The Disaster Tourist

by Yun Ko-Eun

  ‘Can you give me your passport in the meantime? I’ll let you stay in the bungalow where you were before, for one more night. Tomorrow we’ll contact your travel company.’

  Yona considered for a moment whether she should tell him that she’d lost her wallet. Tomorrow, they’d probably be able to contact Jungle, and then she could pay for her stay at checkout time. But what if they couldn’t get in touch then, either? The next day was Sunday, and in Korea, it was already tomorrow. What if no one answered Jungle’s emergency number?

  ‘My passport and wallet were pickpocketed,’ Yona blurted out. ‘In the train. So my guide told me to come here. I thought she’d told you this.’

  ‘If you don’t even have your passport, the situation will be difficult for us.’

  The manager spoke without losing his affable smile.

  ‘Who should I contact? There’s not a Korean embassy here.’

  ‘Well, in the meantime, stay in the bungalow. It’s late and you need to sleep, so we’ll make sure you can spend another night here. And I’ll contact people in the morning, whether at Jungle or an embassy somewhere. Even though it’s the weekend, they have emergency lines. You just need to sleep. But don’t go outside, please—I’m breaking policy …’

  Yona got into a golf cart and was driven back to her bungalow. The eyelids by the front door were raised. After Yona went inside, the eyelids lowered again. The room was the same as before, but she didn’t feel any of its former cosiness. She perched on the edge of the king-sized bed.

  The days Yona loved the most on trips were the unexpected ones. The days that weren’t planned, that weren’t on the itinerary. Like if she stayed an extra night, or decided to do something spontaneous. Sometimes, when Yona was presented with an unexpected twenty-four hours, she’d return home at the end of the trip and only remember that one break in her schedule. Days like this couldn’t be insignificant, but neither could they pull Yona away from the rhythm of ordinary life. Today had been too painful to be a welcome break. Yona realised how hungry she was. It seemed awkward to notice hunger in a situation like this, but her stomach’s emptiness was exacerbating her fear. On the table, Yona saw a gift bag filled with fruit, with a cereal bar and chocolate nearby. Who had set those out, knowing beforehand that someone would stay here tonight? Had someone prepared the snacks during the brief interval Yona was away from the resort? Yona debated whether she should take one, before ripping open the packaging on the multigrain cereal bar. She put the bar in her mouth and mindlessly chewed. Just the act of cutting into something with her teeth seemed to prove that she wasn’t dreaming. She tried to bite the inside of her cheek to feel some sort of pain, but for some reason the pink flesh wasn’t easy to grab hold of.

  In the morning, as soon as she opened her eyes, the enormous ceiling fan came into view. At some point in the past, when visiting the Leeum Art Museum, Yona had laid down beneath the statue Maman by Louise Bourgeois. Then, it was just to snap a photo, but this morning she felt like she was lying under that spider sculpture again. This time, not to take a picture, but to be eaten. Yona sat up abruptly.

  Her mobile phone was useless. The dead phone was now in as dire straits as she was. Yona walked towards the lobby, but she knew she shouldn’t enter the resort’s dining hall. When she’d travelled from her bungalow to the main building by golf cart, the distance had felt very short, but now that she was walking, it was far. The route differed slightly by foot, too. Yona didn’t see a single person until she reached the lobby; perhaps none of the gardeners worked on Sunday. The resort seemed frozen, and she wondered for the first time if this whole situation had been somehow staged. Then the manager approached, and summed up her predicament all too clearly.

  ‘Ms Ko, there haven’t been any calls from the travel company, and no one picks up when we try to contact them. What would you like us to do?’

  Yona dialled the numbers to Jungle’s emergency phone number, but the call cut off after three rings. None of the company’s employees had been in a crisis like this while travelling for work. Yona’s situation wasn’t going to be recorded as an accident; they’d think it was carelessness. She was just going to have to wait until Lou returned and sorted everything out. Waiting to be a Jungle customer once more, waiting to be saved: that seemed like Yona’s safest option.

  Yona pulled her camera out of her bag.

  ‘If you hold on to this, can I stay for one more night? Today’s Sunday, so just one night longer.’

