Fear and Loathing in Seoul

Hello again. How are you? Awfully quiet these days. Gotta say, it's discouraging.

I had an...interesting weekend. I've thought about how to explain it fully, and it's pretty hard to put into words, but I'll just go through it, when I write it in my head it sounds like a Hunter S. Thompson adventure though.

I'll skip Friday night. It was far too tame to be worth describing. Company dinner. Free $50 meal. Can't complain.

Saturday started about noon. I headed to the travel agency in Itaewon. I had to pick up my freshly visa'd passport. I was extremely worried for a few minutes because the fine woman behind the counter had trouble locating my passport. She just kind of nonchalantly shuffled through the stacks like if she didn't find it it'd be no worse than misplacing my big mac order. Finally she spotted it in a different pile, and my heart rate went back down under 150. (Losing your passport is a nightmare. When I travel outside of Seoul I'm duct taping the thing to my chest. No worry like being trapped in China.)
-A quick side note. I know I've been a bit mysterious about my travels, so here's the skinny. I'll be going to China from July 27th to August 2nd. I am going with Alex and Tazz. We're going on our own. I managed to find a nice little hotel in a traditional Chinese village area(called a Hutong) about a kilometer from the Forbidden City/Tienanmen Square area. For $26 a night! It was an excellent find if I do say so myself. I'll be doing the usual touristy stuff-the city, the square, the Great Wall, the Olympic facilities. Hopefully a few days to just wander around the city as well. We shall see.

Back to Saturday.
I could try to explain to you the types of things you see in Itaewon when you're walking alone, but I'd rather not confuse and permanently scar you. It's a wild place(not in a debacharous sense-at least not while the sun is up-but in a much more literal 'you can find anything here' sort of way)
Anyway, Alex met up with me around 4. We had a few drinks and then went to dinner.
Then things started to pick up. We went to a little sports pub to watch the Wallabies/Springboks rugby rematch. The place was packed. I really wish we had something similar to this in the States. The bar was about 2/3rds South African, and I was with my South African friends, so I of course rooted for the Africans. They all sang their anthem, chanted some random stuff that was in a different language. The Aussies retorted. It was good fun. I started mingling. I noticed a couple of guys staring with that "I'm only about 65% sure I know what's going on" look at the TV. Turned out they were Marines who work at the Embassy. We had a solid bitch about how we can't stand Army guys, which was therapeutic. Then I met a couple of New Zealanders who spent 15 minutes convincing me why I should root for the NZ team in the upcoming world cup. They were pretty convincing-and I have to admit they do have one awesome name "The All Blacks"
Finally about this time Tazz and James showed up. (Remember James? Tazz's now official boyfriend-the guy who patrols the DMZ) James also brought a friend-Matt-from the base. Matt's a good guy. He's Brittish, with that thick accent that I only understand about 60% of the time, but he's always making some sort of joke and then laughing at it without waiting to see if I'm laughing at it too. He was by no means a serious man. In fact I'd say he was far far to the goofball side of the spectrum. Matt if a fighter pilot. Those two do not go together. Complete off the wall type of personality, a baby face-he's 30 but looks far younger than any of us 20 somethings-and HE controls the multi-million dollar vehicle of death. Man, the things we see destroy our preconceived notions sometimes. I thought all fighter pilots were Tom Cruise.

Anyway, we had a couple more drinks, chatted with some more random people. Then decided to head out to Erin's apartment. She was having a house warming party. She had just moved into her new apartment earlier in the week. We got there just in time for the landlord to come up and start yelling in Korean. I didn't understand much of it except AFRICA(That's Erin) CA NA DA(roomate) OUT TOMOLOW! I'm not sure how that turned out the next day, but it seemed like a rather fast eviction, even for someone with a personality as prone for eviction as Erin.

