12.13.00 Seoul; drinking tea

Oh dive of my worst case scenario! Ajuma has no clue about a KNTO reservation and gives us a cruddy double bed on the 2nd floor. As I'm trying to communicate the necessity of two beds and the desire to transfer to an ondol room, the taxi driver enters the lobby one floor below, yelling, "Ajuma! You got two foreigners staying here..." Upon reaching the 2nd floor he thrust the money back at me, asking for 3000 won more. It got belligerent. This guy had no idea who he'd picked up; thought he'd got two green chicks and ignorant, ignorant him, believing that not one of us would challenge male authority. He'd lost face relenting to me out there on the street and here he was whining to ajuma to pry just under $3 dollars from me. Ajuma argued my case as I had but more eloquently than I could muster. But he stood there spitting frustration and she finally turned to me and said I'd have to pay the 3000 won to get him to go away. So I did and he left. Sorryass fool he was. And there we were with ajuma in what was suddenly revealed to be a sex hotel. She showed us to our new room on the 5th floor, two floors above where the hall lights ceased to work. We were exhausted and freaked out and now this shithole yogwan. Condom dispenser on the wall, hairs and pecker tracks on the sheet covering the yo, and a dank, hair-ridden bathroom. Winter seeped in through the gap between the wall and the cracked air conditioner, but the ondol was warm. Angela wrangled another yo and a clean sheet from ajuma. We sat for a bit, just in the shock, and then walked out into the Seoul night in search of food, which we found at a nearby LG25. And as we stood there eating our shin ramen at the little standing counter, two drunk businessmen came up to the window beside, laughing and pointing at us, two white girls hunched over and sucking noodles in the middle of a Korean night.

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