Taxi Tour of Seoul

In 2006, I had the opportunity to go to Seoul, Korea with JCI. I was a candidate for JCI Vice President so I did not have a lot of time to sight see. The 1st day I did and I took advantage of it. Christa, Sean, Mindy, Ben, and I were off to see anything and everything we could. Our cab took us to the first temple on Sean's massive and extremely comprehensive sightseeing list (I think he is more organized then I am) and we explored the temple. As we were looking for a taxi to take us to the next location, we came across a Communist protest complete with the ominous music and hundreds of people shouting something we could not understand. As the police with the riot gear showed up, we took it as our clue to get the hell out of dodge.

Then it was off to the Seoul tower to take the tram to the top. Mindy and Ben got in a different cab then us, had some problems with communication and ended up at the base of the mountain. Sean, Christa and I arrived at the tram entrance and proceeded to wait and wait and wait not knowing what had happened to Mindy and Ben. A half hour later and a mile hike later Mindy and Ben showed up in need of a drink and a shower. The view was amazing!

Through the week we (I) did not get much time to go sightseeing and there was still stuff on Sean's list that I had not seen so after a Korean BBQ and a lot of drinks, Lori, Phil and I thought it was a good idea to hire a cab and take a midnight tour of the city. Probably not our best idea as we all were tipsy but we jammed ourselves in to the back of a taxi cab and gave our driver the list of 6 things we wanted to see. We took off like we were drag racing in the movie "Tokyo Drift", went about 1 block and the driver slammed on the brakes and pulled over. Had we laughed too much as we were holding on for dear life? Then the driver started yelling at a pedestrian and passed him our sightseeing list. What was going on? Was he trying to get this guy to drive us? Were we going to get robbed at one of these spots? The guy outside wrote on our list and handed the paper back to the driver and again we went from 0 - 60 in 3.5 seconds. We figured out that he had our list translated so he knew where he was going.

We got to the 1st location and we tried to dispense of our cab driver and pick up a new driver who wasn't as nuts, but he was not having any of it. He stuck to us like glue. He assisted us in taking pictures, opened our car doors and since we could not really communicate with him, we knew we were stuck with him. At the second location, the closed gate blocked the temple so we could not even see it to take a photo. The next thing we know the cab driver is talking to the security guard who opens the gate and we have the ability to walk around the deserted grounds. The driver was trying to explain the temple to us in KOREAN so of course we had no idea what was going on. We lost Phil briefly as he ducked behind a bush to go the bathroom (I told you we had been drinking) and then we were off to the next location.

2 hours later, our stomachs hurting from laughing so much, the driver returned us to the bar next to our hotel where we had a pitcher of smoking beer (compliments of dry ice). A tour, a pitcher of beer, a night to never be forgotten, all for $45 dollars - how can you go wrong?