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Nothing ever
lasts forever
On Saturday afternoon I took a long cab ride to Apkujeong, a
fashionable area of Seoul where everybody has double eyelids and shiny
shoes. It was the first time I've been there in a very long time, but I
wanted to see it one time before I left to make sure it was as rubbish
as I remember it being and that I'm not missing out by not drinking
around there.
It was kind of interesting really- I felt like a country bumpkin who didn't belong in the sophisticated part of town- there are paparazzi patrolling the streets looking for celebs, restaurants that serve nothing but lobster and classy girls smoking cigarettes on the streets with no shame. Terrified of the pretty people and flashing lights I hot-footed it back home clutching a new Adidas tracky top.
On Saturday night I had dinner with Emily then met up with Stuart and
his unstable friend whose name I can't spell. We had a few drinks and a
few laughs (mostly at my expense for ordering a "Ginger mojito"- which
apparently is not manly)- and polished off a bottle of vodka in HITW
bar where I was shocked to see a drawing I made 18 months ago still on
the wall.
Two weekends left. Thanks for the comments and emails folks, I feel pretty popular today. Just to clarify then, when I leave I am not going to update the lostseouls blog any more. It's one thing to have a couple of weeks of "Hey look! Steak and kidney pie!" in
between doses of "So I went to
Hongdae and..", but I'm leaving Seoul for good this time so know
when to call it a day. I've been telling people I'll go cold blog turkey when I get back
home, but honestly I'll still be taking photos when I get back, and one
night when I get drunk I'm bound to sign up to blogspot.com or
something to post them online. So there might be something knocking
around later in the year but it probably won't be much like this site.
There'll be no random photos of paper cups for a start.
Anyways since I haven't got much time left I've been trying to make a list of stuff I want to do, and one of them was to see a show in the Sejong Performing Arts Centre- so last night I put on a fancy suit and went to see The Hunchback Of Notre Dame with Emily, Jenny and RachelLynn. Going to the theatre is a lot like going to see a film except you
pay much more money and feel smug when you come out, and at the Sejong
Arts Centre you get the extra film-like experience of subtitles- either
in your seat back monitor (if you paid 200,000 won for the ticket) or
projected to the sides of the stage (if you paid 60,000 like us).
Unfortunately I don't understand either of these two languages and
so maintained a very thin grasp of the plot throughout- at the interval
I asked Jenny The music was great though, as was the choreography and lighting
(yeah whatever lads, I went with my girlfriend
so can say what I like) and a wonderful time was had by all. Well today seems like as good a day as any to mention it; I'm leaving Korea permanantly in a couple of weeks time. I'm really sad to be going, I certainly don't feel like I've done
everything there is to do in Korea or that I'd be bored if I stayed for
longer, but I'm moving with my job to Shanghai in October, and really
want to spend some time in England before I go from here to another
asian country. I'm starting to forget what that 'fishes and chip' looks
like.
There's a guy arriving on Monday to replace me at the airport, and
I'm supposed to tell him everything I can about Korea in a few weeks
before I go. But where am I supposed to start with something like that? Korea's been great to me- every day there's been something new*, I've made some great friends, eaten and drank a plethora of strange and wonderful things, visited some fantastic places, and generally just had the time of my life.
Anyhoo I'm not going to bang on about it today, there'll be plenty of time for nostalgia over the next couple of weeks, but I just wanted to mention that my time is running out- and you should start looking for another kimchi-based website. I'ight?
More from Changwon and Pusan. Years ago Sam tried to make me go to the aquarium at Co-ex, but I have a morbid fear of crossing the Han river, so refused and she has always held this against me, so since Busan has a wicked acquarium of its own, we had a look around. Now although I didn't complain at the time, I thought the 15,000 won entrance fee was a bit steep, it's not like they have fish monkeys is it? However...
It turns out that watching fish swim around is actually a great way to spend a few hours- especially when you get to see Seahorses, electric eels, pirhanas, fish the size and shape of a Sumo's leg and a fricking shark with a laser on its head.
Highlight of the day for me was when a scuba diver went into the
shark tank to do a bit of maintenance and posed for a photo with me,
then after the snap was taken, we pretended to shake hands through the
glass. As with my mascot obsession I don't know why it is, but that
kind of thing makes me grin like Gary Glitter at a roller disco. [Loads of photos today Mum, if I was you I'd go and make a cup of tea whilst it
downloads ] Flying from rickety old Gimpo airport to Gimhae near Pusan takes about an hour to fly pretty much the full length of South Korea, and costs about 140,000 won.
