When I first accepted this contract there was one thing that I completely forgot about my own personal mind-set, or rather that I just didn’t think about. Since I started work with the line, I’ve developed a much thicker skin than I used to have; it takes a lot more to shake me than it used to. I can tell off hawkers in Egypt and breeze past aggressive workers in Turkey without a second thought now, whereas last season similar situations sent me running back to the ship (the first time I went to Turkey you couldn’t have gotten me to walk through the market alone for anything, now I just slip my headphones in and waltz right through). However, a lot of that confidence is still quite new, and a lot of it is created by false bravado (cue: “I whistle a happy tune, and no one else will know I’m afraid!”).
Drop me – a pale-skinned, strawberry blonde, five foot nothing little Canadian girl – into the middle of a Korean metropolis, where I speak not a word of the local language, have not a penny on me of the local currency (a fact that was the fault of the crew office hours more than anything) and tell me to fend for myself? That’s a recipe for a relatively good panic attack on my part.
I’ve always found Asian culture intimidating. Fascinating, but intimidating. I’ve never really been able to pin down why. I suspect it’s just because it’s so very different from anything I’m used to. European culture is far easier to adjust to, and somehow has never seemed so foreign to me. I can fake European. Asia? Nothing makes any sense to me. Ironically that’s one of the reasons I wanted this contract, so that I could experience something that was completely new to me – it’s just…going to take more adjusting than I expected.
That isn’t to say our first Korean port wasn’t interesting – far from it, I mean, where else do you turn the corner and find a street vendor selling (I kid you not) sting-rays! Laid out on a table, not even refrigerated! – I just spent a lot of it petrified I was going to get lost!
It’s a little difficult therefore, to figure out what to say about the city itself. But bear with me, I’ll try my best. The thing is, it’s really not like anything I’ve ever seen before, so I don’t really have any grounds to compare it to. I’ve been to Hong Kong, but Hong Kong is an entity in and of itself, and Korea has a totally different feel to it. No dragons here for one thing! The stores are all layered on top of each other, and they seem almost haphazard, as if they were built before anyone really thought about how to lay out the space. There’re no balconies, and no discernable way to get to the upper levels of the structures, just floors upon floors of huge marquees that may or may not be attached to an actual shop. It’s as though everything is competing for space. A city built for commercialism, not aesthetics, but that is oddly beautiful in spite of itself.
Immersing yourself in a new culture is always a challenging experience as well as an amazing one. Debarking the ship and finding yourself in a world that’s so completely the opposite of your own is intimidating for anyone who’s used to basically one way of doing things – but all that aside, I can’t say I’m not excited about the upcoming Asian ports. Yes, it will take time to adjust, I’m sure it will be awhile before my stomach doesn’t tie itself into knots each time I go out without a group around me, but how many other people get to say they’ve even had the chance to experience it at all?
And next time I’ll try and get a picture of the sting-rays…