[January 2011 update: This information is a bit outdated. For more up-to-date information on getting a Korean driver's license, visit "Getting a Korean Driver's License".]
This just in from the American Embassy:
Korean authorities have told us that effective February 2010, the Korean government will require American citizens to bring a notarized affidavit from the U.S. Embassy attesting to the authenticity of your U.S.-issued driver’s license in order to obtain a Korean license. You may come in anytime during our office hours to execute this affidavit. The notarial fee is $30.00 ($20.00 for each subsequent notarial). Please visit our website for our office hours and more details: http://seoul.usembassy.gov/service.html
I'm not sure if this means you still have to take the computer test or if the affidavit and a valid US license qualifies you for a K license automatically.
JT, of Finer Things in Vientiane, shared some of his father-in-law's stories as a guerrilla soldier during the Vietnam War, particularly during the CIA's secret bombing campaign during from 1964-1973. JT's wife, who was born in the caves in Vieng Xay during this time, busied herself about the store preparing tea while JT regaled us with these tales.
The Pathet Lao forces during these 9 years were hiding out in the caves in Vieng Xay, fighting the Royal Army as best they could while fending off the Americans' relentless bombing campaign. During this period, American planes dropped 2 million tons of bombs on the country, focusing on certain areas where the Pathet Lao were suspected to live. This was at a time when the entire population of the country was 2 million people - that's 2 tons of bombs per person, if your math skills are lacking.
The Pathet Lao weren't fools, though; they held off the dual attacking forces for 9 years, eventually taking over the government and control of the entire country.
The Americans were constantly bemused by the Pathet Lao's resistance and success against the odds. JT told us how his father's regiment worked for a time building (and re-building) the Ho Chi Minh trail. At times they would encounter a stretch of landscape that was unnavigable. Giant boulders, too big to move, would stand in their way. Rather than spend days, or explosives, tearing through it, they would simply build a few small huts around it. Within a day, American planes flying over, thinking the huts were part of a Pathet Lao hideout, would drop enough bombs on the "village" to incinerate a boulder of any size. The communist regiment could then continue with the trail construction.
Most of the time, however, the bombs weren't so helpful. They destroyed bridges and stretches of trail crucial to the movement of supplies. When bridges were eradicated, American forces were amazed to find that within 24 hours of being bombed they were back in operation again, having been rebuilt by 5,000 men, literally overnight. Given the scope of the bombing campaign, the US commanders were incredulous. They didn't believe it possible.
Sometimes, rather than rebuild oft-bombed bridges over and over, the Pathet Lao forces would simply camouflage the bridge by building it a few inches underwater. Planes flying overhead couldn't detect them, but bicycles and foot traffic could still walk across with ease, albeit wetly.
JT's father-in-law himself sounded like a rather fierce soldier, having been shot three times and surviving. He spoke of a time when he was almost captured by Royal Army forces, who, on a foot pursuit, had surrounded him in a field of tall grass. He lied down, but could hear the soldiers talking as they searched. He knew that if they burned down the field he would have nowhere to run. Luckily, dusk set in quickly, and the Royal Army forces disbanded their search as the sun set.
His stories all made the Americans look rather silly, as if the Pathet Lao forces could predict every move and were merely toying with them. They knew that the US didn't really understand Lao culture or the landscape, and that the pilots' orders were simply to bomb anything that looked like a village. They would build fake villages and roads not only to clear boulders, but also to lure pilots into low valleys, where the soldiers, hidden in the surrounding ridges, would "burn them" from above.
JT's father-in-law's stories were the stuff of legend, the kind of tale I expect small Lao children still hear around the kitchen fire. Surprisingly, though, the stories of Pathet bravery and Americans' incompetent brutality didn't turn many of the Lao people against Americans. JT, a native of Tennessee himself, said that his wife's aunt was the only family member who never quite warmed up to him. Even his wife's father, the Pathet Lao guerrilla soldier who fought against the Americans, accepted JT as his own son.
