Seoul is lightly salted with snow. An aggressive chill is setting in, just in time for New Years, but first, the recollection continues from yesterday:

Act Two: Please do not tap on the glass

I have my visa. I’m packed. My boat leaves in four hours and all I need to do is take enough money to last me a month out of my bank of China account, change it to South Korean Won US dollars (other currencies aren’t available this year) and get on the boat. I mean, I have to buy a ticket to another country the day I’m leaving, but this is China. International transport can be handled last minute. Getting my money is the issue here.

I sit on the padded bench with an out-of-date Lonely Planet Korea and read up on the tribute system. And wait.

For anyone thinking of coming to China in the near future, here’s a tip that will may preserve some of your sanity: Bring a book. Almost any book will do. Other recommendations: Middlesex, China Wakes, anything by Haruki Murakami, a Chinese-English dictionary, a pamphlet on overseas tax laws, pretty much anything with words will do. Keep in handy at all times. Waiting is part of the game.

I reach the window. An hour and a half has passed. I withdraw all the money I will need, a process that takes two minutes. I ask where I can change money, but think better of it when I hear a sentence that begins, “To change to US dollars, you will need…” followed by a list of documents I don’t have. I don’t have tax forms. I don’t have a monthly salary. I don’t have a foreign expert’s certificate. I don’t have a job. And everyone is on lunch.

I leave. I eat, wait, come back. Better yet, I try a different bank. Industrial and Commercial Bank of China. The lines are shorter and the paperwork is one half-sheet. I can change $500. Plenty.

I hand a clerk a pile of renminbi. She counts it by hand. Then it goes into the machine, which counts it. Then she feeds it back into the machine to count again. My head drifts away to a place with no clocks, no departure times, no deadlines. When I return, she is counting again. She aligns more half-sheets of paper, interlaced with carbon. She stamps them, checks each one, stamps again. “Can you go faster?” I ask, politely, I think. “Mashang,” she answers. I used to like that word. “Get on your horse. Immediately.” But it never really means “immediately.”

I’m out the door as soon as money and passport are in my hand, in a taxi and at the terminal with a good 12 minutes to spare. A berth is secured. I walk down a long stretch of off-white hallway toward the gangway. It’s probably 200 yards end to end. I wonder, as I’m walking, if these terminals are designed to stretch out the process of leaving a country, to give the traveler time to think about what it means to leave, to wonder when he’ll be coming back, to hesitate, and possibly to miss his boat.

Those thoughts don’t linger long.

I board the boat, settle in to a cramped but otherwise comfortable bunk, watch the Simpsons Movie and crash out. When I wake up, it’s Christmas Day in Korea.

Next up, Act Three, into the heart of Seoul. Stay tuned.

This entry was posted on Sunday, December 30th, 2007 at 9:04 pm and is filed under roadside blogging, the Dalian life. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.