Guns, Germs and Steel, and Luck

Day 12, Mon, 8/3

Moscow, Russia

Thankfully, this household didn’t resort to yelling and the clapping of hands in order to get us awake for breakfast. “Whenever you guys are comfortable,” they had told us the night before. So JW and I shrugged and slept in until around one in the afternoon.

Our train to St. Petersburg left at 7 tonight, so we had a good few hours to visit a cathedral, a grave, a university and the Kremlin.

I’ve forgotten to mention JW’s love for cats. In fact, the day he began smoking was the day his cat died about three years ago, a cuddly companion he’d been living with for nine years. So whenever we pass by a stray cat in the middle of one of our walks, he sits and takes dozens of pictures of it, telling me each time that he wishes he could take it back to Korea.

When we visited Archangel Cathedral, a burial of all the Grand Princes and Tsars of Moscow. JW was probably more interested in the baby cat that was sleeping in the lawn than the cathedral itself. It was pretty cute though, I can’t lie. And the cathedral wasn’t terribly impressive, either. Oh, also on the lawn was a pair of crows fighting over the flesh and innards of a dead pigeon, which didn't really tickle our funny bones.

Adjacent to the Archangel lies the enormous Novodevichy Cemetery, home - or resting place, rather - to many of Russia’s most prominent citizens since 1898 (namely scientists, soccer coaches, musicians, war heroes, etc.). I couldn’t find Dostoyevsky from the list of names, but JW found composer Dmitri Shostakovich's name among other tombstones of pianists, violinists and cellists, all of whom have had a significant impact on his musical career. We bought several bouquets of flowers to pay homage to these legends.

The cemetery was built like a maze, and each grave was worth at least a minute of attention, as most of them were embellished with at least a full-scale marble statue of whoever that lay underneath it. We spent over an hour looking for just four people, as we were distracted by soccer fans chanting the name of a coach who recently passed away, and a group of decorated soldiers saluting and draping a large Russian flag over a general’s grave.

By 3:30, we rushed to the Kremlin before it closed at 5. On our way, we passed by a horde of tourists surrounding a flickering flame just outside the Red Square, which apparently has been going since the end of World War II. We also ran into probably the most peculiar sight you’ll ever encounter in Russia (apart from the gum drop rain): a semi-circular wall riddled with holes just big enough for coins to be wedged inside. People were climbing all over these walls like spidermen, desperately sticking a finger or two in each hole to dig out treasure. Some were even using digging tools. JW and I couldn’t stop laughing at the mayhem.

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The Kremlin, which is Russian for "citadel," has been boasting its fortitude since the second millennium BC. The complete tour is made up of five different sessions, but JW only had time for one. We chose the weapon and armory exhibition, because that sounded the coolest and was worth 50 more rubles than the rest.

Now before you take this the wrong way, let me say that my parents have always raised me as a goodnatured boy, that is, to despise guns, knives, and anything that’s related to killing. This seemed to have worked, for I used to feel guilty owning even a water gun. But once I saw the display at the Kremlin, I never wanted to own a weapon more in my life, not to use to induce death upon my enemies but rather to bedeck wall. The swords, maces, knives, guns and rifles were gold plated and studded in ores, garnets, sapphires and even diamond. How unpleasant it would’ve been to have blood smeared on one of these! We also saw jewel-encrusted bibles thrice the length, width and thickness of the average science textbook; so much for the bible's imploration to be frugal. JW and I couldn’t help but imagine the priests struggling to open the cover. We wondered why bibles were on display in the weapon section, and eventually assumed that these books must’ve been weapons themselves, as they looked hard and heavy enough to inflict considerable damage. Although there seemed to be more watch guards than tourists, JW risked a few pictures of the priceless display.

We entered another room and noticed a huge, oval-shaped carpet enclosed in a glass case. As we neared it however, we realized that the carpet-like object was actually the tail of a dress that dragged along the floor. Sheezus. Imagine having to wash that. Other dresses came with waists so skinny that I was convinced I could make my thumb and middle finger touch if I wrapped my hand around it.

The final room included about a dozen carriages, all of which dwarfed the impotent pumpkin vehicle that appears in Cinderella. The wheels’ diameters were nearly twice my height. I peeked inside and saw that I could probably live in there. For some reason I also wondered if the dusty, yellowing seats were ever washed.

We left at around 4:50. I don’t know how we didn’t realize that our train left in a little more than two hours, and that we hadn’t packed anything yet. Our home stay was maybe eight minutes away by subway, not including the ten minute walk afterwards to get to the apartment. It would take at least twenty minutes to shower, pack and pay frantically, but with our relentlessly heavy luggage, the walk back to the subway station could take as long as fifteen minutes. Buying the ticket, walking down the endless escalator and waiting for the subway would subtract more time. The Moscow metro station was seven stations away, meaning the ride would take about fifteen minutes. But once we arrived, the Moscow train station was on the other side of the eight-lane road, so getting out of the metro, dragging our luggage through the underground passage and carrying everything up the stairs would take another ten minutes.

Instead of rushing to our home stay to safely get on our train in time, we decided to walk from the Kremlin to the University of Tchaikovsky. How could we have been so ignorant? (The answer will be explained at the end)

We ended up getting lost and meandered down the wrong road for twenty minutes, arriving at the university by nearly 6. The immense bronze statue of Tchaikovsky frozen in the pose of conducting was truly magnificent, but only then did we suddenly, stupidly understand how late we were. All along we had faced this time crunch like the way a cow faces an oncoming train, only to recognize the danger after it’s been hit.

Panic found its way under our skin. We began to sprint to the subway station, but soon stopped in case we wore ourselves out and were unable to carry our bags later. If you’ve spent a lot of time hanging out with me, you probably know just how slowly I walk (this always frustrates my friend Kartinah, who has the longest legs in the whole world). I had to jog slightly in order to stay with JW’s pace.

“I love walking fast,” he told me. “I used to have a girlfriend, and the main reason I liked her was because she could keep up with me.”

We broke through our home stay door at 6:25. The owners expected that we had at least rescheduled the train, but when we said that we hadn’t, they chuckled and told us, “you’ll never make it, just give up now!” Gee, thanks.

We stampeded back out the door at 6:35. After going through countless simulations of our movement from then until we arrived at the train station, we estimated that with luck, there was a small but reliable chance that we would make it in time.

