Day 1, Leg 1

I'm now in the naughtily named Coupling Motel, in a room with a bed for W50,000 a night. For that price, I expect a smart toilet so I can wash my bum and jewels, but no: the room is just a slightly nicer version of yesterday's room. Still, I can't complain. There's WiFi.

Fortunately or unfortunately, I have other things to complain about. The day seemed to start well: I was up before 4 after a fitful-yet-restful night's sleep, and I was out the door into the cold morning before 4:30 a.m. As I was walking along the back alley toward the main street, a cab suddenly stopped right in front of me, so I got in and thanked the driver. But when I told him to take me to Daecheong Dam, he suddenly balked and started babbling some bullshit about how 4 a.m. was actually his 퇴근시간/toegeun shigan (time to leave work), and as a result, he couldn't go that way. The old cabbie's explanation sounded desperate, I was mad because this cabbie didn't start balking until after I had dumped my backpack into his car's trunk, so I now had to retrieve my backpack and leave the car. Steaming but suppressing some loud and probably inadvisable speech, I got out and yanked my backpack from out of the trunk. 

The second cabbie was worse. I think he was stupid and lazy (the first cabbie struck me as lazy, too); he probably thought I was some foreign idiot. I'm not sure where I went wrong, either. I've had plenty of clear, coherent conversations with cab drivers over the years. I told the second cabbie where I was going and why; I even showed him on my phone's map what the route would be. But like an idiot, he said, "But according to your map, that's the endpoint. You're saying it's the starting point." So as if to a retarded person, I re-explained that the route currently being shown was from where we were, by Shintanjin Station, to where I needed to go, i.e., the Daecheong Dam Certification Center. After I got out, the certification center would become the starting point for my WALK. He still didn't understand the concept of beginnings and endings. I showed the cabbie the route via car (not via bike or walking) so he could see that it was drivable. I said that it looked as though he would have to cross the Geum River twice to reach my destination, only 5 km away. He protested that he never took such a route to reach the dam, and he kept peppering me with why and how and what questions. By this point, it was obvious he just didn't want to drive me for whatever reason. I told him he was free to take me to the dam and drop me anywhere near it, and I could find the verification center myself. I added that I trusted his ability to find the way since he knew the area while I didn't. At that, he became passionate about why that wasn't a good idea ("그렇게 하면 안돼!") and other things I didn't understand, so I asked him whether he even knew where Daecheong Dam was (of course he knew where it was: the fucker lives here, and he'd just said he'd driven there before!). He avoided saying yes or no, so I finally got angry and cornered him like a lawyer or a police interrogator: "Do you know where the dam is or not?" And lazy-ass liar that he was, the dumb shit firmly said, "No." You should know that, on the street right in front of the taxi, there was a large, painted label, with a painted directional arrow, that said, " Daecheong Dam." If the guy can't follow a large arrow, he's in trouble. So none of this was really about his stupidity (but I still came away thinking he was fucking stupid); it was about his stubborn, lazy refusal to drive me anywhere.

Ideally, both cabbies should've acted like professionals. They should have entered my destination into their GPS, then followed the indicated route without question—only 5 km to my destination.

But customer service isn't a widespread concept in Korea. You can get it in some corners, but more often than not, the customer, especially if he's a foreigner, is wrong. And that's what I was dealing with here. I stifled the urge to call the guy a stupid son of a bitch, asked him to open the trunk as I had with the first resistant cabbie, and stepped out into the early-morning darkness, once again rideless.

I was mad. I wanted to hurt someone. It later occurred to me that both cabbies might have thought the same thing: That by asking them to go to a quiet and empty place like Daecheong Dam, I was asking them to become human sacrifices in my imagined murder spree. Maybe that's what they think after seeing too much Johnny Somali on TV: All Americans are crazy-eyed killers and rapists. Of course, who really knows what the cabbies had been thinking? From my perspective, I wasn't seeing much intellecual candlepower from either guy. I had even asked the second cabbie to enter "Daecheong Dam Certification Center/대청댐 인증센터" into his GPS, and he refused (because we're Korean, and we despise simple, obvious solutions to anything!).

Too furious, now, to think about starting at the proper starting point, I knew I was already close to the river, so I angrily decided to start my walk right there. Which means I didn't do the first 7-10 kilometers. Fuck.

The next few hours of walking went well enough, I guess. The route has a lot more little rises and dips than other routes except for the east-coast trail, which is surprisingly hilly. There's also a good bit more pollution along this trail, but I grant that I was in a pissy mood and may have been predisposed to see whatever my brooding mind wanted to see. I did photograph a lot of litter, though, which you'll see when I upload more than just the ten images you're getting today.

Still miffed but feeling slightly better by about 1:30 or 2 p.m., my mood was soured again when a plump high schooler rolled up to me on his bike, cheerfully shouting in English from far away, "Grandfather! Grandfather! Where are you from?" I gruffly demanded to know if the kid had just called me "grandfather," and he nodded vigorously, smiling like a retard (in fact, I did briefly wonder, when I curtly talked with him, whether the kid was mentally slow). In Korea, it's fine to address older folks as "grandfather" or "grandmother," but I'm not sure that the etiquette extends to people you don't know, and who remain at a distance. And I don't think I've ever heard anyone shout, "Hey, old person!" to a stranger as a term of respect in Korea. So I felt deeply insulted and told the kid to just go after I'd given him a sour face.

Things didn't turn around until I was resting near the end of the route, and an older gent rode up to me on an official-looking moped. We engaged in friendly conversation; the man said nothing rude. He told me he had passed me four times and had wondered what I was doing. So I told him about the various walks I had done and about my recent medical history, which includes a stroke and a heart attack. As with the friendly cabbie on Day 0, I understood him, he understood me, and there were no communication breakdowns. That's why I found it hard to believe that the morning's fuckups had been my fault.

So the last part of today's slow walk went by with me in a much better mood. I found my naughtily named motel, went to the restaurant next door, slipped over to the convenience store, bought some drinks and snacks for the next two days, then schlepped back to the motel. 

Below are my stats (ignore the pedometer's distance, but trust the number of steps), the day's map, and ten images picked from the hundreds that will eventually appear once my trip is over. Enjoy.