My initial impression: Korea Rocks!

It was awesome! People! Noise! Wide roads (and narrow side roads)! LITTER!!!!! OMG it had been ages since I’d seen a bit of rubbish on the ground – it was by no means a dirty place! But litter did exist, unlike in Japan.  Korea still kinda felt like Japan, but a little edgier, maybe a little more alive, and even a little more genuine.  It immediately looked rougher, but i liked it.  It was a welcome change from the fabricated/perfectness/cleanliness/professional/polished Japan I’d been living in the past few months.

…looks gross

Also Korea seems to have a LOT of street food.  That is, people with stalls on the street cooking ridiculously cheap food for sale.  Some looked mighty freakin dodgy let me tell you, some looked awesome.  Everything was ridiculously cheap, i’m talkin anything they sell would go for about $1, maybe 50 cents. The most common i’ve seen is this “Fish Cake on a Stick” stuff.  Looks disgusting.  Didn’t know what it was until this very second after researching for about 5 minutes.  However, Chris and Haruna had one, maybe Frank did too… I had a bite, and it wasn’t vile… but… i’d probably never bite into one again.

Frank led the way with his directions consisting of “Find the Dunkin Donuts, then the Communications shop [or something], then take the road between those till you find a coffee shop, then turn left and keep walking, you’ll see a sign to keep going, turn left then immediately right and you will see the Bong House” – yeah glad I wasn’t navigating. Thanks Frank!

Bong House was on a dingy little back alley road, and next door to it was the Bong Bar – Awesome! Ahh.. at the front door we were met with probably the most high tech door apparatus ever known to the history of man.  We decided not to touch it… well… poke it a few times, THEN press the door bell (something we knew how to use).  A friendly young Korean lady came to the door, opened it up and welcomed us in.  We took our shoes off in the shoe-taking-off-section and proceeded into the Common room of the hostel.

It looked cosy!  Really nice!  There were photo’s of previous customers, didgeridoos, a computer, a few rooms and a bathroom and kitchen just off to the side of the common room.  We were showed to our room, which was small, but had 3 bunk beds and a single bed.  That’s cool, we only planned to sleep there.  OH OH OH! And it had a HEATED FLOOR! zomg! We shat ourselves when we realised the floor was heated!!!!  ‘KAY, enough about the floor.  We plopped our stuff on our beds and headed back out into the Korean night.

Mmmm…. Pork… Bottle of Sujo on the left

We hadn’t eaten in a while, so we decided food was the first target.  We found a small, but lively alleyway and walked down there.  We came across a small restaurant with large photo’s of pork on it – sounds good!  We went in and was met by an older Korean lady and a younger Korean man.  They were very nice!  Frank ordered a pork dish that we could all share and also a bottle of Sujo each.

Sujo’s this strong shit, to me it felt like vodka, but to others, apparently it doesn’t.  It was ok, it was really strong, and came in a 600ml bottle (or 500ml…).  Kinda tough to get through.

The meal was interesting.  We had a hot plate on the table and a bunch of smaller side dishes to accompany it like this spicy salad stuff, Kimchi, garlic, lettuce leaves, various condiments etc.  We were a little unsure what to do.  Eventually the lady came over with a tonne of our pork and started slapping a bit of everything on.  Then she showed us how to eat it.  Basically you get a lettuce leaf, hold it in your hand, and pile EVERYTHING ON IT! Then eat =D  It was delicious, and pretty fun.  The lady was really nice, spoke next to no english but was always talking to us and smiling.  Oh and she taught us “delicious”: “Mashi seyo” – i think… Well that’s what I was saying haha

Oh, btw, people who don’t know: Korean food is SPICY! omfg, they insist on everything being spicy.  I went for the Kimchi – BAH MY MOUTH! Better cool it down with this salad stuff! *shoves salad in mouth* BAHHH!!! THAT’S SPICY TOO!  There is no escape.  None.  I didn’t know this.  However, it was delicious.  AND CHEAP!  Total, including the bottle of alcohol, came to 11 dollars… =| wow…

After dinner we walked around for a bit, the wonders of Seoul and the animated people that inhabit it slowly growing on me second by second.  We started looking for a bar but kept taking wrong turns apparently.  Apparently? yes, because we’d always end up on the dodgiest side alleyway with no lights and complete dead-ness.  We wanted more life.  So we kept looking.  Eventually we found a bunch of girls, and so Chris asked them where a good bar is, they told us to follow them, so we did and within 5 minutes we ended up at a bar of some sorts.  It looked dead.  Especially for a Friday night.  But we didn’t want to offend so we sat down (at our own table) and ordered some drinks and some snack foods.

At a table next to us was a bunch of rowdy Koreans.  They looked like fun.  Eventually one Korean guy came to our table and started talking to us, telling us his life story of how he is a Korean, who grew up in Japan, and speaks a bit of english.  Resulting in him not really knowing English, Korean or Japanese lol He also continued on at how one of the girls he’s with (who is actually his boss) says she likes “Western Men”, ie. Us guys at the table, but the Translator man is sad because he loves this girl. Haha, it was a wacky night indeed.

Oh and somewhere in the mix i threw a popcorn at chris, missed, bounced off the top of the couch-thing we were on, and hit some Korean dude sitting next to us.  He was PISSED! He glared at me with death in his eyes! I was so amazed! Why? Well it’s the first time in a while i’ve seen anyone display EMOTION! … well not true, but ANGER at least! Haven’t seen it for ages.  I know exactly how that scenario would have played out in Japan:

It’s ON!

Jace throws popcorn at Chris, misses, bounces off couch thing, hits Japanese man and then the two of us would engage in a rigorous SUMIMASEN BATTLE!!! (Sumimasen = “excuse me/i’m sorry”) Constant bowing and rapid fire sumimasen’s would ensue! Slowly, I would feel ridiculously guilty of the pain I must have caused this man, his ancestors and his future children, and slowly HE would feel ridiculously guilty of inconveniencing ME by interrupting my popcorn’s destined trajectory.  We would both then depart from the company of our friends in fear of further shaming them, their hometowns, pet’s, distant relatives, next-door neighbours and workplaces… it’s never a pretty site… sumimasen battles…

</sarcasm>

From there the night gets a bit hazy… uhh… i don’t remember what we did after that.  Went home?

Till next time…