  The manager thought about it for a moment and then accepted the camera, saying that he’d allow another twenty-four hours, no more.

  ‘You must be hungry. I’ll make you a simple breakfast, since the dining hall is closed today.’

  Yona ate pancakes the manager prepared for her. So this is my situation now, she thought as she dropped on to the sofa in her room, relieved but exhausted. She picked up the remote and pressed its buttons repeatedly like the teacher’s six-year-old daughter. The eyelid-shaped signals on the front of the bungalow opened and closed over and over. Then Yona walked on to the beach and wandered to the back of the resort. Thick electrical wires hung between telephone poles, between awnings and fences. The wires looked like horizontal lines on a page of sheet music. Several birds descended like musical notes, and the ends of the wires rolled up into a tangle resembling a treble clef. Yona must have seen this all before, but several days ago she hadn’t had the time for such scenery. Signs of life only now came into view, and those unfamiliar shapes moving around Yona actually made the whole area feel more familiar.

  After walking a while, Yona spotted the sign for ‘Mui Market’, but she didn’t see a single tent or street stall. She passed the Mui Market sign and continued. Soon she was once again in an unfamiliar environment.

  The Sunday morning alley was still asleep. Yona peered at a house. Among the broken fences and shattered windows, someone was looking out through the cracked glass. The moment Yona became aware of the person’s gaze, it disappeared. This must have been her first time on this road, but it didn’t feel new. She felt like she recognised the graffiti on the walls and remembered snapping a picture of the nonsensical Korean slogan that was written there because she thought it was funny. She wasn’t in an unknown place after all; instead, she was looking at an already-familiar path in a new way. In just two days, the structures around her looked like they’d been jumbled up. It didn’t look the same, and seemed to have somehow grown larger than before.

  Yona saw someone in the distance and approached. It was the old man who played the accordion and had lost his legs in the sinkhole. Now he stood upright, on what looked like his own two legs, playing golf with a broom and bits of scrunched up paper. He was so intent upon getting the paper into round holes in the ground that he didn’t notice Yona coming over.

  ‘What are you doing here?’

  Yona was the one to ask the question, but the situation seemed to call for an answer from her, too. She continued to speak as she pulled the straps of her bag towards her body.

  ‘I’m just on a walk. But what are you doing?’

  The old man glanced at Yona and then lowered his head towards the ground again. He was standing—and with such straight posture. Did this mean his earlier appearance had been a show? Yona called out to the old man again. He stared back at her and for a moment he seemed to be hesitating, but then he continued with his game of golf. Yona welled with fury. The man looked angry, too, maybe angrier than Yona. He hurled the broom in her direction and sat down on a tree stump.

  ‘Please,’ he said. ‘We need time off, too.’

  By the time the old man had finished his sentence, Yona had already left the alley in a rush. Mui was not the place she thought it was. What Yona had seen during her Jungle trip was simple, unsophisticated countryside devastated by an old disaster, where ‘one dollar’ was the most popular phrase among locals. But the Mui she was walking around now felt like a theme park that wasn’t yet open. The old man hadn’t exactly felt threatening, bu
t goosebumps dotted Yona’s arms. She turned towards the path she’d come from and began to walk. Her pace quickened.

  Yona saw a house with the door open in front of her. She walked towards it. Inside, a woman was watching television. She stood up when she realised a person was nearby and turned around, shrieking at the sight of Yona.

  ‘Do you have a reason to be here?’ asked the woman.

  ‘I’m looking for the way to the resort. I’m lost.’

  ‘Belle Époque?’

  ‘Yes.’

  The woman turned off the television and went outside.

  ‘Go straight, and when you see a forked path, turn left. You’ll see the ocean, and if you follow the shore, you’ll get to the back gate of the resort.’

  Yona was surprised by the woman’s English. Her voice sounded familiar. When she spoke, her mouth contorted into familiar shapes as well. As Yona began to recognise the woman, the woman seemed to recognise Yona a little bit, too. The woman crossed her arms and walked back through the door to her house, hunching a little bit. Yona had seen that action before.