What followed a few minutes later was the exact opposite of what one would deem 'good.' Maybe it was karma, but for certain there was some supernatural aspect in the sheer degree of my misfortune. As we were dragging our heavy luggage, panting and shirts covered in sweat, I tripped over a small crack in the asphalt, landed on my side in a puddle of mud, cut my elbow and leg, got mud smeared not only on my clothes but also on my bags, fractured my camera and iPod that were in that side of my pocket, thereby seriously bruising the part of my thigh that sandwiched them against the ground. Unable to walk fast anymore, I now had to limp fast. I will never forget the tickling sensation of guilt that concentrated in the back of my throat.

Long story short, our luggage and my limp was just too much for our out-of-shape bodies. We arrived ten minutes late. The only hope we were banking on at that point was some spontaneous mechanical breakdown or technical problem with the train that would maybe, just maybe, delay it enough for us to arrive in time. Well the odds of that happening were nil, so if you made a bet that we would miss the train, well, congratulations - you win! (but I also hate you)

Only if the subway had arrived a little earlier, only if I hadn’t fallen in the mud, only if we hadn’t gotten lost looking for the University of Tchaikovsky, only if we had spent about three or four minutes less each in the Kremlin, in the cemetery and in the cathedral, only if we had done everything exactly as we did except starting off the day ten minutes earlier, we would have made it.

Again, anyone could look at this and only help but wonder: how were we dull enough not to see this coming? Here’s my answer (or my excuse, if that's what you want to call it).

Mlodinov also explains this phenomenon in his book. Basically, the more random factors that are involved in the future, the possibilities of events increase exponentially, making it nearly impossible to comfortably predict what will happen. A common example is a chess game, where the more moves you try to foresee, the “butterflying” scenarios makes it more likely that you’re wrong. Yet one can easily explain why someone made a certain move after the event takes place. This can be applied to all other aspects in life; with the benefit of hindsight (kind of helpful in my opinion, maybe because it never fails), one can see “why a film did well, a candidate won an election, a storm hit, a stock went down, a soccer team lost, a new product failed, or a disease took a turn for the worse, but such expertise is empty in the sense that it is of little use in predicting when a film will do well, a candidate will win an election, a storm will hit, a stock will go down, a soccer team will lose, a new product will fail, or a disease will take a turn for the worse” (202). It is also why some U.S. presidents (without pointing fingers) seldom learn from history. JW and I will use this as an excuse for our apparent irresponsibility.

Yes, we missed the train and spent another hundred dollars each on the midnight train to St. Petersburg, but we eventually learned from this experience. I also got a chance to rinse my legs, arms and clothes, avoiding the embarrassment of jumping on a train covered in mud. My iPod and camera functioned normally too, which was surreal considering just how hard I fell on them. JW had a great time with the punching bag in the arcade, releasing his frustration by setting the second and third highest scores of the day. How fulfilling.

Okay Moscow, Let's Start Over and Try This Again

Day 11, Sun, 8/2

Moscow, Russia

One of my worst pet peeves is being woken up in the morning. And that's precisely what happened.

The old lady clapped her hands as loud as she could and screamed, "WAKE UP, WAKE UP, TIME FOR BREAKFAST!" clap, clap, clap, clapppp.

Gritting my teeth, I spoke from under my sheets, "We slept late, please don't worry about serving us anything." My phone read blinked 8:02AM.

"I already have the table set!" she replied, clapping even louder.

"Please, we don't like to eat right after we get out of bed, leave it on the table and don't worry we'll eat it cold."

"Fine," she finally said, and slammed the door. JW threw off his sheets and swore, complaining that he was having a nice dream. Right when I was about to doze off to sleep again, the lady entered the room.

"I change my mind; I can't leave to do my errands until you guys eat so wake up."

"Why?" asked JW. "We'll do the dishes, please go do your thing."

"No, just wake up now. Wake up, come on," clap, clap, clap.

Grumbling and rubbing our eyes, we walked into the kitchen and immediately felt sick at the sight of so much food. Moreover, the food wasn't even good. The soup was lukewarm and thick with bean paste and shrimp, which was terrifying. Trying to shove down grainy rice down our dry throats was torture, and we simply gave up after a few scoops. JW looked as if he were chewing on spoonfuls of cockroaches. We left the table leaving barely anything touched, as the lady quickly came in and began cleaning up. To my horror, I saw her take our bowls of soup and dump the contents back into the pot.

"We ate out of those," I said.

"It's fine if you boil it," she coldly replied. Trying not to imagine the countless people who ate out of the soup before me, I vomited a little in my mouth.

Too disgusted to fall back asleep, JW and I promptly began packing our bags.

"Leaving so soon?" chimed the lady. "You, don't forget to pay me $90, and you, I think I said 3160 rubles, right?"

"Actually I think I'll just pay $180 for both of us," I answered for JW. "For no reason whatsoever."

The lady narrowed her eyes a little and left without a word. $90 a night for this? What has the world turned into?

There was something about paying the woman and finally leaving that godforsaken place that made us rejoice and cheer for fifteen minutes straight. We brought our luggage to another home stay that JW found in his guide book, and at $60 a night it was not only as comfortable as our first but also the owners were much friendlier. It was also the oldest Korean-run home stay in Moscow.

The moment after we stepped in the door, the owner's wife ran towards us to help us with our luggage (unlike the other lady!) and offered us fresh watermelons. Her husband was out fishing but he'd return later that night. JW and I showered, finished a quarter of a watermelon and left to explore a little more. Too lazy to go anywhere specific, we wandered into random cool buildings for about three hours. At some point we passed by a subway station that was overflowing with hundreds of Russians dressed in red from head to toe, including a red scarf around their necks. There must've been a soccer game going on, and the sea of red reminded me of the horde of Korean 'Red Devils' during the 2002 Korea-Japan World Cup.

We eventually came by a large concert hall and JW, the passionate piano major, sprinted towards the timetables to see if there was a show that night. Unfortunately the building was undergoing renovation and all performances were postponed to next month.

We did, however, run into a different kind of a show that I consider a lot more valuable than a ticket to Sarah Jung's live act. When we went down an undeground walkway to cross the road, we ran into an old man with thick glasses, playing a small trumpet, keyboard, and drums simultaneously. He was a one man band. Amazed at his talent, we couldn't believe how there wre barely any coins the cardboard box that sat in front of him.

After listening to him for a few songs and clapping along, I wondered if he could play one of my all-time favorite songs.

"Do you by chance know The Girl From Ipanema?" I asked.

"Of course, of course," he chortled with an enormous grin on his face. "This is a great song, yes."

I had to refrain from yelping with excitement. I asked JW to get out his camera and record a video of this wonderous occasion. The performance lasted a sweet two and a half minutes, which included an impressive trumpet solo.

