What greater wound is there than a false friend?

Sophocles, “Antigone”

List of people at the hostel:

• Owner – owner of the hostel, 41yo guy. Originally from Cananda, he seemed (and acted) way younger. Fond of drinking and talking about being horny.
• C.H. – one of the staff members, 28yo guy. Bespectacled, served in the navy, intensely shy.
• Nacho – Korean-American female staff member in her early thirties, originally from L.A., in charge of the volunteers. Bespectacled, hilarious, and plump, with a BTS haircut and a crazy sleep routine.
• Chica – Spanish volunteer / actress from Madrid, 34yo girl. Short, perky, petite, with long, straight hair and freckles.
• Lil G – Mexican volunteer, 33yo guy. He’s my height, yet three times thicker than me, like a bodyguard.
• Painter – Brazilian volunteer, guy in his late thirties. Been here for around five months. Half of the time, he painted the hostel instead of cleaning.
• Horizon – Israeli volunteer, 22yo girl. Half Turkish, half Indian, sensitive yet tough.
• Ryu – German volunteer, 22yo girl. Platinum-dyed hair, straight, black eyebrows. Fluent in Japanese, having spent senior year of high school in Osaka. Also, intermediate in Korean.
• Q – Spanish volunteer from Barcelona, 20yo girl. Thin glasses, curly hair like a poodle’s (her own description).
• P.V. – Peruvian volunteer, a guy whose age I don’t remember. Short yet feisty.
• Mon chéri – French volunteer, 22yo (?) girl. A tall, redheaded beauty, she’s the party girl, with a  thick, sultry accent and a love of coffee.
• Cosima – Romanian volunteer now living in the island of Sardinia, 27yo girl. With glasses, a bob cut, and a sharp nose, she possessed deep knowledge of Korea (and delicious ability of cooking Korean food). I picked Cosima, the feminine version of Cosmo, due to her cosmopolitan nature.
• Angel – 27yo French girl with long curly hair, black glasses, and an olive skin, staying at the hostel for a month, studying Korean in Busan. Her long term residency and bubbly personality made her an instant addition to the volunteer group.

1 June 2023

• 13:10-14:50 sheets

Neither Sightseeing, Nor Expenses

First day of not leaving the hostel. Also, of not spending a single dime. I found out volunteers were eligible for complimentary rice and instant noodles. With the groceries I’d bought, I managed to go a full day without paying for food.

I socialized with more volunteers and guests – from Mexico, France, UK, Israel, the Netherlands… a lot of British guests had been staying here, actually. Their enviable accents took me back to my time in Norwich. I could listen to them talk for hours.

It rained all day. I made progress with my sister’s paper and itinerary for Korea. Overall, a quiet day.

Today’s highlight: not spending any money whatsoever.

2 June 2023

• 13:20-14:55 mopping
• Clubbing at night

Israel in Busan

This morning, alone again with my computer in the common area, a girl exhausted from her red-eye from Thailand collapsed next to me on a chair.

Then an Israeli girl showed up, the newest volunteer.

Horizon – 22, half Turkish, half Indian – had stayed in this hostel for two weeks in May, and enjoyed it so much, that she decided to volunteer here for two months.

The snoozing girl froze in her chair.

“Are you talking in Hebrew?” she asked us… in the same language.

So now there were four of us in this hostel. Including the Israeli-Thai girl. Who had in fact mentioned to me the previous night a Canadian guest, who spoke a little Hebrew as well.

After the original group of volunteers had checked out, we’d gone from six volunteers, to ten. Horizon had come; Ryu, a German girl with platinum-dyed hair and straight black eyebrows; and Q, a Spanish girl who was doing the 1-year working holiday in Korea and volunteering in hostels.

Nacho informed me I’d sleep in the guest dormitory on the third floor during the whole month. She’d made a mistake in calculating the beds for the volunteers.

No biggie. The only nuisance was at night, when the room was dark, and I couldn’t organize my things.

The newest volunteers did sheets today. Barely anyone had checked out. I was assigned mopping. All eight floors. By myself.

I finished last out of the volunteers. My hand was cramping, and my back hurt from bending.

Horizon and I went grocery shopping afterwards, this time to a bigger shop, with two floors. We spent 1.5 hours there, browsing every aisle and shelf, looking at prices and marveling at Korean groceries. We also talked a lot, having immediately hit it off, and found many things in common.

