Wednesday, October 28, 2009

Of Cultural Differences

I was in the Korean Republic (South Korea) recently on a business trip and arrived,with a colleague, a day prior to reporting to the venue. We were suppose to meet up with another colleague and to be picked up at the Incheon International Airport the next day. So I suggested to my colleague that we just store our luggage at the airport's storage facility and maybe shower at the airport.

Incheon International AirportImage by http2007 via Flickr


We touched down at about 6.30 a.m. and exited the arrival hall around 7.00 and stored our luggage. We found out that the shower facilities was in a spa at the airport, and we got to pay 20,000 KWon to use it. Hence we decided to skip shower and took a bus ride into Seoul, and we disembarked at Itaewon and had kebab for breakfast.

We went around Seoul by subway and finally took the bus back to Incheon International at about 9.00 p.m., took our stored luggage and then went down to the spa for our shower. We found out that besides shower we can use the facilities like the lounge where you can sit and watch tv and sleep on the recliner seats.

As we were putting our things in the locker we went looking for our bath towels, and what did we find? Towels the size of face towels. And guess what? That was the size of towels available... Much to our chagrin :)

We left for Anseong the next morning to the meeting venue, checked into our rooms and what did we find? Face towel sized towels as bath towels....

I told my colleagues, maybe we should use the towels to cover our faces....




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4 comments:

Asnija said...

ha..ha...interesting findings...I told shamien...the size of the towel vs. the size of you...I don't want to comment any further...anyway, thank you for the brooch, Mr P said, you took all the trouble to get it for me..in and out the subway, all over seoul...thank you arr...

pak pandir 2020 said...

what people do for friends......

AL-K said...

Korea.....the mere thought of going back there again is somewhat a bit of "unlooking forward"....funny cos without armed either with a korean dictionary or a calculator, it can be as good as the ultimate "no-deal" situation....(borrowing Dr Covey's word)....

AL-K said...

back to the towels issue, I cant remember facing that problem in Korea....perhaps they ran out of bathtowels when u came?