So with the house party destroyed we decided to go to another heavily western club district in the north part of the city. In America we might worry what to do with all the booze which we bought for the house party. Luckily there's no such thing as "drinking in public" or "open container" laws in Korea. So, I wandered the streets drinking my 40 oz. of malt liquor. This is when things really started going bizzare. We ran down to this rather pristine looking subway, managed to convince the guy to let us on the last train for just 4 or 5 stops. (I think there was a bribe involved) I was nursing my 40 pretty hard at this point. Once we got off the train we still had a good 2 Km walk. I started collecting things. I don't remember much why or where the idea came from, but when I opened my bag the next morning I had a bottle of wine, two rocks, and a poster for "Cats". A man can have some strange vibrations while drinking malt liquor on the subway.
So we're walking walking walking. I'm in the back of the pack, slowly making my way. Then the guy ahead of me stops abruptly. I accidentally kick the back of his shoe. No harm done to him. But it broke the strap on my sandal. Every one else had sufficiently been drinking as well, so they continued to trek. I had no choice, be abandoned or walk barefoot. Barefoot it was! So here I am, bottle of malt liquor in one hand, sandals in the other, walking down the street in world famous Hongdae. I'm quite lucky I didn't have a nasty tangle with broken glass, but I did have enough awareness at the time to look for and avoid that.
Finally we came across a 7/11 and Tazz managed to handle asking the guy for tape. So we taped the soul of my shoe to my foot. It was a bit odd, but it worked-although I don't think it was exactly attractive.
Of course right after the 7/11 was a street salesman selling shoes. I bought a pair of hideous shower shoes which were 3 sizes too small for 5,000 won($5). They were ugly and they made my feet hurt, but it was better than the delicate tape job I had going. Again, I have to thank Tazz for this transaction as well-my Korean negotiation skills are the best at this point in the night. Tazz was kind of my handler. (For those of you worrying, I was never in any serious danger or anything-I have good friends.)
Still walking this psychedelic walk of people from all over the world. Kind of meandering trying to find a specific hip hop club.
Then things got even stranger-the former mentioned Canada girl made some stupid comment about Tazz's boyfriend. It should be mentioned that we refer to Canada girl as "dumbass". We're not big fans. Well Tazz is a great person, but certainly not at all passive aggressive. Much more aggressive aggressive. So Tazz confronts dumbass about her dumbass remarks. This turned into something out of "Real World Seoul". Dumbass truly showed her dumbass colors by hurling insults such as "You're not popular!" and "No one likes you!". The Canadaian dumbass was told abruptly that she was more on survivor than the real world and the group had just voted her off. At this point a fight broke out just to my right between a large group of Koreans. It was basically a gang beating from what I could gather.

There I stood in my size 8 Hawaiian shower shoes, bag filled with broken sandals, a half drank 40 of Cass Red, and "Cats" promotional posters, with memories of the dumbass canadian making an L on her forehead with her index finger and thumb, and a massive, highly tae kwon do influenced, beatdown going on in my peripheral. I came off the saturday night high quite quickly then. We went into the club. It was packed, and the beats and the rhythm were a little nice to just sit and enjoy. But enough was enough. I was waiting for the midget, the clown, or the polar bear to come strolling through at any time. Alex wasn't feeling so hot either-he could feel the oddity too I think-so we caught the first cabbie willing to deal with white people and got home. I think he screwed me on price, but I wasn't about to kick his door in for it. I'd had enough fun for one night.

That's the highlights of the night. There's more, but I think you get the idea. It's a strange trip over here sometimes.

Sunday was much more calm thank god. Alex, Jin and I finally went out of Seoul to a small little satellite city(not quite a suburb persay) and had dinner and went up this random tower in the middle of nowhere to see the little bit of scenery it had to offer-which was highway and river. Honestly though a mass stream of lights on an interstate was really nice. It reminded me off home. Which is usually good, if a little melancholy for me. As long as things stay foreign it's hard for me to miss home, but when I get a little taste of what home's like. That's when I miss it. I had bacon last friday with lunch, it had the same effect. So Bacon and Highways make me miss America. I'm not sure what that says about America, but it says something. Certainly this is something for us all to reflect on.


Anyway, that's enough for now. Leave questions. If you want more entries at a faster pace, questions and comments is the quickest way to get what you want. So get on it.

-Bret