‘Oh, I know, I know,’ the boy replied. ‘Honestly, I’ve always had a lot of interest in trips like this, trips that do good for the local community. My friends all want to go see museums or castles, but I don’t care about those things. By the time our trip ends, I want to be inspired to live dynamically. Of course, if I die, I’ll be helping out my parents financially, at least.’
As soon as the student repeated his joke, Lou clarified once more.
‘There’s no chance you’ll die,’ she asserted. ‘Our Jungle system isn’t something haphazardly cobbled together.’
The college student shook his head in annoyance and turned his gaze to the view outside the window. Yona had discovered two potential problems during the conversation. One was that the trip probably wasn’t going to live up to the student’s expectation of ethical and locally engaged travel. The other was that Jungle’s system didn’t actually guarantee safety one hundred per cent. Yona thought of several safety incidents Jungle had dealt with. The causes of death were drowning, car accident and feverish illness; floods, crashes and fevers were not, of course, the disasters the travellers had chosen when planning their trips. The deaths were unadvertised disasters, unexpected by the travellers. From what Yona knew, Lou may have thought her assurances reflected the truth, but that didn’t mean there were no accidents. It was just that news didn’t spread, or it did so slowly.
They’d begun to pick up the fishy smell of anchovies in Phan Thiet harbour, and it had continued to waft into their nostrils throughout the crossing to Mui island. Yona breathed in deeply. This smell was probably nuoc mam. It was an odour she knew only by sight, a word she’d read in guidebooks. Nuoc mam, a kind of fermented anchovies, changed the flavour of any other ingredient it touched. In this part of the world, it was the conqueror of mealtimes. Mui lived by its nuoc mam. ‘Mui’s mornings are filled with the hubbub of fishing, and its nights with the smell of fresh catches fermenting in salt.’ That was the first sentence of a book she had read about Mui. But the statement could no longer be written in the present tense, as most of Mui’s labour force had left for nearby Vietnam and nuoc mam was now made in Phan Thiet. Even so, you could certainly still smell in it Mui.
Yona didn’t mind the fishiness. Like the stimulating odour that hit your nose when entering a musty house, or a new place, it lasted only a moment. Most people grew used to the smell of their new surroundings, and never again experienced the exciting initial pungency.
The bus drove down a road lined with gingko trees. Mui was already dark. It wasn’t easy to see what lay at the end of the road. Once Mui had drifted into night, you couldn’t see a single thing on the island, not even neon signs from a red light district. The total blackness made the entrance to their lodgings seem even brighter. The bus stopped in front of a resort called ‘Belle Époque’, whose sign stated that it was a ‘Gift From Nature: Private Beach Resort; All Rooms With Ocean Views’.
‘It’s nice to meet you all. Welcome to Mui.’
The manager, a local, greeted them in fluent Korean. Yona crossed the lobby and looked at the far-off ocean. The resort’s rooms consisted of individual bungalows that stood above the ocean on stilts; a twenty-metre wooden bridge connected the cabins to the beachfront. Yona’s bungalow was right on the beach. An employee opened the door to her room and began to show Yona around. Her accommodation featured curtains that opened and closed automatically, a TV and speakers, a minibar, a safe and customisable lighting: nothing out of the ordinary for a luxury resort. Next, the employee pressed a button on the remote control in his hand as he introduced one of the resort’s ‘unique features’. The button turned on two enormous lights, shaped like a pair of eyes, which hung next to the front door on the outside of the cabin.
‘You can use these eyes to express your wishes,’ the employee explained. ‘If you close both, it means “do not disturb”, and if you open them, it means “please clean”.’
The night was deep, and inside their bungalows, the travellers adjusted to unfamiliar darkness. Most of the rooms were set to ‘do not disturb’, but the eyes on the teacher’s bungalow opened and closed repeatedly. Yona could see the woman’s daughter leaning against their window as she pressed buttons on the remote over and over again.
Yona sunk into her sofa. The white linens on her bed looked clean enough to wrap her body in them without worry. On one side of the tub, there was a bag filled with rose petals, and the ocean dozed a few metres below. Yona hadn’t had a break like this in a long time. This might be a better trip than I expected, she thought. It was an unfamiliar feeling, thinking that she could miss this place after she left. She mused about the expectations that travellers carried: the expectation of the unexpected, and of freedom from the weight of the everyday. She considered the possibilities that travel presented as the night went on.
The morning sea was black, and silence permeated the air. Nothing dampened Yona’s cheerful mood as she went to breakfast. Waves lapped against each other melodiously, and the sunshine beat down gently. It was early, but several people who looked to be locals were tidying the garden. They said hello to Yona.
Yona seemed to be the first guest in the dining hall. The host directed her to the seat with the best view of the ocean. She was offered coffee and black tea, and chose coffee. She decided to eat a fried egg instead of an omelette or scrambled eggs. The cook asked her if she’d like both sides of her egg fried or just one, and she chose the latter.
The writer suddenly approached Yona’s table and sat down across from her. ‘They’re asking us how well they should fry our eggs! Such a light-hearted thing to worry about, isn’t it? If I have to choose between an egg fried on one side and an egg fried on both sides, I’ll eat anything they give me. Normally, I’m happy as long as I don’t burn the egg. Right?’
His coffee and omelette soon arrived. After taking a sip of coffee, he continued.
‘I’ve heard that there are two hundred people working here.’
‘Really?’ Yona replied. ‘I didn’t realise it was so many. Are they all hiding?’
The writer didn’t answer her question. ‘None of the people I’ve seen really seem to be trying very hard at their jobs. It’s like they’re weirdly optimistic about whatever menial labour they’re doing. Our guide told me that the resort’s hardest-working employees make ten times more money than everyone else. Of course, she also told me that the best employees work ten times more than the others.’
‘Huh,’ said Yona. ‘I guess the manager we met yesterday is a high earner, then.’
‘Lou told me that the manager earns more than three million won per month. If you think about the cost of living here, it’s a really powerful salary. But it looks like the resort hasn’t had many customers recently. We’re the only guests right now. I don’t mind, cause it makes it feel like we’ve rented out the entire place, but the overstock of food inventory must be a headache for them.’
He ate his omelette, shaped like a half moon, in three bites. The garden visible outside was still in the midst of landscaping.
‘You should eat a lot,’ the writer urged Yona. ‘Our schedule today is really full.’