"You can observe a lot by watching." -Yogi Berra

Month: January 2016

Superlatives Around the World

When tourists or expats exclaim, “Oh, the people there are so great!” it is usually subjective hype- a good Samaritan returns a lost bill, the local service workers seem exuberant, a few serendipitous encounters introduce friendly strangers, no one gets their pocket picked, and hey, why not look on the bright side of life? Only Scrooges complain about vacations and foreign travel. But the truth is not so rosy. I met many friendly individuals in South Korea, sure, but to characterize the Korean people, above other characteristics, as friendly would seem a step too far. The real question is who- what people- are friendly above all else. I suppose, as an Iowan, I always have my radar out to detect for friendliness and folksiness, so this became a real search for me. If someone visited the places I did and ranked Korea as an especially friendly place above others (it is often a very reserved and well-behaved place) I would dispute it with the argument below:

Friendliest: Thailand
Runner-up: USA (mostly in the Midwest)

Thailand is nicknamed “the Land of Smiles” for good reason. Most every place I tried out my marginal Thai speaking ability, or where I gave a polite wai (prayer hands and bowed head) greeting, I was met with a big smile and a compliment: “You SUH-PEAK Thai soo GOOOD.” I found the few beaches I saw in Thailand crowded, dirty, and touristy; the thrill for me was just trying to ask kind-looking strangers questions or order food in their language. The laid-back sa-baai (relaxed) attitude in Thailand, and their welcoming interest in foreign visitors- not just eyeing me as a walking cash cow to be milked, although that element definitely exists in Thailand’s dirty alleys and shopping arcades- was a highlight of my time there, although the openness did backfire on me.

The ubiquitous, super cheap massage parlors (legit ones; get your mind out of the gutter) were advertised by the masseuses sitting around on the porch and calling out “MASSAGE!” until they had hooked your attention. I made the most of the availability of dirt cheap massages by going almost every other day. But every time the massage lady found out I could speak a little, or nitnoi, Thai, she peppered me with a stream of questions like a chatty beautician in an American hair salon. I couldn’t answer any of them past my name, age, occupation, where I was from, and what I was doing in Thailand, so I had to constantly apologize, “I don’t understand. I don’t understand,” as my overeager acquaintance told me indecipherable lines in Thai and broken English how happy I would be in Thailand.

And yet, unlike in the Philippines, I never got the impression the people were trying to butter me up and work me over. Negotiating price with tuk-tuk drivers and bartering with shopkeepers was never really stressful, but straightforward. I’ve never found it to be true in America or anywhere else, but smile in Thailand, and the Thais smile with you.

Even Ronald McDonald is more friendly and polite in Thailand.

Even Ronald McDonald is more friendly and polite in Thailand.

I say the American Midwest is the second friendliest place I’ve ever been because, even among Americans, I’ve heard of people visiting my home state (Iowa) and being taken aback by store clerks greeting customers or saying “Thank you,” strangers holding the door open for each other, and drivers passively letting pedestrians and other cars cross in front of them first. It’s not quite the Garrison Keillor caricature, especially among the younger generations, and sure, the Midwest isn’t THAT much friendlier than other places in America- also, lots of other places have high standards for public manners (get over yourselves, Canadians)- but growing up here I was exposed to a lot of gentle adults who treated me with nothing but kindness. It was just expected that nice people would joke around with you or take up light teasing when they met you out in public, then depart with a smile or a pat on the back. While it seems that my unpleasant experiences close to home have more than balanced out the kind encounters, whenever I visit another place and see the people almost uniformly acting rude or stone-faced to each other, I worry about what’s wrong with them. As soon as I got back to Iowa from abroad, and an oncoming truck driver stopped well short and waved me to walk across the street, I remarked, “That would never, ever happen in China. Ever.”

Least Friendly: Korea
Runner-up: USA

Re the woman's face in this picture: restaurant advertisement or hostage video?

Re the woman’s face in this picture: restaurant advertisement or hostage video?