She would celebrate her birthday two weeks from now. I was surprised to discover her unfortunate history with this day. She was so used to her friends forgetting it and ditching her, that she decided to just spend it alone at some point, without counting on anyone else to be there for her.

A similar thing had happened to me, particularly on my 19^th birthday.

We filled a cart with groceries. I bought so many things, that I spent a budget of more than two days.

Back in the hostel, I learned that Painter was, well, a painter, responsible for all the murals in the hostel. My first host from Seoul had done the same in Israel, volunteering at a hostel in Tel-Aviv and painting it.

Why did I meet so many painters in Korea? I wanted to meet a costume designer. Someone who could help me make my coveted dancheong hanbok.

I cooked a healthy dinner for once – fish, salad, and a black squid ink and cheese bun I’d bought with Horizon.

The Social Power of Traveling

It was such an odd discovery, that I had to try it. Yet neither I nor anyone else in the common area could describe the taste.

It wasn’t sea-like. Earthy? Charcoal? Stir-fried garlic?

Those were some of the suggestions brought up by the people who wanted a taste.

Then I talked to a Russian merchant mariner who had been traveling the world on a steel ship for 11 years.

“Your friends and acquaintances start to kind of forget you, when you’re at sea for a few months every now and then,” he said. “It’s harder to start any relationship when you work like this and even harder to keep them.”

“I bet,” I replied. “It sounds amazing to be able to travel the world for so long. But you probably don’t have an anchor (pun unintended) this way.”

“Even if unintended, sounds nice to me.”

I recalled a sentence the Dutch girl, who I’d hung out with in Japan more than anyone else – in Yoshino-yama, Takayama festival, and Tokyo – had said to me in April.

“People will make time for you if they want you in their life.”

Not a week had gone by since then when I hadn’t pondered over this. Now, the Russian’s words felt like a continuation of hers.

“Some losses are good for you, actually. In your travels you start realising who your real friend, who you love indeed, who you want in your life. And the garbage people that you had picked up throughout your life by accident, just fall off like tree leaves that don’t get the nutrients from their host in the autumn.”

(Direct quote, verbatim.)

Then, with today being my first Friday at the hostel, it was time to go out.

I soon learned about the ritual. The volunteers would gather at 22:00 or 23:00 in the common area with soju bought from the convenience store. (There were two 7/11s less than a minute from us.) I bought a bottle and joined them at the large table.

Talking to Ryu led to the discovery of her fluency in Japanese. She’d gone to high school in Osaka as a foreign exchange student in senior year.

As the atmosphere around the table only grew louder, with people drinking and talking loudly, I grew quiet.

My sudden, intense envy of her left me speechless. To attend high school in Japan, and have Japanese friends to this day…

Seomyeon

The time to go out arrived, and saved me from exhibiting my emotions.

A few guests wanted to join us. The volunteer group was always the largest of the groups formed in the common area. The friendliest, most tight-knit. It wasn’t uncommon for guests to try to infiltrate it.

Tonight, for example, it didn’t work.

Some guests, from places like France, Ireland, and Scotland, walked with us out of the hostel. I found out this was the Peruvian volunteer’s last weekend in Busan. He’d stayed at this hostel for four months, and wanted to be with his volunteer friends tonight.

P.V. was short yet feisty. He exuded coolness in an effortless way. We’d been talking every and now and then since my arrival.

Now, the group he invited to his last weekend of partying included the only other two volunteer veterans – Lil G, a 33yo Mexican guy who was as tall as me, yet three times thicker, like a bodyguard; and Mon Cheri, a 22yo French girl, a tall, redheaded beauty, with a thick, sultry accent. Out of the new volunteers, he invited Ryu, Chica, and me.

Yesterday, after our shift, we’d gathered in the girl volunteers’ dormitory on the second floor. A pole had stood in the center. This had thrilled Chica, for a reason unknown to me. She and P.V., who had been flirting nonstop, had come up with the idea of going out to a club with a pole.

To recap: going out tonight, after the pre-party drinks, two groups formed.

• Q, Horizon, and a bunch of guests.
• P.V., Lil G, Mon Cheri, Chica, Ryu, me, and a French girl who I hadn’t noticed before, but assumed was a new volunteer.

