Travel questions!

[nixwilliams]

Hi all, I'm going to be travelling to the UK from Australia in a couple of months (yay!), and the flight includes an overnight hotel in Seoul (extra yay!). I have a few questions

Comments

[knightvision]

I can't really help in the area of the F on the passport, though I just recently traveled from one coast (of the US, to be clear) to another and back, and every time I was 'sir'ed or 'mr'ed despite the F still lingering like a nasty boiled disease on my license. I assume people are more interested in verifying your name and the legality of your ID/citizenship/what have you than your marker. :) most of the time, at least in my experience, people tend not to notice unless attention is specifically brought to it

[nixwilliams]

yeah, i've had mostly similar experiences with the F on my passport - people look at it, look at me, look at it again, say, "thank you" and hand it back.

thanks for passing on the information, too!

[mesolimbicjoy]

It is this principle on which the art of prestidigitation is built. Our brains are much less perceptive than we think they are, and most of the time they just assume they see what they expected to see in the first place. :)

[nixwilliams]

this is excellent! i don't think i've ever seen/heard someone use the word 'prestidigitation' in conversation before. :D

[elegancewaves]

Well, I've never been to Seoul so I don't really know 100%, but considering its a major major big city and not some dinky town in the backcountry, I'd think they'd just let it go.

[nixwilliams]

(i assume you're talking about the passport.) i'm hoping so. i think i just got a bit freaked when a trans friend of mine said she'd turned down a work placement there due to her passport mismatch.

[fall_of_sophia]

just a thought after returning from another Asian country with both some fairly tolerant and some fairly traditional attitudes, by Western standards (Thailand)... I often adjusted my behavior to behave more like is expected of women there a bit more than a lot of American/European/Australian tourists I encountered, and the reason is - even if those expectations are rooted in sexism, it would be colonialist for me to take an attitude that things that are expected of Thai women were not supposed to apply to me. If things are changing, it needs to be because Thai women are leading it, not because of or perceived to be because of the behavior of entitled western tourists. So in general, I would advise erring on the side of caution when it comes to social conventions even when they're oppressive and when some locals are challenging them.

Also, I don't know about Korea but same-gender hand-holding is not necessarily viewed as queer in all cultures; sometimes that only applies when it's between women, or between men.

[nixwilliams]

thanks for your reply! did you have a good time in thailand?

same-gender hand-holding is not necessarily viewed as queer in all cultures

yes, this is definitely something i was wondering about.

and thank you for articulating a bit better what i was trying to say - i don't want to tread all over whatever social traditions are in place with my entitlement.