Coming from a country where smoking is banned everywhere, except in the bedroom post-coitus, it's interesting to be in Korea. Here, you can't help noticing that smoking is EVERYWHERE.And I mean everywhere.
Bars, restaurants, noraebangs (karaoke rooms)...simply everywhere. You'll find ashtrays in the craziest of places. Suspended above urinals in the washrooms or shoulder-height with toilets. Sadly, you get used to it.
Then you get addicted to it.
With smoking being so ubiquitous and culturally ensconced, after several drinks in a bar you can't help lean over and say, "Hey, can I have one?" in your best, broken Korean. Pretty soon, you're buying your own packs.
My choice: Dunhill 1mg
Dunhills are an American splendour that I've discovered here. They come in so many varieties in cool, succinct packages that don't have pictures of bleeding gums or blackened livers emblazoned on 'em. Thus, for awhile I temporarily suspended my Canadian persona of grimacing whenever I was in the presence of smoke, and took to it like Dean Martin.
However, I am now in relapse mode.
Recently, several foreigner friends and I have felt the repercussions of the white devil sticks and have unanimously decided to quit, hoping to get rid of the monkeys on our backs. I have prevailed, but other friends have fallen back to the allure of the Dunhill Devil.
Here's hoping those of you who quit, stay quit, and those of you who haven't started, stay far away from Korea.
Dunhill Dan
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