Randomness

A few things have been happening that I have met to write about. It can all be summed up in one word ‘strangee’.

A couple of weeks ago I was waiting in the subway station to meet Clare for dinner. While I was waiting I noticed a crowd of maybe Southeast Asian men milling around. One in particular walked past me a couple of times. On his next trip by, he stopped to ask me a question. I am not sure what language he was speaking, so then he tried Korean, which I replied no again. I said I was from Canada, and he made a funny sound that indicated I was a hopeless case. Before he departed back to his friends, he gave me an ice cream cone! I tried to decline, only because I was going to eat supper in 10 minutes, but he insisted. Needless to say Clare and I enjoyed a laugh and an ice cream cone before dinner.

Another night after a delicious meal at Wazwan (greatest Indian food restaurant in Busan), we were on the subway politely minding our business waiting for our stops to arrive, when suddenly this old Korean man is saying “coffee, coffee” and give us each a dollar. I was surprised and a little freaked out. At first we tried to insist that he take his money back, but he would have none of that. So we sat there uncomfortably, not touching the money and not really knowing what to do, and the train full of people looking at us to see what we would do. It was my stop so Michaela and I decided that we would just leave the money on the seat. Unfortunately for me, I was getting off at the same stop as this guy, so I ran to another exit and successfully lost him. I was never really afraid he was going to hurt me, he was just really creepy.

I find out later that there are such things as ‘coffee girls’. These women are essentially escorts. Prostitution is illegal, but in Korea a person can get anything delivered at anytime. The lady delivers the coffee, and you can imagine the rest. I am not sure what that old guys intentions were; maybe he just wanted to talk to some foreigners.