Motive, Opportunity & Intent

Motive!
Stepping off the ferry from Fukuoka, we immediately recognized that we were no longer in Japan by the smell. In Shogun, one of the novels I read this year, the Koreans were referred to as garlic eaters. The smell of the ferry terminal made it clear as to why.

Not wanting to repeat our search for an over priced hotel, Chrissy immediately got on the Internet to search for a hotel. We only needed to spend one night before we would catch our flight for Jeju Island in the morning. In the 40 minutes it took to find and secure a reservation the ferry terminal emptied out. As we began to exit the terminal, two men came to us and asked us if we needed a ride.

Chrissy answered, “Yes, we are going to Tokoyo Inn. Do you know where it is?”

The men looked confused so we showed him the billboard for the new hotel just completing its grand opening rates that night. The billboard was above the exit door, but it was in Korean script, so Chrissy and I couldn’t read it, but their web site was in English and included a map showing it within close proximity to the ferry terminal.

The ad didn’t seem to answer his quizzical look, but he said, “Ok, 10,000 Won.” (About $10.00) I was ready to jump into his cab. We had a terrible trip on the ferry. The ride was ok, but our baggage wasn’t very manageable down the gangways and throughout the terminals. We each had two 48-pound bags, a carry on bag, a computer bag and a couple of small sacks with our lunches and souvenirs from Miyajima. But Chrissy told the cabbie "absolutely not" and that the hotel was very nearby. Chrissy walked away from the men and pressed onto the taxi stand, refusing to do business with these men who were trying to take advantage of us.

We walked across the road to the taxi stand, followed by the two drivers trying to grab us as a fare. They continued to tell us that they could find Tokoyo Inn, but it could be difficult. The map we had and directions from the Internet didn’t seem to help the men trying to get us in their cab.

At the taxi stand, a driver hopped out of his car. Amid the drivers trying to sell their 10,000-Won cab ride and the baggage we crossed the parking lot, I luckily saw the name of the Tokoyo Inn less than a half a mile away. A big blue neon sign with their name on it was the only hotel visible from the terminal. The new driver said he would give us the ride for 5,000-Won. This rate earned him the ridicule of the other drivers who had seen us as an easy mark, but it also won our patronage. The ride was short and the stay at our small hotel was restful.

Opportunity.
The next morning, we checked out and grabbed a cab for the 35-minute ride to the airport. The desk staff at the hotel told us that fares to the airport would be about 16,000-Won. It was reasonable, so we loaded our luggage in the car and began the drive.

Within 100 meters of the hotel, the driver stated that the fare would have to include the toll for the drive. We thought we understood him to say it would total 35,000. His English wasn’t great and our Korean wasn’t as good as you would think after we had spent an entire night in Korea. And from our dealings the night before, we assumed that he had doubled the fare. We refused his ride and forced him to return to the hotel. He backed up in the street to the hotel. Chrissy agreed to go back into the hotel with him to seek better English translation. He left the cab running with all our luggage inside and went in with Chrissy. I sat in the cab with the backseat and trunk stuffed with our bags.

It proved to be a miscommunication. The toll was 1,600-won, very inexpensive. The total fare would be under twenty dollars. We even had an enjoyable ride, visiting with him as best we could in two separate languages.

Intent?
In Seoul, we took an airport bus to Seoul Station. Seoul Station is a major rail hub for the freight and passenger trains and it was just a couple hundred meters from our hotel. However, the second we got off of the bus, Chrissy realized that she didn’t have her purse. Somewhere between the airport, where we converted 20,000 Yen into 200,000 Won and the bus stop, the purse was mislaid. With all of the bags we had, I am surprised that it didn’t happen sooner or more often. We were distressed. We carried most of our cash, nearly $8,000.00 from my last pay checks and travel allowance in our computer bags as well as our passports; but her purse did have credit cards and more importantly pictures and keepsakes she has collected. (See Purse-suit for the story of the lost purse.)

At the station we loaded our bags into a cab. The cabbie didn’t get out or help load the bags. He stayed in his car listening to a radio drama. We showed him the map with the location of the Ramada Hotel clearly marked. He should only have to turn his wheel once or twice before he dropped us off less than a kilometer away.

