Egypt vs. South Korea.

Don’t worry, Egypt hasn’t become allies with North Korea or anything.

Because I went straight from one new foreign culture to another completely different new foreign culture, I was constantly contrasting the two.

pork
There wasn’t a piece of bacon to be found the five weeks I was in Egypt.

Korea is a pork-heavy country. It didn’t even take me 24 hours after I left Egypt to have my first bite of pork, and in my nine or so days in Korea, I more than made up for the five-week Egyptian pork drought.

alcohol
Alcohol is legal in Egypt, but you have to go looking for it. Even the Italian restaurant in the neighborhood full of foreigners didn’t offer wine. A crazy night out with my new Muslim friends usually consisted of tea and maybe shisha [although, as already mentioned, there was a little more booze involved when I was with Christians].

South Korea, one of the foreigners said, is “the land of the functioning alcoholic.” They set up soju stands on the sidewalk. Businessmen start drinking right after work, and you start seeing a number of people stumbling around outside as early as five in the afternoon. I saw a guy throwing up outside of a bar and a girl so drunk that she couldn’t walk and wouldn’t let her boyfriend help her – she just squatted on the ground or lolled on a car hood and screamed and cried. Not really the kind of stuff I like to see at any time, but after that long in Egypt, I think I was even more sensitized to it.

The comments from men in Egypt could get a little uncomfortable sometimes, but at least the men were sober and less likely to go further than just comments, so I never really felt too unsafe. Drunk people, on the other hand, can be scarily unpredictable, and although I didn’t have any bad experiences with drunk men while I was in Korea, it wasn’t unthinkable.

the landscape
Egypt, as I have previously mentioned, is pretty much entirely desert. There are green patches at the oases or where there are sprinkler systems in the cities, but it’s mostly just brown and sandy/dusty.

Korea, especially Jeju Island, overwhelmed me with green. It was beautiful.

driving
I’ve already discussed driving in Egypt.

Whenever I arrived at a destination in South Korea, my foreigner friends warned me that the traffic was crazy – but after the time in Egypt, it didn’t seem like much. Sure, Koreans sometimes [well, often] blow red lights without a second thought – but at least they have traffic lights.

tips
In Egypt, you’re expected to tip pretty much everyone – all the usual suspects, like taxi drivers, hotel porters, and so on, but even sometimes people who just give you directions when you’re lost. I’ve never been good at knowing how much to give people – not too much, not too little – especially in a country that has a very different standard of living from my own.

South Korea is a tip-free country, and it was glorious. You don’t tip taxi drivers, you don’t tip waiters, no tips, ever.

women
Even scandalous foreign women in Egypt make sure their skirts are below their knees and they’re not showing off too much cleavage.

Young Korean women tend to wear high heels combined with short shorts or shoooort skirts to show off their legs-up-to-here.