I wanted movement and not a calm course of existence. I wanted excitement and danger and the chance to sacrifice myself for my love. I felt in myself a superabundance of energy which found no outlet in our quiet life.

Leo Tolstoy, “Family Happiness”

Updated list of the people from 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).
• 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.

6 June 2023

• Sheets shift (forgot to write the time)
• 15:30-16:00 Beomnaegol station to Nopo station metro, 16:10-17:30 Busan Intercity Bus Terminal to Pohang Intercity Bus Terminal bus, Pohang Intercity Bus Terminal to Hwanho Lake Park bus number 900 (I got on the bus headed in the opposite direction before finding the correct one, but it was a 25m ride) (207 also goes there)
• Space Walk (1h)
• 5m bus ride to hostel at Yeongildae beach

Vibing at the Hostel

An alarm went off at 10:00 while I was still in bed. I freaked out, then realized it was Memorial Day. A 10:00 alarm was just like in Israel.

I spent the morning chatting with the French guy from the bathroom. He was about to fly to Jeju Island, so I gave him a bunch of recommendations.

With a blond ponytail and big, blue eyes – always wide, almost like a fish, unlike his mouth, which was usually quiet and shy – he reminded me of Rodin’s the Thinker, if he were an Australian surfer from France.

He didn’t talk fast or smile much. But we did talk several times in the hostel. So I thought of him as introverted, affable, and reflective. I knew his wheels were turning, when I talked to him, and he just watched me silently.

He was born 4 days before me, as became apparent when I reserved a spot for him for Hallasan.

In a moment of perhaps too much enthusiasm, I gave him my Instagram, discovered we’d both stayed at my favorite hostel in Seoul and met the same people, and bid him bon voyage.

He left, and I returned to the common area.

“Did you feel a vibe?” Lil G stopped me. “Did you feel a vibe?”

I bopped him in a friendly way.

“Maybe,” I said. “Why?”

“You could not stop smiling.”

Mon Cheri and I stripped the beds today. We’d grown close lately, especially after going out on Friday and discovering her love of gay clubs.

“The first few days,” she said, “I thought you hated me.”

“What?!” I exclaimed. “Why?”

“Because I tried to talk to you, and you weren’t really responding.”

I couldn’t believe it. Had I really done that?

“Is it when I was glued to my laptop for a few days?”

“Yeah,” she said. “I thought maybe I was being too much and annoying.”

This fear, which had been nagging me since elementary school, could not have been farther from the truth.

“It’s just a lot of things happening at once,” I said earnestly. “There’s a lot on my mind, things I held off for weeks while traveling, and also the uncertainty of my future.”

I was still deep in thought about the latter – what I wanted to do next, what I could do next, and if a job in Japanese tourism was truly for me.

“So it had nothing to do with you,” I added. “Sometimes I just can’t hide it.”

“It’s hard to hide your feelings.”

“No, I do that a lot,” I continued in earnest, still stripping sheets. “But it doesn’t always work. And sometimes I just need to take a break from everything. So this trip now is coming at a good time, because I really feel like I need to get away and be alone for a while.”

We made plans to go out just us two this Friday. Today was Tuesday; I planned to return to the hostel on Friday evening.

Space Walk

After my shift, I got dressed lightning fast, shoved peanut butter toast into my mouth, and rushed to the metro. A middle-aged woman was screaming inside the train car in tortured Korean. A few minutes like this, and she asked the passengers for donations.

Then she did it again in the next car.

I made it to the intercity bus one minute before departure. (There was a line every ten minutes, but I had no time to waste – didn’t even manage to have a toilet break.) It was big and spacious, three seats in each row, all wide and new and comfortable.

I reclined and raised the leg rest. If this were a night bus, I might’ve been able to sleep in it.

The only downside: no Wi-Fi on intercity buses.

Today was Memorial Day, so I’d expected a long line at my attraction for the day. I arrived at 18:25. There was no line, and not that many people.

Space Walk was basically the only reason people came to Pohang, a nondescript city north of Busan. A free, experimental art installation by couple Heike Mutter and Ulrich Genth, it looked like a rollercoaster you could walk on: a steel staircase, meant to simulate gliding on clouds and swimming in outer space.

Pohang was the city of steel and light. It was an installation never before seen, and remained the largest experimental art piece in Korea.

