Just wanted to say thanks, Tim. This post made for some of the most interesting and informative reading I have done in a long time. It is a bit ironic though that you start out with mentioning how much you earned and then said don't go to Korea for the money. But, hey, I am nit-picking now and I don't want to do that.

For me, Korea was a chance to see that not every place was as enjoyable for me as China was or as near death horrible as Turkey was. The money in Korea was very good ( not as good as what you made, but then I didn't work my rear end off like you did, either) and I managed to make a few good friends and managed to avoid drinking at all and found enough Western-style food (It's not ethnic prejudice - I love Chinese food but I can't eat the Korean cuisine without getting sick.) to live on.

My wife, whom I met in 2002 in China, is Chinese. She and I have both been hired by a Korean school and so I will be returning to the land of kimchi and hangul as my wife gets hat experience I first ahd in China - the first foreign country.

Should be fun to return.