  ‘Hey! Have we met?’ Yona asked.

  The woman looked like she was about to say something, but kept her mouth shut and just smiled timidly. She was definitely Nam. The woman who’d led Yona and the other travellers around during the one-night homestay.

  ‘Your name was Nam, wasn’t it? Hey, look at this!’

  Yona outstretched her ten fingers and showed off her pink manicure. But the woman in front of her looked embarrassed, and angry. She rushed back into her house.

  ‘Nam,’ Yona called from outside.

  The windows of the house next door creaked open and then quietly closed. She couldn’t see anyone from where she was, but Yona realised that over the past few minutes, the many eyes in this alley had begun to flicker in her direction.

  Yona started down the path Nam had described. She wanted to look back, but it felt like the moment she turned around, she’d transform into a pillar of salt.

  The resort looked like a red spot in the distance. But what caught Yona’s eye wasn’t that spot, it was the road bending left at a forty-five-degree angle. She heard some sort of sound coming from down the road, so she peered cautiously to the side. Then she began to slowly walk down the left edge of the fork. Moments later, a massive truck rushed around the corner at speed, screeching to a halt and throwing something from inside several metres up into the sky. Whatever it was, was shaped like a person. Yona hid behind a tree and clamped her lips shut. Someone hurriedly stepped down from the driver’s seat and approached the fallen figure. When the driver saw that the person on the road was still breathing, he got back in his truck. The vehicle reversed, to secure a bit of space, then accelerated fast enough not only to grind the pebbles under its wheels to bits, but also any person who happened to be lying on the ground. Yona knew what the truck had run over without having to look.

  The driver stood in front of the body and made a phone call. A few minutes later, a different car arrived and some people got out and collected the body, Yona could see the victim’s face. It was the accordion man. His broom lay next to him. Dizziness and fear rose up inside Yona. She closed her eyes and took a deep breath. When she opened them, she saw someone on the road looking in her direction. Yona stepped back. Her right ankle twisted. And then she felt arms around her. She looked up and saw a familiar face.

  4

  THREE WEEKS LATER

  ‘YOU SAID YOU SAW A TRUCK?’ the manager asked, as if Yona had told him something strange. His accusatory tone set Yona on edge. She was too scared to tell him that she’d witnessed an accident, too.

  ‘You must not have seen right. Outsiders never see those trucks. That’s a rule.’

  ‘It was a yellow truck.’

  ‘Well, then it belongs to Paul. Those trucks are used for construction, or for public safety. But because of the noise they make, they’re not used when outsiders visit.’

  ‘How does Paul know if outsiders are on the island?’

  ‘Because all the visitors stay at this resort. If there are guests here, Paul doesn’t use large trucks. Since I registered you, there’s a guest on the record at Belle Époque, so Paul’s vehicles aren’t permitted to drive around. More importantly, though, it seems like we need to have another conversation.’

  The manager stared straight at Yona as he spoke.

  ‘I mean about you breaking your promise. I said that you absolutely could not leave the resort gate. What would Jungle say to us if something happened to you? If our employees hadn’t found you outside, we would have no idea if you were in trouble.’

  ‘I didn’t see a gate. The walking trail by the sea is connected to the village.’

  ‘No it’s not. There’s a border between the sea and the village. It might not be tall, but there is a fence. If you went out that way, you definitely crossed the resort gate.’

  Yona couldn’t deny it. The manager held her bill out to her. ‘You broke your promise,’ he said. He added that he still hadn’t been able to contact Jungle. That in this situation, he couldn’t help Yona any more. As the manager spoke, wrinkles appeared in the middle of his forehead.

  ‘Since it looks like you won’t make it to the boat today, stay here tonight. Tomorrow morning, I’ll escort you to the harbour. That’s the limit to what we can do for former guests. I don’t know if you realise, but if you’re not an approved foreigner, you can’t just remain in Mui. Especially if you’re a foreigner without any identification.’

  ‘Then where do I get approval?’

  ‘From Paul.’