So many people in this hostel, it was hard to keep track at times. I just went with the flow.

We ditched the first group in Seomyeon and went to Yaman. The club was empty.

But there was a pole. And we had each other. So we drank and danced and had fun, despite the oddness of the situation. Seomyeon was as busy as it got, with the popular places full to the brim.

Then Chica jumped on the pole.

She moved like a professional pole dancer. Did every possible move. Her core strength was incredible. 

We took turns, her instructing each of us how to pole dance. I managed to not slip after a few attempts. Two Korean guys showed up and danced with us. Lil G was so big, that he almost broke the pole.

After that, we went to Thursday Party. In Seoul, I’d found it lame, yet here, it was fun. Mostly locals, younger crowd. We met a Korean-American guy who had just moved to Busan from Texas.

A tight, competitive match of beer pong ensued, during which I chugged beer in loss despite my dislike of carbonated drinks. All the while, Ryu was talking to the Texas guy in English and Korean.

“You should get his number,” I told her in the end. “I think he’s into you.”

She approached him.

“Hey,” she said. “There is no romantic tension between us, right?”

“Oh, no,” he smiled.

That was impressively direct. Drama-free and simple. The guy’s lack of offence seemed genuine.

Next, we tried to get into Groove, one of the most popular clubs. Lil G showed the guard a picture of his passport.

“No photos,” the guard said.

P.V. misheard “no Mexicans”, and lost his shit. Almost got into a fight with a tall security guard.

We dragged him away from Groove and tried to calm him down. For better or worse, he could act hot-blooded at times.

Gost was it instead. Only for a short while. A smaller club, catered mostly to foreigners.

Back outside, a few Korean guys were fighting in the street. A police car showed up.

My legs were so tired by this point, that I sat on the street.

“I wouldn’t sit there,” Lil G said. “People pee here everywhere.”

Every club in Korea reeked of smoke. Trash was everywhere, especially now in Seomyeon. PDA as well. I was in a place totally different from Japan.

I went to bed at 5:00, my ears ringing, and legs heavy.

Today’s highlights: grocery shopping with Horizon; black squid ink and cheese bun; and clubbing with the volunteers.

3 June 2023

• 13:15-14:50 mopping
• Bus number 81 to Busan’s Citizens Park; lunch at the park
• 18:30-20:00 classical music concert at the park
• Drag show and clubbing at night

I woke at 10:00 after less than five hours of sleep. Everyone was telling stories from last night during breakfast.

“Kesem,” Nacho said at 13:00. “Can you do mopping again today?”

“Um… can I do something else?”

“It’s not a question,” Lil G said. “She wants you to do it.”

“Oh.”

“You did a good job yesterday,” Nacho said, “so I want you again today.”

“So you’re saying I should’ve done a bad job…”

I mopped faster today than yesterday, adamant to avoid finishing after everyone else again.

Busan Citizen’s Park’s Classical Music Concert, Day 1

In the afternoon, I cooked lunch, and took it with me to Busan Citizen’s Park, a short ride from the hostel, for a free, outdoor classical music concert at 18:30 today and tomorrow. Today’s theme was opera.

No volunteer had wanted to come with me.

After showing up 1 hour early to the festival at the Blue House and scoring the best seat, I figured the same would suffice here. It did not.

I arrived at 17:30. The best spots on the lawn were already taken.

Koreans came PREPARED. Everyone had mats and hats and UV umbrellas. They showed up prepared for hiking as well as for events. I, on the other hand, had brought my small, quick dry towel.

I found one spot in the back, and napped for an hour.

At 18:30, the concert began. The female singer performed an aria from La Boheme with the biggest smile and playful disposition.

The first male singer possessed a powerful voice. The second performed an aria from Don Carlo with melancholy and a look of pain. Deep, resonant voice. The screens on either side of the stage depicted him surrounded by blackness, due to the camera’s angle. I found this image as moving as his voice.

(Video not uploading for some reason… will try again later)

The sun set over the stage, and the sky turned a beautiful shade of pink. Once over, I had dinner at the hostel, and went out to my first drag club.

