walk the same trails daily like a mindless farm animal forever toiling amongst my own droppings.
It isn't like this though, here I'm only held in by . . . well nothing. We pull up to a beach as I revel in that knowledge. Here we're allowed to get out, stretch our legs and swim a little if we like (with our lifejackets on). I of course choose the later of the three options and am now realizing that if I position myself just right I can float effortlessly in the cool murky water, unmolested. How relaxing, I smile perhaps the biggest smile I've let go in a long while and amuse myself by waving at the passing rafts beaming like an idiot. The people all wave back, mostly with confused smiles on their faces followed shortly by nervous laughs that can only mean "Hey, look at that crazy white guy, what's he so happy about?" The fact that they wave tells me that somewhere in their Korean hearts they know exactly what I'm smiling about and are enjoying life just as much as I am right now. The current cradles me in its arms and I couldn't be happier. It goes around in an oval here as it swirls around the spit of land directly before the beach, so I really have to exert no effort to stay here, none at all, amazing.
I'm called back to reality by the rest of the group as the guides have set up a mini water slide on the beach. If there isn't anything as relaxing as what I've been doing for the last few minutes than there certainly isn't anything as gratifying as a makeshift water slide, yes, I'm in. I climb out of the water and get in line with the rest of the rafters. We run as fast as we can down the slope of the beach one at time and jump onto the underside of an upturned raft being splashed with water from the river by the raft guides, sliding immediately off. On my first attempt I propel myself over the 16 foot raft having attempted to skim across on my stomach. Instead I'm surprised to find myself hitting the water on the other side face first, filling my mouth, nose and ears with the Hantan River. I pull up out of the water laughing, that was great, 100% worth the sting of a face plant. I think I'll go a few more times.
I went 6 more times, one guy got a back flip off, I didn't but am having a lot of fun watching the Indian guys try, this one guy just landed on his head, priceless! "One more time," calls a guide to a chorus of groans, but we're on a schedule and this is only an appetizer for what's to come later so we all oblige them and go two more times, like I'm going to accept no more water slide for you, ever.
The rest of the river is mild, one more set of rapids, but our battles with the other boats are far from it. There is a boat loaded with Indians who work for Samsung chanting Indian War chants with one guy standing in the middle with his oar thrust to the sky as a spear. We are in the process of obliterating them, even with our tiny contingency of people willing to fight. It's four on ten and we've shown them what Amurica is all about. This is a good time. There are several stare downs with other boats involving the non spoken conversation of; "You're not gonna splash us," "No YOU'RE not gonna splash US" "Oh YEAH!" "YEAH" which of course immediately degenerates into another skirmish. Alliances are being forged and broken in spans of seconds. The Indian battalion has been humbled but are still screaming their war chants as we pull away from them and four other rafts who we have had our way with. We pull into the departure point, soaked, my leg is bleeding, from what I don't know, and tired.
What a great trip.
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