Korean Job Discussion Forums

[chicagorick]

1. Guangzhou, China

While looking for an internet cafe on a side street downtown I happened into a computer store where the sales guy didn't speak English but wouldn't let me leave the store without purchasing a $3,000USD computer; to the point where he had two menacing-looking guys appear from seemingly nowhere and block the only entrance/exit. Once they saw I wasn't intimidated they sort of lost interest and wandered away long enough for me to hightail it out of there.

2. Chicago, USA

I was jumped from behind and held to the ground wile being robbed of my wallet, cell phone and house keys, literally right outside the front door of my apartment building, at an hour of the evening when plenty of people were still coming and going. The attackers ran off and tossed my wallet in the bushes a couple blocks away, and someone found this and returned it as it still contained everything (IDs, debit card, etc.) except for the $600 cash I foolishly had in it. This is in an up-and-coming neighborhood that has Starbucks and Borders on one side of the street, housing projects and pawn shops on the other. I lived there for years with no problems whatsoever, until this happened.

3. Saipan, Northern Marianas

I was at a traffic light, in my car. The light changed and the car in front of me was still sitting there while the driver chatted with some friends in the next lane. I politely tapped the horn to make him aware of the stop light, and he leapt out of his car, came back to where I was and started screaming insults at me and pounding on the door of the car. I had already locked the door and the windows were rolled up for the sake of air conditioning, but this guy was built huge and obviously worked out and looked like he could do some serious damage to me. I dodn't remember how I got out of there, but I did so pretty darn fast; some serious evasive manouevers. A Japanese woman was beaten senseless, killed, and her bank account cleaned out right across the street, only a few months previously. A Korean businessman was murdered and his body shoved into a wall cavity in an abandoned office building not far away. And hundreds of Philippine and Chinese women have gone missing on Saipan, only for their bodies to turn up in a field somewhere.

4. Mindanao, Philippines

After almost getting run down in the street, I got into a small argument with a motorcycle driver, that I guess must have gotten out of hand and wound up with him following me all over town (in a predominately non-Muslim area) screaming at me about foreigners, and the fact that I must be out of my mind or on drugs, and that I should be arrested and locked up in a loony bin for the common good (at least that was the general gist of his tirade, most of it was in Bisaya, a language I'm not fluent in). I'm just glad he didn't have a gun, machete or other weapon handy.

And, various street-crossing expeditions in Bangkok, Thailand and Shenyang, China.

[Tiger Beer]

[Alias]

Surprised to hear that Saipan is so dangerous.

[SarcasmKills]

[fiveeagles]

One time, I was in Puerto Rico for business. One night, I foolishly went with a few friends I had recently made and went to the southern part of the island for a island wide celebration. The night before I met this puerto Rican girl and it kinda blurred my thinking. She was going and all I could think of was meeting up with her there.

I heard there was about 300,000 youth going, so I was definitely up for it. When we got there, we made our way to the heavy metal band area and began to mosh in the pit. When about 4 or 5 big spanish guys surrounded me and asked me to drink their tequilla with them. I saw them drinking and I thought it would be alright. Once, I had a few shots, then they asked me to start chanting what they were chanting. They seemed like good guys, so I was game. When I did, alot of the people around us started laughing. Fortunately, someone told me that I was chanting. It made me look like an idiot.

All of a sudden I became acutely aware that I was in this foreign country, with no friends and no help if my "so called friends" decided to do me in. Fortunately, I got out of there without incident, but it made me accutely aware of my own mortality.

[chicagorick]

[Tiger Beer]

[Demonicat]

first of all, mad props for Anacostia. DC pride!

the most dangerous place I've been though, is the Ivory Coast (cote d'voire) during a particularly bad moment. People were walking up and down the street shouting, in french, "death to the French". While I would not normally mind such a thing, I was at the time a lone white guy who happened to be speaking French. Without going into details, lets leave it that after a dash through the jungle, I made it back to Sikkasso, Mali and forever cursed the bus that took me across that border.

[travel zen]

That is dangerous !!

Racism is a deadly thing.


I hope that doesn't happen to me when I go to Russia

[ChimpumCallao]

*LIVING* in an iranian neighborhood in the *poor* side of ISTANBUL.