Laos is famous (at least domestically!) for silk; its dozens of ethnic groups each produce silk weavings in their own style, color, and pattern. In Vientiane there are dozens of silk shops and innumerable street vendors hawking traditional Lao silks from different provinces, though many are actually produced in Chinese factories in the Lao style. At one store, however - called Finer Things - we were pleasantly surprised to meet a Laotian woman (I have since forgotten her name, because the business card she gave us ended up in the wash) who held nothing back about the products she sold. Some of the tapestries she sold, she informed us, were produced in China, or with artificial dyes - these products were invariably cheaper. Most of the weavings in the store, however, were woven by hand on a traditional Lao loom, and dyed with natural inks that are increasingly difficult and time-consuming to make. Although more expensive, none of the items she sold would break the bank; an 8-meter embroidered tapestry, the largest in the store, rang in around $150.
Silk aside, the woman and her family were interesting enough to keep us occupied for several hours by themselves. She was from the Hmong ethnic group, born in the cave hospital in Vieng Xay during the CIA's bombing campaign in the Vietnam war. Much later she met and married an English teacher named TJ from Tennessee in a wedding attended by over 1,000 people. He arrived at the store after some time and entertained us for an hour with animated stories of his history in Laos, his family and the cultural differences they had to overcome. TJ had spent 12 years in Laos, first arriving in the mid-90's to study the Lao language at the national university in Vientiane, which he described as an open concrete box overgrown with weeds. He commented that he was probably one of about four international students who had ever taken the Lao language program.
Though he did seem to genuinely love Laos, TJ's home for the majority of the time (his family periodically returns to the US to live in Tennessee when their children's English starts to fade), he was not without guarded criticism. Though the communist government got a bad rap for their alleged mistreatment (some would say persecution and/or torture) of the Hmong ethnic people, TJ said that most of the internet presence was dominated by Hmong expatriates abroad who had fled the country immediately following the Vietnam War, and so the online point of view was largely one-sided. In the government's defense, TJ stated that though there was a lot of bad press, they never spoke out publicly. He has seen a lot of the good they have done over the years.
Our conversation eventually turned to TJ's father-in-law, a communist rebel fighter during the insurgency and CIA bombing campaign of the 60's and 70's.
We landed in Vientiane after dark on Christmas Day, and the landscape looked desolate from the window, and black. With a population of around 6 million, Laos is one of the world's least densely populated countries. Even the biggest cities - Vientiane, Luang Prabang - have the feel of another country's rural towns. The airport in the country's capital was small; we exited the plane from a staircase wheeled to the door. Two government officials sat behind plain, worn wooden desks to collect our passports and money for the visa. Neither wore a smile above their faded, drab olive, one-size-too-small military shirts, the kind of shirt that, when i was a kid, hung in the back of my dad's closet after 4 years of US army service in the 70's. Now they are the standard dress of 3rd world military regiments and low-level communist party officials.
The streets seemed deserted on the short walk to our guest house. Though the country-wide 11 o'clock curfew hadn't fallen yet, few people were about. One local bar still sounded quite lively, and closer to the center of town, just before the city abuts the Mekong, a handful of tourists glided past on bicycles and sipped Beer Lao on cafe patios. The night was quiet.
We booked a room at Saysouly Guesthouse for 90,000 kip (11USD at the time). From outside it was very ordinary looking, but walking into the upstairs interior felt like entering a hotel from the French colonial age. The dark chestnut paneling, deep mattresses, and heavy linens had the feel of old-world luxury and smell of history, something that first-world hotels always try to recreate but always destroy with sanitizers and air fresheners.
We wandered down the neighborhood street towards the river. The air was cool and a touch humid and made me wish I owned linen pants. There was a tex-mex restaurant on the corner with a balcony (I'm a HUGE sucker for balconies) and live music (sucker again) and enchiladas (sensing a trend?). The place was clearly made for us. We ordered two Beer Lao - our first of many - and listened to the solo Lao guitarist's crooning covers of Hotel California and other Western oldies, which were popular with the expat crowd.
Shortly after 11 the bar closed, and we returned to our guesthouse. Though most places observed the curfew religiously, others kept their doors open until 11:30 or sometimes 12, as if to test the limits. After two Beer Lao and a longer-than anticipated day of travel, however, we didn't feel like testing ours, and we were asleep before the city's final door was closed.
On Saturday Lisa and I attended a co-teacher's wedding at Pohang's swankiest hotel. That should give you some idea what a big deal this wedding was - most Korean these days get married at wedding chapels, where wedding parties churn through ceremonies on a conveyor belt.
