The following is more or less going to be a list of random observations I made while in Korea that didn’t really fit into the mold of any one chunk of posts. That being said, it’s also indicative that I’m pretty much at the end of the rope when it comes to writing about my experiences in Korea.
Internet is as good as you’ve probably heard: When you use the internet in Korea, coming back to America and using my Comcast “high-speed” service that I pay a premium penny for on a monthly basis feels like going from a jet to a Ford Festiva. Wi-fi, at a public hotel, with many users concurrently connected, was still pulling 60 down and 60 up, speeds that rival my own private connection, hard-wired. And it was like that everywhere I went; I know, because out of curiosity, I was running the SpeedTest app just to see how good Korean internet speeds were.
Cabs are dirt cheap. I was often doing math in my head while in Korea in regards to trying to find the USD equivalent of everything I was spending. It’s easiest to round up or down, to where it’s a 1 to 1,000 when converting a dollar to Korean Won, so basically chopping off the last three digits was the easiest to rationalize the dollar amount of things. I rode in a lot of cabs, because after the amount I was walking, sometimes I just didn’t want to hoof it for more miles to get to the nearest train station. But whereas in the States, a cab ride for just a few blocks easily ticks its way to $10 and up, I was baffled to see how often times a cab ride for a considerable distance, often started at roughly $3, and only once did I spend more than $10 on a cab ride, and that was a good distance.
Buses are even cheaper. When I was exploring the idea of separating from the tour group so that I could see to my own personal interests in Busan, I had to figure out how to get from Busan to Gyeongju on my own dime and time. Upon a cursory check on Rome2Rio, I was getting hits for alleged $4-5 bus fares from point A to point B. I didn’t believe this at first, but when I cross-referenced Google, and the bus providers themselves, it turned out to be true. Knowing this, I still was awestruck at the bus station itself, and I’m paying $4 and change for an hour-long bus ride from one major city to a smaller one.
Liquor is cheap too. One of the more amusing street carts I saw, was one for a mobile cocktail bar. Mind you, beer in Korea, for Asian brands like Hite and Cass are surprisingly not cheap, but at this cart, you could get some pretty serious cocktails, for the equivalent of $4.50 USD. Not just shot-sized either, but probably roughly a 6-8 pour, hard to tell, because they were served out of what looked like IV bags, with straws in them.
Korean food is cheap. However, most any other food is not. This was fine with me, because I had little interest in eating shit like pasta, pizza, churros, tacos or hamburgers while in Korea. But traditional Korean dishes rarely surpassed the $10 mark, if it even passed the $8 mark in the first place. Barbecue is the only thing that really runs a little high, but I treat it much like I treat K-BBQ in the states, more like a once-in-a-while delicacy.
Salt and pepper shakers are a rarity in Korean culture. Whenever I sat down at a Korean restaurant, there were usually two things: a box that contained spoons and chopsticks, and a box of the flimsiest, most ineffective napkins on the face of the planet. But that’s about it. Salt shakers, and pepper shakers were pretty much non-existent in Korea, which sucked, if you found something to be a little bland. Fortunately, it wasn’t a big deal for me, but it didn’t go without notice.
Creamer is not a big thing in Korea either. There may have been no shortage of coffee shops throughout Seoul, and the other parts of Korea that I visited, but I was still often times pining for a good cup of coffee, because creamer is not really a thing in Korean coffee culture. I can drink black, but it’s basically equating to bean water at that point, and I like some cream to take the edge off the bitter. It wasn’t really until I got back to America did I really have some good coffee again, but Korea would be great if there was just some more creamer available at their legions of coffee shops.
Koreans don’t lift. Obviously, this doesn’t apply to all Koreans, but at least in Seoul, Koreans don’t lift. I’m not the most muscular guy in the world, but next to the average guy in Seoul, I must look like Big E Langston. Arms on all these guys were small and wiry, and I really don’t think there’s much concern for weight lifting in the Motherland. Occasionally, I’d see the rare meathead who clearly lifts, but when it comes to police and military men, I’m pretty sure any sort of weight lifting is not in their training regimens. Subsequently, in Korean clothing sizes, I am an XL, as opposed to the L I wear in the States; mostly on account of my chest and shoulder width not being puny.
Which explains why Koreans must love sweatshirts so much. I knew I wanted to buy some clothing in Korea, preferably from clothing makers from Korea. Support the Motherland, y’know. I went to quite a few stores during my numerous shopping ventures, but I was surprised at just how much of Korean basic clothing revolves around, sweatshirts. And not like hoodies or zip-ups that can be designed and more preferable to my personal and more Westernized aesthetic, but just straight up sweatshirts. And it wasn’t even cold for most of the time I was in Korea, at least not to the point where I’d consider wearing a sweatshirt. But Koreans love their sweatshirts, and it actually was problematic just how much of stores were stocked to the gills with sweatshirts, and not enough of anything else.
Speaking of fashion, one prevalent thing seen throughout the trip were obviously, facemasks. Honestly, my biggest pet peeve of the entire trip was the fact that from the time I got onto the Korean Air jet in Dulles, from when I got off the people mover in Dulles, I was surrounded by Korean and other Asian people who simply were not brought up and taught to cover your fucking mouths when you cough. Nothing drew my ire more than seeing Asian person after Asian person coughing into the vast expanse, spreading their SARS and Bird Flu and H1N1 for everyone else to get infected with, and I often altered my walking paths to take the widest berths around problematic carriers. It astounds me how an entire culture can not be taught something so basically courteous that so many in other countries are astutely conditioned to consider.
One Piece and The Simpsons are huge in Korea. Okay, One Piece I understand, it’s been a fairly popular anime for quite some time now. But The Simpsons? They haven’t been relevant in American television for quite some time now, and I’m not even entirely sure that the show is even still in production, it’s that irrelevant in my little world. But Korea hasn’t seemed to have gotten the memo, because Simpsons merchandise, and co-branding is all over the place. Most of the time it was like Bart or Lisa’s head, naturally on a sweatshirt, with some basic English statement. But it was the Simpsons just the same, and it was all over the place, along with One Piece stuff.
And with that, I think I’ve pretty much said everything I had wanted to write about, in regards to the Motherland. All that being said, I still feel greatly rewarded with my experience in Korea, and I feel that I will be better equipped and prepared for the next time I some day go back, which is something that I greatly look forward to, one day.