I went with Emily to visit my mates Sam and Barclay who are living in Changwon, pretty close to Gimhae airport. They moved down there a month or so ago and it seems like a good place to live- close to the mountains, none of the traffic problems you get in Seoul, but with a downtown so drenched in neon it would (seriously) give Jong-no a run for its money. Friday night was spent in a few bars and restaurants around the
city, (City? Town? 55,000 people anyway)- eating BBQd meats and
indulging in what I would call 'moderate binge drinking'- although that
really doesn't say good things about me since we did actually drink a
goodly amount. Not so much, however,
that we couldn't wake up at midday on Saturday to head to the coastal
town of Pusan for a bit of beach action.
My third trip to Pusan, it was also the third time I'd gone straight
to Haeundae beach and not seen anything of the rest of the city- for
all I know, the parts of Busan which aren't the bus / train station or
beach might have wild Unicorns parading down the strees and marshmallow
trees at every corner. I do know Haeundae reasonably well now though
having visited it at the height of summer 2001, and then again last
June,
but so far have only ever drank on the beach- this time we dug a bit
deeper into the maritime delights and went on a boat
trip and to the aquarium. Oh yeah!
Other than being eaten by wolves in a forest, there's nothing to
make you feel further away from the big city that a boat trip. The
fresh sea air filling your lungs, the jaunty motion of the waves, the
wind blowing through your- well blowing anyway- and one thing that I've
only seen in Korea, seagulls chasing the boat catching snacks thrown to
them by the passengers. Most of the time, people throw the crisps and the gulls catch them
in their horrible beaks, but sometimes they'll swoop in and actually
snatch little corn
snacks out of a kid's hand- if you were quick all you'd need to do
is grab its neck with your left hand and BINGO- seagull and chips for
tea!
The boat trip went around 'Ohyukdo' = '5 6 island'- so called because when the tide is high there are 5 rocks, and when it's low tide there are 6 (or so the recorded message said anyway). We picked a good time for the trip, the sun was just beginning to set as we head out to sea and the lights were coming on in the city when we rounded the island and headed back into harbour. Frigging freezing it was, but luckily I'd bought a hat very similar to Elmer Fudd's at the dock, fur over my ears and everything.
Tomorrow- a photo of me with a frogman! 16 February 2006
The airport is a strange place at night, there aren't really any
flights at night so apart from a convenience store and the 24 hour
sauna in the basement, the whole place is empty. With all the empty
marble floors and huge glass walls it would be the greatest venue for
an epic paintball fight to the death you could imagine,
but when I suggested renting it out to crazy marines the eggheads in
management said it
would "set the wrong tone". Typical.
Flickr.com is the site I use to host photos and if I had more hands I'd give it four thumbs up. As well as being a good place to put my pics, they make it very easy to look through other people's personal photos and find images on such subjects as, oh I don't know- girlguide parades, naked midget wrestling, or the Winter Olympics. Whilst looking through photos of Korea I found an amazing collection taken just after the end of World War Two by a US serviceman who was stationed here.
I got in contact with the photographer and he told me he'd spent 5 months in Korea after the end of WWII. It seems he was originally going to be part of an Allied invasion of Okinawa but after the Japanese surrender he was posted to Korea instead.
I think the photos are fascinating, especially the older Korean guys
wearing horsehair hats with beards down to their shoulders- how that
ever went out of fashion I'll never know. It's a time in Korea's
history that I know virtually nothing about (although to be fair I
don't know much about what happened in 2005 either)- the Japanese left
after occupying the country since 1910, and the Korean war was still 5
years away, so I'd like to think it was a good time to be around. No
doubt I'm wrong though.
I know the world as a whole has changed a lot since 1945- (it's in
colour for a start), but when you think that it was the year that the
microwave, Bob Marley and Rod Stewart were all invented it puts into
perspective the incredible transformation of South Korea in just a few
short decades. Many, many thanks to Don
O'Brien (the photographer, who reserves all copyright on these
images) for giving me permission to post them up here. February 14th is, of course, the day when Korean boys sit back and relax, safe in the knowledge that their Korean girlfriends have to buy them a present. One month later the pendulum swings t'other way and the men have to try and figure out how much their girlfriend spent on them, so they can buy something worth slightly more. Ah l'amour. The only female in my office brought in chocolates for all of the guys today- which was nice of her. However I only ate one before foolishly leaving my desk- and the rule around here is that unattended chocolate = free chocolate.