It was the biggest wedding I've ever attended. There were a good 400 people there, including the mayor of Pohang himself, who greeted us outside of the hotel on our way in. It was a sign, in part, of the bride's father's success in business. In Korea, yellow garbage bins sit outside of every residential complex and restaurant, for the sole purpose of discarding food scraps. Everyone stores their food waste in their home, along with their trash and recycling, before taking it to the curb to be recycled into animal feed products. (You can actually be fined for throwing your food into the regular trash.) The recycling company comes along a couple of times a week to collect it. The bride's father started, and still runs, that business which serves all of Pohang and Gyeongju.
Inside the upstairs lobby, between a cascade of flower boquets, guests were met by a large donation table, with the bride and grooms' parents on either side, mothers in traditional hanbok, greeting the attendees. The groom stood with his parents on a small red carpet, and when we approached him he stepped off the carpet and shook my hand warmly. He thanked us for coming and suggested that we say hi to Sung Mi, the bride and my co-teacher. I hadn't seen her yet, though, so I asked him where to find her. He pointed us to an adjacent room. We entered to find Sung Mi, alone and glowing in the center of the room, her gigantic wedding dress laying like a small snow drift on a crimson chaise lounge on a small platform. We filtered into a small line of people waiting to greet her and have their picture taken with her. If any bride has ever felt more like a princess than she did at that moment, I don't know who she would be.
We took our seats in the expansive auditorium set with tables for the ceremony and reception rolled into one. Drinks - soda and beer - were already on the tables along with some rolls and rice cakes. We took our seats, the only ones still available, at the table farthest from the runway and stage (yeah, there was a runway) under the giant projection screen (there were actually TWO projection screens for the service).
The ceremony began quickly, without much ado - the groom entered, followed by the bride, who were met at the podium by some old man (apparently a professional public speaker) who proceeded to drone on for 30 minutes on some drivel about successful marriages. It wasn't just boring because it was in Korean and we didn't understand anything - my co-teacher also remarked that he wasn't a very good speaker. Probably expensive, though.
When he finally finished, no one really noticed because everyone was eating or drinking or having their own conversations, having stopped listening 29 minutes ago. Sung Mi and her new husband turned to face the guests, and a couple of groups of high school students came up to perform some poorly rehearsed, but quite entertaining, song and dance numbers.
Food was served - soup, salad, and a main course - and the bride and groom cut the cake. After that I heard my name called amidst a stream of Korean, and everyone at my table turned to look at me. Speech time. (Back in November, Sung Mi had asked if I would give a short address in English at the wedding, and I agreed.) I wandered through the mess of tables, crossing the approximately 3.5 miles from the back of the room, and was finally handed a microphone and pushed onstage next to the new bride and groom. I gave the crowd a little "nice to meet you" in Korean, which received some applause and which lubricated the next 5 minutes nicely, since my speech was all in English and only a handful of people in the crowd would have understood it.
I talked about how everyone's definition of love is different, but how it usually contains the idea that love is something that happens to you, rather than something you have power and control over, and we need to rewrite the definition to reflect that love is simply how you treat other people. Using that ceremonially ubiquitous bible verse from corinthians, i re-wrote it (yeah, i re-wrote the bible) to say "i am patient, i am kind..." blah blah. i felt silly and sappy but this was the kind of wedding that afforded me the luxury.
I made my way back to our table, we ate the 3 courses brought out to us, and left, leaving a wedding donation at the money table on our way out. We also grabbed some fresh flowers from the lobby, since everyone else was doing it.
I took some basic video, which I compiled into a short synopsis here:
Our flight was booked from Busan through Thailand to Vientiane, with a 7 hour layover in Bangkok, but we didn't plan to catch the second leg of our flight. We wanted to get off in Bangkok and spend a night or two there before catching a bus up north and getting on a slow boat down the Mekong River to Luang Prabang. At the Busan airport we were told that it might be a problem on the way back if we missed a portion of our flight, with an extra charge or something they couldn't specify at the time. They told us to ask about it in Bangkok, which we did, and the Thai Airways ticket desk waved us along with their blessing.