After the show, JW and I took pictures with the old man and paid him three hundred rubles, or about $10. I also threw in a 5000 won bill from the bank of Korea, which was worth slightly under $5. We sat there and talked for half an hour, as we learned that he used to live in China with his parents when he was a young boy. JW and I were too afraid to ask what happened afterwards - to his life and his parents.

Despite his slight stench, we hugged the old man tightly before departing.

"The world is yours," he told us with a smile and a wave. Had anyone else in the entire world told me this, I wouldn't have taken it seriously.

Walking aimlessly again, JW and I stumbled upon a luxurious hotel, lined with Ferraris and Lamborghinis. We entered the mammoth lobby and ordered coffee and cake, leaning back in the cushiony couches to get a taste of the lives of the riches. But there was something missing; the well-dressed, virtuoso pianist filling the halls with a thousand jazzy notes sounded somewhat empty. The coffee and cake were delectable, no doubt about that. But the atmosphere was very, very lacking.

JW and I left with our bellies full but somewhat unsatisfied. Then, long story short, we arrived at St. Basil's again. Not only was this simply ridiculous, but we also realized just how much we had walked. The enormous gumdrop raindrops bombarded us once again, this time for much longer. Learning from last night's infamous incident, we took the subway back home.

The owner was back from his fishing trip. He was just as overly kind as his wife, and offered all of us beers. For the second time on my trip I had to say no, for I was a minor. The owner however insisted in an avuncular fashion, explaining that drinking with adults would serve me well. We all sat around a low table on the floor, and I took a tiny sip because now his wife and JW were encouraging (pressuring) me too. I flinched at the bitter taste and handed the rest to JW.

The three of them had a blast drinking 6 huge cans with peanuts, discussing education, jobs and music. JW and I also derided our previous home stay, and the owner was shocked to hear our anecdotes.

"What, you actually think I can make a fortune out of running a homestay? Ha," laughed the owner. "The only reason I do this is so I can meet interesting people like you folks. It's truly amazing that you students have planned to travel alone on the transsiberian, ended up meeting each other, and changed your schedules according to each other. There's a certain beauty in that." He paused, drained the rest of his beer and poured himself another cup. "You aren't merely people who come and go, leaving some bread cash so I can live off of it. Hell no. Honestly, I hope you don't feel like I'm invading your personal space but I think of you guys, students, as my own kids. My son just graduated college and my daughter is still in law school. And you wonder why I offer you free beer. And, even though our website says that we only serve breakfast, do you actually think I'd say no if you guys asked for some lunch? How much does a bowl of rice cost anyway?"

Clearly the opposite of the previous lady who had wronged us.

Avid fans of live jazz, JW and I set out at 10:30 with the sudden urge to test out the music scene in Russia. We looked up the closest jazz club in JW's guide book, adorning ourselves in spiffy shirts, jeans, and cologne. Unfortunately, the pouring rain washed out most of the excitement as JW and I continuously tumbled into ankle-deep puddles, making our jeans nice and soggy.

And of course, after the fifteen minute trudge through dark Moscowian alleys, we arrived only to find a towering Cartier store without the slightest hint of jazz in the air. Clothes and moods quite rained out, JW and I returned to our homestay, cursing the author of his guide book.

The Drunkard's Walk: Moscow Style

Day 10, Sat, 8/1

Moscow, Russia

Stepping off the train after three dreadful nights, the huge sign that read “MOCKBA” might as well have been labeled “WELCOME TO HEAVEN.”

I bid farewell to my three German roommates and Lady Gaga, giving each of them a hug.

Gyu and I noticed English words covering street signs and restaurants, while store clerks, waiters and taxi drivers spoke enough of it so I didn’t have to jump up and down and wave my hands anymore. What Gyu had told us was true: eastern and western Russia are polar opposites of each other, as the former is much more European than the more Asian latter.

The Moscow subway station was so crowded that more people seemed to be jumping over the railing than waiting in line to buy a ticket. JW and I considered this but we had too much luggage to hull around. Fortunately the ticket system was very simple in that it cost you 22 rubles (60 cents) to anywhere you wanted to go. At first glance, the station seemed to be grimy and salted with litter, but once we went deeper inside I found myself in a museum. Everything was made out of marble as enormous chandeliers dangled above our heads. I’d also never ridden an escalator that took minutes to get me from one floor to another, even though it was moving twice as fast as one you would see in an American mall.

On the base of the escalator, there was a gigantic shield hanging on the wall with swords crisscrossing over it. I then assumed that this place was so magnificent because it was the main train station in Moscow, but that wasn’t the case; every other station we passed ended up looking equally impressive and I just couldn’t stop wondering about the amount of work and money that went into all of them.

JW and I arrived at our home stay in around twenty minutes. The lady that owned the place was quite rude and seemed unable to speak without yelling. She also insisted that it cost $90 a night rather than the original $70 my dad and I had clearly read on the website. JW and I were irritated because we calculated that it was cheaper if we’d just shared a hotel room.

JW also explained to me that we needed to sign up for a visa registration if we were planning to stay in Moscow for more than three days. Again, going to a hotel would have been advantageous because there we can register for free, rather than paying a yelling woman $50 per person.

After showering and unpacking, it was just past noon and JW and I went out to explore the immediate vicinity of our neighborhood, saving St. Basil’s Cathedral for tomorrow.

Amateur, dirty street artists took up about half of the sidewalk with their work. I felt sorry for them having to sit under the unforgiving sun all day, painting their lives away, surrounded by stifling competition.

The gothic buildings, along with enormous arches and curly-Q lampposts definitely portrayed the atmosphere of Europe. Searching for food, JW and I passed by Italian pizza restaurants, Starbucks, and a Japanese place. After considering veal tongue salad for a while, we instead went into a Mexican restaurant and ordered a less exciting slice of lamb.

After our meal, we meandered into a pastry shop for some dessert. I chose what looked like two thin brownies stacked on top of each other, with whipped cream sandwiched in the middle. Terrible decision. When I took a bite, I realized that the white stuff in the middle wasn’t cream at all; it was as hard as candy and seemed more like pure sugar or dried frosting. I immediately threw the rest of it in the trash without even offering JW a piece.

Once we left that candy store of a bakery, JW and I wandered aimlessly, farther and farther away from our home stay. I must’ve asked him about twenty times if he had any idea what street we were on, and only one of those times did he do so much as to begin taking out the map in his bag and then stopping because he was too lazy. We honestly had no idea and didn’t really care, because we were just happy that our feet were treading on normal, immobile asphalt. We decided to walk in the opposite direction of our home and flip a coin whenever we came upon a forked road, and when we got tired we’d stop a taxi and drive back. Now this was fun.