I also agree that Lima is dangerous as hell. I remember when i went back to visit my aunties a taxi took a shortcut around the chollo barrios near the mountains (shantitowns). Then we got stuck in traffic.

in five minutes, We saw 1 car get their window smashed in, a whole bus gang robbed, and god knows how many chloroform kids walking around barefoot selling god knows what.

[Cheonmunka]

I was surprised in Saipan sitting on the balcony of the hotel room listening to police sirens. And kept hearing them off and on all night.
A tour guide told me that there is a crack problem in Saipan.

A beautiful tropical island paradise, so I walked arounf the island, often so nearly getting run over by all the sooped-up pick up trucks.

Strange people. But wonderful, clean ocean water.

[kiwigirl :O)]

so far the most dangerous place i have been to is inglewood/compton, la......that was before my foray into non western countries....ive not really felt unsafe anyway except on the fukuoka ferry coming back to korea as the waves were so damn high and choppy i seriously thought that was it for me

kg

[dbee]

Some guys tried to drug me on a train coming from Athahuya to Bangkok.

A German convict out on parole and on a three day whiskey + LSD + hardcore techno binge, made a valiant attempt to stab me to death with a knife, including - but not limited to - trying to bust my door down, trying to stab my door to pieces, trying to dig under my door with his knife. This lasted for about an hour. When the German police eventually did arrive, they ran my ID through their system, then asked the guy to turn his music down and left.

Took a subway past midnight from Manhattan up to Columbia university where we were staying at the time. Unfortunately, what hadn't been pointed out to us, was that for some reason they'd closed the columbia subway stop. So instead, two white foreigners with backpacks on, were treated to a tour of the slums of Harlem. It took us up to MalcomX boulevard, Bascially this black guy who was walking his daugther home was able to stop a 'veteran' cab (the only cabs that would operate up there). I think he pretty much saved our ass that time. We were about six seconds away from getting seriously 'jacked'.

Drunken argument with a crack dealer in Myrtle Beach. The guy just accosted me on the street

Nearly being caught in the middle of a riot in Boddaghya in India.

BAD food posioning in the tibetan townships on the Tibet - China demarcation line.

Very nearly falling in to the Mekong River in Loas and getting swept away.

Spending the night on the streets of Venlo in Holland after missing our train, with no cash and everything closed. Tripping waaay too badly on mushrooms.

Staying in a hotel near Angkor Wat in Cambodia. I was fairly drunk one night and I made the mistake of tipping the door-boy 1$. Next night two guys come creeping into my room and rob everything inside there. Luckily I'd actually changed room that evening for some reason that I can't remember right now. Unluckily, there were two Japanese girls in there that got $2500 stolen from them. What really creeped them out though was what else might have happened. I think they took and early flight back to Japan the next day ...

[Woland]

Almost fell into an active volcano near Bandung, Indonesia. This was when I was first working in Korea. I went down with a friend from here and we stayed with a friend of his in Bandung when we arrived. Friend of friend took us out to the double cone volcano near the city. You could walk around onto the ridge between the caldera. Most people did so and walked back to the parking lot. But friend of friend said that he had heard that you could walk all the way around the cauldron, so we went for it. I wound up at a certain point standing on a narrow ledge above the cauldron, trying to pull myself up over the chest high edge to the next level. The problem was that I was a bit too heavy for the volcanic soil and every effort to pull myself up just led to it crumbling in my hands and me teetering over the edge. Finally, after a good laugh at my predicament, my friend came down and offered himself up as a brace for me to pull myself over.

The only other time I've really been scared for my life was on Loyola Avenue (not normally a dangerous place) in Chicago. Coming off the el, I stumbled onto an altercation between a man and woman. She was trying to get away and he wouldn't let go. Another guy getting off the train and I both sort of stood there gaping at seeing something like this in our neighborhood in the middle of the afternoon. The guy noticed us, let go fo the woman, and as I was closer, came after me, saying, "Is this a show?" over and over. I figured I had to buy the woman some time to get away and stood while he approached (both the woman and the other guy from the train beat it at this point). I was thinking, "*Beep*, I'm going to get into my first fight since middle school and I don't know why." And just as he got up close, someone who knew him came out the alleyway by the el, grabbed him and led him away. I didn't really get scared until later that evening when I talked to a friend about it and she looked at me bug-eyed and said, "What if he'd had a gun?" That brought a chill to me.

[The Man known as The Man]

East Side-Vancouver