Haircuts, and the Ninja Fortress of Daegu.

On Saturday, Mac and I spent the morning playing video games (mainly I spent it playing World of Goo, and he spent it watching me play world of Goo, laughing at me, and playing Kongai, an online strategy card game. Warning: World of Goo is ludicrously addictive, and I don't recommend it to anyone who has anything pressing to accomplish). Mac also gave me a ridiculous treat, with a truely remarkable name. Crunky Nude Balls. Lotte (who else?) makes them. They are a sort of ball of chocolate and the filling things they put in Crunch bars back in the states. We later figured out that Crunky is a type of candy bar almost identical to a crunch bar, and the nude balls are a special form of that candy. Still, what a name. Good though. Ate the whole container in a couple of hours.

After we had our fill of video games, we ran some errands then went to get haircuts.

I am going from here to Indonesia, and short, easy to maintain hair will be really nice. Plus, it'll keep me a lot cooler. When we took our seats, Mac barked out his order, which was either for a haircut or a gay gigolo, I'm not sure. Something about High and tight with skin on the sides and a number one guard, I didn't catch it all. The Korean girl standing at my chair looked at me.

I pointed at Mac. "Can you repeat that?" Mac looked concerned. He repeated the order, as a question.

"Yeah, that."

The face of my Korean girl darkened. "Skin?" she said, touching the side of my head.

"Yeah." I said.

She was obviously very recalcitrant to cut my hair. "You Army?" she said.

"No ma'am. But I want my hair short."

"ok. But, I start with a three."

Her face remained mildly troubled as she cut the top, then the sides with no guard at all. "That good?" she asked, hopeful that it was short enough.

"No, use the number two guard on top please."

Her face fell again. "Ok." When she was done there was a pile of hair around my chair and I felt (and looked) like a new man. Save for the beard, I also looked like a fresh Army recruit. My hairdresser looked like she might cry a little.

I smiled at her, and rubbed my stubbly scalp. "That's good. Thank you!" She managed a smile and I tipped her a little extra to make sure she knew I wasn't going to miss my hair.

For those of you dying to know the damage: here's how it looks now.

Now, about that the Ninja fortress.

They say that Ninjas are silent, and can vanish without a trace. I suspect Korea had Ninjas of this type. They built at least one Fortress, then wiped out all evidence of it save the tourism map.

After our hair cuts, We hopped on the post bus to Camp Walker, in Daegu. There we hoped to explore the local environment and see what was to be seen in the Daegu area. I'd heard it wasn't much of a tourist spot, but every city has its bright lights, and we figured we'd find something.

We didn't, but the not finding was so epic as to be worth the attempt anyway.

Leaving Camp Walker, we made our way to a bus that we figured out (after some blank staring at the bus signs) would take us to Daegu station, where we figured we could likely find some tourist information and maybe a map.

We climbed aboard, paid a dollar, and rode the bus across town to the Daegu Station + Lotte Department store. As it turns out, Daegu station is actually INSIDE the store, sortof, they're sharing the same building. We wandered in the store for a time. Department stores here are more segmented by brand than American ones, so much so that you almost feel as if you're inside a mall, where each brand is its own little shop, when in fact you are in one giant store, that is just heavily segmented.

In the basement sub-level two (where else?), we found a grocery store, and bought some snack foods, then we wandered back outside and found a small tourist information booth with a girl that spoke some English. We didn't really know what we wanted to see, so she recommended a sort of botanical gardens. We thanked her, took a tourist information map, and sat down to study it before we made up our minds. We decided, instead, on a Fortress, called BongDeokToSong fortress on our map, that had a little icon that implied that maybe there was an ancient castle there.

In retrospect, maybe we should have done a bit more research, but whatever, the adventure was fun. We rode the subway until we were as close as we could get on the trains, and then walked out onto the street and hailed a cab.

We climbed in, showed him our map, and stammered out the fortresses name as best we could. The cab driver look at us and bobbed his head, repeating the word, slowly. "Beyondokson?"

We parroted at each other for a few minutes, trying to get the pronunciation just right, and he shrugged and drove until he saw a couple of high school kids. He shouted to them, rolled down a window, and gestured to us. We showed them the map, They carefully pronounced the words on the map, made a face, and after some discussion said "sorry" and shrugged.

The cab driver drove on, and repeated this process with a security guard he found on the next block. Again, no success. He called a friend on his phone, learned nothing from them, and continued driving. Then he found a police station, and asked there. We wrote out the Han Gul characters, and gave him both the Han Gul transliteration from the map, and the map itself. He was in the station for a long time.

"Maybe it's a prison?" Mac suggested.

I giggled.

When the cabbie came out of the station, things were no better. Next, having escalated from high school student to security guard to police, he took us to the next logical authority--he took us to the ARMY. Specifically to another entrance to CAMP WALKER, the base where we'd started an hour and a half ago.

They were also no help. When you've escalated up to asking the Army, and they don't know the answer, who do you ask next?

We drove a little further.

"Maybe it is a prison." I admitted. "But you'd think then the police would have known where it was. . ."

We agreed that regardless, if we didn't find this place, we were going to have to look it up later.

The cab driver, apparently bereft of options, at this point offered to take us somewhere, we think to eat, but then he took us to an art gallery and tea house, so maybe not. On the way, we passed right by the same damn gate we'd left when we arrived at Camp walker, now about two hours ago. When we reached the tea house, he hovered after we got out of the car and paid the fare, anxious to help out if there was anywhere else he could take us. I looked at Mac.

"He's not going to leave, is he?"

"Doesn't look like it. I think he wants to know where else we want to go."

I was tired of the taxi, and I didn't want to keep moving, because I didn't know where we wanted to go yet.

I looked at Mac, looked at the driver. I went inside, ordered tea, and sat down.

The tea was good, strong yellow tea, with Ice, in tall glasses. It had a severe flavor that reminded me of unsweet tea in the deep south, but with a more Asian, tea-like, finish, if that makes any sense.

Our driver finally abandoned us. We resolved to look up the mysterious BongDeokToSong fortress when we returned home, and after grabbing dinner at a restaurant bar decorated entirely in American pop iconography, that served Korean food and spoke no English (and a charming place it was, too) we caught a bus back to Camp Walker and from there a base-bus home.

We tried to look up the fortress (go ahead, try yourselves if you like) using both the English spelling and the Han Gul. In the Han Gul it returns a couple of results, one of which is just a picture of a post, another is a phone and e-mail directory.

Apparently, nobody knows what the hell this place is.

Me? I blame the ninjas.

Tomorrow, Silly Dice Maze, Go!