We landed around noon. We made a speedy departure through the airport terminal (Americans don't need a visa to stay in Thailand for up to a month), took a taxi to our guesthouse, put down our bags, and headed straight for Khao San road, Bangkok's famous backpacker street made more famous by DiCaprio in "The Beach". After some pad thai (eh) and a Chang beer we hunted down a tourist office to book a bus or train ticket up north to Chiang Mai. What we didn't realize was that every tourist and their mom was apparently trying to do the same thing, the day after Christmas, and every train until after New Year's was booked solid. The pushy saleslady wanted to sell us a package deal on a "VIP" bus (she was incredibly vague on the details), hostel stays, transfers, and a slow boat ticket for 150 USD each. We declined ever so politely, and made a rather split-second decision to make a dash back to the airport and catch the second leg of our flight after all. Because while we could have booked a cheap bus and found our own place to stay for much less than 150 bucks, there was no guarantee that rooms or boat tickets would be available when we got there. We realized that we had, as the saying goes, planned to fail.
So with the slow boat idea scrapped and 3 hours left til our connecting flight, we decided to make the most of it and buy some crap to prove to everyone that we really did visit Thailand. Before we knew it, we were knee deep in shopping bags and late. We caught a tuk-tuk back to our guesthouse, grabbed our still-packed bags off the still-made beds (we had already paid the 5USD for a night at the guesthouse) and flagged down a cab. We were at least 30 minutes from the airport and it was after 5:30pm already; the time, we soon discovered, that the highway out of Bangkok turns into a parking lot. We were stressed. The cabbie turned off the engine at a couple of different points because it was clear that we wouldn't be moving anytime soon. The dashboard clock mocked me as it blinked, but I realized there was nothing we could do. We decided that if we missed our flight, we would head back into town, go see a ping-pong show (when in Rome...), and salvage the pieces of a bus trip up north. We'd make the slow boat work somehow.
It was 6:20 and we had made peace with our backup plan when the traffic jam broke and we sped up to a blur. We arrived at the airport with 30 minutes to takeoff and ran to the first open Thai Airways ticket counter we spotted. Airline workers, in my experience, are exceptionally kind to panicked passengers that are dangerously close to missing their flight (I have planned to fail before), and though they were sad to inform us that the gate had closed 45 minutes before takeoff, they called the gate anyway to see what could be done. "They'll hold the plane for you, but you have to RUN." But we couldn't run yet - we had to pay a 20USD 'departure tax' to get out of Thailand (it's ironic, and if I really think about it just plain mean, that such an exotic tropical country would add insult to injury and make you PAY to LEAVE their paradise). 5 minutes later, receipts in hand, we were sprinting through the unnecessarily massive Bangkok airport to our gate, which was the farthest gate from anywhere and probably close to half a mile from the ticket counter. I rushed breathlessly up to the gate with hopeful eyes and my prettiest smile and asked the lady if we could still get on the plane. She smiled impatiently. "We haven't started boarding yet."
Everything is so much sweeter when it seems, even erroneously and for a brief moment, that it could be taken away, and then it isn't.
We arrived back in Pohang yesterday from a couple of weeks in the Laos People's Democratic Republic: Vientiane, Vang Vieng, Luang Prabang, Xam Neua and Vieng Xai. Though Laos is not a destination I would ever have immediately considered, had you asked me where I would choose to spend a two week vacation - primarily because it is landlocked, I suppose, and whenever "vacation" registers in my mind a beach isn't far behind - it was a very eye-opening, very unique, adventure. I'll be writing about the trip over the next couple of days, so check back for the pictures and stories.
Some of the highlights (and a lowlight or two): bathing an elephant, playing petanque with some government workers, lighting paper hot air lanterns under the new year's full moon, drinking goat's blood mixed with lao-lao, exploring the caves which hid the communist party members during the CIA's 9-year secret bombing campaign (in which the US dropped 2 tons of bombs per person in Laos), herbal saunas and Laos massages, meditation with some Buddhist monks, a 40-hour bus trip which included some chalk outlines by the police, meeting a woman born in the caves and her husband from Tennessee...
Unfortunately, on the way to catch our return flight, we realized that we misplaced one of our cameras, which contained 2gbs of photos and all of the videos we had taken. Bummer.
