Leaving Shanghai, a warm welcome in South Korea.

Shanghai was a hard place to leave. For me, the city was magnetic; drawing me towards it at first, and later refusing to let me go. Every step seems like an adventure, every street corner has something interesting. It can be scenic or it can be chaos. Shanghai is glamourous but rude, and the showpiece of China.

So with Shanghai in my rearview, I landed in Incheon, South Korea yesterday afternoon. It’s hard to imagine just how different South Korea is from China, even just this short flight over from Shanghai. By comparison, Korea is organized, polite, and subtle. That’s just relative to China, in my experience.

I took a bus nearly from the top end of this small country to the bottom and didn’t even need a washroom break. In 4 hours I arrived in Gwangju where I’ll be for the next 3 days. This compact city of 1.4 million feels like a village compared to Shanghai, but is actually quite a major metropolitan city itself. Of course, I’ve got a bit to share!