KOREARGHHHhh!
Well Seoul was alright. Could have been better though.
At Incheon International airport we met our pseudo tour-guide and were about to be ‘welcomed’ to Korea by a series of events that set a bit of an ugly precedent for the whole trip. Our guide was ONLY there to take us to the hotel - as part of the holiday package, which included airport transfers. However, whether it was the tour policy or her own personal preoccupation with our wallets - she tried very hard to get us to part with our cash on the way to the hotel, which really just pissed everyone off.
This lady, who was Korean but spoke Japanese to us (our common language) informed us that before the hotel, we would make a quick stop at a Duty Free mall for us to get some shopping done. “Great!” I thought, as visions of cigarette cartons leaped and bounded before my eyes and the 80% of my body that has become entirely dependant on nicotine started to throb violently. The lady handed out ‘passes’ with a cryptic number on them, which we were to use when we bought anything.
When we arrived at this place, it wasn’t exactly the haven of cigarettes and alcohol that I had imagined. In fact, there were none. For this place was entirely devoted to Duty Free designer goods, of the Luis Vuitton / Cartier etc variety, none of which I had any interest in buying (at least not the REAL ones) and it slowly dawned on us that the passes with the number we were given were in fact our lady friend’s operating number so she could get commission for bringing us to this place.
In the end, we bought absolutely naff all, which VISIBLY changed this lady’s demeanour (cashwhorehatehatehate), totally destroying the atmosphere in the tour bus. It was like we were being babysat by a child who didn’t get the toy they pleaded for, except you couldn’t win her over with a candy or threats of throwing them out of moving vehicles.
Anyway onto the reason as to why I have now realised I hate group holidays. This is in addition to the fact that at any given time I can quite unexpectedly flit from being a happy-go-lucky joe-nobody to a reprehensibly impatient cockwad in the blink of an eye. But yeah, the reason I hate group holidays is The Group. Individually, people in a group might be really cool, interesting people*, but collectively as The Group, people are a bunch of indecisive, in-your-face, compromise-eating gibbons.
I’m not saying this with a sense of distance - in this equation, everyone in the group is equally as bad as each other. The reason why the group never works is because someone always has to make a compromise. One idea always gets pushed to the front and people are either too polite or too dependent on The Group to either suggest something else, or break away and do the thing they actually want to do. Thus, gibbons. The funniest thing though is if you do manage to break into 2 or 3 separate entities to do different things, upon meeting up again afterwards there is that subtle contest to see who’s endeavour was the most interesting:
“Dude! You should have seen the museum. It was so cool. It really helped me understand this place a lot better” Translation: We went to the gift shop and I bought a keyring in the shape of a beetle. Then we looked at some paintings which were all oriental and stuff, then we went to Starbucks and I had a Caramel Machiatto
“Dude! We went all over Seoul! We saw the whole city!” Translation: We took the wrong bus. Then an old lady shouted at me until I gave her all my money. Then she defecated in her hand and tried to throw it in our eyes as she ran away
Anyway, me and Dave (I say that as if you know who the hell I am talking about) decided to break away from the rest of the group and do a little exploring. We made our way to the Olympic stadium, which was depressively run-down, and then on to Lotte World. Lotte World is a huge shopping mall which actually has a full-size theme park inside it. In the mall area, I also found the shop pictured on the right, where you can see dogs being groomed (yes, the caption is a LIE). At first I thought I had hit the jackpot, as I had made it something of a personal mission of mine to find, and eat at, a dog restaurant in Korea (and also made it an annoying running joke - “this is dog meat, you know” etc, at a normal restaurant) - since the array of dogs in the window and numerous cutting instruments bore all the hallmarks of some kind of tasty doggery, but it was in fact the emotional opposite of that. Ah well.
Overall, I would say that Seoul is a nice place if you can avoid the really touristy areas. There was much more of a dollar-hungry vibe from the local shopkeepers than there is in Japan. People tout their wares in broken English as you walk past their stalls (haro haro dis velly chip) and it felt like 90% of the people are out to rip you off blind or shoot you with nuclear guns. This is the kind of baseless paranoia about The Rest Of The World that one cultivates through a year spent in the middle of Japan’s nowhere.
*I love you guys really.