Beomil

P.V. and Mon Cheri had been going on and on about it to me all week. They’d mentioned going there once and seeing an ad for a big event tonight, in celebration of Pride Month.

Yet the same process as yesterday repeated itself.

Pre-party drinks in the common area led to more guests trying to join in. For example, a pretty but shy German girl.

“I missed you yesterday,” she said, “I wanted to go out.”

Apparently, she’d seen us drinking, but missed out on the chance to join us.

Horizon and I felt bad at the prospect of abandoning her. The German girl’s friend did not want to party with her, no matter her strong desire to go out.

Moreover, Horizon wasn’t invited tonight, either. The plan was for P.V. and Mon Cheri to take me to the drag club, for P.V.’s final night. They hadn’t told anyone else where and when the drag competition would take place.

“I’ll go out with the German girl,” Horizon said, hurt by the lack of invitation.

Suddenly, I felt on the opposite side of the “closed club” atmosphere in Korea. The veteran volunteer group had probably given other guests, and Horizon, the same impression. I was invited, yet the latter was not.

She thought they hated her. I tried to convince her that it was just because I’d arrived to the hostel before her; I’d felt similarly in the first few days as well. But she was certain that Mon Cheri disliked her.

While this was unfolding in the common area, a new volunteer checked in: Cosima, a Romanian girl and YouTuber who was now living in Italy, Sardinia. I introduced myself to her, and mentioned tomorrow being my one-week anniversary.

“I thought you were here at least 2-3 weeks,” Ryu said, taken aback. “You seemed very into everything already.”

“Don’t worry,” I said, “give it a few days.”

Because indeed, my first few days in the hostel were mostly me glued to my computer, yet now, I was glued to the veteran volunteers.

P.V. and Mon Cheri hadn’t returned yet to the hostel, after going to watch the drone show at night in Gwangali beach. It was midnight, and the drag competition would start at 1:00. So we agreed to meet at the club.

Horizon, the German girl, and who-knows-who-else all went out to Seomyeon, while I walked south to Beomil: Busan’s gay area.

I arrived to the club before the others. It was as packed as Shinjuku ni-chome during Tokyo Pride. Another déjà vu was me finding myself alone in a sea of couples, checking my phone for half an hour, and scouring the crowd.

“Please sit down on the floor,” the drag mom / manager said at 1:00. “It’s dirty, but we’re dirty people.”

The competition began. Each drag queen went onto the small stage to uproars. The makeup, the hair, the costumes – what a joy, to finally see drag queens in real life!

One by one, they all lip synced to songs. Dancing, voguing, wig reveals, death drops. One even flute-synced to Lizzo.

Then, a drag queen with half of her face frozen came to the stage. I could not take my eyes off her.

Her hat was constantly falling off. She fixed it and lip synced like everyone else had. I admired how she did so nonetheless. She was one of the top two queens who would battle it out for the crown. Her shock was deep and touching.

The lip sync battle for your life ended with her winning and crying tears of joy.

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After the competition, cake and flowers were given to the manager. She was celebrating her birthday.

I took a selfie with my favorite drag queen, danced a little, approached people. One person stood out to me among the rest. He did not want to dance.

In the restroom, I met a Korean casting director who told me she’d just cast a trans Israeli woman to a modeling agency. Then I decided to call it quits, and left the club.

I talked to an Italian guy in the street. Today was his first day in Korea.

A guy and a drunk girl leaning on him for support walked toward us.

“HE’S TRYING TO SCORE,” the girl yelled.

Assuming that no one would understand him, the guy complained about her… in Hebrew.

The bewilderment on his face, when I made it clear that I understood him, was priceless. I was the second Israeli (and the first guy) he’d met in four months of foreign exchange studies in Busan.

“I thought I was the only Israeli guy in Busan,” he said.

He was 24 years old, blond, tan, and short. As he soon complained to me, 45 people from his university had come to the drag show tonight. No less than 42 of them were straight.

“I’m straight, too,” the Italian guy said.

Ugh.

The Israeli guy and I both found the absurdly high percentage of heterosexuals invasive. I hopped on a cab with him and his straight guy (French, obviously) friends to Seomyeon.

The straight nightlife district of Busan was even crazier today than yesterday. A girl collapsing in the middle of the street. A guy holding a different girl, to keep her from passing out. People were insanely drunk.

