SEOUL-LESS: A JOURNEY FAR BEYOND THE TOURIST TRAIL (chapters 1-5)

If you don’t own your trauma, it’ll own you.

That’s what I figure, that if I don’t make this story into some funny anecdote (or promo for the importance of travel insurance) then it’ll own me. But it’s mine. I let it rule my life for several months, turning me into an emotionless robot (though I’d say of all the times in my life, it was the best time possible to be a robot) but that is actually no way to live.

Yes, it was hard. Hopefully one of the hardest things I’ll ever have to go through in my life. I’m not saying it’s some trivial story I can discuss on my blog like some dumb cultural misunderstanding in Indonesia but I’m saying that it’s better for me to treat this as a funny story than bury it inside as a trauma.

I’ve tried for months to write this but failed due to getting caught up in the details. My challenge was expressing how challenging and devastating this experience was for me, but also trying to remember the good and funny things that happened and also to reassure everyone that I’m fine.

Last week I remembered that when I was going through counselling for the PTSD my psychologist set me the homework task of breaking my experience into a novel and the main points into chapters. I of course completed my homework as sarcastically as I could. Let’s stick with that.

Welcome, to my debut novel (that will never really be written). A sure to be imaginary bestseller and the inspiration for a fake movie with the same name. 

"If I don't laugh,
I'll cry."

dedicated to my family, friends and Mr. Moon

For years I dreamed of going to Korea.

I thought it'd be so magical- I'd go there and play around in a shiny city. I'd fall in love with a handsome Korean man, we'd get married and I'd move there and get a high-paid teaching job. We'd have adorable Korean triplets. It was like a fairytale (or at least my own weird version of one) and I was ready to finally live it out.

  

I landed in Seoul one Sunday evening full of excitement.

How long did that excitement last? About two hours. It immediately felt lifeless to me. I don’t know why exactly but it just seemed so organised and structured that it felt immediately uninteresting to me. People seemed to be like beautiful robots going about their daily activities without emotion. The first night I went to bed early, trying to remain positive about what I would find in Korea the next day.

And I found something pretty quickly. 

I was the first one in my hostel up for breakfast (that's how I found out I was staying in a party hostel, apparently my seven o'clock start was unusual) so I sat alone with Lee, the Korean guy who worked there. He gave me tips on what to do for the first day, we made awkward small talk and he invited me for dinner and drinks with the others in the hostel later that evening.

That night after playing a load of drinking games I didn't understand (and obviously losing) and eating copious amounts of chicken feet, the awkwardness faded. In a Korean karaoke bar we talked over the sound of "What does the fox say?" and it was really nice.

This lead to walking back to the hostel together, plans to hang out the next nights and then, the worst days of my life.

But for a few days, I was fulfilled- the days spent getting lost in the cold streets looking for something to like about South Korea, the evenings spent opposite the cute Korean guy temporarily indulging the fantasy of finding my Korean husband.

What could possibly go wrong?

My fourth evening in Korea was spent in Hangang Park. I was happy to be leaving soon but also happy in the moment. Visiting the park with Lee felt like a romance film aside from the fact that a lady we bought some snacks from gave us some kind of fried bugs for free and they tasted fairly disgusting.

But otherwise it was amazing: a beautiful park lit with colorful lights. a cute Korean guy, a flight out of the city two days away.

It was his idea to hire a tandem bike, and I found it overly romantic and therefore hilarious.

It was my idea to sit at the front of the bike as I had more experience riding bikes.

It’s strange to think that we were laughing and joking and saying things like “we’re gonna die on this bike” and “it’s okay I have insurance” moments before we made a wrong turn. Minutes before a lady came speeding around a corner on a bicycle and I could do nothing to stop us from hitting her (a moment that has been replayed through my mind 1000 times since… trauma is real.).

And then the holiday ended and the nightmare began. 

We saw the lady slide across the ground towards the river, a pole just stopping her from going in. Lee and I rose from the ground we'd fallen on and rushed to her. Some stunned witnesses called an ambulance. 

We thought she was dead for a moment. 

