I’m in Seoul, South Korea at the moment. I’ve only been here for about eight hours but I’ve already been struck by the following observations:
- Seoul feels much, much bigger than Tokyo. I think it’s because of sprawl. Nonetheless, it’s big. And very hectic. I get stressed out just taking a taxi from the airport to the hotel.
- It’s really cold here, despite being on virtually the same latitude as Tokyo.
- Korean taxi drivers are more likely to understand Japanese than English.
- The money game is quite dumb. The highest denomination of bill that can be retrieved from the ATM is 10,000 won, which translates to roughly $8.60 USD. That means one has to tote around a wad of about 60 10,000 bills if a retrieval of $500 is made from the ATM. Stupid.
- I’m staying at the Grand Hyatt, which is where Barack Obama apparently stayed during his one-day whirlwind visit to Seoul at the tail-end of his grand Asian adventure. What this means is I get to enjoy backed up traffic to the hotel, periodic sightings of serious-looking dudes with dark suits and earpieces, and eavesdropping on a conversation next to me in the lounge of two military guys talking about the stresses of setting up the flags that adorn the backdrop of Obama’s many international appearances. It’s all about perspective, I suppose.
