Our last day in Jeju… our last day in Asia. Today we wanted to take it easy. Just find a beach and sleep the day away. No such luck. Unlike the tourist beaches of Europe, there are no places here to rent a reclining chair and a parasol. So we drove and drove.
As we drove along the coast, searching for a nice place to hang out, we spotted something out at sea. Several orange buoys bobbing about and several black shapes in between. The lady divers! We saw a documentary about these women. They dive just off the coast, catching shell fish from the bottom of nooks and crannies of the lava rock. They hold their breath for two minutes as they search and then resurface… and then dive… and resurface… and on and on. All day. All year. And it’s only aging women. No men. Just aging women, dressed in black wetsuits. These are some tough mamas. Unfortunately, the next generation isn’t up to the task, so this tradition is dying off.
We drove some more and when it looked interesting, we stopped and walked along the rocks listening to the waves crash. And in each case, five or ten minutes after finding a hidden cove or beautiful vista… a bus of Japanese or Chinese tourists showed up. Children running. Parents yelling. Spell broken. Sigh….
We had to return the rental car by 8:00pm so around 6:30pm we typed in the rental companies telephone number into our GPS and followed the arrow and the encouraging voice. We’ve been running low on local currency, but finding an ATM is a nightmare, so we thought we could make due with the credit card, if the need arose. Well, arose it did. Along the way, I remembered that we had to fill up the tank, so I pulled into a filling station and waited for the attendant to skitter over to the window.
“You take this,” I asked, holding up the Master Card. “Credit Card? Master Card? Okay?” He looked puzzled, which should have been my cue to drive on, but after a while he nodded and took my card. Then, after filling the tank, he came back with the card, waving his hand. Oh… no good, I see. Shit. And thus began the drama. Not enough cash. No credit card reader. One of the attendants took the wheel and drove us to a nearby “bank” with an ATM, but of course, the thing was only in Korean and even after trying every single button, still no dice. Double shit. No other bank. No other ATM. No other hope! And time is running out to return the car! And to make the whole thing worse, we can’t communicate with anyone! Or can we…? My lovely wife picks up the cell phone and dials our friends in Seoul, then explains the situation and asks if she can explain it to the attendant. We hand him the phone and after several minutes, we speed back to the filling station, he runs inside and after a couple more minutes runs back out with our phone. He waves us off and indicates it’s okay. He smiles once more and leaves our lives. What happened? Our angel in Seoul came to our rescue and made the problem go away. With just 15 more minutes to spare, we raced, and I mean raced, to the car rental office. We flew through red lights, tires squealing through corners, zigzagging through traffic. Finally, this was the video game you’ve always wanted to play. And we made it! All’s well that ends well.
What did we learn from this story? Always help people when you can, even if you have to go out of your way. Help people, because you never know when you’ll reaaaaaaaly need that helpful person. Oh yeah, and always have enough cash!
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