But in those tense moments following the accident the woman sat up. By the time the ambulance left she was already standing. She was in pain but it didn't seem to be too badly injured. The ambulance took the lady away to hospital (not before they completely unnecessarily stuck a Band-Aid on my scraped knee).

How many police did you meet during your last holiday? I bet the answer is zero. I can't even count how many I had to deal with. The first police officers I met came soon after and took Lee’s phone number. The police told us to return our bicycle to the store we hired it from so I shakily returned us to our starting point even though the last thing I wanted to do was ride a bike.

We collapsed into the grass by the river bank, feeling shaken but relieved that things weren’t more serious.

Little did we know.

The next morning was my last day in Korea, so I got the train to Myeongdong to do some last minute souvenir shopping, thinking my minutes in Korea were numbered. As I walked out onto the street, I glanced at my phone and noticed a million panicked messages from Lee. I called him and he told me that the lady had fractured her neck and we needed to go to the police station.

I’ve never watched a K-drama but I felt like I was watching one from the inside. As we navigated around various train stations in Korea making calls to my mum, my travel insurance and the Australian embassy along the way.  I was calm, because I didn’t know what to do.

The K-drama continued.

Everyone was shiny. Even the police officers were handsome. Sitting in that cold police office for 7 hours, reality slipped further and further from how I imagined my time in Korea to be. This was my non-fairytale version of Korea- Lee stepping out for a cigarette and me being shouted at by a policeman in a language I didn’t understand, a security guard (the only person in the vicinity who spoke any English) trying to translate, me crying because I felt pathetic, useless and alone.

Lee’s father confusingly called Mr. Lee showed up to help. He was incredibly angry at his son for getting involved in this situation, but very kind to me. Those hours in the air-conditioned police station went on and on, getting bleaker and bleaker. 

I eventually left, feeling broken. My passport was blocked, the family asking for US$10,000 in compensation, my travel insurance not getting involved, the embassy offering no support and the police threatening jail time if I couldn't somehow magically sort it out.

I was supposed to be flying to Hong Kong the next day, but as my plane took off I was sitting in the Australian embassy sobbing staring at the beautiful view of Seoul from the window.

The embassy couldn’t do a lot for me. They let me use their phone. One heavily pregnant Korean woman gave me a hug. They recommended I pay the family compensation if I wanted a timely solution. Otherwise I was on my own.

Luckily my parents are amazing and were willing to help pay my way out of this situation. My mum transferred the money to Mr. Lee's account to ensure things would go as quickly as possible, but things were still going to take time.

I spent the weekend in bed. I felt hopeless and could barely get up. I had no appetite, feeling physically sick and having no energy because I hadn’t eaten. That’s when Lusie arrived.

Sharing a 6-bed dorm room in an apparent "party hostel" with a crazy French lady isn’t great at the best of times, but when you add this to what were already going to be the worst days of your life, it's a disaster.

I sat in bed sobbing as Lusie tried to spark inane conversation with me. And I learnt a lot from her. According to her in 100 years Korean people will be sterile and “they won’t ask people in America to help because they’re racist.” The conversation often centered around the future of artificial uterus's but her knowledge of reproduction also extended to the idea that “blood makes people attractive, so that’s why you might be attracted to family members in some way and that’s why my family members aren’t attracted to people from Holland”.

Another time after two hours of silence she suddenly exclaimed “so that’s how we know America won the war”. When I replied with a confused “huh? how?”. She told me “I don’t know, I guess their weapons were better”. I laughed awkwardly to which she replied “don’t laugh, it’s a very bad thing”. Things went on like this for a few days. If I were capable of getting out of my bed, I would have run as far from her as I could have.

Once when Lee and I were quietly discussing the "situation”, Lusie interrupted to tell me that she knew something was up with me and concluded that she knew I was pregnant. I don't know which problem I would have preferred.

Around the same time another roommate accidentally knocked the safety rail off the top bunk of the bed. It fell and hit my leg, as I was sulking in the bottom bunk below. Looking over the side of the bed, she noticed the large bruise on my leg (from the bicycle accident) and told me I should tell the hostel that the safety rail caused the bruise and that I should sue them. I told Lee I wanted US$10,000, but to this day they still haven't paid up.