Sometimes it seemed like no mystery to me why the two halves of Korea are in the midst of the world’s longest ongoing war, not counting the unending hostility Israel has faced from its neighbors since day one (July 1953 marked the armistice agreement between North and South Korea, not the peace treaty). I can think of no disposition so stubborn, grief-mongering, and hostile to outsiders as what I witnessed in modern South Korea. Sure, China’s “People’s” government is also engaged in a constant push of anti-Japan, anti-foreign oppressors propaganda through school curricula, popular media, and official statements, and the present day disputes of China vs. Japan seemed just as petty as Korea’s in some cases (“These barren rocks belong to us! You can see in this mildewed, moth-eaten map that these two black blobs in the middle of the ocean must represent our ancient, irreproachable claim to this territory. Your claim is groundless and absurd!”), but I never got the feeling that everyone in China was carrying a chip on their shoulder towards the outside world, or that they defined the outside world as “everyone not directly in my relative social circle.” Chinese people, in my encounters, looked at the USA and foreign visitors as country bumpkins who didn’t quite know how to contain their curiosity and so might point and shout out “Laowai!” (“Foreigner!”), or just march right up and bombard me with questions or gawk at me. South Korea is the only country I’ve been to where I received the reaction I thought had died out in the modern world: a little girl walking towards me suddenly looked up and gasped, “Waygook-een!” (“Foreigner!”) and turned on her heel, running in panic back to her father.

In my daily experiences in Korea, I often felt like indignantly apologizing that I wasn’t the one to pickle all of my grouchy strangers’ sour kimchi, so why was I getting the mean, frowning looks and calloused treatment? I was warned by some Chinese friends who’d been there that Koreans had a holier-than-thou attitude that Korean culture was superior to all others and Korean people were the best. Still, I had a hard time handling my shock as I’d get cut in line three times in a row as I stood immediately outside a bathroom door, or pushed and scowled at on the bus or subway, or grouped in people’s minds together with every expat drunk and sexual deviant as a foreign bogeyman, or treated so explicitly and embarrassingly as a foreigner that the concept started to take on a dirty meaning, or often excluded with an icy invisible wall. I had heard from other Americans who’d been there and back that Koreans are hard to get to know personally, but once you do the friendship is binding, intimate, and lifelong. I can say that I definitely experienced the first half of that equation, but my hopes of crossing into the latter were never met.

Koreans even have a word, or cultural concept, to describe their feelings of bitterness and unrequited revenge: han (“haan”), or 한 in Korean script, or 恨 in the Chinese root. I read that han is a deep and difficult-to-understand concept, but as soon as I saw it identified in text I thought, “Yes, from every unflinching frown I seem to tangibly feel, I know exactly what they’re talking about.” According to the Wikipedia article (motto: “27 million contributors can’t be wrong”), anthropologists have even “recognized han as a culture-specific medical condition whose symptoms include dyspnea, heart palpitation, and dizziness.” (Wait, can I quote a Wikipedia article? It’s bound to change a week after I post this. I suppose I could just go and change it back, but then I might get into an editing war with a presumptuous Wikipedia editor. Ah, life can be so stressful. I think I might be developing an appreciation for han.) Han is supposed to include bottled-up feelings of sorrow, passive aggression, and an abiding thirst for vengeance against oppressors. As a side note, I can’t be the only one to have noticed that han is a perfect pun in the Korean language for the “Han” people and “Han” country, or Hangook and Hangook-een: “Korea”/”Korean”. I think that the developed han concept is all a self-important gloss for what my grandma would call bein’ ornery, i.e. people acting stubborn, grouchy, and vengeful. Like every comic book villain will teach you, nursing a grievance and spending life seeking to avenge old injustices is a recipe for evil. Not that Koreans would ever listen to a foreigner, but please, let it go. I don’t care about Dokdo Island. I don’t think anyone outside Korea does. Bury all the hatchets.

This is me on one of the two rocks of Dokdo. I'm probably one of a dozen non-Koreans to ever visit this jingoistic symbol.

This is me on one of the two rocks of Dokdo. I’m probably one of a dozen non-Koreans to ever visit this jingoistic symbol.

