The Daewoo and Hyundai banshees are shrieking out on the overpass. It’s been one month now since I landed in my first excursion out of the familiar. Going from a basement suite in East Vancouver to a nondescript high rise in some run down corner of some nondescript district of an even larger city makes you realize one thing: I could fucking jump. Granted the sights are better than my previous abode, the snaking freeway versus a concrete walkway. I get some sun now and then but you feel shuffled into a slot. Thrown in with the pack that you would have to wrestle with for the repelling harness off the tenth floor in the event of a fire. I could take the stairs but there is that damn extra set between the 2^nd and the 1^st that just burns me every time.

      This journey started, chronologically in the bowels of a sex hotel. The proper term in the Korean culture is “Love Hotel” although it is fair to throw the notion of a romantic love out of the window you stare across into the next building. The Maldives, a name harkening to Asia’s smallest island country and according to Wikipedia, “one of the most disparate countries in the world.” This could not have been a more accurate adjective to describe my initial introduction to South Korea.

      Upon my arrival I was fairly impressed. My room at The Maldives boasted a flat screen television, leather sofa complete with zebra print throw pillows, and a glowing UV sanitizer for the tiniest cups I had come across in a long time. I learned of the bed’s capabilities: vibrating in a wave motion that thrusts the pelvis up at continued intervals. I imagine it would really come in handy under the right circumstances but it only succeeded in paining my lower back. A flashing light in the bathroom changed from green, to purple, to blue and back to green at strict intervals and I had no way of turning it off.

      The most peculiar element of this modern lust wasteland was not the VHS pornography collection out in the hall, although it did take some doing to get those videos apart. No, it was the toilet. I had never seen anything like it. The thing had more buttons than the television remote and I did not know where to begin. I figured I should try to master the inner workings of the apparatus before I was stuck with a toilet full of piss and no way to flush so I just started pressing buttons. I depressed button number one, the seat began to heat up. The next button did not have any discernible impact on the toilet’s functions. I pressed a third, bending over the toilet in earnest and was rewarded with a shot of water intended for rectal hygiene. Shocked and slightly disgusted I picked myself up off the tile floor and vowed to only use the handle for the duration of my stay.

      The bathtub was my next challenge. An open jacuzzi style I tried in vain to get the jets working. I pushed what I thought would be the key to a good hour of relaxation and comfort only to hear gears grinding. The thing about the shower, while not as complicated an apparatus as the toilet, was that it had just a few extra knobs to turn. Once I got the water going out of the familiar tap I felt confident, this isn’t so different not too exotic. I turned the knob to the left, next a stream came out of the detachable shower head. Elation! Granted the floor was getting a little wet due to the lack of curtain but it was a strong and steady stream worthy of at least a Holiday Inn Express. Emboldened by the success of my experimentation I turned the knob completely to the left. Immediately a series of a previously unseen holes in the wall ejected a torrent of water shooting water across the whole of the bathroom. After the initial shock I half expected a chipper and over the top Korean television game show host to pop into the bathroom and blast a quirky phrase to an eager studio audience. Such a situation would have lent some semblance of normalcy to such a peculiar convention of plumbing. Instead of validation of my complete confusion I was awarded with a set of soaking towels and an inch of water slowing draining from the floor.

      Aside from the mystifying nature of the bathroom The Maldives had its amenities. During my five day stay I lounged in mini skirt length bathrobes while listening to the sounds of copulation. Starting and stopping at various intervals it was the quick and immediate nature of climax that really intrigued me and the sound of slapping. A woman’s voice could be heard climbing the register, accompanied by some voracious sounds of slapping flash that would last, at best, a solid five minutes. This decrescendo would immediately be followed by another, this time from a different area that would rise and fall with the same cadence.

     I left The Maldives with the same tempered step as those retreating from the bosom of infidelity and one night stands. In my current apartment I miss the rooms: heavy curtains and an unassuming air. It was not trying to be my home it was my way station, not this tenth floor masquerade, though I appreciate the fridge and kitchen sink. The Maldives was my first introduction to South Korea and a fitting one. It’s place similar in many ways to my old home but with peculiar quirks that are both intriguing and frustrating. I haven’t been back to a love hotel since but if I did I sure as hell wouldn’t bring anybody. It’s no place for tenderness.