Never fear though, the day is not yet over and either I'm going to
get a gift later on, or else I'm going to throw a hissy fit the likes
of which have never been seen before.  13 February 2006 These Monday posts are actually being generated by computer- I simply enter the names of 8 people and three bars, hit a button and it automatically inserts the required metaphors for being drunk and such and such. It's a sad state of affairs and one I hope to fix soon by getting
out of the city next weekend but in the meantime please stand by for
another collection of "People in bars" photos. Saturday night was Cam's birthday- but he's one of those people who
doesn't like to be the center of attention and actuallyy left really
early. This is something I find hard to imagine, especially when I was
loudly insisting that I be the only person allowed to sing karaoke to
Justin Timberlake at 4:15 later that same evening. Still, Happy
Birthday Cam.
The night started in Sinchon where we hit a "Bavarian Brewhouse"
that specialises in gigantic tubes full of (pretty tasty) beer and a
grim looking "sausage platter", then onto the "mushroom bar" which is
sort of like being inside a Salvador Dali doodle made out of
fiberglass. It could be argued I should have taken a photo of this
place to explain what I mean, but when our pitcher of beer arrived, it
had cubes of dry ice in the middle so I was distracted into playing
with that instead. This part of the evening was spent with Doc and his friends Chris,
Frank and Leslie, who all came along to Itaewon to meet the usual gang
who were celebrating at Soho. It being almost valentine's day the bar
was decked out in pink balloons, satin drapes, and roses hanging from
the ceiling- a definite change of pace from the next bar we went to
"Club Friend" which still had a giant spiders web and pumpkin on the
ceiling from Halloween.
The 'happy hour' at Club Friend is, apparently, from midnight until 2:18am (or more likely from the time when a gang of people show up, to the time when they're drunk enough to pay full price) so we were suitably refreshed when someone suggested going to Noraebang (by chanting "No-Rae-Bang! No-Rae-Bang!" over and over and pumping their fist in the air. It might have been me). And then you can guess the rest of the story. Coming later this week- a WWII exclusive! Woo!! Compared to most cities I've been too, Seoul has practically no people begging on the streets. Sometimes people will come on the subway and try to sell you slightly over-priced chewing gum, or hand out leaflets explaining their dire situation before asking for donations, but proper panhandling is fairly unusual.
When it does happen however, they really go to town. The guy on the
left is holding a cardboard mooching box on the steps leading up to the
Kyobo book store. It's a blurry photo but you can see that he's doing
the kind of really deep bow that you see in front of Buddhist altars,
and ancestors (alive or dead) on special occasions. I don't know much about the welfare state in Korea (and when I say
not much, I mean nothing at all) but you have to be in a pretty bad way
to resort to this kind of thing in the freezing winter. In fact I
almost feel
bad for putting my chewing gum in his box now. Assuming you didn't just turn off your computer in disgust after that tasteless remark, I suggest you spend the rest of your break from work casting an eye over Owen's blog. People who don't smoke weed may remember that he visited me a few weeks ago on his way to Australian & New Zealand, and this site includes his write-up of all that. Also check out this guy called David-
an Australian who visited North Korea and the Arirang Games this
November. No, I didn't realise you could do that either. It snowed last night, deep and crisp and even- so this morning it took an hour and 20 minutes to get to work. Before you cry on my behalf though, that basically just meant an extra 20 mins sleeping on the bus.
Luckily for me on Sunday I bought this thing from a guy on the subway to keep me warm. It's made out of a kind of fleece stuff and is basically a headband with earmuffs attached.  The salesman demonstrated how it could be used in the way shown,
around
your mouth (I think he said to avoid breathing in mosquitoes?!) or
around the neck like a scarf- which was all rubbish but for a thousand
won you can't go wrong as whenever I wear a hat, my earphones fall out. It's reversible too, the other side is red. For parties.
