There was one night, after some drinks and food, my friend and I decided that the 'hotel' that we booked were not bearable. There was a new one next door which was in a much better condition. But anyway, it was 3am in the morning and we were basically lugging our luggage and baggage around street after street. My friend is a very...how should I word this....relentless person. She decided that with the luggage and stuff, arguing with and comparing prices and amenities between the motels at 3am is a perfectly fine thing to do.
In a red light district, no less.
Let's just give her a hand for her fighting spirit, and relentless pursuit of trying to argue with non-English-speaking Koreans about reasonable prices for motel rooms.
As you know, I watch a lot of Korean dramas and some variety shows, I understand what they are saying. Trying to get them to understand me is quite another thing but so far so good. They even said that I spoke good broken Korean. Well done. I think. They were all accommodating enough with my inability to make a proper Korean sentence so, they basically tried to speak broken Korean with me as well. See, it works out, right?
There was a salesgirl who found out that we were foreigners, her English is bad, so I told her to go ahead and just speak normally. I will try to capture what she is saying. She went ahead and spoke some JOSEON Dynasty Korean. PUAHAHAHAHA. Herleooowwwww.....
I think it worked out well in another way too. When these two Malaya-mari punya orang (Malaysians, in short) are faced with 2 Koreans, with me being the one who understood and tried to explain and the other who just barreled on and on in her full-on English and body language, rolling eyes, flailing arms, flaunting of credit cards, raising of voices, puppy dog eyes, at the verge of tears and confidence that she can change the world, I got to be the good guy and she, the bad guy.
At one point in time, as my friend went on with her unending flurry of arguments, the Korean girl I was speaking to was telling me that it was a rule they had to stick to because it worked the same way for other places around the same area. It won't work out well if other hotels found out that we were charged less and if we sung songs about it on the internet or something...the competition could get ugly.
I tried to explain to my friend but she turned around and hissed, 'Don't say anything, he's bending' and went on to continue with her pummeling.
The girl turned to the guy and said, 'This girl (me) understands, let her explain'.
The guy said exasperatedly, 'BUT THIS ONE DOESN'T UNDERSTAND A THING'.
And he swiped the card.
Credit: Image of couple arguing
In a red light district, no less.
Let's just give her a hand for her fighting spirit, and relentless pursuit of trying to argue with non-English-speaking Koreans about reasonable prices for motel rooms.
As you know, I watch a lot of Korean dramas and some variety shows, I understand what they are saying. Trying to get them to understand me is quite another thing but so far so good. They even said that I spoke good broken Korean. Well done. I think. They were all accommodating enough with my inability to make a proper Korean sentence so, they basically tried to speak broken Korean with me as well. See, it works out, right?
There was a salesgirl who found out that we were foreigners, her English is bad, so I told her to go ahead and just speak normally. I will try to capture what she is saying. She went ahead and spoke some JOSEON Dynasty Korean. PUAHAHAHAHA. Herleooowwwww.....
I think it worked out well in another way too. When these two Malaya-mari punya orang (Malaysians, in short) are faced with 2 Koreans, with me being the one who understood and tried to explain and the other who just barreled on and on in her full-on English and body language, rolling eyes, flailing arms, flaunting of credit cards, raising of voices, puppy dog eyes, at the verge of tears and confidence that she can change the world, I got to be the good guy and she, the bad guy.
At one point in time, as my friend went on with her unending flurry of arguments, the Korean girl I was speaking to was telling me that it was a rule they had to stick to because it worked the same way for other places around the same area. It won't work out well if other hotels found out that we were charged less and if we sung songs about it on the internet or something...the competition could get ugly.
I tried to explain to my friend but she turned around and hissed, 'Don't say anything, he's bending' and went on to continue with her pummeling.
The girl turned to the guy and said, 'This girl (me) understands, let her explain'.
The guy said exasperatedly, 'BUT THIS ONE DOESN'T UNDERSTAND A THING'.
And he swiped the card.
....xxxxxx....
p.s. In case you are wondering if it felt dangerous or if we felt threatened when walking around at 4am in the morning in a red light district while lugging our luggage or if we felt that we were going to be gunned down, robbed, murdered, dismembered, burgled, raped or be put into the flesh trade.....NOPE. Not one bit.
We just walked around. Just like that. There were couples hanging around, there were guys, there were groups but we didn't feel threatened at all. Maybe it is because we looked quite the spectacle that we didn't think anyone was going to bother with us at all?
Or maybe South Korea is just so much safer than Malaysia. Maybe it's just that.
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