“I go out to Seomyeon every week,” the Israeli guy said. “It’s never been like this.”

We went to Gost. It was fun, but getting late, and, after less than five hours of sleep, I was yawning while dancing. At 3:45, I decided to call it a night.

“Whaaaaat?” the Israeli guy said. “It’s early!”

But I was exhausted.

On the way back, I ran into Horizon and the German girl. We walked to the hostel. I discovered P.V. and Mon Cheri had gone to Thursday Party instead. They could’ve told me they weren’t coming.

Still, after Tokyo, I was used to going out alone. Despite four rejections in one night, my first drag show was fun.

I had a long and deep 4:00 am conversation in the common area with Lil G and a Colombian nightshift volunteer, who, due to her working hours, I hadn’t been able to see. We discussed pansexuality, a concept hitherto unfamiliar to the straight-as-a-pole Lil G. Like me, the Colombian girl fell under it.

“I care about the vibe someone gives off,” I explained to Lil G, who seemed eager to understand this concept, yet still confused by it.

Finally, I went to bed at 5:00 again. A couple of new guests in my dormitory were snoring like trucks.

Two performances today moved me to tears for different reasons. Overall, a successful day.

Today’s highlights: the free opera concert in the park; my first drag show (particularly the winning queen); and clubbing with the foreign exchange students.

4 June 2023

• 13:15-15:40 bathrooms
• 18:30-20:00 second day of the outdoor classical music concert in Busan Citizens’ Park

A Grossly Valuable Shift

I woke at 10:30 and had breakfast alone. The volunteers all got up right before 13:00, and ate at the last minute.

“Kesem,” Nacho said. “Can you do bathroom?”

“No,” I said, by now comfortable enough around her to speak my mind. “Oh, wait, it’s not a question.”

So Lil G and I did bathrooms together. My left palm was still painful from holding a mop for two days.

One of the men’s toilets had vomit all over the seat. I came across stains on walls that looked like blood. Hair everywhere.

The stench.

But then – but then – the girls’ bathroom.

Girls were worse than guys. The horror I saw there. Even the frightening mess in the girl volunteers’ dormitory.

Lil G and I cleaned bathroom after bathroom, both in private rooms, and in shared floors. In one of the men’s bathrooms, a French guy greeted me after stepping out of the shower.

He’d been striking up a conversation with me almost every time he’d seen me over the last few days. Now, in the bathroom, we stood and chatted, me holding a nasty toilet brush, him barely covered in a towel.

Lil G impatiently waited for us to move along.

Overall, doing bathrooms today was both valuable and gross. I found the experience quite teachable; about people and their behavior, about cleaning after those who hadn’t deigned to clean after themselves. Ten years ago, I’d worked in retail, fresh off high school. Neither position appealed to me. But they were learning experiences nonetheless.

“Everyone needs to do things like this,” I mused. Ever since working in retail, I’d been able to tell apart people who had done the same, and those who hadn’t.

Busan Citizen’s Park’s Classical Music Concert, Day 2

In the afternoon, almost all of the volunteers asked to join me for the second day of the free classical music concert in Busan Citizens’ Park. I couldn’t tell what had changed since yesterday, when I’d attended it alone, but I invited anyone who expressed interest.

I took lunch with me in a container and walked to the park with the volunteers, thirty minutes from the hostel, straight all the way north. “Busan is ready for World Expo 2030” signs and commercials everywhere, all over the city; the city’s ongoing candidacy was the reason it had been throwing free events like this.

My companions were Lil G, Mon Cheri, the Colombian nightshift girl, Chica, Ryu, Cosima, and Angel, the French girl who’d gone out with us on Friday.

The latter and I spent most of the walk to the park side by side. Angel was 27 years old. Short and perky, with long, dark curls, black frames, and an olive skin. She was staying in the hostel for a month – as a guest, having come to Busan to study Korean.

She was very easy to talk to. Soon enough, she mentioned going out last night on a first date with a local guy. I told her about my own recent date.

Like me, she’d never been in a relationship. Unlike me, she liked to take things slow.

I was happy to see her becoming a part of the somewhat-off-limits group of volunteers. Her thick accent was funny at times, such as the way she pronounced “foreigner” as “fo-RI-gi-ner”. Over the next three weeks in the hostel, I would feel comfortable enough around her to make fun of her for it, and of Chica, whose “jes” I imitated constantly.