To be fair, and honest, I met lots of Koreans who were happy to have me around and were delighted to meet me due to my foreign-ness and “so handsome” looks, or even because they genuinely had fun with me in their group. And Koreans’ disposition wasn’t a walking cartoon of clenched teeth, sharply frowned brow lines, dark appearances, gray clouds, and grumbling- but it often seemed close.

I was sometimes asked by Korean acquaintances if I wouldn’t want to stay in their country long term, get a nice English-teaching job, find a Korean girl, have a family and settle down. The thought was tempting, truly- I think Korea is, despite the difficulties, a very comfortable and fun place for Americans to live- but I couldn’t shake the dread of living to be an old man and still having people act surprised at how well I could use chopsticks or read the Korean alphabet, still placing me not even at the bottom of the social totem pole but somewhere out of sight, or having them finding unhappy ways to blurt out “Really? But you’re a foreigner.” I have already dug myself a deep enough hole with any of my remaining Korean friends, so I think I will just quit now.

A perfect metaphor for han?

A perfect metaphor for han?

I say the USA is the next least friendly place I’ve ever been because I think that Jesus’ statement to his home synagogue in Nazareth: “A prophet is not without honor, save in his own country, and in his own house” has always seemed to have a general application to me in the familiar places I’ve lived. In nearly every foreign setting, just being different has sparked many excited conversations that have to rely on fundamental human connections over language subtlety and status. The closer I’ve been to home, the more I had in common, the more people could assume about me, and the more it took to impress them. So, unless I’ve had a job or reputation worth boasting about, most of my conversations with neighbors have stop before they ever get started. People overseas were eager to ask me simply where I was from. Obviously, no one in America was interested in this information unless I really stood out as a tourist or something, and even then my answer wasn’t special enough to spur the conversation on. Most things could just be assumed and went without saying. I’ve also found that Americans closest to my age or social situation like to assume I share most of their same opinions, so if I ever fail to laugh at the same political jokes or fail to echo the social vibe, this puts an uncomfortable damper on the relationship. And, an axiom that people everywhere seem to say is that bad people are everywhere. The insults and cold shoulders sting that much more when I’m literate in the language and context.

Foreign exoticism cut both ways. Whenever I went to tourist spots, strangers would ask to take their picture with me, like this young man. Fun attention, at times, but also overwhelming.

Foreign exoticism cut both ways. Whenever I went to tourist spots, strangers would ask to take their picture with me, like this young man. Fun attention, at times, but also overwhelming.

Rudest: To avoid being redundant, I will just link to some stories of my rude encounters in China here and here. Or, just look up “The Real China” category link in the sidebar. Not as bad as China- not nearly- but there were nonetheless a lot of boors in South Korea, especially with the kids who fought, screaming and stomping and hitting and kicking and pushing, without ever getting an adult censure, and the older men and women who pushed and shoved to get into subway cars and elevators and tight spaces.

More of the Most -est in the World*

*i.e. places I’ve been to, according to me.

SAM_0618

Vainest: South Korea
Runner-up: Everyone else

If I had to sum up the Korean character in one word, it would be vain. They’re so vain, they probably think that “song” is about them- “Song? Hey! That’s my name, too! Whenever I got out, the people always shout…” The ubiquitous Korean smart phone was used about a third of the time for social media, a third of the time for playing games, and the rest of the time as a pocket mirror for fixing hair and make-up. This was done in subways and restaurants and cafes and pretty much every other public place you could think of. Occasionally, the phones were used for talking in loud, exaggerated, whiny voices. South Korea is also the only place I’ve seen mirrors posted in a public place (a subway corridor, for example) and seen people regularly stop in front of it and check their hair as onlookers walked past. Whatever the activity, the hair and outfit had to be just right. Even in freezing weather, people would not wear hats because that would ruin their hairdo, and I only noticed a few people who would wear gloves. Even then, the gloves had to be thin and fashionable. When hiking, a popular weekend pastime, the hikers had to have matching brand name clothes in bright colors of orange and purple over black. Make-up and hairspray were still expected. This coordinated outfit policy applied to every activity and every outing. I could go on, but a picture of vanity is worth a thousand words.

