A bus ticket? Incomprehensible!

Korea has a well developed transportation infrastructure, with bus companies doing very well. The observed phenomena is that Saturday afternoons, the Koreans surge out of Seoul in great hoardes that almost rival the ones that Gheghis Khan got together. Traffic out of the Southern Seoul expressway is almost at a standstill. Come Sunday evening the tide changes course and those that went out, return.

I was incredulous, and then surprised to see how people just can’t read a bus ticket correctly. The elderly and even men in suits got it wrong. What’s so difficult about reading and abiding by the seat number allocated to you on the ticket? I think it’s a bit more than laziness in action. The old man sat in seat 20 (my seat!) realised with some surprise that he was sat in the wrong seat. I’d sat down next to him (cricket practise was exhausting but productive) when he realised he was in the wrong seat. It was actually seat 3. I pointed forward, to the front of the bus. The old boy, looked left and right in apparent confusion. Two ajummas were sat in the row that had seat 3. Evidently 2 ajummas trumps one old boy. He sat down, perhaps with some relief.

From just stupid to just plain smelly. My new seating companion had a certain odour about him. Maybe he’d been rolling around in newly ploughed fields someplace because this guy had the passing smell of manure. Or maybe he’s just had a wet-one escape from the stable doors. So many people returning to the countryside.