Saturday, March 17, 2012

Busan - Busan Until The End of Time

Hour three. What little sense of self I had to begin with has been replaced with a volatile mix of K-pop and processed cheese food. Having found no sustenance in this God-forsaken desert, I have resigned myself to walking the terminal until the heat death of the universe, or until our flight to Siem Reap departs. Whichever comes first.

The man at the top of the jetway had offered us a devil's bargain: leave the airport, strike our for downtown Busan, and come right back as soon as we'd arrived, or set up camp in the terminal for the next several millennia. Posterity will no doubt know by now the sorry course we chose.

I would tell you precisely when the nameless man approached us with the offer of a sandwich - a crustless square of white bread enclosing two limp leaves of lettuce, cheese food, and a thin slice of Spam - but already time had lost all meaning. The look in the man's eyes was almost apologetic, as if he had looked into our futures and knew full well what lay ahead.

There was nothing for us but to eat, and nap, and walk the terminal, wondering how things had come to this. How, in the course of human history, had such a thing become possible? An airport terminal without a restaurant? With two acres of duty-free shopping, but nary a bookstore in sight? Such is the curse of modern living: bearing the weight of history's mistakes on our backs. In the meantime, there is nothing but waiting, and hunger, and the pop stylings of BigBang fading into static in the recesses of our minds.

(Still, seven hours in the Busan airport - well worth the money we saved on our flight.)

3 comments:

  1. Outside I see life moving forward. A taxi drives with its trunk open. A motorcycle spews blue smoke. Forty people in black suits walk out of an automatic door. Yet I go nowhere.

    Someone asks me in Japanese if they can borrow a chair. I say yes. Then I realize that I am a white American in Korea. Was it only Japanese in my mind?

    I go to the bathroom. Three women stare at me as they brush their teeth. Is that what bathrooms are for? I can't remember, and it scares me.

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  2. lol you guys are crazy.

    Jackie

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