A holiday in Korea is a time to stand in front of scenery with a selfie stick. These people are lined up to take their photo in front of the angel wings mural. I think I saw more angel wings profile pictures in Korea than I saw people named Kim.

A holiday in Korea is a time to stand in front of scenery with a selfie stick. These people are lined up to take their photo in front of the angel wings mural. I think I saw more angel wings profile pictures in Korea than I saw people named Kim.

These compulsory hiking outfits are actually on the tame side. They could be spotted everywhere throughout the city, usually on the subway, not just on the mountain trails.

These compulsory hiking outfits are actually on the tame side. They could be spotted everywhere throughout the city, usually on the subway, not just on the mountain trails.

The Korean need to be seen has its charms, too. Where else could I meet a man with such a flashy blue suit?

The Korean need to be seen has its charms. Where else could I meet a man with such a flashy blue suit?

A "Where's Waldo?" of people taking pictures, cameras, and matching couples' outfits.

A “Where’s Waldo?” scene of people taking pictures, cameras, and matching couples’ outfits.

Everyone and everywhere else is vain, too (“Vanity of vanities, all is vanity,” says the preacher), but South Korea has made vanity a conspicuous, obvious obsession.

Prettiest Women: ?

Men love to discuss this question, and when I discussed it with my friend, James, we settled on the 2015 Miss Universe champion and runner-up, or vice versa, he saying Colombia and I saying the Philippines. I knew it was an uneasy guess when I made it, having based it on exposure to only a few Filipino beauties in person and on TV, and the consensus opinion of some fellow travelers on the best-looking women in Asia. I suppose I tested out my theory through living in China and South Korea and traveling through Japan, the Philippines, and throughout the US, but it seems like I’ve never been able to pin down a satisfying, conclusive answer to this question. In the Philippines, it seemed like most women were the size of middle school students, and their anthem was Confederate Railroad’s “Trashy Women.” Yeah, an’ I like my women just a little on the trashy side/ When they wear their clothes too tight and their hair is dyed. No, they weren’t wearing Dolly Parton wigs (those belong to the Philippine drag queens), but neither were they near as gorgeous as the fabled women from TV.

In Korea, the women were circumspect about looking fashionable, as mentioned above, and they had shapely, healthy physiques, yet it seemed that their general good looks were shared by all and few stood out from the pack. This is not at all a bad handicap, but the rub is that there are few stunning stand-outs, and the exemplars look less exemplary in comparison.

In China, the women also looked alarmingly undernourished to me, and they mostly dressed in a simple, childish way, and while China no doubt has some stunning beauties and a high standard for the average woman, I still just could not say definitively that Chinese women, or any group of women, were THE best looking. I think it’s an insoluble question that will constantly tempt and try men’s minds if they’re not careful.

Homeliest Women: USA

I’m sorry, I know that the US has all kinds of women from all over the world, and it attracts the best and brightest and most beautiful, but of all the people I’ve been exposed to, America has shown me the most out-of-control obese and slovenly women, and the women with the laziest, most careless clothing choices, and the women with the loudest mouths and ugliest attitudes. In the other countries I’ve been to, my beauty advice would be to drop the beauty products and pick up some beef and barbells; in my home country I’d say to drop the beer and beef patties and take up yoga.

From peopleofwalmart.com. Made in the USA.

From peopleofwalmart.com. Made in the USA.

Ugliest Cities: South Korea
Runner-up: China

Modern Korean architecture is the ugliest I’ve seen, which is quite a mark considering how much I hate the indistinguishable assembly line architecture of all the shoe-box lookalike, atrociously angled modern buildings in my own country. Korean infrastructure, from streets to skyscrapers, has been put up slapdash wherever it will fit in between the mountains and the existing city sprawl. The multi-story buildings are mostly of one template, with aggressive neon signage scrawled across every exterior, with each floor of a building advertising itself in a stack of monotonous eyesores. Where the buildings are meant to be on display, like a church building, the sight is offensively ugly, a cheap imitation of a style copied from overseas. I’m not the only person to have noticed the garish, shantytown structures.