Chrissy and I weren’t watching where the cabbie drove. We were exhausted, distracted and worried about her purse. We sat in the back seat and tried to reconstruct the last hour and to divine where that purse may have been left. The best we could come up with was the restroom at the airport. In our distraction, though, the cabbie made a right hand turn sooner than I had expected. When I looked up he was about to make another right turn into a tunnel. Immediately, I recognized that he was taking us in the opposite direction of our hotel. The first right hand turn, I let him have. I didn’t know the particulars of the one-way streets, so the first right hand turn may have been necessary to approach our hotel from the right direction, but the second right into a tunnel heading south when we wanted to go north was obviously wrong. Chrissy saw it, too.

In plain, rapidly spoken English with a hint of distress over the lost purse, we both demanded, “Where are you going?”

I followed the question up with a simple declaration. “No Won!” He hadn’t turned the meter on in the cab when we got in, so I was suspicious that he was taking us for a ride. I repeated, “No Won!” I said it slowly so he would understand. We also pointed back in the direction of our hotel.

Even so, he took us through the tunnel. He couldn’t turn around. At the southern end of the tunnel he pulled over and attempted to call a translation service for directions to our hotel. He seemed confused and his radio continued to blare with the program he had been listening to since we got in the cab. This section of Seoul, seemed easy to navigate to us (and we had just arrived). A large hill with an antenna on top dominated the center of our ride. On the western edge of the hill was Seoul Station. Just to the north of the hill was our hotel, Seoul’s traditional outdoor market and the famous gate that had burned down last November. We were now on the southern end in a foreign district. A place our cabbie must have assumed we would want to be regardless of the map we had shown him.

The directions he got over the phone didn’t seem to help, but we recognized that he was heading back to the road that would take us north back to Seoul Station. As long as we kept an eye on the radio tower on our right, we couldn’t get lost. It was a very smoggy day though, and the tower disappeared behind some buildings and didn’t reveal itself again.

As he started up again he turned his meter on. Chrissy said forcefully, “No meter, No!” We were several kilometers from our hotel as well as the place he originally picked us up at. Our entire trip should have been less than half a kilometer when we began. He turned his meter off.

He drove to another hotel and asked the concierge for directions to our hotel and finally turned the volume on the radio off. We continued. Chrissy and I checked the landmarks in the city we had just come to, landmarks we had seen from the bus window. We passed the Museum to Korean War Soldiers; we passed several bus stops that we recognized. We came up on Seoul Station where he had picked us up.

Chrissy said kindly, “Meter okay, now.” Verbs aren’t always important when speaking English with people with limited English knowledge. She repeated it more forcefully but still nicely, “The meter, it’s Okay!”

He didn’t turn it on.

We passed Seoul Station. This time, both Chrissy and I were paying attention to the drive. In fact, we were telling him exactly where to go. One block beyond his original right hand turn that began our wandering around Seoul, he began to merge left through an underpass, but I didn’t let him. I think Chrissy yelled out "where are you going???". We both knew we had to continue only a few more blocks and then turn right. I couldn’t see how long the underpass would take. My fear was that it would overshoot our right hand turn. I made him make an immediate, sharp, right hand turn.

Our hotel wasn’t on this street, it was just on the other side of the block, but we still couldn’t see it. We made him pull over instead of continuing on. We knew we were close and honestly were just about to get out and be done with him. I rolled down my window and asked a passerby if he knew where the Ramada was. He pointed to the far side of the block.

We didn’t allow our driver to get out of sight of the block where our hotel was, we made him u-turn and take us to the hotel. At the curb, I told Chrissy to stay in the cab while I unloaded the car. I was worried that after his horrible experience with us he would drive off with our bags still in the trunk. The cabbie never left his seat as I piled the bags like cordwood on the sidewalk. Chrissy got out and he rolled the window down for his fare. I didn’t ask him how much we owed and he didn’t tell me. I took 2,000 Won from my wallet and laid it on the seat. It would more than cover the minimum fare it should have cost originally.

Somewhere along the ride Chrissy and I both realized that this driver did not intend to rip us off. He simply was confused or he wasn’t bright enough to read a map. In the end, our impression was the latter. In his best effort, he had taken us to a section of town where he thought foreigners would go. In our stress over the lost purse, frustrated by not getting to our hotel quickly so that we could report it lost, we had harangued him forcefully, but not mercilessly, probably adding to his confusion and distress and worsening his ability to find our hotel. In the end, the poor guy never did get to finish his radio program.