There was also the case a month or so ago when I was walking towards a bar at night and a Korean man walked past me in the other direction, completley naked! He seemed to be completley unaware that he was naked, like he'd just forgotten to put his clothes on that morning and had gone about his daily business. This time though, the Koreans most certainly did notice and were out in the streets taking photos on their mobile phones.
Korean Business Logic
I always wonder just how most business' here make any money. If you were to ask someone at home where is the best place to open a bedding and fabric store in town, they would probably not answer with "next to the seven other bedding and fabric stores that all sell the same stock". Yet this seems to be the way in Korea, the bedding and fabric stores are all next door to each other and sell the same things for the same price. The main street in town has about 10 hiking shops on it. The techno-mart in Seoul has one floor with almost 50 camera shops in it, none of whom stock anything different from the guy next to him. All of these shops are always completley empty whenever I walk buy, which makes me wonder just how people keep their businesses alive.
There is also bar street in our town, which almost looks like a bar street in the centre of Bangkok with it's neon lights and pumping music blasting out, but again all of these bars are pretty much empty even on Friday and Saturday night, unless a group of 10 foreigners comes inside. The bars again sell the same drinks for the same prices - which isn't cheap, £2.75 for a small bottle of weak Korean beer (I cannot stress enough just how weak the local beer is here). I always think that if one of the bars actually lowered their prices, by just 1000Won (50p) they could make a killing, even if it's just from the foreigners.
Everland
Last weekend, my boss took me to the fourth biggest theme park in the world (according to the Lonely Planet). Now if you think theme parks are brightly coloured and tacky and you have set foot in Korea for more than a day, you might get some idea of just how brightly coloured tacky Everland is. This was not aided by the fact that they are celebrating Halloween there for the next 2 months, so everything is decorated with skeletons, ghosts and pumpkins, who are not supposed to be scary but are cute like everything else in Korea.
It was certainly an odd experience, like being at a half-assed Disney World, with the poor staff being forced to do a little dance whilst the rides span and looped about. They were also made to sing the Everland jingle everytime you got off the ride (with Everland pronounced Eber-rand by Koreans). They were quite enthusiastic at the start of the day, but come 7pm when we went home they really could not be bothered anymore (but still had 3 hours left to work).
There were some good rides at the park, namely the giant wooden rollercoaster, which seemed to defy gravity for the most parts, but some rides were clearly not designed for Westerners like the Viking boat (biking boat to Koreans) which nearly crushed me when they lowered the safety bar.
Undoubtedly the funniest moment there was when we rode on the Amazon river ride, humurously put in the Africa zone, and doing nothing to dismiss assumptions that Koreans are bad at geography. As we got closer to the boats, we noticed that all the boats had covers that you could pull over yourself to stop you getting wet. Needless to say the Koreans were all cowering underneath the covers, pulled up to their necks and screamed as a little splash of water landed next to them. I tried to explain to my boss that this was completley missing the point of a water ride, you're supposed to get soaking wet on it, but Koreans appear to be afraid of water. When Meg and I got on and the staff pulled up the cover, they were all shocked to see us pull of the cover and wait to get wet. Of course we stayed dry and the water splashed over all the Koreans and managed to get them soaked.
Chuseok
I had three days off this week, unfortunately they were Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday so I couldn't go anywhere for too long. I did get to do a lot of sightseeing in Seoul, albeit not a lot on Tuesday because of the horrific downpours that caused severe floods in Incheon. Taking a cable car up to Namsan Tower and seeing the whole of Seoul from a great height was a huge highlight.
Wednesday was the Korean Thanksgiving, Chuseok, so Meg and I were invited to my boss's family's house to have a traditional Korean Chuseok dinner. For once it was worth noting that this was one meal that didn't involve "red" so the food didn't knock my socks off as I feared it would (although there was Kimchi floating about somewhere.
The family were very kind to us, and the nephew and his girlfriend had perfect English (accent included) so could explain to us just what was going on and what food was being served and which food didn't contain seafood and was safe for Meghan to eat.
My boss's brother (whose house it was) greeted us at the door in what can only be described as pink pajamas. Bright pink pajamas! They were, apparently, traditional Korean clothes and whilst they looked very comfortable, they were still bright pink. My boss said she thought her brother was a bit backwards because he was wearing them, I think she might have been a bit embarrassed.
After dinner, we played a traditional Korean board game which was explained to me as being a bit like Monopoly. As we played the game I realised that it was nothing like Monopoly and was in fact very complicated. The head of the family, my boss's father, was apparently the master of the game and immeadiatley after dinner he was sitting on the floor throwing the sticks into the air, practicing apparently. As we played, it became increasingly evident that I was lucky to have a Korean partner to aid me, but we still lost and I hard to part with 10,000 Won (£5.50), the hosts where the eventual winners - which my boss said was more than a little suspect...
