- Everybody has a cell phone: the flip-up kind, often hanging around their neck, the young (especially) and old, ringing with all sorts of melodies, all the time, everywhere; many appear also to be either a Palm Pilot or Blackberry + some can make photos (to be e-mailed of course!)...
- It is really clean everywhere: on the streets, subways, hiking trails, etc.; I even saw the cleaning lady of a museum using a rasor blade to remove gum and other sticky items from the floor...
- So far I have only seen Korean cars and trucks on the road: Hyunday, Kia, Daewoo and Samsung... Apparently imports are terribly expensive...
- All Korean families seem to have 2 children, preferably a boy and a girl: one fellow told me that it was so the parents could experience the two different ways of growing up...
- The low- to mid-range hotels (US$ 25-30/room/night) that we always stay at seem to be mostly used by couples without any luggage; one inn-keeper even asked if we needed it for sleeping...
- Also, these hotels are allways the same: several stories high, 5-6 rooms per floor, each room has a bath (with used soap, toothpaste, tbrush and shampoo), tv, phone, hairdryer, mirrors (one rooms even had a round bed); I allways sleep on the ground on a thin Korean mattress...
- So many people say Hello to me: waitresses at the restaurant want to cuddle me, people in the street stop and stroke my hair, they seem to like my eyes, they give me food/candy and drinks all the time. I'm not sure I like it since I am not yet used to all that attention...
- The scenery when we travel is nice but fairly monotonous after a while: hills, hills, hills, with lush green rice paddies in between...
- Express and intercity busses leave allways on time, even if there is hardly anybody in it (once only two people besides us)...
- Their pets are really funny: we are only seeing the smallest dogs, often with their ears and/or tail coloured in pink or yellow...
- The subway stations in Pusan have an open bookcase with a library of books to be lent out...
- There are TV's (on) just about everywhere: restaurants, subways, bus stations, magazine stalls, etc. etc. showing dozens of local channels...
Some other day-to-day things that might interest some of you:
- In Korea we spent an average of US$ 60/day, including everything, which is very high compared to China and India (we hope...)
- We usually do our laundry ourselves, by hand, in our hotel bathroom, hung to dry on the roof; occasionally we use a laundry service.
- We still only carry 1 backpack each, which we have to repack every time we move to a new destination.
- We usually go to bed at 10 and wake up at 7; I always end up on the ground on a thin, but comfortable, "ondol" mattress.
- We carry the Lonely Planet guidebook, but also get local brochures and of course the tourist offices are of great help too (the same tel. nbr. everywhere gives you a local, English speaking and very knowledgable tourist "officer").
So after one month in South Korea, I must say we now have a much better impression of this country we really didn't know that well. The people are very friendly, hospitable and helpful; the food has a lot of variety and often is delicious; the scenery is mostly composed of valleys and hills, but also beautiful coastlines; and their culture and customs are quite different from other Asian countries we know of, eventhough there are many similarities with Japan. We had a truly wonderful time and I must say we were a bit sad that we had to leave again. But other exciting destinations are awaiting us...