Dear God don't make me remember the Korean guesthouse
I taught English in Japan a couple of years ago and had to go to Korea to get my visa sorted. So I went from Fukuoka (where I lived) to Busan (big port city on the toe of Korea) by boat. Fine. The boat was great and I spent loads of my cash on a giant bento box.

When I got to Busan, I took a taxi to the the Japanese embassy. I had thoughtfully, and with rare insight on my part, prepared a piece of paper with a map of the embassy and the address on it to give to the cab driver. Unfortunately for me, most Korean cab drivers don't speak or read Japanese (my bad) so we had to rely on this map which I had found on the internet.

Anyway, I digress. We found the embassy, and I gave my passport for it to be stamped, and was told that I would have to wait for the morning. OK, fine.

So I wondered around the place and decided to stay at the first hotel/motel type place that I saw with the reasoning that I needed to be close to the embassy.

It was late at this point, dark, and extremely cold (put it this way, I was near the Russian quarter of Busan and I saw dozens of fellow caucasians with massive bushy hats and frozen rictus grins).

So I find this hotel which I identify as a hotel by way of the sign 'Hoter'. Check in, hey i am in luck! its only 5 pound for the night!

The features of the room were as follows:-

- No door

- a giant grate in the middle of the tiled room. Emanations were dispelled from this.

- an ensuite bathroom! Minus a toilet seat, toilet roll, shower, bath, and er... a toilet. Basically it was a hole in the ground with a shower nozzle above it that spat rusty liquid ice. Oh it did have a massive and well used toilet brush though, that was a very pronounced beige colour. Some might use the word 'Khakhi' to describe it.

- Burnt curtains

- A decidely sloppy bed (This is where I had intimate relations with the bedbugs that left me with scabs for weeks)

- A pot of hairgel(?)

- A used comb

- a little platter of condoms on a plate.

With the above features and amenities at my disposal, I cried myself to sleep and wished I were in Swansea. I should have gone to another place but I lacked the werewithal.

However days later it all seemed like a dream, and ironically enough, I went to live in Korea for a few years afterwards and met my wife there.

Yay for a happy ending.
(powervator and NONE SHALL PASS, Mon 21 Jan 2008, 17:02, 2 replies)

Visa
I was told by my (cowboy) employment agency that i just had to come to Japan and start working on a tourist visa. Of course this was frowned upon by the local immigration office and they issued me with paperwork that had to be processed outside Japan. Apparently.
(powervator and NONE SHALL PASS, Mon 21 Jan 2008, 17:16, closed)