I found a seat under it and ate a very late lunch. Today was cloudless. Not humid. Nor hot. The sunset view would be worth the wait.

But I was the only one who had shown up alone. I already knew I wouldn’t be able to snap good photos of myself. And seeing all the couples traversing this incredible installation on this perfect day, at sunset, in magic hour, and stopping high up a vantage point to kiss again and again and again – I felt sad at my decision to come here by myself.

I watched the sun set from the top of the installation. Rickety stairs wobbled, much to people’s dismay. I felt like I was up in the air.

The rattling of the installation made me feel helpless, as if I was about to lose balance and control over my body. In that sense, it did simulate zero gravity, or at least my idea of it.

A few minutes after sunset, they turned on the lights. The sky was pink and the breeze was tender. The mountains were misty, the sea pale. The people were loud and the skyscrapers were gray, but they didn’t take away from all this. It was a melody of pastels and steel.

I continued up the stairs, this time with my eyes shut. Walking it blindly amplified the sense of weightlessness and helplessness. I treaded slowly and stopped whenever I heard voices, to let people pass.

When the sky turned maroon and purple, and the white strip of light running through the staircase brighter – this was when the installation reached its prime, in my opinion. Magic hour; a convergence of nature and art.

I waited up on the stairs until it got dark, for more variety in landscape. Then I dashed up and down the rickety stairs, curious to feel how running would differ from blind treads, and left at 20:30.

Pohang

After a short bus ride, I checked into my hostel for tonight, and asked the owner about the sunrise coast – the place with the earliest sunrise in Korea. He said it was far, the taxi would be expensive, and the effort would not be worth it. Great: now I didn’t feel pressure to wake at 4:00.

Three Korean soldiers in my dormitory and a 40yo Swedish software engineer, originally from Switzerland, here to visit local friends. The latter had long, straight hair, bushy eyebrows, and thick whiskers that extended from his temples down to his throat. The rest of his beard was shaved. Small round glasses, tall stature, and a giant’s feet.

We talked for 2-3h at the lounge, just us two there. Mostly about society and politics in Europe, as compared to Israel, as well as navigating jobs and bills.

I learned a lot of things about his two countries and the differences in their quality of life. Apart from two girls, I didn’t see any other guests at the hostel, which included 2 floors of rooms, a cafe, a roof, and a basement.

My night here was more expensive than my previous hostels in Korea. As a matter of fact, the price matched Japan’s. Tourists didn’t really come to Pohang, and if they did, they didn’t spend the night. The hostel did include breakfast. But my temple stay for two days from now would be slightly cheaper, and include three meals. One of my Korean hosts from Seoul had told me about a huge discount that temples across the country had been offering for the month of June. So this one was a no-brainer.

Overall, my reason for coming to all the way to Pohang and paying this amount of money couldn’t have paid off in a better way. I’d explored the Space Walk at the perfect time, and left it almost weightless and elated. Tomorrow, I would move to another place.

Today’s highlights: the seats inside the intercity bus; the uniqueness of Space Walk.

7 June 2023

• Yeongildae beach (~1h)
• 11:42-12:05 Dongbu elementary school stop to Pohang Intercity Bus Terminal bus number 207, 12:40-13:10 Pohang Intercity Bus Terminal to Gyeong-ju Intercity Bus Terminal bus
• Quick stroll around Jungang market
• 14:30-14:40 Daegu bank stop to Dongung Palace stop bus number 600 (many buses go there)
• Donggung palace
• Gyeongju National Museum (2h)
• Cheomseongdae observatory, Gyochon Traditional Village (~1h)
• Daereungwon Tomb Complex (35m)
• Cab to Donggung palace (5m)
• Donggung palace at night (30m)
• 20:18-20:26 Dongung palace stop to Daegu bank stop bus number 600 (601 also goes there)

Seonsaengnim

During breakfast with the Swiss/Swedish guest, an old Korean woman, dining by herself, complimented my hanbok and invited us to sit with her.

She’d come to Pohang on a whim, always traveling like this now in her retirement. She had white, cropped hair, a pearl necklace, a baby pink shirt, and a charming voice.

Fluent in English as well.

She asked for our names. I showed her my notepad, which contained my name in English, Hangul, Katakana, and Kanji.

