Fast & the Furious 4: Korean Street Racing

A few friends and I went to Haeinsa Temple on Sunday to visit a very beautiful Buddhist temple holding Tripitaka Koreana, which are over 80,000 Buddhist scriptures carved onto preserved wooden printing blocks from the 1300s. There was the surrounding Gaya Mountain, one of South Korea's largest. Basically...way cool. See photo gallery for visuals (too lazy to post on here).

We had to take the bus back to the city of Daegu, where we would then take another bus back to our city of Yeongju. We arrived by 7pm and there were 3 more buses left for the night...but all were sold out! So stranded and knowing we had to work the next morning, a Korean man from Yeongju approached us and asked if we wanted to split a taxi back, which costs us about $35/each (ouch). So we had to take it. And then the adventure began...

At the beginning, we were going at a relatively normal speed, maybe 120 km/hr (~75 mph). Then all of a sudden, we were sent off into a warped zone (perhaps an alternate universe) and speed jumped about 60 km/hr. So yes, my friends, for nearly the entire way back to Yeongju (normally a 1.5hr ride) we were speeding at a rate of yes, 180-190 km/hr, equivalent to 110-115 mph...and a frequent high of 200 km/hr, which is about 125 mph. He maybe slowed down to 100mph around sharp curves and around other cars, honking at them to get out of his way before he hits them and kills all of his passengers (us). I was also the only one without seatbelt access. One of us did at one time ask him to slow down but that obviously made no difference. In fact, I think he went faster (she had used the impolite form apparently--oops). He also at one point had no passing lane, so he decided to speed along the shoulder of a dangerous curve, which I'm pretty sure took about 10 years off my life. Here's the nutty part (as if it wasn't already nutty enough): we were approaching a police car and we were all SO relieved to know that he'd finally be slowing down...only to find him honking at the police car and perhaps even increasing his speed. OH. MY. Apparently cops don't pull over for speeding. Instead, there are video cameras along the streets to "capture" the speeding cars. But the driver later told us that if you go over 180km/hr they can't capture you on camera.

So imagine a really cool simulated racing game (i.e. Need For Speed or Cruisin' USA) where you're rapidly passing every car on the road and then you hit some wall and spin around and crash and burn. This was exactly that, only you don't magically reappear after you crash. You can imagine it was about the best moment of my life. And this is only because I realized how much I love life and dying would not grant me that satisfaction. You know how people say your life flashes before your eyes when you're having a near-death experience? Well, I think those people make that up. Because my near-death experience consisted of a lot of "Oh f*ck f*ck f*ck" thoughts. And that was it. I now truly understand the meaning of this t-shirt (cleverly made for foreigners by foreigners).

It was great how we were able to laugh at the situation and talked about what death would be like. Of course, it was a very heavy nervous laugh.

I once thought being a racer would be killer...yes indeed, it would be A killer.

I am alive, don't worry. Unless they have blogging in the afterlife, then wow! Not that different in the afterlife, I guess.