Time: 1.55.00
Sessions and I went out to Incheon on Saturday arvo to get ourselves ready for the great race. We had been preparing for this since back in late June. I was looking forward to that finish line more than I'd realised. After all, who would give up a precious weekend to go and sweat it out with 10 000 other nutters on a Sunday morning? Even the churchgoing among us had a longer sleep in than Stephen and I! I have decided to spend the next few Thursday nights at Traveler's Bar & Bistro getting pissed and telling stories about how I used to be great at sport, which will lead to the more tall stories about how I used to be popular at school, and then onto more general shouted demands for the whole pub to STFU and listen to me sing Khe Sahn. And enjoy it.
We headed out on the bus and spent the afternoon wandering around Incheon's Chinatown and Jayu Park. There's a couple of notable monuments out there including the General MacArthur statue and the monument for the centenary of Korea-US relations. At around 4:30 we headed off for the love motel district (adjacent to the Incheon Songdo Business District) and started to look for somewhere to stay. Love motel or not, 35 000 KRW was a good price for this room. It came with a free condom which, although I appreciated the tired receptionist's gesture, didn't fit because it was designed for 4 Incheon. I'm not sure how many of you will get that but it's staying in for publication as I quite like it. Cheers.
Right then. After dinner I listened to the last of Iris Chang's The Rape of Nanking audiobook and then had trouble sleeping. It wasn't the mattress, or the arguments outside, or the budae jjigae I'd had for lunch. Have you heard of the Rape of Nanking? It was one of the most concentrated and abominable horror stories ever to emerge from the long and painful twentieth century. And as a student of history, I am qualified to say that there was a lot fucked up shit that went down in that century. I am spending a few days in Nanjing during my upcoming Chinese "sweet 'n' sour" tour of January '11 and am therefore keen to know a bit about what actually happened there in the winter of 1937-38. But not if it involves too many more stories of tortures, beheading, rape, genocide, and Japanese soldiers enjoying it.
Sunday morning was a simple dinner of gimbap, which I thought would be plain enough before the race. We hailed a taxi and had chosen one that didn't know where Central Park was which I thought was pretty poor form but found the race after he hailed another cabbie and got directions. How amusing for me to find that the start/finish line of the race was outside the hotel I'd been put up in 11 months earlier by Korean Air when I was flying to Europe. This small area of Korea sparks great memories and carries heavy emotions for me. Korea was the first foreign country I visited and so the morning before my flight I wandered around the park taking pictures of "Asian" things. Rocks and pavilions and towers and such.
This one, the old and the new, was taken on November 19, 2009. I had the sense that I would like to see more of Korea, but had no idea it would be as soon as...
...October 17, 2010, after the short journey to Europe, the incendiary relationship coming down and going up in flames, the long trip home, and the determination never to be fooled again. Oh, the humanity...
Shame about this pic as I'm doing that squinty thing again. That's Stephen next to me, an all round top bloke who did the marathon (42.195km) in 3.43.00
Some women go all Beatlemania when they spot a handsome white man. Other just hide behind their sleeves. Stephen, who took this picture, is very good-looking guy.
The race over, Stephen and I started to head back but were met by some of his mates who made the journey all the way to Incheon, only to miss the finish. We got back to Yatap, where they went to play football and drink and such and I went straight home for a nap. Actually the damage hasn't been bad at all; going down stairs was painful yesterday, but I would say that Stephen and I put in enough training, to cope with the race, when it came. And we did.
No comments:
Post a Comment