Catmandu
Never content to stay in one place, our fearless leader commanded the carry-on convoy to another taxi line.
We were headed to the beach; over the hill from Jenna’s neighborhood.
The Galaxy Hotel, our new place of residence on Bukbu beach, felt like a different city entirely from the smaller section we had come from.
It was right on the beach, a great spot, a gorgeous rooftop bar, but what it had in extravagance, it lacked in beds. This was a traditional hotel that featured bed rolls on a hard linoleum floor. The two inch “cushions” provided were really more like a plastic bag in a down comforter’s clothing.
This was the nest that Mother eventually constructed.
I’ve slept on hard floors plenty of times in my life, but these made dingy hotel mattresses look quite luxurious.
Lodging taken care of, we bussed down to the Pohang version of the market, walked a street consisting basically of a home depot turned inside out.
We ran into one of Sister’s favorite winter hangouts: a fabled cat cafe.
This guy was the friendliest of the bunch.
They’ve got some weird lookin’ cats in Korea.
Lemme tell you ‘bout Mandu.
There were two Korean staples of my childhood that we were happy to share with our Sister: Mandu and Moojeegay.
Moojeegay, camp Moojeegay that is, was a Korean culture camp down near New York city. I don’t remember much of it, besides seeing traditional Korean garb, but every two months or so, our family happily remembers Mandu.
Dumplings. Korean dumplings. Halfway around the world at the Irish house, we put together a mix of tofu, carrots, onions, and garlic, take some square tofu wrappers, and make beautiful dumpling triangles for some light frying. If you know me you know I ain’t a tofu guy, so the rate at which I send these little suckers down my gullet may suprise you.
Needless to say, there was some palpable excitement around trying the real thing over here in Mandu’s natural setting.
We weren’t disappointed.
Sister had found the local place, and there was a team of three hand-making the more rotund version just feet away from where we ate.
Instead of tofu they used pork. Great. Instead of lightly pan-fried, they slapped them in a deep flash fryer. Excellent. Chopsticks vs hands? I like to live hand to mouth.
They were indeed fantastic, both the fried and steamed variety. They went quickly.
Bellies full of pork bellies we perused the Pohang market.
In our travels we seemed to be spotting an abundance of U.S. Army personnal. They were quite easy to spot with their camo packs and cropped haircuts. The same must have gone for us — I heard “English?” behind us, and we had a 10 minute exchange with a farmboy from Louisiana and his friend from Brooklynn.
Back to the hotel we had a brief siesta, got some fatty fried-chicken and hit the boardwalk for some night views of the ornamental pier on Bukbu beach.
Being Sister’s birthday eve, we had a mysterious birthday cake delivered to our room. Regardless of it’s unknown sender, the ladies were quite eager to inspect its insides.
After that it was up to the roof for Sister’s birthday bash. Lots of Soju, (recently released in flavored varieties) beer, and little chips that looked like deep-fried Nik-l-Nip bottles. Oh, and all her Pohang friends as well. Quite a time.