What happened next though shocked and scared us to a point where we couldn’t realize just how incredible the situation was. We came upon two narrow alleyways and the coin came up tails, so we were supposed to go left. But we had gotten so many tails before that we were tired of going left and stubbornly disobeyed the random coin toss. And I swear to you, out of no where, no where, appeared St. Basil’s Cathedral, towering into the sky several hundred meters ahead of us. AHHHH!!!

What are the odds, not only of the series of coin tosses, but also accounting for the fact that JW and I decided to change our minds on that particular turn? I don’t even want to begin to know.

There were two twin arches - collectively known as the Voskresensky (Resurrection) Gate - that we had to walk under in order to enter the famous Red Square, Moscow’s favorite attraction. While directly ahead stood the cathedral, to our left was a shopping mall in the form of a palace, and on the right laid Lenin’s body in an enormous, rectangular grave. The vast, open space made me feel as if I was in Paris.

As you may already know, public bathrooms aren’t free in Europe and apparently neither are they in Russia. Usually someone sits in a beach chair in front of a row of portable toilets and demands about a dollar if you want to go in. Or if the bathroom is in a building, there’s a booth where you pay in front of the doors. This only makes me wonder, what happens if one of these workers has to use the bathroom? In any case, it was my first time in one of these portable toilets situated on the beautiful quad of St. Basil’s Cathedral, and what I saw in there ruined my mood for the rest of the day. Breathing through my mouth didn’t help either, as I had to chew 7 pieces of mint-flavored gum before the taste went away.

The colorful, twisting patterns that covered the cathedral gave me the impression that I was at an amusement park. Die-hard Tetris fans know that the original Nintendo version has the cathedral in the background, and once you get up to a high enough level, it takes the form of a rocket ship and blasts off into interstellar space. Thank goodness the real cathedral didn’t actually take off and incinerate everyone on the square.

Also on the quad stood a type of wishing well, except the area in which your coin was supposed to land in was terribly small. The “well” was also no more than an inch deep, so it was more than likely that your coin would bounce back out if it actually landed inside. So our tactic was to gently toss our coins underhanded, rather than hurtling them like a baseball like everyone else seemed to be doing. I ended up getting two in, and I used both of my wishes on the same thing so the chances of it coming true were twice as high. Should work, right?

The cathedral itself and the paintings inside were truly gorgeous, but the most memorable aspect was the floral pattern on the wall. It’s a shame that there were people standing around every ten feet, sniffing the air suspiciously to make sure that you weren’t taking any pictures. Here’s an image I found on Google though.

Back outside, JW and I walked behind the cathedral and found a series of cannons next to a pile of bowling-ball sized cannonballs. There also seemed to be a wedding going on, so I couldn’t help but get JW to take a picture of me with the Hummer limousine.

Walking further away from St. Basil, we came across a bridge that went over Moscow River. I think I can safely say that the middle of this bridge was my favorite spot in Russia - I wondered why this area was so devoid of tourists. St. Basil’s Cathedral, the Kremlin, the shimmering river under the setting sun, lilies, ferries, skyscrapers and the enormous Lomonosov Moscow State University - standing there, you could see something breathtaking no matter where you looked. JW and I remained here until evening, taking pictures and soaking up the last rays of the day’s sun.

As we walked off the bridge, it began to rain. Not a really exciting piece of information for a travel blog you may assert, but let me explain just what made Russian rain so exciting. The rain wasn’t a light shower, nor was it a heavy pouring, and not even necessarily anything in between. In fact, JW and I marveled at how we’ve never encountered this kind of rain in our entire lifetimes of rain encountering. The raindrops were so huge that we could clearly see them and even catch them before they landed on the ground. We felt like we were being pelted at with mini-water balloons. But it was again a different kind of pelting than the one you receive in a torrential downpour; instead of hearing a soft thump or a thud, you could literally hear a splash. To this day I regret not having taken out my camera and getting a picture of my shirt, which looked like it was covered in dark, near-perfect circles about half-inch in diameter. When a raindrop landed on my forearm, it would explode and cover literally half of the length of my arm, and I would show JW before I wiped it off. Though at first we cursed ourselves for forgetting to bring our umbrellas, we ended up enjoying this Russian rain and tried to get hit by as many raindrops as possible, while we still could.

The mysterious rain mysteriously stopped after just a few minutes. JW and I finally admitted our exhaustion by spreading out on the benches and waiting for a cab to take us home. Unless you’re at the train station, cabs in Russia are quite rare, as we had to wait half an hour until we finally spotted a sedan wearing a little yellow bar on its roof. We had read countless horror stories of taxi drivers ripping off foreigners, but at this point we were too tired to care; besides, even pessimistically thinking, about how much would an evil taxi driver actually charge us for a five-minute drive home?

The answer is three thousand rubles, or the U.S. equivalent of about one hundred dollars. That’s right - pause from reading here so you can let that soak in for a bit. JW and I had made the fatal error of failing to ask the driver how much he thinks the drive would cost before we got in the taxi. When we arrived at our home-stay, the meter read 7km and the number 200. So JW and I thought that number was the price of our ride. However, the driver leaned over and pushed a random button that was apparently used for multiplying by fifteen. He leaned back and looked out his window, as if nothing had happened.

“Um,” I started. “How much?”

“Three thousand rubles,” he said, pointing at the meter but still refusing to make eye contact with me. I looked back at JW in the backseat, and found him just as confused as I was.

“I’ll sit behind the driver and put him in headlock,” JW explained in Korean. “And you can present a few blows of your fist to his face.”

Seldom having felt so enraged, I’ll admit I considered JW’s idea. But that would get us nowhere. I jokingly told him that criminal troubles abroad would get confusing, anyway. JW then proposed that we could just leg it. I considered that even more. Now that I look back on this, I think I would have; the streets were packed outside, there were no cops, I carried nothing but a camera while JW carried a tiny bag, I was on the track team and JW said that he was pretty fast, even though he was a semi-chain smoker. In any case, we weren’t even carrying that much combined, for we had spent most of our cash on food, entrance fees and grotesque public toilets.

