By Kathryn Fourie

You know how in my previous blog I was talking about how awesome public transport is in Korea? Well, I did kind of forget to mention how utterly terrifying it is to travel by bus. I mean, I know we all talk about Joburg vs. Cape Town vs. Durban (actually Durban drivers are so chilled you barely know they’re driving), mad taxi drivers and what not…but Koreans are on another level.

Our class had a lecture on transport in Busan when we arrived here two weeks ago. Our supervisor, Mr Choi, bust out with an awesome power point showing the subway, the KTX (super fast trains), ferries, boats, planes…and then he showed us a picture of a bus. “Busses are a very good option, but Korea is famous for having really…bad…bus drivers”. We chuckled and were all thinking ‘yeah right, it’s a bus how bad can it be’. Mr Choi clicked on to the next slide and said “This is a bike.” The image was basically the flaming remnants of a small scooter, smashed across the road, with a bus in the background. “I would strongly advise you don’t get a bike.” You don’t have to tell me twice.

Korean drivers are the most impatient drivers in the world. I mean, the only reason the roads here don’t resemble Bangladesh on market day is that they have very strict traffic regulations. People drive up curbs, hoot like they were born specifically for that purpose, and brush so close to each other down narrow lanes that I find myself ‘knyping’ involuntarily about 40 times a day. In fact, two days ago I watched a car reverse into an old man, bashing him on the hip. Luckily the driver was going super slowly, but the best part was when the old man picked up his walking stick and simply smashed it three times on the boot with the force of a ninja. He then toddled round to the front of the car and hurled some prime cuss words at the driver, raised his stick in a pretend swipe, and toddled off again.

But this rushed, hard-arse driving (and pedestrianism) extends from car drivers to taxi drivers (I close my eyes a lot), and then over to the scariest of the lot, the bus drivers. Korean bus drivers wear matrix glasses, glare at you like you just swore at their mother and drive like Mad Max on Tik. I can’t tell you the amount of times I have literally been knocked off my feet by the force of brakes slamming on (ABS would be sooo nice), and I have perfected the art of grabbing the hand bars in mid-air, doing an Air Jordan slam-dunk manoeuvre and landing back in the same place. I mean it’s exciting and all, but I could live without it.

One of my best experiences the other day was on the bus from the main land back across the bridge to Yeongdo-gu (the island where I live and work). It was mid-morning so it wasn’t too crowded, and I had somehow wound up with a lot of grannies on the bus. Of course we had Michael Schumacher the second behind the wheel, and his delightfulness was particularly partial to thumping the hooter with his gloved fist. On one overly indignant thump, the hooter decided it had had enough and refused to stop howling.

When I say that we drove for 10 minutes with the hooter screaming its defiant little lungs out, I am not kidding. The grannies on the bus almost started a riot, slamming brollies on the back of seats and saying rude things in Korean, while I just looked at the teenager riding next to me who packed up giggling. Eventually Michael Mad Max Schumacher pulled the bus over, nearly causing a tail-gate crash with the 101 bus behind us. Of course the 101 bus hooted back which further enraged the grannies and the bus driver, and I was biting my lower lip so hard to not laugh that I was almost crying. Teenager had hands in face snorting.

The problem was eventually solved by the bus driver shoving his whole fist into the fuse box and pulling out a clump of wires, by which time a lot of the grannies had abandoned ship and jumped on the 101 bus. I stuck around just for the entertainment.

You know, as haphazard and kak as public transport can be in South Africa, the bus drivers and taxi dudes will always smile at you, greet you and it’s accepted that people will cut you off so no-one bothers hooting in anger thaaaat much. The only thing to be given to Korean drivers in credit, is that there are only something stupid like six traffic deaths a year. I find it hard to believe, but Korea is a bizarre place. I mean you can buy beer right next to the milk at the convenience store at 3am. You win some, you lose some.