I don’t know if somehow the Korean’s can manage never to clog their toilets or their rectal emissions just never result in toilet flow failures, but it is neigh impossible to find a plunger in Korea! I am sorry for the TMI nature of this post but it was a quest of the utmost importance!

This very unepic adventure began yesterday afternoon with a failure of my plumbing to perform it’s duty (use your imagination). Anyways my immediate reaction was to fix this situation as rapidly as possible, so I proceeded to the Mega Mart (seems somewhat like Busan’s version of Wal-Mart just hopefully not evil). I know discovered a flaw in my plan…I do not speak Korean, hence had to pantomime plunging a toilet. I hope your minds eye was just assaulted with imagery of me very animatedly plunging invisible toilets, because I most likely was more absurd in real life. This action just resulted in a group of Korean Mega Mart employees surrounding me looking utterly confused and laughing hysterically. So I resigned to buy a rice cooker and Drain-O (at least I think it is Drain-O may have just been bleach).

Anyways I Drain-O’d (or perhaps bleached) my toilet heavily enough to melt holes through a lead plate. I then proceeded to leave for work and trusted in the magic of chemical acids. To my excitement when I arrived home the water levels returned to normal! I then flushed the toilet just to listen to the glorious sound of the vortex of water going down the drain, but alas it almost overflowed again.

Fast forward to this morning where I decided to resume my mission. I forgot to mention earlier but somehow I have damaged my left knee to the point where I do not walk normal nor fast and I am in considerable pain (I do not know how I hurt myself either). So I proceeded to hobble up to the local Home Plus which from what I am told is pathetic (especially when compared to Mega Mart). I walked around there and actually found some youngster who spoke English but was only able to present me with a plunger that would have resulted in me have to submerge my hand just to plunge and not to mention the rubber portion was to small to fit over the hole in the toilet (perhaps it was for sinks?). Anyways I said “WTF is this!” well no I said “Aniyo, komapsumnida” and walked away. While hobbling, in defeat, back home I discovered a shack with what looked like plumbing equipment and when I say shack it literally was plywood tacked together and made water proof with a tarp. I bought a strange contraption in there that was plunger (see photos below)!!!

To end my story I was able to unclog my toilet and felt enough excitement to photo document my King Leonidas esque victory yell!

P.S. As I chill here at Java City pounding back a double Americano (they hung up the drip coffee for the night). My boy Mike the owner gives me a free Blueberry Latte. I am not one for the sweet drinks but this was good and free…so Ryan has just cranked 3 shots of expresso (might help explain the over the top attempt of using imagery in my post).