That is all. 6 February 2006In the film "Big", Tom Hanks puts his life in the hands of an obscure arcade game, and eventually gets to play a giant piano with his feet so now whenever I have to make a major decision; what to do with my life, whether to ask a girl out, whether to shave my chest hair into a Shamrock etc. I leave the decision to one of the "Rock, Scissors, Paper" machines below.
I think these ones must be broken though, as they always come up
'Get drunk in Hongdae'. Before drinking in Hongdae however I went out to a nice restaurant
in Euljiro-2-ga (or thereabouts, I'm not good with my Euljiros)- I
think it was called "Bruschetta Pix" or some such nonsense, they had a
statue of kids playing on a see-saw outside and the world's worst music
video but it was a smashing meal and a great choice of restaurant by
Emily. Oh, also Emily is like my girlfriend and stuff (happy now?!)
After the restaurant there was still time for a bit more classiness
before the inevitable carnage. I've written about the Veiled Chamber Of
Hidden Mysteries before, but the photos were crap that time so I'm
mentioning it again.
Finally though, all pretense of class was dropped and we went to
Tinpan Alley to meet up with Birthday boy Peter and the rest of the
gang. Hmm getting pretty slack with the updates here- to be honest it's a
blessing in disguise though; last night the thrilling roller-coaster
ride of my life included such peaks as The ebay thing is especially sad, I keep on buying really crappy old
cameras that cost about the same as a roll of film but are (according
to other camera geeks) 'classics'. The trouble is that even though I'm
buying these things to use, I am too cheap to pay the extra postage to
have them posted out to Korea so my parents have just got a stack of
boxes in their hallway, waiting for me to come and collect them.
Anyway what is much more exciting is The Return Of Sam! Sam is an english girl who was my proper partner in crime in Korea
until she went back to the UK for a holiday and never returned, long
time readers may know her as
Without much more notice than when she first left the country, (the
plan was a 1 week holiday, she called on the second day to say she was
never coming back)- Sam returned on Tuesday with her new man Barclay
(who is a funny bastard- and that's
swearing). Instead of hitting Seoul like normal people they're going to live in
Changwon (a town near Pusan where people still
point at aeroplanes) because apparently as there is something down
there called "nature"- presumably some kind of bar. It's weird /
fantastic having her back in the RoK but a shame I won't get to spend
as more time with
her as I used to when we ran tings.
The reunion of the old gang was on Wednesday night, Heidi nearly
cried when she found out we'd ordered pork neck ("Ewwww! Pig
throat!??" "Well, what part of a
pig does bacon come from?"
"I don't know, but not the throat!
Ewwwww!!"), Sam reminded us how much
wine you can actually fit in a wine glass, Barclay told me what "Bo Kat
juice" was and I got abuse because I refused
to order a beer instead of a Wrong Island Ice Tea at 1am when I was up
at 6:30 the next
morning. 1 February 2006 Apparently you can't walk around Hongdae without coming across great
new bars lately. On a very quiet Saturday night, when most people were
home bowing in front of their grandparents or using the long weekend to
get out of the city, I went with my new mate Peter to a wine bar 3
floors above the main club street.
I dread to think what the owners of the place were trying to
translate when they declared this place an "Occult Lounge", but Zhou
(Zhou Inn?) was very stylish, pretty reasonable, and entirely empty
apart from one guy asleep on the till. When we got up to leave and
found the owner asleep again, Peter was tempted to walk out without
paying, but I insisted we pay the full amount and no mistake (also, he
woke up when the bell for the elevator went).
On Friday night I walked to Sangsu station (line 6) to meet Amy and
saw another 3rd floor gem- The Wallflowers was a good size and location
for our group of 5 (me and four girls because I'm a frigging player,
seen?) but the best thing was the music policy. Instead of CDs, the guy
at the bar was downloading tracks from something called the World Wide
Interweb- which I doubt will catch on. When some random Smiths tune
came on, Patty and Shelly wanted to know if he had "This Charming Man",
and when he played that all hell broke loose. We snowed the poor guy
under with requests, made him crank up the volume and danced to Arctic
Monkeys (best new band in years), S-Express (I recreated the dance
they'd make me do at youth club when I was 11- I used to be paid in
fizzy cola-bottles), R-Kelly (one Amy's chose it, the other Amy
belly-danced to it), Prodigy (Shelly showed us 'the running man' and
scared all of the Koreans on the next table), and just loads and loads
of great stuff. And then we hit club night. |
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