Waygook Special

There is a phenomenon here in Korea that I have termed the ‘Waygook Special’, although I’m sure someone else has come up with the same clever title. Waygook is the Korean word for foreigner, and in a very homogenous culture foreigners are a bit of an oddity.

Now what is a waygook special? When a taxi takes it upon themselves to give you a scenic tour of the city and stops at all traffic lights, heads in the wrong direction then finally doubles back after hearing your incomprehensible pleas. Its when you go to a produce market and get the same feeling as walking down the midway at a carnival when carnies call you over to their games o’ skill. Its when basically things that are supposed to be inexpensive turn out to be more expensive than they should be.

I’m not implying anything about racism here, I’ve not really experienced any of that here myself. Aside from that one old man on the subway on Christmas. But its hard to take someone seriously when they look like someone used too much felt on a muppet.

I also don’t want to give you the impression that Busan is full of a dedicated ring of shysters that actively takes advantage of foreigners. That is entirely possible but I frankly haven’t done any research to that end, the makeup required for the undercover work is cost-prohibitive. I’ve come to realize that the feeling that you are being ripped off a bit comes from two possible sources:

1. What you thought was cheap really wasn’t. Korea is the second most expensive country in Asia (Japan wins!) and is not the land of 25 cent meals like my obviously born- in-the-1930s friend Ken originally thought. Alcohol is pretty cheap for instance, even in restaurants. However if you go to an Ice Bar, like my fellow teacher Nick did, and have a half dozen bottles of beer delivered to your table in a bucket of… you guessed it… ice, expect to pay about $100 cdn for that privilege. Well you pay in Won, but I’m converting to help comparison. You can get a hilarious amount of tangerines for $3, yet apples even in bulk usually average to about $1 a piece.

2. What you thought you asked for you didn’t get. The best example of this for me came last night. Ken and I frequent a certain grill house every Friday and order a dish that is basically ribs without the bones. Now last week I had been very confident, not even looking at the menu when I ordered and feeling pretty proud until we paid and found out we had ordered a different dish than we thought. Bill came to $30 instead of $24 (with drinks), not a big deal but I was a little embarrassed. Last night when we ordered I kept my pride in check and pointed at the menu to order and made absolutely sure to order the thing we wanted this time, figuring it was better to be thorough than look cool. We were very satisfied with this slightly cheaper cut of meat, not really being able to tell the difference. Which made sense when we paid because it turns out they still served us the more expensive dish. I tried to explain that was not what we ordered, not out of anger, just confusion. I didn’t know all the words to explain myself so I treated the owner to a recreation. I picked up a nearby menu and repeated the motion of pointing at the thing we asked for, first thing listed. The owner smiled, shook his head and pointed at the more expensive thing down the list. I paid with confused exasperation.

Now I don’t think the man diabolically supersized us, I think he just brought us the other dish as a favor. He just made an assumption on what we wanted and went with that. Possibly based on the fact that the dish he brought us was the one we inadvertently ordered three times before at his place. Possibly because what we had pointed at was like when you order chicken at Red Lobster and the waitress winces and says : “Tell you what, I’ll bring you something nice.” I think to the time that Ken and I ordered chicken that was so spicy the cook came out from the kitchen to personally plead with us to change our minds. We laughed him off and then went through a very painful eating experience, which eventually ended in us hiding pieces of chicken around the table so we could save face with a clean platter.

I originally viewed the Waygook Special as a bit more malevolent than it seems to me now. Now I just figure that people see me as a blind man in a bowling alley facing the wrong direction. They gently turn me around to face the pins, never even occurring to them that I wanted to aim for the Coke machine.