12.13.00 Seoul; drinking tea

Seoul. Wracking my nerves even before touchdown but once out and past Immigration and Customs I felt in command and revving to go to the yogwan and to sleep as it was quite late and that harrowing near-miss in Tokyo had sucked the tank dry. A taxi driver grabbed me at the door and I denied him because he wasn't in the queue. The guy next in queue approached and we went, with me applying directions in Korean. Right away something was up with this guy. Too many clues but already trapped in a moving car on the freeway. Besides other, subtler clues, he said he spoke no English though being quite young. Then he said—in English—when I asked him to turn on the meter, "First time." First time what? Taxi driving? His face didn't match the picture of the driver posted on the dashboard. He said in Korean that the price was set at 16,000 won and I left it at that because that was about right. Halfway through the ride he raised it to 20,000, to which I replied the price was staying at 16,000. When we arrived at the yogwan he took my big bills and returned only 5000 won in change. He tried to take 35,000 won! Bastard. I argued and grabbed my money back. We argued. I gave him 25,000 won—more than reasonable. We got out, he left and we headed off to find our shithole yogwan in a tight alley off Chongno.

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