The church building I frequented most often was supposed to be inspired by Noah's ark, but just looking at this "ship" I could tell it wouldn't float.

The church building I frequented most often was supposed to be inspired by Noah’s ark, but just looking at this “ship” I could tell it wouldn’t float.

"Just put that next house anywhere." Re Korean vanity, they nicknamed this area Korea's Santorini.  My thought was that it twinned Rio de Janeiro's favelas.

“Just put that next house anywhere.” Re Korean vanity, they nicknamed this area Korea’s Santorini. My thought was that it twinned Rio de Janeiro’s favelas.

Good luck ever finding the place you're looking for in Korea's urban jungle.

Good luck ever finding the place you’re looking for in Korea’s urban jungle.

China comes in at second place for building cityscapes only a communist could love. Absurdly large avenues and towers in abandoned planned cities, government buildings of hasty construction and childish sophistication, garish street lamps and accents, and obtusely abstract, gray, decaying modern compositions all around. Plus, China’s vaunted antiquities were very dingy and dusty looking, in my observation. There are way too many ancient buildings for China to restore and keep up them all, but I suppose they could attempt it as a jobs-creation program for their billion-plus population.

Shanghai's Oriental Pearl tower, which is about to the Chinese as the Eiffel Tower is to the French. This might be the ugliest landmark I've ever seen in person.

Shanghai’s Oriental Pearl tower, which is about to the Chinese as the Eiffel Tower is to the French. This might be the ugliest landmark I’ve ever seen in person.

A clothing market next to a bus station in Beijing. Who thought this looked good enough to build?

A clothing market next to a bus station in Beijing. Who thought this looked good enough to build?

Most every panorama in China is seen through a veil of pollution.

Most every panorama in China is seen through a veil of pollution.

Prettiest Cities: Japan
Runner-up: USA

This one’s a close contest, but I’ll give Japan the edge because of how uniformly clean and neat in appearance all the cities and towns were. They’re maintained to picture-perfect precision, like the backdrop of a movie shoot.

Old district in Kyoto. It's hard to even find chewing gum stains on the pavement.

Old district in Kyoto. It’s hard to even find chewing gum stains on the pavement.

I love the stately styles of American homes from centuries past. Walking through a traditional American downtown, surrounded by a neighborhood of ornately styled homes and mansions, is a refreshing dose of beauty.

From scenic Galena, Illinois. Too bad all the cars are obstructing the view.

From scenic Galena, Illinois. Too bad all the cars are obstructing the view.

A mansion in Galena.

A mansion in Galena.

An elegant old house in my neighborhood.

An elegant old house in my neighborhood.

More categories to come.

The World’s Best, Worst, Most, Least, -est, -iest, and -un’s*

This is a popular time of year for lists of all kinds, and while mine isn’t confined to the year 2015 alone, I thought it might be a fitting time to share. It’s a survey of the superlative places, or better put, the places most notable for each superlative category in the whole world*. (*that I’ve been to**.) (**not just in 2015, but in my lifetime.) While my list isn’t as timely as other common year-end lists, it more than compensates for this in originality of categories. Let’s begin with something fairly typical and move on from there. The…

Best Food: Japan
Runner-up: Thailand
Honorable Mention: New York City

Japan’s famous dishes: sushi, noodles, yakitori (barbecue), teppanyaki (the showy iron hibachi grill food) is all great, but in all my time in Japan, every single thing I tried except for the donuts and desserts was excellent. Japanese tastes are usually right on, in my book, except when it comes to sweet foods. They’d probably find a saltine cracker “too sweet. Oh, no, too sweet.” I have no idea how those seaweed-eaters stay so skinny with all that good food around. Maybe because it’s all incredibly expensive?

Thailand is the country with my second-favorite food. Its people and restaurants are close to my heart. Unlike Japan, almost every place you eat at in Thailand is inexpensive and unpretentious. And there are street food vendors galore, so you never run out of new things to try.