Unable to think clearly due to the sheer ludicrousness of it all, JW and I emptied our wallets and paid the driver the rest of what we had. Put together, our coins and bills totaled only 2,500 rubles. However, instead of getting angry that we were short of his demand by 500, the driver nodded his head and repeated “Ssank you, ssank you,” multiple times and made a gesture as if to say “run along now,” still not making eye contact with either of us. Stunned, JW and I stumbled out of the bogus taxi. Seven kilometers. Five minutes. Twenty dollars per minute. We had paid fifty bucks for an hour long taxi ride in Irkutsk when we had the street expert, Gyu. Here we were in Moscow, undoubtedly robbed. Should we have written down the car’s license plate number and reported him? Possibly. But as I’ve told you before, Russian cops were quite corrupt as well in that they sought to squeeze money out of clueless foreigners.

JW and I walked back in a drunken zigzag, cursing the driver and not wanting to spend a ruble for the rest of our trip. It was comical to know that we couldn’t even afford a bottle of water to quench our thirst.

“At least we can’t get robbed anymore,” JW wisely noted. “Now I’m not afraid of anything.” Maybe that was the cheap safeguard against getting ripped off - traveling with your wallet empty.

The day that had begun and nearly ended so beautifully had, in fact, ended horribly. Serendipitous luck followed by frustrating unluck. JW and I entered our homestay in sour moods, only to encounter something else distasteful (of course!). The lady had demanded 90 dollars for a night in one of her lukewarm rooms, but since JW only carried Russian currency, he asked the woman how much it’d cost to pay in rubles. She pulled out her calculator, pressed some buttons, nodded her head and told him that it’d be 3,160 rubles. Now I don’t know about you, but just by the sound of that number I thought that that sounded like a little much. All day we must’ve passed at least a dozen currency exchange booths, all of them clearly showing that the dollar was worth slightly over thirty rubles. JW pulled out his cellphone and divided 3,160 by 90, expecting the dividend to be somewhere between 30 and 31. Instead, his screen flashed a number slightly greater than 35. Either the woman was a crook, or suffered in the subject of division to a tragic degree. Even if she were a crook, she was still kind of lightheaded for expecting us not to notice anything unusual in her demand.

On the verge of being ripped off for the second time, JW clenched his fists and eventually I had to restrain him from going out and buying Coke and Mentos to leave the lady a little surprise by the time we left the next morning. Instead, he vowed to leave the worst review ever written by man once he returned to Korea (by the way, this home stay is called RUSKO. The website looks snazzy but don’t be fooled!). That idea I was okay with.

After a while we fell out of the desire to argue with the woman, and concluded that I’d pay his share in USD and he could pay me back later in the correct amount of rubles.

At five minutes to midnight, once we were washed up and getting ready for bed, the white walls suddenly glowed pink and neon green. Looking out the window, we noticed fireworks setting the velvety black sky on fire. Although there was nothing particularly remarkable about these fireworks - as they ended as abruptly as they began - something about their mediocrity calmed us down. After the show, JW and I tried to summarize the day’s unfortunate events once more, except this time viewing them in context.

On the transsiberian I had finished a highly entertaining and informative business book called The Drunkard’s Walk: How Randomness Rules Our Lives, by Leonard Mlodinow, a genius author and professor who co-wrote A Briefer History of Time with Stephen Hawking. In it, Mlodinow expresses how in a world ordered by chaos and chance events, strings of highly unlikely occurrences are inevitable and should mathematically come as no surprise. And though it is not wrong to say that today was full of unlucky surprises - discovering that a night at the home stay costs $20 more than we expected, choosing the worst tasting cake, getting cleaned out by the cab driver and meeting an unfriendly owner who also tried to clean us out - the human brain tends to single out these negative moments and as a result overshadow the positive ones. Instances of wonderful fortune such as unknowingly arriving on the same day in Irkutsk to meet one of my closest companions, meeting Gyu the day before he left and coin-flipping our way to the Red Square were memorable but would’ve gone generally unnoticed and unspoken about tonight - or ever - had we not seen the fireworks, which in turn would’ve passed unseen unless we had stayed up the few hours disputing over how to pay the old lady, and so on. Chance is a curious thing, as you may also recognize what I’ve described as the butterfly effect. Once JW and I were able to zoom out this way, we realized that today’s events were quite nothing in comparison to what has happened to others, or what could have happened to us. For example, my dad was mugged of his passport, wallet and cameras while he slept among the homeless on newspapers when he traveled Europe in his early twenties. Numerous other mishaps befell JW’s friends, too. At least we still had our passports, food, running water, and nice beds.

So we showed appreciation for our fortune by sleeping in the nice beds.

Back On the Trans

Day 6, Mon, 7/28

Russia.

Unlike my last compartment, all four beds in this one were full of snoring bodies, and I had to occupy the one on the top-right. Being stuck with the upper bed was extremely annoying because I had to climb up and down awkwardly by stepping on the lower beds whenever I wanted to go anywhere, and lifting my two ruthlessly heavy bags into the storage that high up was backbreaking. JW was four vehicles away from me, and sent me a text message complaining that he suffered the same fate.

Although I had toured Irkutsk all day and jumped in the Baikal on just a few hours of sleep, I couldn’t go to bed. I stepped outside of the hallway and into the noisy ‘bridge’ part of the train that connects the back of a vehicle to the front of another. There I found a short, brunette girl with a neat Lady Gaga haircut, dressed in a Hello Kitty wifebeater and quietly smoking a cigarette. I called my dad and told him in loud Korean that I was leaving Irkutsk and on my way to Moscow, and the girl promptly started babbling nonsense at me in a teasing voice, trying to imitate my Korean. Once I hung up I couldn’t tell whether she was annoyed and trying to tell me to shut up or simply joking around, but she smiled, so I assumed she was being friendly. I offered her some Orbit gum, trying to tease her back and imply that smoking causes bad breath. I don’t think she understood but she accepted a piece with a “spaseeba” and tossed it in her mouth. We talked for a bit afterwards, but when we couldn’t understand more than a few words, I gave up and went to bed.

I remember waking up to a horrible, gritty voice of a Russian rock singer. Having no idea where the music was coming from, I pulled out my iPod and played my own song, making the volume high enough to drown out the Russian music. Then I realized that this wouldn’t help me fall back asleep for my iPod was near its maximum volume. Irritated, I sat up in bed and realized that the terrible voice was coming from speakers embedded in the ceiling. Up until now I had no idea that there were radios on the train. Well, seeing that it was 4PM, I got myself out of bed.

I found brunette Lady Gaga in the hallway, except this time she was dressed in her proctor clothes - so last night I guess I had run into her during her off-duty.

