Saturday, October 22, 2005

Language: OK, so you need to travel in korea...

Yesterday, I got acquainted with Mr. B, a French national on project here in Gwangyang. So he asks me the directions to Nokdong ferry terminal (녹동항), from which you can have your car transported over to Jeju Island (제주도).

It just occurred to me how difficult it must be for non-Korean speaking people to organize a trip in this country...

  • The detailed country map I had was in Korean ~ not by choice, but because they did not have ANY English maps in ANY of the local shops/shopping centers.
  • Nobody along the way spoke decent English.
  • Romanizations of street signs (or anything else for that matter!) aren't always consistent.
    Examples: 부산 can be spelt either Busan, or Pusan. Road ~ 로, can either be "-No", "-Ro" or "-Lo"... etc.
    You can get directions in English all you want, but whether it works 100% of the time, that's another question...

Moral of the story: Learn Korean to travel properly in this country, or pay me LOTS and LOTS of money to bring you around... *Evil laugh.

1 Comments:

At October 23, 2005 7:28 AM, Blogger Felix :O) said...

pay you money? hahaha! that's wicked man!

i'd get my korean friend to take me around. might be visiting south korea early next year... :)

 

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