  Paul was connected to everything here. Yona repeated the word ‘Paul’ in her head, until it started to sound like ‘foul’. She felt overwhelmed. She couldn’t erase the suspicion that she’d fallen into the grips of an organisation as disconcerting as Jungle. Yona decided to call Jungle’s emergency number. Her passport and wallet had vanished, and all she had left was a few small coins innocently scattered about her purse pocket: that scared her. The phone connected to Kim more easily than expected, considering that the work day in Korea was already over. But Yona soon regretted that she’d reached him so quickly.

  ‘It was your mistake not returning on schedule,’ Kim berated her. ‘How can you expect the company to straighten this out for you? You have to get back on your own. You can’t just hope that someone else will take care of you. Don’t think of your situation as being left behind—why not see it as more like an extension of your trip? You have to turn this into an opportun ity. Remember: you haven’t got a raise in three years, and that suggests something about your performance. I’m disappointed in you.’

  Kim’s casual attitude made Yona even more nervous. For a moment, she had forgotten that Jungle mattered more than Mui, that her office could be scarier than this island. She couldn’t ask Kim to bring her back to Korea. There had to be another way to leave this place. She could call friends in Korea and ask them to send money to the resort. Then she’d have to ask Belle Époque how to get to Ho Chi Minh City’s airport. There were several ways to fix this. Why had she called Jungle and not anyone else? Over the past decade, had Yona become too dependent upon her employer?

  Yona had initially applied to work at Jungle because she liked travel, but after surviving ten years there, the company had begun to mean something else to her. Even if Jungle sold something other than travel, even if Yona actually created something other than trips, she did her job diligently. And now she was thirty-three. Jungle was the ideal company for people who didn’t have time for dating outside of work. It encouraged office couples, and it even provided opportunities each weekend for single employees to meet other singles. It also offered nearby employee housing. A doctor’s office, theatre, sports centre and shopping mall were all located inside the office. There was just one downside to a company like this. The moment you quit your job, you had to restructure your entire life.

  The call hadn’t been worth the effort, but that didn’t mean it had gone un
noticed. Someone pressed the doorbell to her bungalow, and when she opened the door, a golf cart was waiting outside. It was the manager.

  ‘There’s something we need to discuss,’ he said. His expression was different from yesterday’s.

  ‘I see that you made an international phone call.’

  ‘Yes, bill me for that, too,’ Yona replied.

  ‘You called Jungle, didn’t you?’

  ‘I did.’

  ‘Why didn’t you tell me? That you were a Jungle employee?’

  ‘Do you listen in on guests’ phone calls?’ Yona responded indignantly. She was shocked by how accusatory the manager was acting.

  ‘It seems like this conversation is going to take a while, so let’s go inside and talk. Luck, Mr Hwang is coming. Go show him inside.’

  The dark clouds in the sky grew larger, and rain began to splatter on to the ground. Yona followed the manager to his office. He prepared refreshments for them, and his voice softened.

  ‘I want to apologise for what happened yesterday. I’m very sensitive about our visitors here, and I didn’t realise you were a Jungle employee. I made a mistake, treating you so harshly.’

  The manager handed Yona’s camera back to her. He asked for one of her business cards, but of course Yona didn’t have her wallet.

  ‘The truth is, I was a bit sensitive because yesterday morning I got a notification from Jungle, saying that they needed further review before renewing our contract. It was a letter, sent by mail. As you know, we can’t get in touch with them on the phone.’

  ‘Really? I don’t think they’re reviewing the contract yet. Jungle isn’t going to deal with this resort’s programme until I return. Of course, considering the quality of service here, I’m going to tell them we should cut our losses.’

  ‘Can you change the results of the review?’ the manager asked.

  ‘Yes, that’s why I came here—to look into the package you offer.’

  Yona was the person in charge of this case, and her briefing hadn’t arrived at Jungle’s headquarters yet, so what did it mean that a notification regarding contract renewal had already been mailed to the resort? I’m supposed to be the only Jungle employee in contact with Belle Époque, Yona thought to herself. To think that the resort was getting mail from Jungle that she knew nothing about. Yona struggled to conceal her anxious expression. She sat upright, wavering slightly.