It took me nearly three minutes just to reach JW’s compartment, opening a dozen doors and weaving through half-naked Russians in the narrow hallways. JW looked like he’d just woken up too. He brought out a bottle of shampoo and asked me if I wanted to wash my hair. Holy moly! Being able to wash my hair would be a dream come true. But how in the world was I supposed to do that when the faucets, as I’ve described before, were nearly impossible to use? JW laughed and pulled out a golf ball. Oh, what a genius. He was using that the whole time to block the water from draining. But there was still the problem that you couldn’t stick your head in the nasty sink without banging it against the tap. It was especially painful for me because I have a particularly big head.

“Oh it’s worth the pain,” JW assured me. And he was right. The privilege to wash your hair on the transsiberian is a priceless one, and once I was done, I almost wanted to spend the next hour walking up and down the hallway, showing off my clean, wet hair to everyone else.

The average train stop lasts about two minutes, but occasionally when it halts at a large town or city the passengers have 20-30 minutes to step off and exercise our slowly deteriorating legs. Also at these stops are merchants and small stands where you can get some bread, drinks and snacks. Each item also comes with a price tag, so you don’t have to worry about the mean old ladies on the train who try to rip you off.

*IMG_4748 Day 7*

I’ve been teaching JW some guitar, and thanks to his piano skills he’s been learning extraordinarily fast. Rather than holding the guitar normally, he also likes to lay the neck across his lap and tap at the fingerboard as if it’s a keyboard, which he’s getting pretty good at. Again my instrument’s been attracting random passersby, which helps with my stage fright training but also makes me miss Anton and everyone else from the last train quite dearly.

My three roommates include a fat Asian guy and an old couple, and they can all speak a little English. This is a miracle with the odds of which I can’t even begin to imagine. I had trouble enough finding anyone at all who could speak English, and here I am placed in a room with three. Ironically, I didn’t converse with them nearly as much as I used to with Oliya from the last train, who couldn’t even pronounce my name correctly.

For the rest of the day I established myself as the guy who gives out free guitar lessons. Unfortunately this also attracts a bunch of three year olds who end up banging and dribbling all over my instrument.

I’ve been tackling and transcribing a piece called Chaconne written by J. S. Bach since around September of last year (with immense help from my mentor and friend, Robert Squires). Originally written for the violin, the Chaconne is considered to be one of the most difficult pieces produced during the Baroque era; Brahms once wrote that it was pretty much the best song ever and claimed that if he had written it he would’ve gone mad with joy (I site Paul Lee on this). Anyway, I found out that JW had learned and played the entire fifteen minute piece for the piano. When he discovered that I was trying to learn it on the guitar, he jumped and insisted that he recorded me on his camera to take back to Korea. I didn’t allow it because I still sucked, but I promised that I’d let him do so at some point within the next week, so I’ve been practicing wildly for hours on end - so much that my roommates can now sing along to parts of the song.

*IMG_4780*

I also found out that JW has one of the best collections of music I’ve ever encountered (his monumental taste in music is up there with my other bassist friend, Jin Lee). We sat on his bed listening to each other’s music from 10PM to 4:30AM nonstop, and I only managed to get up to the letter K on his iPod. The only reason I stopped there was because my eyes were burning out, but I was excited for the upcoming day, knowing that I’d actually have something to do other than reading, playing the guitar or working on my college applications.

*IMG_4770*

Unable To Have Kids

Day 5, Mon, 7/27

Irkutsk, Russia.

Dizzy from lack of sleep, we quickly showered, broke our fast and headed out with sunscreen and swimming shorts. Although JW and I had arrived with different plans and without knowledge of each other’s existence, I convinced him the night before to travel according to my plans. Originally, he had wanted to tour the town of Irkutsk all day and visit Lake Baikal the next, for the lake was over an hour away. But since my train left tonight at 2:54 in the morning, I reasoned that we should have enough time to tour Irkutsk for most of the day and jump in Lake Baikal during the evening. That meant that first we had to go to the train station to make sure there was a seat left for JW on tonight’s transsiberian. It was highly unlikely and both of them said that there was no use; if you wanted a seat on the transsiberian, especially during the summer, you were advised to buy a ticket about a month ahead of time.

There was exactly one seat left. Yesss. This is what I love about the freedom of traveling: if you want to do something, the answer is to do it. Also, like I mentioned in my first entry, since traveling is so dependent on random factors - the weather, meeting travel buddies, accidentally staying up all night, etc. - the best way to plan your trip is to barely have anything planned at all. If, for example, JW had bought a different ticket ahead of time, we wouldn’t have been able to go on a four-day train ride together. In the end, such random, independent events tend to fall into place somehow (like meeting Gyu or getting a seat), and even if they don’t, you can always find another way around it. Always.

There are two types of buses in Irkutsk. One is in the form a family van with just a small number sticker on the window. The other is a normal bus. The hilarious thing about the bus system is that both the vans and the buses are imported from Korea! What’s even funnier is that the Russians never cared to take off the Korean labels covering them. For example, I saw a van that was labeled “충주남부감리교회,” which means that it was a church van in an area in Korea called Chungju. I saw another bus labeled “3420 장지동, 선릉역, 고속터미널” with the door labeled “자동문,” which means automatic door - I used to take this very bus all the time in Seoul!

Church van

Korean bus

A warning about the buses if you ever decide to travel here: there are no signs whatsoever that indicate bus stops. Gyu explained that you just had to know what corner or street the bus stopped on. Without Gyu, it would’ve been nearly impossible to tour the city and figure out the public transportation system. One more thing: you pay when you’re about to get off a bus, rather than when you’re getting on. I feel like that makes it extremely easy to just hitch a free ride and run; would a bus driver with a vehicle full of passengers actually get off and try to chase you down?

The town of Irkutsk reminded me of a typical European one, packed with beggars, century-year-old buildings and cables hanging above the streets. It was also stifling hot, so I spent $40 on sunscreen for the three of us. We passed by a small yard with leftover tanks and missiles from World War II, and despite the chains surrounding them, I just felt the need to jump over and climb on one of the tanks.

Pigeons unusually gathered around a love graffiti

While there are hundreds of rivers that flow into Lake Baikal, the Angara River is the only one that flows out of the lake. For me it was the nicest and most relaxing view in Irkutsk, but also the scariest. The river was as pristine as the very water I was carrying around, but so deep that I couldn’t see the bottom. If you dropped a leaf or a small pebble in it, you could see just how quickly the water flowed - yet as fast as it was flowing, the Angara was quiet. Gyu, JW and I leaned our heads over the bridge for half an hour and stared into the bottomless blue bottom, captivated by the river’s stealthy silence and imagining how quickly we’d drown if we all fell in.

