Highly suggested you read the previous post before reading this one.
Tuesday 6:30 pm - Well, I walk away from the China Southern Air check-in counter for the 10th time, trying yet again to figure out some nagging issues. I have to get rid of 20 kg of stuff, I have to find a place to sleep for the night, I've got a Korean visa that's one day short of what I need it to be, and there's $3000 burning a hole in my pocket.
I decide now is a good time to eat. I stop at Lotteria, which is Korea's answer to McDonald's. Well, lookey-there: a currency exchange place, right next door.
Sidenote: The $3000 I have in my pocket really isn't $3000. I've been lying to you, sorry. It's actually 3,360,000 Korean won.
So, before I grab a burger, I stop by there and change out almost everything to American dollars. Benjamin and all his doppelgangers feel crisp and compact. I can't even fold my wallet.
Tuesday 7:30 pm - I send an email off to my friend Daniel and let him know that I won't be able to visit that night, and then I call up my girlfriend and let her know that I'm coming a day early, which means that she switched out her flight to Venice for nothing.
Tuesday 7:50 pm - I've found a semi-secluded spot in the labyrinth of the Seoul airport, right next to the spa (which also happens to be the place I plan to stay for the night). I'm bound and determined not to pay $400 for all my excess luggage, so I open up my bags and start sorting through junk. I hold an object in my hand, and if it weighs about a pound, I ask myself "Is this worth $10 to me?"
At first, it's just shampoo and shaving cream and some old t-shirts that my girlfriend hates. But then it moves on to an extra bedsheet I might not need, and some shorts that have a dubious stain on them near the crotch that I'm always scared people are going to focus on. I take several trips to the garbage can that's about 30 feet away, throwing out perfectly good stuff. Shirts, books, coffee mix, a random cord for my Xbox....it's really hard to look back and remember all the stuff that I let go of that night. I think my brain closed off that section of my memory, due to the painfulness of it all. Perfectly good things, dumped in a trashcan merely because they weren't worth more than $10 a pound.
Tuesday 8:30 pm - My plan to lighten my load evolves into a full scale assault with one goal: eliminate enough stuff so that I can throw out one of my two big bags, which itself probably weighs at least a couple pounds, and is so old and ratty that it's bound to break sooner or later.
Tuesday 9:10 pm - I'm getting ridiculously close. It's been rough, but somehow I've managed to throw away a huge bagload of stuff, and I've put my big black bag next to the trashcan, which a security guard is now kicking. I think it's his way of saying, "I do not appreciate this. We do not accept huge black luggage bags as trash." But, I'm guessing his English isn't good enough, and the great thing about my Korean is that it manages to turn itself off whenever I feel like it, which happens to be right about now.
As I sort through the last few items, it seems my dream has come true: I've truly managed to throw out enough stuff that I now can fit everything into one large bag instead of two. I'm ecstatic. I head back upstairs and find a luggage scale. The guy at the desk is closing up shop, but he lets me throw my bag on. The scale reads "19.2 kg." I look at the guy and give him a big smile. Little does he know that I just threw away a big black bag and 20 kg of stuff, and I will not be paying any luggage fee whatsoever tomorrow.
(I write this a week after, and of course, the question remains: Do I miss anything that I threw away? Honestly, aside from shaving cream and contact solution, I can't think of much else I've had to buy so far to replace what I lost. Works for me.)
Tuesday 9:30 pm - Time to get naked, relax in the spa and sleep for the night. Over the past two years I've come to really enjoy Korean spas, because they're cheap and effective. You always walk out feeling like you can take on the world.
They have a place for me to store my luggage, and I decide to take a shower and do some soaking before I do a little work on my computer in the lounge area and go to sleep.
Tuesday 10:30 pm - Soaking in the spa. Feels great.
Tuesday 11:30 pm - In the lounge, studying for my interview that's later on this week.
Wednesday 1:00 am - Still in the lounge. Me, and a bunch of Koreans. Pretty normal. Except all of a sudden, there's a really old American guy getting a tour of the place, walking around. He's got his suspenders on, and he looks like he just finished riding his lawnmower for the day. "What's he doing here?" I think.
Wednesday 1:30 am - I walk back into the locker rooms, about to get ready for bed. Sitting on the bench in the locker room is that old man. He's got nothing but his t-shirt and some whitey-tighties on, and a long plastic tube reaches from inside his undies to a large plastic bag that's filled with urine. It's a catheter.
He doesn't notice me as I walk in. I open my locker, get my stuff and start brushing my teeth. I can see him in the mirror. He's just sitting there, looking at his bag of piss. He grunts occasionally.
I take out my contacts. Still, he just sits there. He's not moving, just looking at his bag of piss. I think that maybe I should help him. But, as quickly as the thought comes, I push it out of my mind. I figure that if he's an old guy, and if he knows enough to come stay the night at the spa, then he's smart enough to take care of himself.
Wednesday 1:40 am - I'm putting my stuff away, and I look one more time at him. He's just sitting there, urine bag in hand. I gotta at least ask.
"Sir, do you need any help?" I say. He slowly looks up at me, focuses in, and then starts, "Well, I'm having trouble with this here tube. Not sure how to disconnect it for the shower. I think if I take it to the shower it's gonna leak somehow, so I'm wondering if I should switch it out or not."
I tell him to hold on as I put my contacts back in, cause I can't see anything without them. I start talking to him, trying to figure out what it is he needs. The more we talk, the more I realize that this guy needs a whole bunch of help.
He just arrived from Tucson (oddly enough), and he's on his way to meet an old buddy of his that he fought with in Vietnam. However, the VA hospital in Tucson kept postponing his surgery, so he's stuck with the catheter until the end of November, when they're finally gonna do the surgery. As it stands right now, he can't continue his trip because something's wrong with the tubing or the bag.
Wednesday 2:00 am - He's never been to a Korean spa, and he has no clue where the showers are, where the soap and shampoo is, or, better yet, how to empty his urine bag.
He's really stuck on trying to switch out the bag for a plug he has with him, but I convince him that it's ok to take the bag into the shower with him, and that it's not gonna hurt anything if he does.
We go into the shower area, and he takes off the rest of his clothes. I do a pretty good job of just acting normal and not looking. I just imagine that helping old Vietnam war vets who stumble into airport Korean spas late at night is my day job.
I take him over to the toilet and show him how to empty the bag. I strongly advise him to drink more water, because even though he's complaining that the piss is the wrong color because of something funny the doctors must have done, my trained eye can see that he's been drinking almost nothing. He's got a huge pot belly, so I wonder if all he drinks is beer.
I show him how to work the showers and which button to push for the soap, and I help him choose a place to hang his bag up.
At this point, I consider slowly backing away. He's naked, he's showering, I already went to the front desk and got some pajamas for him, and I placed them and a couple dry towels on the bench closest to his shower. He's washing himself, and I'm standing around with nothing to do. I look at my watch: 2:10 am. Great. I've got a flight at 8:00 am, so the latest I can wake up at is 6:00 am, I figure.
Again, good place to stop.
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