“Qìxiān,” she said, reading the latter according to the Chinese reading. Slightly different from the way the Taiwanese girl from the language café in Seoul had.

The woman was fluent in Korean, English, and Chinese, and even studied Japanese for a while, having visited it no less than ten times.

We ate lettuce, eggs, pancakes, yoghurt, and a homemade mango purée. I wolfed down two plates (“10 points for you,” the staff said; apparently, it was uncommon for guests to eat more than one portion), while the woman was only a third into hers. She was smiling gently all the while, interested in hearing our stories.

The Swiss/Swedish guest had been volunteering in computer graphics conferences for 12 years now. His friends from Pohang, he’d met at one in Korea. His wife, originally from Hong Kong, he’d met at one in Bangkok.

They’d both happened to go to Japan after the conference. In Osaka, he’d asked her to ride a Ferris wheel alone with him; it was where he’d his feelings. She’d needed the night to think it over, finding this moment unexpected. He’d felt nervous for hours, until she’d texted him the next day, agreeing to date him.

The Korean woman seemed again charmed by all this. We spoke about love for a bit.

“Best feeling is freedom and kiss,” she said.

The computer graphics guy only had a few days in Korea, whereas I, weeks upon weeks. The woman invited me to her hometown. Throughout our meal, she’d kept referring to me by my Chinese name. The way she pronounced it was so mellow, with an emphasis on correct phonology, that it sounded like a song lyric.

We exchanged numbers. She asked me to call her 선생님 (seonsaengnim), teacher in Korean (equivalent to the Japanese sensei). I promised to dedicate one of my days off in Busan for her.

Yeongildae Beach

After checking out, the computer graphics guy and I walked the beach. Outdoor sand and stone sculptures, a rest pavilion – all in order, in Korea. He gifted me black licorice roots, famous in Sweden, and a healthy alternative to gum. I, in return, gave him the only thing in my bag: the rest of my KitKat matcha.

At Pohang’s bus terminal, there was again a bus departing every ten minutes. I bought a ticket for 12:10 and headed to the toilet. I made it to the platform at 12:11, after the bus had left.

I boarded the 12:20 one, thinking the time on my ticket wouldn’t matter (the buses were mostly empty on weekdays). It did. The driver told me to get off. I had to cancel my ticket and purchase a new one.

Gyeong-ju National Museum

Gyeongju bus terminal included no tourist information center. I walked for ten minutes to Jungang market, searching for a hanbok in vain. A pack of thirty eggs for 5,000 won… insane. 

Men without legs were dragging themselves on wheels. It was 30 degrees, but not humid.

I checked into my hostel, a two-minute walk from the market. Another cool one with a bunch of guests. Quirky and humorist décor, a boho lounge with manga in the basement. I had a quick bite from a convenience store (how many days had it been since I last visited one?), and took the bus to Donggung palace.

The internet had advised me to reserve a ticket for tonight, since it got very popular at dark. The ticket office at the palace said there was no need to reserve a spot.

So I walked to the adjacent national museum, which two guys from the hostel had told me about. How such an attraction wasn’t on my list, I could not figure out. Because I spent two full hours there, reveling in the history and archeology of Gyeongju.

Gyeongju was the capital of the Silla Kingdom for a millennium, starting from the reign of King Jijeung (500-514). Silla was founded in 57 BC, under the name Saroguk. The name originated from a phrase meaning “reform and innovation”.

The museum’s collection began with the Paleolithic period. From large stone tools employed for multiple purposes, to small, chipped, more advanced tools. Fishing nets and hooks from the Neolithic period. It was interesting how vessels had gradually become less and less decorated during this period.

Not new to me, but forever baffling the correlation, the museum explained that the emergence of agriculture in the Bronze Age had led to the emergence of society and social ranks.

There was a lot of iron weaponry consumed by rust. I could not believe a human being had made and used it thousands of years ago. They’d produced countless iron weapons to continuously attack and annex small polities in the area, in order to broaden the state. The rust made it all seem negligible and stupid, while also somewhat engaging, because the color was glistening in a somewhat poetic way. Everything they’d produced was unusable now. Everything they’d achieved had gone to dust rust.

Another thing produced by the people of this kingdom: gold. Lots and lots of gold. As a symbol of eternity and nobility, nany royal members were discovered buried in it. The center of Gyeongju was known for hill-like mounds containing tombs of Silla royalty from 4-6 century BC, most likely erected as a symbol of their strength and authority over the city.