New York is probably the place with the best food I’ve tried in my own country, with the very large caveat that it’s all way overpriced, as if the whole city were inside an airport terminal, and way too classy for a simple Iowan like me to navigate and feel welcome in. A longtime resident there asked me my favorite food in the city, and to get out of her glaring spotlight, I replied generically, “Uh, I like the pizza.” But that wasn’t enough to get me off the hook. “Like what, you mean a pie? Or by the slice? What kind of pizza?” She grilled me so bad I wished I had told her I only ate peanut butter sandwiches, but then she probably would have interrogated me on what kind of peanut butter and bread I used and then humiliated me for using mass market name brands.

Best Meal Experience: China
Runner-up: Korea

I’ve written about how fun (and wild) Chinese dinners could be here and here. In short, Chinese dinners, in celebration with family and friends, are hours-long events with many rounds of food, drinking, toasts, and merrymaking. While the average meal was pretty dismal in China, a big dinner was filled with dozens and dozens of different dishes to choose from, and the fun atmosphere of the event filled a whole evening. The dinners really were the highlight of my time in China.

I’m not crazy about Korean food, (unlike Koreans, whom I believe are in a sense really deranged about their own food, with anecdotes of Korean airline travelers telling security guards that they need to bring their kimchi on board because Koreans can’t eat the food in other countries- look it up), but Korea is a great place to eat out with friends. For one, Korea is jam-packed with independently-owned restaurants, most of which are furnished with long tables meant for very large groups. And the up-all-night culture means there is always a place you can find to take a group of one or two dozen people at any time for barbecue or a crowd-pleaser like chicken and beer or spicy chicken stew (jjimdak). While I disagreed with all the sour pickles being served at every Korean meal, I could never turn down barbecue, a fool-proof and plentiful option in the busy streets of Korea.

Jjimdak, from http://english.visitkorea.or.kr/enu/FOD/FO_EN_6_4_4.jsp?cid=586927

Jjimdak, from http://english.visitkorea.or.kr/enu/FOD/FO_EN_6_4_4.jsp?cid=586927

Worst Meal Experience: USA
Runner-up: China

In America, the places available to eat at where I live mostly expect you to sit down, order, eat, pay, and go quickly, with a waitress (cue the authoritarian Millennial: “That’s SERVER.”) constantly coming up and asking you, “How’s everything for ya?” or “How’s that tastin’ for ya?” or anything else “for ya?” Then, after turning down dessert “for ya” by asking for “just the check,” you chat a little, then leave and go home and scroll through your phone. Boring. Any place in America that doesn’t follow this model, in my experience, has been a neat independent place, or more likely, an elite dining experience far out of my price range and cultural comfort zone.

Runner-up is China, because although the special dinners there were great fun, they always brought stomach pain in their wake, and the average meal there was something lousy that you would expect to find as a sight gag in a dreary scene of a movie. Limp, oil-soaked vegetables, hardly any protein, unrecognizable bland, soft-textured, gelatinous foods, stinky foods like smelly tofu, and all of it prepared below acceptable hygienic standards. Okay, maybe not ALL of it, all of it, was prepared with poor hygiene, but enough must have been that I had stomach pain on a weekly basis and spent three days in the hospital at the end of my year-long stay.

