The ice cream was listed as 1500 won, rang up as 1500 won, but I only had to pay 750 won. I don't know why this is either. I saw the price on the screen and handed the cashier 2000 and she handed me back one of the bills and my change from the other. The same thing happens at my local convenience store when I buy ice cream, I only pay half of the listed price. I thought this was just because the guy at my local store, the Dongho Power Mart, was super nice and liked me, but it seems to be a more widespread practice.
Having the woman hand back the extra bill when I was trying to pay 1500 for the ice cream got me thinking about how honest Koreans seem to be when dealing with tourists/foreigners. Of course this particular event was really nothing noteworthy, and is really something to be expected pretty much anywhere, but I thought it was nice nonetheless. I was perfectly willing to pay the extra money, and it would have been that simple just to take it.
When I first got to Seoul for my orientation period, I went out with some friends I had met. We met Emily, an acquaintance of mine who had been in Korea for nearly a year at the time and she brought us out to a bar on the other side of the river from where we were staying at Konkuk University. When we were getting a cab back to our dorms, I thought that the cabbie was going the opposite way that we came from, and thought, oh boy, we're about to get hosed on cab fare cause we don't know shit about the city and its obvious. Turns out that we were indeed going away from the way we came from, but it was the shortest way because we had to get to a bridge that brought us right back.
Since that initial false alarm, I have not once felt I was getting gypped just cause I am a foreigner and don't know shit. In fact, the cabbies here in Daegu seem to pride themselves on getting you to where you go as efficiently as possible, which usually entails dangerous and illegal driving techniques. One evening I was downtown with Masa, who happens to be both the Man, and a Japanese climbing friend I first met at Seoraksan National Park in mid-September.
We were getting some beers and let the time slip beyond the reach of the last subway train back towards home, which is rather early at 11:30pm. Masa was crashing at my place so we found a cab to get home. As I said above, the cabbies generally make sure you get to wherever you're going quite rapidly, but this guy easily wins my Cabbie Speedracer Award. We regularly hit 140kph in 80kph zones and cut across lanes and back with no heed of what people usually heed when driving at high speeds, namely the law and safety. Deceleration and acceleration were equally exciting, respectively experiencing inertia as being jerked forward or pressed firmly back into our seats. Masa found the drive particularly exciting as we were getting tossed around the back seat, and the cabbie seemed to be encouraged by his whoops and cries. I think we got home in record time, and all that entertainment and transportation for about 11,000 won, quite a bargain, especially after Masa was estimating a taxi ride of an equal distance in Japan would be about six times as much, and I am guessing that the same ride would have been about three times as much in the states.
I guess that one of the reasons that foreigners don't get hosed so much, at least inasmuch that I am aware of, is that South Korea doesn't have a large enough foreign tourist industry to make it worthwhile. In Thailand, there is such a large tourism industry, largely cheap-ass backpackers or Ronald McBoyfriends with dyed hair and a middle-aged guy, that one must be careful when buying certain things like cheap bus or train tickets, or from what I've heard (I swear) "women", who may turn out to be what are called lady-boys there. Europe as well is quite well-known to have a thriving population of pick-pockets and petty thieves. I got my digital camera stolen there when I was in Prague in 2003, and chances are you know someone who got ripped off there too. Just look in a guidebook for most places, there is going to be a section on common scams, but there is no such section in my guidebook on Korea, and I am yet to see a need for one. Get enough tourists in here though, some fat balding aging white guys looking for young brides like in Thailand, or some hippy backpackers wanting to be able to say they've been somewhere you haven't, like just about everywhere you travel, enough people moving through to justify ripping them off, then I have faith that the scamming industry will pick up.
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