The museum traced the history of war the Silla Kingdom engaged in, as well as the adoption of Buddhism in 528, after which funeral proceedings were simplified, and burial mounds built on lower hills. Hwangryong-sa, the first temple, was erected. Finally, in the 8th century, political conflicts brought down the kingdom.

There was a temporary exhibition presenting Cheonma, AKA the Heavenly Horse – a famous painting that had become the symbol of Silla. Painted on a plate made of birch bark, it had survived all these years.

It was extremely fragile and broken, carefully laid out in pieces on a plate. Yet the colors were still vivid (unlike Greek sculptures), and it spoke to me as much as the Phoenix from Byodo-in had. Although photography was prohibited, I left the exhibition with a free poster of Cheonma, to hang in my future home.

The rest of the museum had me encountering jewel stones – so mesmerizing, that I sighed and understood the appeal of jewelry – the Divine Bell of King Seongdeok, a pond, a three-story stone pagoda from Goseon-sa Temple, and artifacts excavated from Donggung palace and Wolji pond.

Dong-gung Palace

After this fascinating visit, I crossed a park for twenty minutes toward Cheomseongdae observatory (Korean for “platform of gazing at the stars”). The oldest surviving astronomical observatory in Asia, I didn’t find it interesting, and focused more on the view of misty mountains against green mound hills.

Gyochon Traditional Village was very tranquil. Woljeonggyo Bridge, a gigantic pavilion stretching across a river, was nice. I continued to Daereungwon Tomb Complex, where I entered the Cheonmachong tomb (site of the heavenly horse). The burial site included golden horse-riding gear.

In front of a king’s tomb, I noticed an old Korean man bowing four times.

After waiting endlessly at the bus stop outside the tomb complex – so small it featured no ETA – I gave up, and took a cab. The sun had set over the mound hills during my visit (a beautiful sight), and Donggung palace would soon lit up in the dark.

Made it at 19:40. Perfect timing.

The palace had turned into an InstaFest. Not without merit, since the complex was very pretty when lit up at night. Especially the buildings’ reflection on the water. This sight reminded me a bit of February in Matsumoto castle. At the same time, that was it. The palace was just pretty.

So I didn’t need more than half an hour there. It wasn’t that big.

Back in my hostel, the four volunteers from earlier today were there: a Taiwanese boy, a Taiwanese girl, an American guy, and a Spanish guy. Plus, a few guests from places like Spain, Switzerland, and France.

The volunteers told me about the amazing work conditions they’d been benefetting from this hostel. So good, that I wanted to volunteer here.

The two Western guys were fresh off a month of volunteering at a dirty and derelict hostel in Tongyeong, a tiny coastal town no foreigners ever visited. It was already on my list, however, being my painting host’s favorite place in Korea.

The guys gave me several tips, urged me to avoid their hostel as a guest at all costs, and also showed me an udon and soba stand in Osaka, where dishes cost between 170-330 yen. So unbelievably cheap for Japan, that I was tempted to return to Osaka just to see it for myself.

The way hostels were, everyone gathered around the common area at night and talked. We played a game which involved placing a hand on a lie detector and asking each other questions. An electric shock was supposed to happen after telling a lie. The machine was so crappy, though, that it happened at random. I told a lie and got electrocuted. Then I dared the Taiwanese girl to try.

“Oh, no, it never works on me, because I never lie.”

“Oh, come on!” everyone shouted around the table. “Never lie?”

She placed her hand on the machine.

“I don’t lie,” she said. “AH!”

Anelectric shock made her flinch.

It was fun, but I was exhausted. Moreover, there was the peculiar feeling of being the guest among a group of volunteers who’d become friends. I felt more chemistry with some of the guests and volunteers at my hostel, rather than here. So I excused myself, knowing tonight would be my last night of decent sleep until Sunday (temple tomorrow, and partying in the weekend).

“You’re being very responsible now, only to be irresponsible later,” the American volunteer remarked, after hearing of my intention to wake up before dawn on Friday at the temple, and still party at night upon my return to Busan.

I begged to differ. These days, I was acting irresponsible like I’d never had.

Today’s highlights: breakfast with Seonsaengnim; the national museum; sunset over the tomb complex; the lying game in the hostel.