South of the Border and No Burritos

For completeness sake here is a little about my quick stopover in South Korea after the Philippines. I really wanted to visit the North Korean border but due to time constraints things didn't work out.

However a friend who lives in Seoul was able to take the afternoon off and show me around. The things I'll remember were the random people we saw and not so much the sites.

What was funny was I kept forgetting I wasn't in Japan - Korean signs and the people's attitudes were good reminders though. The Koreans were very helpful and friendly but they were also blunt and didn't try to save face like the Japanese. The people were intriguing. In the 24 hours I was there I watched as a lady on a busy sidewalk laid on her back with her hands and feet sticking straight in the air like an overturned turtle. Another lady sat next to us at the bar at a Burger King and yelled directly at the wall for about 10 minutes. She left and then came back in to finish the fight. The wall won and she again left frustrated. And finally I got to witness a full-on geriatric fight in the subway station. It resembled what you would see in junior high with bystanders circling around to watch. I wanted to try and stop it but what can a clueless white guy do or say. A few other Koreans tried to break it up but ended up with bloody noses. After rooting for the oldest guy for a while we were ready to move on, but the fight had moved in front of the ticket machine. I waited rather impatiently until the fight finally rolled on, bought my ticket and left. Good times.

Perhaps one day doesn't give an accurate perspective of a country but it did give me some good memories.