It Never Ends

A drunk man wandering the streets yesterday afternoon tried to kiss me. He followed me for two blocks, shouting "Helloooooo!" and "Kiss me!", pursing his lips and waving his hands at me. He then pulled out an electric razor and tried to give it to me, at which point two cops came round the corner and he went the other way.

Last week, a taxi driver asked Shannon how much it would cost to have sex with her. His English was a little bad, so it's possible there was some confusion on both their parts, but given that he definitely asked her "how much" and then began muttering something that sounded like "penis", there doesn't seem to be much doubt about what he was trying to get at.

These have been some of the things happening in the past week that have made Korea seem more like a circus side-show than a first-world country. Of course, there are still plenty of great things about being here and it's never all drunken perverts you run into, but I think I may need to post a list of all the good things about Korea soon so that people know there's some positive aspects of the country.

A recent trip to Busan by myself, Shannon and an Australian friend, Kirra, also was fraught with bizarre Korean behaviour, that I'm sure makes plenty of sense to this country but little to people from elsewhere. We traveled to Busan to go surfing, though it turns out the one beach we could rent boards at really didn't have much for waves. Still, we rented some boards (there was a lesson organized for this day, so about 10 people were with us in total) and went to the beach. Right away, we were told we couldn't go surfing though, since it was too dangerous.

"Right now, no surfing here" the lifeguard told us.

"But you rent surfboards just across the street" we replied.

"No surfing here, it's dangerous. Too many people." they said.

"There's no one in the water" we point out.

"No surfing on this spot now. It's July, no surfing until after August 21st."

Eventually we moved to the far side of the beach where they said it was OK, but every time we creeped over towards the better waves, lifeguards would start blowing whistles and moving in on jet-skis to get us away from the people that weren't in the water. During the next two days of surfing they would continue to blow whistles at us for things like:

Surfing without a wet-suit
Swimming in water deeper than your chest
Not taking a 10 minute break
Swimming near the surfers
Surfing near the swimmers
Not getting out of the water at 6 o'clock, at which point everyone has to get out

Still, despite the annoyingly assiduous lifeguards, it was a great time in the water. Anyway, that's all for this week, I'll have more fun stories (and hopefully pictures) next week after we go to the Beoryong Mud Festival, where thousands of people head to the beach and play in the mud all day long. It's going to be quite the adventure.