Love lockets along the Angara

The sun was still high and bright by six o’clock, and we hopped on a bus (or a Korean church van) headed for Lake Baikal. There are all kinds of tours available to see the mammoth lake, some even that last for weeks. While I would’ve loved to ride a ferry to Aron island - the largest island on the lake - and spend a night there, I was also on a mission to reach the Atlantic Ocean before school started so I had to economize my time (call me a hypocrite because a few paragraphs ago I wrote that you should do whatever you want when you’re traveling). We ended up going instead to Listebianka(?), the closest point on the lake from Irkutsk that was about an hour away.

The bus ride to Listebianka(?) was so exciting that I thought I was on a rollercoaster. The highway was nearly perfectly straight and we went over some of the steepest hills I’ve ever seen an automobile go over. The driver kept his foot on the gas even when going downhill and the van reached speeds up to 95 mph. The back windows were just slightly open but that was enough to put my hair into Einsteinian mode. If a tire treaded on a rock on the road, the van would’ve flipped and we would’ve all died violently in a huge fireball. That’s how fast we were going.

We reached Baikal in just 45 minutes and I paid the driver an extra ten rubles for being so awesome. I wished I had a job where I could drive at ridiculous speeds and get paid for it (except NASCAR - that’s in fact the last thing I want).

I thought we had arrived at an ocean. It was just water for miles and miles until the end of the horizon. When I walked along the shore, I was still convinced that this was an ocean. Since Baikal had just recently melted, the water was frigid - I couldn’t put my foot in the lake for more than three seconds. Gyu explained that the lake was cold enough to be a main habitat for seals. Unfortunately I didn’t have seal fat, and I couldn’t believe that I was actually going to jump in. I’d get hypothermia or frostbite just by putting in a leg.

Ocean or lake?

“You gotta do it man,” said Gyu. “If you’re at Baikal this is something you just gotta do.”

There were lots of people along the shore, stretched out under the sun, but no one was braving deeper than ankle-deep.

“If I die, I want to be buried in Hawaii, or a desert,” I said. “And tell my parents I said hi.”

And so we changed into our swimming trunks, praying and appreciating life and whatnot. I was already shivering just looking into the water. People were staring at us probably thinking, “stupid tourists.” I handed my camera to a girl named Estella, who was wearing nearly nothing, as her two guy friends glared at me.

As we marched towards the water, the cold air made me feel as if I was entering a freezer. After the first few seconds, my foot was already numb, which was good because I didn’t feel any pain but bad because if the water was cold enough to make my foot go numb that quickly, I should’ve probably turned around. I placed my other foot in, and then entered slowly shin-deep, knee-deep, thigh, and torso. Forgive me for this remark, but a crucial part of my body felt shriveled and I feared the possibility that I may not be able to have kids. Estella was giggling and the boys looked as if they truly wanted me to freeze to death. With a quick shout at the sun and the clouds and the rest of the world, I dunked my head in and officially baptized myself in the Baikal. During the half-second my entire body was underwater, I felt clean. Fresh. Sterile.

Unable to have kids.

When I lifted my head, I had a brain freeze. Gritting my teeth, I waded back towards the shore.

Unable to have kids.

Apparently I stepped on a piece of broken glass but I wouldn’t realize this until a few minutes later because all that was on my mind was:

Unable to have kids.

JW and Gyu were both yelling and swearing as they came out of the water. I picked up my towel when I heard Gyu chatter, “What, don’t tell me you’re going in just once.”

“If I go back I don’t think I’d be able to have kids man,” I replied. To my horror, I saw two wide and incredibly scary Ronald McDonald grins form on Gyu and JW’s faces.

“Grab him!” Each of them held my arms and dragged me back towards icy death. I thought maybe it wouldn’t be as bad since I just experienced it, but no, it was just as bad. Before I knew it my head was underwater again.

Seriously unable to have kids.

Gyu and JW were also in agony but they were still clinging onto me. I looked back at the shore and wanted to slap my camera out of Estella’s hand.

No way in which I could have kids.

After about a minute we came back out and I was graciously allowed to pick up my towel. Never in my life did I remember myself having such powerful, loving emotions towards a piece of fabric. We took several group pictures and I have no idea why I’m smiling in any of them.

Me and JW

Gyu, JW, Me

Once we were nice and dry, I watched JW and Gyu smoke with Estella and the two guys, and we headed off to nearby restaurant. Along the way we ran into the captain of a ship that was docked on the shore, and we thought it’d be fun to make him take a picture with us.

Captain’s ship

Me, captain, JW

At the restaurant we ordered a grilled omul - a fish that is endemic to the Baikal - as well as some skewered steak. The omul was slightly bland, perhaps because it was fished out of freshwater, but it was nevertheless soft and delectable with the steak.

We finished up at around 8:30. As we were licking our fingers that were still cold, Gyu realized that he had forgotten the Irkutsk bus system ends at 8PM. That meant that we had to take a cab home, which would cost a fortune. Luckily Gyu bargained with the cab driver (you usually agree upon a price before you get on the cab) and brought the price down from 1700 to 1500 rubles, or approximately $50. That was a ton compared to the 3-dollar bus ride, and the windows were up the whole time, but the cab driver blasted some nice club music for us and JW and I got some nice shots of the setting sun.

Once we arrived at our home-stay we bode farewell to our tour guide, Gyu, and packed up for our next adventure on the transsiberian. Nothing particularly memorable happened except there was this one homeless person at the station who smelled really, really bad.

Russian Sunset and Russian Nightlife

Day 4, Sun, 7/26

Irkutsk, Russia.

Although I had set my alarm at 2PM, I ended up waking up at 9 in the morning after just four hours of sleep. I felt like I’d slept for much longer and I couldn’t go back to bed. Everyone had left except Alexei’s laptop was still sitting on my desk. I went to the proctor’s compartment to see if Anton was there, but his girlfriend was on duty and she told me that he was still asleep. Alexei was up though, and we chatted in my room for about three hours, talking about New York steak and traveling. He also showed me hundreds of pictures of him and his “woman” when they were traveling in Germany.

Anton woke up at around noon and helped me pack up. There’s no doubt that my compartment was the dirtiest one of them all; after Oliya left I had the entire four-person compartment to myself, taking advantage of it by spreading out my food and trash on all four beds. It took two hours to pack, vacuum and replace the sheets, and I was almost sad to see place so clean and remote.