In those days, all I could do is go along with what I could do. I felt so sorry for the woman I had injured. I took responsibility for the accident but it also was an accident. I was threatened with jail but I felt like I was already imprisoned. My anxieties and the sick feeling in my stomach basically chained me to that bed in the 6-bed dorm room, long after even Lusie checked out and went on with her life.

My experiences during my first weekend in Seoul was a far-cry from what I'd planned to spend my time doing in Hong Kong. 

“Hi this is Mr. Lee, father of Lee, can I speak to Lee?”

I got this phone call several times a day. Lee’s phone was broken so Mr. Lee called Lee through me regularly. Later Lee would translate the next complication of the case:

"The family don’t believe that you were riding the bike."

"The police need to look for CCTV footage to prove that you were."

"They’re asking for more money now."

"They aren’t willing to negotiate now."

On the Sunday afternoon, “Mr. Lee father of Lee” met us at a coffee shop near the hostel to discuss the next steps. He had sought legal advice and I felt safe knowing that he was on my side. In the middle of a short explanation about what we were going to do next, Mr. Lee informed me that he had withdrawn US$10,000 from his account (the money from my mum hadn't arrived yet but he'd taken his own money out so that we'd be ready to pay as soon as the family was ready to negotiate again). To prove this, he pulled the wad of $100 bills out of his bag. I guess it’s the only time in my life I will be in the middle of a cafe in Seoul, sitting in broad daylight with a Korean man waving more money than I'd ever seen in my life in front of my face. 

Mr. Lee was the hero at that time. He always had a plan B, some kind of legal-loophole that would at least give me some hope before it was destroyed again by reality. But I trusted his ideas and followed his advice. A few days later he told me to meet him at courthouse across town to try another option and I went there, optimistic that this would be the day everything got resolved.

"So what exactly is your relationship with my son?" he asked me as we walked into the court. Awkward silence ensued.

"I'm just a guest at the place he works" I told him, knowing that my hopes of Korean triplets had already died. Nothing kills romance more than a super complicated legal situation.

I spent that full day with Mr. Lee, attempting to get papers written up with an official offer to the family. This proved complicated, took hours to do and required walking long distances between different offices. He stuck with me “the guest at his son’s place of work” and a relative stranger for the whole day and always treated me well.

When I asked him why he was willing to do so much for me, he just explained that he'd traveled a lot and he wouldn't know what to do in my situation. If that’s not touching, I’m not sure what is.

When Mr. Lee and I were finished in the court, he told me I should take the paperwork to the police station. So I did.

My body felt like it was falling apart. Navigating the maze that is three train lines after not eating for days was too much. I handed the policeman a contract from the court, which he immediately declined. I almost broke into a million pieces in that moment.

I’d never been to Jonggak Police Station alone, and the only way to manage was for the police and I to type things into Google translate and pass our phones backwards and forth. That is how the police informed me that I wasn’t allowed to leave the police station as the family of the lady were on the way there and I needed to talk to them.

So I waited for the amazing joy of sitting with the daughter of the woman I hit, passing a phone back and forth. For the first time in my life I was threatened via Google translate. She demanded I pay US$100,000 (without any proof of what it was for) and repeatedly told me that if I didn’t pay, I’d go to jail. This got angry and repetitive, so eventually I kept Google translating the phrase “if you have nothing else to say I’m going to go home now”. Eventually she let me leave.

Outside a massive storm was in full effect. As I was about to step out into it, the daughter suddenly asked me if I had an umbrella. This made me incredibly angry. She wasn’t feeling guilty about asking for $100,000 or threatening me with jail time but was for some reason worried about me getting a little wet in the rain.

So I got the train back- wet, cold and exhausted, feeling completely overwhelmed, in those moments of desperation I knew at least with Mr. Lee, father of Lee on my side I still felt like I had at least a little hope.

Tune in next week for zombies, hot lawyers, plot twists and a jailbreak in chapters 6-11 of SEOUL-LESS: a Journey Far Beyond the Tourist Trail.