Some last thoughts:
We are now sitting in the lounge at Icheon airport in Seoul waiting for our Singapore Airlines flight to San Francisco. The trip has been wonderful and eye-opening, especially the part in Southeast Asia. The
gap between generations in Viet Nam, China, Japan and South Korea is startling. The young people are
so au courant with regard to fashion, especially the young girls. Shopping is there biggest sport and there are hundreds of malls to satisfy their pleasure. In Seoul I was really shocked to see lines of young people waiting to get into the stores of Louis Vuitton and Chanel. There were guards at the doors to make sure that the store did not get too crowded. There is a huge gap between the younger generation and the older ones as if the countries had gone from the 1950's straight to 2010. It will be interesting to see how this affects these countries in the next few decades. And yet school children wear uniforms and all men wear black suits, black shoes, white shirts and ties during business hours in Japan and South Korea.
The new status symbol is the automobile and people are rushing to buy one as soon as they have enough money for a down payment. The roads are overcrowded at all hours of the day and many people have obviously not learned how to drive properly. Driving habits are very poor and it's almost like they are playing a video game - seeing who can squeeze ahead of the traffic mass even if there is only an inch of clearance on each side of the car. Motor scooters and bikers have the right of way. Pity the poor pedestrian. Just because you have a green light and a specified pedestrian lane you must be ultra careful, especially in China where we saw several people get hit by motor scooters that never stop for lights or
pedestrians. In South Korea the motor scooters drive on the sidewalk at fast speed without regard to pedestrians.
Modern technology has introduced everyone to the cell phone. The companies have obliged by giving
everyone clear signals just about everywhere - in subway stations, subway cars, streets, etc. At first I thought this was a great idea but when too many people are on the phone in a crowded area you yearn for some quiet time.
We were not prepared for how little folks spoke English or, if they understood what you were saying, they were too shy to respond. We should have done our homework and at least had a few words of each language at our disposal. But we wanted to have the challenge of travelling independently rather than in a group and that is the challenge. It was nice to have booked a few American hotels where we could take the easy way out.
Of the southeast Asia countries, I think we would like to return to Cambodia, China and Japan at some future time. But we may return to sailing rather than flying. Once on the plane everything was great but the airports and the security are nightmares. And, by the way, flying to nine countries on various airlines, all flights were on time or early departing and arriving. Service on the planes was wonderful and it makes
all American airlines look bad. We now will board our flight and look forward to getting home and getting warm.
Thursday, April 15, 2010
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