Suddenly, two shirtless guys named Artur and Alec came in my compartment, their breaths reeking of beer. It was pretty clear that they wanted to steal my belongings, as they pointed at items such as my camera or my laptop and asking, “Present me?” I shook my head, and Alec pulled out a deck of cards and asked if I wanted to bet at all. I shook my head again and tried to refrain from planting my fist in both of their faces. How dare they rummage through my stuff like that? Instead, I kept a smile on my face and let Artur play my guitar for a few minutes.

Artur (Thief #1)

Alec (Thief #2)

The train was scheduled to arrive in Irkutsk at 5:20PM. By around four, Anton, Leila and I were pressing our faces against the window, too depressed to talk about anything. At 5:15, I pulled out two pairs of cheap wooden chopsticks (the ones you throw away after just one use) and two Korean 100 won coins. “Ssahnk you,” they said. We exchanged phone numbers and wrapped our arms around each other for the final five minutes, swaying to the motion of the train.

Russian village

Fortunately, our train conductor sucked at his job, so we didn’t arrive until nearly 6. It also meant that I had to face an angry driver who I had asked to come pick me up at the station by 5.

We exchanged our last hugs and I slung my unnecessarily heavy - but slightly lighter - bag over my poor back. I stepped down the train and onto Irkutskian(?) soil, almost wishing that I had left something on my bed so I had an excuse to go back for a few minutes. I walked out about a dozen steps and turned around to wave goodbye, but Anton and Leila were already flooded with a horde of passengers shoving tickets in their faces, and couldn’t see me. Sad face L.

At the station I was again accosted by a series of enormous ugly Russian taxi drivers eager to rip me off. That reminds me; here are two more characteristics I learned about Russians:

1) They try to have a staring contest with you all the time. They simply won’t stop looking at you and it gets pretty creepy. Sometimes I feel like they want to eat me. The one nice thing though is that the girls are never shy to show that they’re checking you out, as in they don’t look away when you look back at them. Russian girls also have some of the nice curves, which come as no surprise since they are best known for their ballet and gymnastics.

2) They wear nearly nothing. Fully grown men walk around shirtless, or in a button-up without buttoning anything. Women wear spandex or jeans as tight and short as possible without the slightest care for what they’re exposing. It’s as if Russia is one huge beach.

Once I evaded the scary people, I met my driver along with a fellow solo Korean traveler, Jeong Woo (I’ll refer to him as JW). Apparently he was on the same train as me the whole time, just in a different vehicle. As we drove to a Korean home-stay called 예지네집 (Yaeji’s house), I found out that JW was a balling partying 20-year-old piano major from Hanyang University with hands the size of my face.

The moment I arrived in my room I ripped my clothes off like Superman would from his office wear and had the most satisfying shower of my life. 3 days worth of transsiberian grime washed away. I wish it’d never ended. But I also shed about a fourth of my hair from malnutrition, which wasn’t very pretty.

After a nice Korean dinner (our first normal meal in days) JW and I headed out to see the surrounding neighborhood and the sunset. Our home-stay is located at the top of a rustic hillside and the air had a kind of crisp that felt like a nice clean shower compared to Korea’s sticky, goopy atmosphere.

View from veranda

What struck me most about the houses were the colors. The view looked like a mosaic. Enough with the words, let the pictures do the talking:

After about an hour, JW and I became hungry again and dropped by our rooms to pick up some money. Suddenly a short kid named Gyu, the house owner’s nephew, came up to us while we were leaving. I seriously thought he was in middle school with that height and voice, but he was a year older than me and going into law school in September. He told us that he was bored and had nothing to do until midnight the next day, which was when his plane left for Korea. Jackpot. With the exception of one year - when he schooled in Texas as an exchange student - this guy had lived in Russia for a lot of his life. The point is that when you have someone who is fluent in Russian and has nothing to do, you make him your tour guide.

For as scrawny as he was, he seemed to know literally half the people in Irkutsk. During the half hour it took for us to walk to the supermarket, we spent about twenty of it shaking hands with his friends that we ran into. Then JW and I would try to converse awkwardly with them in a mix of Russian and English (Ringlish). The Russian friends asked Gyu to invite us “newcomers” to go get a taste of Russian clubs, but I was a minor. I told Gyu and JW that it was perfectly fine to go without me but they insisted that it was okay because we had to wake up early tomorrow to tour Irkutsk and Lake Baikal. I felt like a party pooper.

The one unusual thing about the supermarket was that the fruits, vegetables, cheeses and yogurt were all located in a separate room at the temperature of a refrigerator. It was pretty amusing to watch people push their carts down the aisles with their teeth chattering violently. That should teach them a lesson to put some more clothes on.

Another shocking discovery I made about the Russians were their unique taste buds. In the snack aisle I ran into my favorite Lays potato chips, only to find out that they were either crab-flavored or fish egg-flavored. As much as I liked to try out new things, I had to pass on this one.

Crab

Fish egg

It was around 11 when we began walking back, and Gyu told us never ever to walk around at night without someone who could speak Russian. That didn’t sound too good. He explained that Russian teenagers spend their free time cornering and robbing tourists. Even the police are corrupt here; since their wages are so low, they tend to make a significant portion of their income by pestering foreigners and pointing out fictional problems with their Russian visas, and demanding up to $100 at a time.

The path in which Gyu led us back home was a shortcut, but I would’ve rather walked back the longer way. We had to maneuver through a forest in the complete darkness, and we all had our cell phones out to light the way. I complained and said that this sucked.

“Hey,” Gyu said. “Would you rather come this way or walk past a huge whorehouse-warehouse thing that’s full of thieves, murderers, drug addicts and AIDS? Besides, there aren’t any bears here, just some ticks.” Great. I was the only one wearing shorts. “And I think I saw a ghost once,” Gyu added.

Suddenly, JW’s bag ripped under the weight of his beers. We all screamed, thinking maybe an animal was jumping out to attack us. Then Gyu and I started yelling at JW, half mad and half crying because we were so shaken.

We reached our dwelling at 11:10, only to be scolded at by Gyu’s aunt for being out at night.

Although Gyu and JW had not ditched me to go clubbing because they wanted to wake up early tomorrow, we ended up eating several bags of chips and shortbread cookies, listening to music, playing guitar and discussing life, religion and politics until sunrise, which was our planned wake-up time. Uh oh. None of us were tired by then, so we eventually had to force ourselves to go to sleep, setting the alarm at 8:30.

Well… no one heard any of the alarms, even though JW had set up ten, each a minute apart starting from 8:21 to 8:30. Gyu shook all of us awake at 10:30 instead. Well there goes most of our morning.