Lying on the grass in front of the stage, napping on each other’s laps while listening to the classical music, it felt like this was my life now. This was where I lived and the people I spent time with. This was what I ate and the work I did.

I recalled orientation day of my B.A., in August 2013. I was 19, a year after graduating from high school. I’d went to Tel-Aviv University to meet the director of my small program.

“You’re avoiding each other’s gaze now, being too shy,” she’d said, as the 18 students around the table (all much older than me) shifted uncomfortably. “In a few months, you’ll be lying on the grass, on each other’s laps.”

She was right. It took a semester for that to happen.

Now, almost a decade later, it took two days.

The sun set again over the stage, as the orchestra played Busan’s anthem as an encore.

We walked back to the hostel. The group all went to dinner for some kind of a traditional meal with cheese, onion, and chicken. The pictures were enticing, but meat wasn’t for me.

Instead, I ate salad at the hostel with the Israeli-Thai girl.

“So you’re the famous Kesem,” a new Israeli girl said, joining us at the table. “She [the Thai girl] won’t shut up about you.”

“Only bad things, I hope,” I said, surprised by this exchanged.

“Of course.”

Socializing with people in the common area had become no less enjoyable to me than exploring the city. In one week, I’d dedicated most of my days to it, in comparison to only one day of sightseeing. I enjoyed meeting people, befriending them, and not being alone. From the signs I’d gotten and things I’d been told, it seemed that, with some of them, it worked.

Today’s highlights: cleaning vomit; second day of the classical music concert, this time with friends.

5 June 2023

• Sheets (didn’t write the time)

Swamped

I was a zombie today. Continued writing my sister’s paper in the morning. I could barely move, my body lethargic.

Nacho asked to vacuum – a physical activity that made me beg Lil G to switch with me.

“I owe you,” I said upon his agreement, and wondered if I would live to regret it.

So I did sheets slowly and laboriously. My partners, Cosima and a new volunteer from this morning, were eager to chat. But I actually wanted to be alone today.

In the afternoon, the Israeli-Thai girl left for the airport.

“You’re one of the most fun people I’d met,” I told her. We hadn’t been able to go out together, but spending hours with her in the common area more than sufficed.

“You too,” she said, then added in earnest: “You’re iconic.”

She stared at me with a serious expression on her face. I couldn’t understand what I’d done to give her this impression.

“I keep telling Horizon,” she added.

In the evening, after doing more research about travel in Korea, I decided at the last minute to go on a 3.5-day trip, which would include a temple stay, starting tomorrow. I rushed to build an itinerary and book hostels.

The Dutch girl from Yoshino-yama/Takayama/Tokyo, who was still travelling there until next week (she’d gone there for 3 months, like I had), was in Okinawa now. She sent me a photo of her with the French girl we’d met in Takayama, right before night festival. I remembered her well, having followed her and a Japanese man to the off-limits bridge at the last minute, and finding myself separated from my friends.

What a coincidence, for them to stay at the same hostel now.

After wrapping up preparations for my trip tomorrow late at night, I went to take a shower. I stood under the hot stream of water and listed everything I had to do.

• Finish my sister’s paper
• Interview for work
• Think about money and my future
• Sightsee Busan
• Plan the rest of my time in Korea
• Plan my return to Japan (accommodations for several festivals on my list were already ALL sold out)
• Call my family, who hadn’t heard from me in forever
• Call friends I hadn’t had the time to talk to, either
• Document my trip on my blog (I still hadn’t finished my Tokyo post from April)
• Journal about certain things that had happened to me over the past seven weeks

Also, get some sleep.

I wanted time to stop. I wanted to be alone again, just so I could process everything and recharge. When surrounded by people, too many things went on. I was about to crack.

Still, I felt constant FOMO about not sightseeing enough and taking advantage of the precious time I had in Korea. At least tomorrow would change that.

“OMG really very busy🥲 you need to take a rest.. Maybe you can sleep at temple enough!” my second host from Seoul texted me before bed. Little did I know, a temple in Korea would be the last place in Korea where I would find rest.

Today’s highlight: planning a last-minute temple stay and trip, to be alone for a few days.