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Show #2 Chinhae Naval Base
Traveling from Kunsan Air Force Base to Chinhae Naval Base took us through some breathtakingly beautiful mountain scenery. This is a lovely country. No space is wasted. It appears that most people live in the cities - there doesn’t seem to be a lot of urban (and suburban) sprawl like there is in the US. There is a lot of open land and crops are laid out in neat patches where ever there is a flat space. Greenhouses abound. We’ve seen ginseng, rice, grapes, blueberries, fruit trees, even the sloping ditches are planted with crops like hot red peppers.
The show at Chinhae was fun. Most of the bugs have been worked out of the sound system and everyone is settling in with their gear. We had a really good time performing - having Craig Smith sit in on bass was a lot of fun and we had a great time chatting with the navy personnel who came out to see us. We even met several people who hail from Michigan originally. Since this base is small and rarely has access to AFE entertainment, we passed out quite a few of the cds that we brought with us to give away.
Our off base lodgings for the night will become one of the more colorful tales we tell from this trip. The Hole in One Hotel where we stayed after the show has nothing to do with golf, believe me. When we pulled up, our driver Mr Yi told us he refuses to stay at the hotel, which appears to be the kind of place that rents rooms by the hour rather than the night. Our first clue was the bondage rack attached to the wall in our room. Then there was the machine at end of hall which dispensed sex toys rather than sodas. Hot water did not seem to be a necessary amenity. When we arrived back at the hotel after the show there were “business cards” carefully displayed on the entrance steps. Mr. Yi waved and drove off to his alternate lodgings and we reluctantly trudged up the steps to our funky rooms. Fortunately, the rest of the night was blessedly quiet and uneventful.
Osan Air Force Base is a very nice base, with the officer’s club resembling some of the nicer country clubs Rusty and I have performed at. Rusty has already detailed the equipment meltdown so I won’t go into that again. The weather has been sublime since we've been here and it was a beautiful evening to be outside playing music for folks. We talked with a concert/festival promoter there who is interested in bringing us back to Korea for a regular show tour. We'll see what happens with that.
