One night when I was out with a western friend of mine we ended up trading taxi cab stories. His was when he had started in Korea and was just two weeks of the boat so to speak. He had gotten into a Korea taxi with one of those overly exuberant taxi drivers. If you’ve haven’t been in one of these taxi cabs it’s a little like flying with the Wright brothers and then being shipped on a space shuttle. You go from snail speed to light speed in 0.5 seconds and your underwear goes from dry to wet even faster. So two weeks off the boat and my friend is flying through traffic with a cab driver. Then they passed a accident involving a car and another taxi. The cab driver turns around points and laughs. To which my friend points forward and yells watch the road. The lonely planet phrase book doesn’t have a section about trying to get your cab driver under control.
This is all part of the Korea culture of work hard, play hard and live harder. I remember my first time in a Korean taxi. Chances are if there are ten finger nail indentations in the leather back seat that was my first cab, but the teeth marks were there when I got there. I’m not a religious person but I have never screamed out the Lord’s name more than in the back of a taxi cab, and sadly I was alone at the time…dammit. And I have never taken the Lord’s name in vain in the back of taxi cab, but I don’t know what the Catholic church’s position on screaming out the Lord’s name, like a little prepubescent girl, in shear terror. If someone knows their bible get back to me on that. Now you might be asking yourself what taxi cab doesn’t have finger nail indentations and teeth marks? Well since I thought that my first taxi ride would be my final taxi ride with my pinky finger, I scratched into the door a last will and testament that whomever was to find my panic-stricken corpse asking him or her to please go to my apartment and delete certain [cough] files from my laptop. Now before anyone begin to wonder, I have some illegally downloaded movies and TV shows. If you were thinking something else, then the problem is with your naughty mind and you can write your own jokes about that one.
Not to paint all Korean cab drivers as being reckless drivers. One was spoke English and was really cool, another cab driver was stopped at a green light with one car coming toward us way off in the distance. I pointed for him to turn left and he pointed to the stop light; he was waiting for the left turn signal. I of course demanded to see his Korean citizenship papers thinking that he might be Chinese. Most nights you’ll get into a taxi and can’t find a seat belt to save your life and other times the driver will point out the seat belt. Taking a taxi is like being drunk in Itaewon and “accidentally” wandering into a transvestite bar; it’s never the same.
Still if Hollywood makes the next Fast and Furious movie in Korea, Fast and Furious 4 Seoul Speed, the director is going to be on the phone to the producer arguing over production problems. Hollywood would find and bring in the most pimped out Hyundai cars with rims, neon, painted with dragons and Nitro-ed out the max, and the director would be screaming at the producer that all the best cars and stunt drivers were bring passed by average Korean cab drivers.
