Phuc Dup

I travel more than the average person and I have my fears, like any one, about crashing in an aeroplane or being hijacked. Although the chances are very rare indeed, it is always a worry when you hit bad turbulence or hammer down hard on the runway whilst landing in a storm.
What I never expected to worry about is dying in a taxi. The earth quake that shook my hotel in Dubai earlier this year was a buttock clenching moment but yesterday’s taxi ride back from my meeting with Samsung was the most unnerving experience yet.
I am all for pensioners who do not want to fully retire, keeping themselves busy by finding something to do or earn some extra cash. However there should be limits…….if only to protect the public.
After a pleasant meeting with Samsung, they offered to arrange a taxi back to Seoul for me. Ten minutes later the cab arrived and I jumped in.
The driver was a sight to behold. He did not look a day under eighty years old. It is very typical of Asian men to try and hide their age by colouring their hair and wearing younger clothes but this guy was way over the top OR he was on his way to a Love Parade after his shift ended. He wore a leather cap and a lycra orange and black top. I don’t speak Korean and he didn’t speak any English at all. I gave him the Asian name Phuc Dup because he truly was a mess. Firstly, his face had obviously taken a lot of beatings and his fingers were knarly and freakish. My guess, is that he had been a boxer…….a really bad one. The type that lost every fight by a knock out and had some idiot coach who kept encouraging him to keep on fighting, just so he could piss himself laughing every time Phuc Dup got into the ring.
Anyway my first suspicions about Phuc Dup being a nightmare taxi driver was when he couldn’t plot a way point on his own GPS SatNAv. One of the Samsung guys had to do it for him. I reckon Phuc Dup thought an abacus was still state-of-the-art. Anyway, to watch him stab and shout at the little screen was not pretty. Once the Samsung guy got everything set up we set off. You know it’s bad when we travel, and I’m not exaggerating, just under ten meters out of Samsung’s gates and we are already lost. He turns around and shouts at the guard to get instructions.

So we set off again and that was when I noticed that Phuc Dup was obviously punch drunk from all the beatings. I swear he was ducking, bobbing and weaving from imaginary blows coming at him as he drove. It was quite unnerving to see him jinxing around but what was more worrying was the way he would snatch at the steering wheel as he dodged the punches. Of course that would send me sideways without any warning. It felt as if someone was driving the car using Playstation buttons.
It got worse. Although the journey was only 50km, we had to join a couple of motorways and that meant merging with other traffic. Now merging traffic is supposed to blend like the two sides of a zip when the zipper passes over. Not Phuc Dup, he had the Velcro approach. His method of merging was to try and stick his car to any car beside him. It turns out Koreans also like to shout abuse, wave the finger and honk their horns loudly when someone tries to trash their car. Phuc Dup was oblivious to all of this, even when I screamed because I thought we would end up under the wheels of a huge tanker truck that was not going to give way. Thankfully it did, although the traffic in the other two lanes that swerved to avoid the big truck, which braked and swerved to avoid Phuc Dup, were not amused.
Seeing as how I couldn’t speak Korean and Phuc Dup was ignoring my screams, what could I do? 
Thinking it couldn’t possibly get any worse, Phuc Dup decided to take a nap. Entirely reasonable at his age but not when you’re doing 130km/h on the motorway. “Oi! Phuc Dup! At least slow down to ninety if you’re going to sleep!” was all I could shout as I poked him to wake him up. He just giggled then started dodging more punches.
Somehow we made it Seoul and in the rush traffic his Velcro merging technique continued to be effective at getting us through the congestion. It was when I saw my hotel and thought the end was in sight, that the real drama happened that nearly killed us both. Like an idiot I foolishly tried to use hand signals to indicate a few directions to my hotel. Phuc Dup thought I was trying to punch him and dived out of the way. Whipping his head around, as if to look out of the side window, whilst raising his elbows up to protect himself from me, he drove straight through a red light........at speed! If I hadn’t wisely gone to the toilet just before I left Samsung then I would have gone now……..uncontrollably.

People say that when you are about to die your life flashes in front of you. All that flashed in front of my eyes was a bus, two cars, a lorry and some school children crossing the road. You could hear both tyres and people screaming……I was one of them. Luckily, the lady’s voice on the SatNav brought Phuc Dup back to the wheel and he pulled in to my hotel without any concern to the mayhem littered behind us. In fact, he’d even finished printing my receipt and got my bags out, before I could stop myself screaming.