Worst Food Instincts: Korea
Runner-up: USA

I think, long ago in the time dominated by robed, funny hat-wearing Confucian scholars, the isolated peninsula of Korea considered its mountainous terrain, cold winters, and limited fruit and vegetable production potential, and began philosophically analyzing everything edible with the question, “But what if we pickle it?” As in, “These green beans would taste great if freshly picked and then boiled or grilled, but what if we pickle them?” Americans think they have a taste for the exotic when they express a fondness for kimchi, but little do they realize that Koreans eat kimchi at literally every meal. Kimchi is not just the cabbage stuff either, there are several kinds of kimchi, with the most common being the cabbage and radish kinds, and there are all kinds of pickled foods eaten for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. Being helpless to find a healthy meal anywhere in Korea of lean meats and fresh vegetables, or fresh fruits, without breaking the bank, was an aggravating experience that made me want to toss my sanity to the wind and lash out to a Korean audience, “I DON’T KNOW HOW YOU PEOPLE GOT SO BIG! ALL YOU EAT IS CARBS AND PICKLES! AND YOU TAKE THE ELEVATOR AND ESCALATOR EVERYWHERE INSTEAD OF WALKING. BUT YOU’RE THE THICKEST, HEALTHIEST-LOOKING PEOPLE IN THE ORIENT! WHAT GIVES?!” (Cue the authoritarian Millennial again: “It’s called EAST ASIA. Oriental is a rug.” Cue everyone born in East Asia who has learned English and wasn’t educated overseas: “But we say Orient.”)

America gets the shame of being runner-up in this category because of our obvious, out-of-control instincts to manufacture food with high sugar content, and to load comfort foods with craving-inducing things like bacon and melted cheese and so on. Absurd Frankenstein sandwiches like KFC’s Double Down, made out of two “buns” of fried chicken with cheese and bacon in between are a successful parody of America’s eat-whatever-looks-tasty mentality, and could possibly be a surprisingly healthy alternative, like the Double Down is, to even fattier sugar and carb-loaded cousins. (Compare the classic Burger King Whopper and the Double and Triple Whopper.) It’s a shame to have to talk about and try to explain the American diet to acquaintances overseas, and I think a very sad and shameful reality for us Americans to live with. Why do we continue to eat this way?

The Double Down sandwich, from http://www.cbsnews.com/news/kfcs-double-down-sandwich-smart-marketing-and-not-as-gross-as-youd-think/

The Double Down sandwich, from http://www.cbsnews.com/news/kfcs-double-down-sandwich-smart-marketing-and-not-as-gross-as-youd-think/

Smelliest Place: Busan, Korea
Runner-up: China
Dishonorable Mentions: Key West, Florida and New York City

When I first came to Busan, an exceptionally glib Korean man introduced himself to me and asked where I was from. When I said Iowa, he responded by telling me, garnished with an unctuous ear-to-ear grin, how he had driven through Iowa once and been bombarded by the wafting stench of manure. Yes, I replied through politely gritted teeth, there are quite a lot of farms in Iowa. I knew it was undignified at the time, but I only had a faint idea how outrageous it was for a Busan resident to be having a laugh at the unpleasant smells of any other place.

Iowa is the US’s leading producer of corn and pork, and there are many other farms producing other crops and livestock, so the farm stink settling over its lonesome highways is an unfortunate byproduct of agricultural necessity. Iowans prefer to endure it with a good-humored perspective by repeating the tongue-in-cheek line “That’s the smell of money.” But Busan’s smell? It’s not a necessary byproduct of anything. It is, as far as I could tell, the smell of incompetent plumbing and infrastructure. Every open creek winding through this otherwise picturesque city reeks like an open sewer, as do most of its busy shopping centers if the competing smells of frying oil and grilling meat aren’t enough to mask it. I’ve lived in Iowa most of my life, yet I only smell bad smells on those occasional trips through the country, and even then it’s not a guaranteed fact of every long drive. In Busan, I smelled the sewer every day. It didn’t matter how I tried to mind my own business, that sewer stink found me. No matter how posh-looking or exciting the lights, sounds, and crowds are in any district in Busan, the fumes of human waste will sneak their way in and bring everyone’s haughty upturned nose back down to ugly reality. When I took walks or runs along Busan’s riverside recreational paths, which was quite a lot since the only other place to take a long walk was up a mountain, I sometimes tried holding my breath or masking my face around open drains. The intense, vomit-inducing odor was the most powerful urban stink I had been overcome with outside of China.

