Noun, Verb, Kimchi: Part 8

Written by Clayton Foster

The first draft of this column is being written hunched up against the locked gate of a hostel in Dalat, Vietnam. It’s 2am and I have once again forgotten the curfew that seems to exist within Vietnamese accommodations; that is, the doors are locked when the manager wants to go to sleep and then you’re on your own, sunshine.

So I’m thinking, once again, about the myriad of things that can go wrong when you’re travelling. It’s not uncommon, any conversation with new travel companions will turn within minutes to respective war stories, be they muggings in South America or police bribes in Eastern Europe.

In particular, I’m thinking about the final month of my teaching contract in Korea, completed three weeks past. While I hadn’t been attacked with a samurai sword on Khao San or received death threats from a gangster in Laos (both stories I’ve been told), my experience was a rapid pile-up of small things, doing what small things do, which is make a pain in the arse of themselves.

It started with a weird shaking in my hands. A month before finishing in Seoul I started to feel a bit ill, which quickly became quite a bit ill, before finally settling on sweating and shivering and doing my best impression of DiCaprio in that scene from Basketball Diaries. Korean medical services are quick and cheap - averaging around $15 a visit with meds - but strangely ineffective. After three weeks of worsening health I discovered the doctor had not been prescribing me the promised antibiotics, but rather Tylenol (like Panadol), and cough syrup. When challenged on this, the doctor waved his hands dismissively and suggested that I wasn’t really that sick after all.

To be told that you’re wrong by a Korean professional is not rare. I’ve had the same dismissive hand wave from hairdressers when I informed them what style I would like, before they proceeded to cut my hair as they preferred. But it’s tricky ground to be on; the more you argue, the more cultural pride sets in and the less likely you are to get what you want. There’s really only one option from here, though employing it is the nuclear bomb of Korean-expat negotiations: calling in another Korean.

Fortunately, I have a faultlessly generous Korean friend, a local businessman, on whom I call far too often. Visiting the doctor with me, he argued until finally I received antibiotics. I also received what was a tentative diagnosis for the first time in a month. Amongst the Korean dialogue flying back and forward, I recognised one word: pneumonia.

The antibiotics sorted me out within a few days. Unfortunately, by this time, there was a new host of problems that had been accumulating in the periphery and now demanding action.

My employers’ tendency to pay late, covered in a previous column, had reached a new level. So much so that I and many of my associates literally had no money left, being forced to wait up to a month or more for money we were owed. To worsen the situation, we had a week-long vacation (one of only two received in a year-long contract) that nobody could enjoy; some of us couldn’t even eat. For their own part, our employers played a game of cat and mouse with phones that left them largely uncontactable. I received a reply only when I finally pulled out the big guns - pointing out that if I could not afford to go to the hospital, I wouldn’t be able to go to work the next week. They begrudgingly transferred $150 of the two thousand that they owed me.

The situation wouldn’t have been so dire, perhaps, if I hadn’t had my wallet and credit cards stolen several weeks before. Unfortunately, the Mastercard Emergency Replacement Service messed up my address so badly that the first replacement sent was never received. Weeks later, a replacement-replacement was sent, but didn’t work. Finally, days before I was due to leave Korea, I received a replacement-replacement-replacement, thanks not to the Mastercard Global service, but to Carol, a friendly call centre worker from Kiwibank who expedited help because she had a son who also worked in Korea.

Now, remember what I said about arguing with Korean professionals? It truly came to bear in the last two weeks of my contract. My employers had asked me to work a few extra days and promised to do the legwork to extend my visa as necessary. Perhaps as a way to punish me for being vocal during the pay disputes, or perhaps due to sheer ineptitude, my visa wasn’t extended despite reassurances to the contrary, something I discovered only on the day it expired. My mind full of dark forebodings of being taken aside at customs for heavy fines, lifetime bans, or worse - all of which I’d heard stories about - I finally lost my patience with my employers. In the ensuing fracas, I prepared a document that very clearly illustrated why they were wrong, and the potential consequences I would face because of it. Not only this, but I once again dropped the bomb: I brought in my Korean friend to be witness to my employers’ wrongness.

In the end, with only days to spare until I left the country, emergency calls were made and the situation resolved, though I did have to sign a letter at customs saying I was sorry to the entire country for being a bad, bad overstaying foreigner. Unfortunately, the damage I had done in embarrassing my employers in the last few days was irreparable; when it came time to say goodbye, my director avoided me by locking himself in the toilets until after I had left.

Oh, there’s other stuff. I was forced out of my apartment earlier than agreed, and a long-distance relationship sadly dissolved over the phone while on my way to A&E.

I admit there’s a part of me that experiences all of this with an almost gleeful anticipation, hoping that the next thing to go pear-shaped will at least be provide a good plot-twist. I was hoping, however, that in writing it all down, some grand lesson might arise out of it all. If there is one, I can’t see it, beyond, y’know, shit happens. Sometimes it’s good, sometimes it’s funny, sometimes it’s terrible and sometimes it’s just annoying. But it happens. Especially, it seems,as I wait for morning to roll around so I can be let into my hostel, when you’re travelling.