Activate Human Shield

When you leave home for distant lands, your loved ones remind you to "be safe."  Often.  And before coming here, we both gave some thought as to how we would take care of ourselves and each other and our crap during our travels.


Interestingly, I don't think either of us had spent much time preparing for what is surely the most dangerous threat we've encountered in Asia.  Its not crime against foreigners.  Not diseases we for which we aren't vaccinated.  Its not food poisoning or malaria-carrying bugs.  Its traffic.  The traffic in the 3 major cities we've visited (Ulanbator, Beijing & Seoul) is fucking terrifying.  In UB, its like the driving public is made up of drunk 14 year olds joyriding in stolen cars.  The good folks of Beijing drive with one foot on the gas, one on the break, and both hands on the horn.  In Seoul, while slightly less frenetic, stop lights seem to be a guideline and cars often swerve through crossing lanes to avoid the pedestrians who, theoretically, have the light.

In Beijing and Seoul, in particular, car culture has taken hold just in the last couple of decades and people are pretty amped about the complexity of the intersections they've managed to create.  It is not at all uncommon to come to a 5 way stop, each direction 4 lanes wide, and stand at a corner pondering when might be an opportune time to grasp hands and sprint across the pavement.

The reason I'm typing this with none of my limbs encasted is that we devised a defense strategy  using human shields.  This started, in earnest, in Beijing when we were so gd confused as to when might be our turn to cross that we would blatantly choose a local-looking pedestrian to shadow.  Over weeks the system was refined so that by the end of our time in Seoul, we were crossing large intersections surrounded on all sides by able-bodied, crossing-savvy Koreans.

To all the residents of Seoul and Beijing that we shamelessly tailed, thank you for your protection.  We didn't mean to freak you out, we were just trying to be safe.