China, in my nickname borrowed after Thailand’s “Land of Smiles,” was the Land of Smells. It could have been shoddy plumbing like Korea, which it partially was, but it was also plant and animal waste left after street markets, restaurant refuse rotting outside, human and animal droppings on the sidewalks and streets, and the world’s worst air pollution. I went on an unwisely long run once on a blazing hot summer day in China, traversing along a riverside road from one city to another, and on my way back, passing alongside a farmer with his small herd of cows, I doubled over from the heat, dehydration, and the burning, sulfurous smell of an adjacent glass factory. I thought I would either retch or faint, and if I fainted, I figured my unconscious body would lie baking in the blazing sun until some concerned passerby called for help. Which could have been a long time, since passersby in China aren’t often concerned (see “the Little Yue Yue event”). I soldiered on, but the rest of my stay in China was never sweet-smelling. Pretty much all of China stinks, or if not, it probably means that you’ve been there long enough to have gotten used to the smell.

Dishonorable mentions of Key West, Florida, for the smell of decomposing seaweed and sargassum around its many island beaches which smells nearly like diarrhea and can be smelled for miles around, and New York City, for the smell of ammonia in every dank corner that I assume comes from human urine.

Safest Place: South Korea
Runner-up: Iowa and Middle America

I begrudgingly award this honor to South Korea because they love bragging about themselves, and Korea’s public safety is one of their most vaunted features. Yes, to answer the question asked of every foreign guest in South Korea, I did feel safe there. I much appreciated the public trust there that made it a casual, thoughtless thing to leave one’s bag and phone unattended at a coffee shop while going to the restroom. I was at times shocked when I saw school-aged girls walking alone through unlit parks and back roads to go home after their late night tutoring and study sessions. In big city America, that would be known as “looking for trouble.” But as far as I know, these girls were rarely if ever harassed. Also, the young men in Korea seldom adopt a tough, confrontational attitude as far as I saw, and I never felt the animosity of aggressive men jockeying for social rank and strong appearance like I have in America. Mostly, people minded their own business, and accidents and slip-ups could usually be smoothed over with a meek apology. There is one glaring inconsistency in Korea’s public safety record: drivers, especially scooter and motorcycle drivers, are reckless and boorish, driving over sidewalks or driving through red lights as they please, racking up an alarming number of pedestrian injuries and deaths every year. So, to rain on Koreans’ pride parade, I would point out that I never feared for my life so much as a pedestrian or car passenger in my hometown.

Speaking of, public safety often never crosses my mind where I live. To avoid the element of danger, I just stay away from bars and crowded nightlife areas. Contrary to the world’s fears about Americans’ private gun ownership, the real danger from guns is from inner-city gangs, drug and alcohol-related crime, robberies, and suicides. If you live in Middle America, like I do, these terrible facts of life can mostly be avoided. I’ve never bought into the hysteria that the average American gun owner has a loose hand cannon just waiting to go off. I should mention though, that like Korea, I worry about traffic accidents and injuries. I’ve thought to myself many times that if I died violently, it would probably be from being crashed into by a teenager texting while driving. Big roads and cars dominate American life, and there’s no way to avoid them.

Most Dangerous: China
Runner-up: Manila, Philippines

If I had to pick a “Most Dangerous” place, I would say China because I almost died there and because many times I thought a wild taxi driver or purposeful truck driver callous to the human life of pedestrians would plow into me without a care. I thought I could have been crushed by panic spreading through one of the many crowds I was inevitably caught in, or from getting sick through poor hygienic conditions, pollution, and exposure to the cold (Chinese buildings aren’t allowed to have central heating unless they’re above the geographical mid-line set by the government, or unless they’re a big public or commercial space like a train station or mall).

I also feared for my life in the mean streets of Manila, where I was eyed as prey by nearly every onlooker, and where relatively safe transportation is hard to procure unless you tip a police officer to flag down a taxi whose driver is likewise eager to extort extra money out of you. Plus, every shopping center and public transportation hub has armed police and metal detectors, and pistol and shotgun-wielding police were a common sight outside of shops and banks. There was a worry of attacks by political groups, but even more so I was afraid that a lax officer’s casual grip on his shotgun handle would send an accidental spray into the street. Manila is also the only place I’ve been pick-pocketed, so that infamy earns it high marks of distinction on the dangerous list.

More ranks of honor and dishonor to come.

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