To those who don’t watch the news, there was quite the hub-bub recently about my ship’s recent involvement with multi-national exercises. While it’s nice to have an influx of emails, when most contain articles talking about Kim Jong Il’s promises to nuke us all back to God, it does cause some time for introspection.
Luckily, as always, threats were idle and hardly taken seriously, but the other bonus that the GW crew, including myself, got some well deserved shore leave. Being my second time in Busan, I knew a little of what to expect, but while we enjoyed many food options (Kim chi is a personal favorite of the local traditions), Busan is an unfortunate illustration of how travel really isn’t travel when it’s with the Navy.
In spite of the Navy’s best efforts on “operation security”, typically an upcoming port of call knows of our arrival well in advance. Advance enough to raise hotel prices, advance enough to set up many colorful (misspelled) welcome banners, but more than anything time to prepare for our drunken stupidity. While the days of being expected to raise hell are largely over (international news media largely to thank), those that want to find compensated companionship, or very cheap and terrible liquor, can find both in copious quantities.
A perfect example is Texas Street. This street is typically a local nightlife district with many small bootleg shops, restaurants, and drinkeries. Queue the influx of young men with bloated pockets, and you’ve got a recipe for more than a bit of nonsense. For starters, expect to pay triple the normal cost for just about everything. A great example is when we went to a small Chinese restaurant on Texas St. and ordered a modest meal for three people. Each of us paid equivalent of $30 U.S. While a nice meal at a nice restaurant in the states wouldn’t make this out of the question, for dinner the same day we went to a formal sit down Italian restaurant right on the beach, and paid $20 U.S. for a 4 course dinner. The difference is a simple and painful lesson in economics, but more than anything shows how ridiculous the experience can be for Sailors vs. travelers.
Another prime example is the classic cab driver scam. By law, all cabbies in Busan are required to use their meters to allow the passengers to know exactly when they have to stop the car and get out, if need be. This law exists in Japan, Singapore, and a handful of other countries our ship has visited over the past year. The beauty is, if you don’t start your meter, and your passengers are uninformed, drunk, or American, it means that your company thinks you are looking for a fare, and they get to pocket all of the cash themselves. For a 20 minute cab ride from an honest driver, we paid $11 US. Two hours later, a cab driver tried to charge us $90. Opportunistic scams like this are so easy, but when you’re part of a huge collective of drunken apes, refusing to pay can cause more trouble than it solves. Lets be frank here as well, no one wants to have legal troubles in Korea.
As expected, all drills following our port visit when by without any real threat to safety, and so we continue on our dizzied course through the Pacific through the Summer.
