Complete and Creative

I Think Korea Loves/Hates Me (1/2)

You won’t find any travel tips in this article (although you could probably infer a few if you read closely). This is a story about one guy and one country (and maybe some of the women in that country too). Don’t expect to learn anything, but you might get some laughs out of it.

View of the Incheon district from Chinatown.

They say that first comes love, then comes hate, right? Or there can be no hate without love or something like that, right? Well, in any case, I think the message is that love comes first. Not in this article.

I was near the end of my study abroad experience in Japan, and since I had always wanted to go to (South) Korea and a ticket from Tokyo to Seoul is much cheaper than a ticket from Los Angeles to Seoul, I talked a Korean friend into going with me. It was just that one friend and I going to Korea (certain circumstances prevented any other friends from accompanying us), and she was a single girl around my age, so if you know anything about conservative Asian culture, you can imagine what it was like when she visited her family in Seoul bringing a male “friend,” but that’s for later.

Have you ever visited a place and instantly got the idea that things just weren’t meant to be for you and the land? Well, for me, Korea was one such land.

It was absolutely poor timing on our part. My friend and I could not have chosen a worse time to go, but then again it was the most convenient time. In the translated words of my friend’s grandma, who lives in Seoul: “This is the coldest winter in decades.” Wonderful. Aside from that, the yen had depreciated, so I was quite happy when I exchanged all my US dollars for yen. Not quite the case when I exchanged yen for Korean won, which had appreciated in the past week. Doubly wonderful.

Night of arrival, our hotel shuttle arrived late. When we got to the hotel, we found out that something had gone wrong with the booking, so the hotel was full and my friend and I didn’t have a place to stay (at least the attendant thought I was Korean after I said “yes” in Korean and started speaking to me as if I understood every word that was coming out of his mouth). Eventually, we were brought to a better hotel at no extra cost. Yay. This country isn’t so bad.

So far, I’ve only discussed woes befallen both my friend and me. Here’s where the fun begins: just Korea and I. Second day, we took a train from Incheon (the only international airport in Korea is located in this small district outside Seoul) to Seoul. While in Japan, one of our friends had gotten trapped between train doors. Many of us laughed at him and sympathized with him at the same time for the improbability of something like that really happening. Well, it’s not that improbable. At least not when you’re me and when you’re in Korea.

to be continued…