STUDENT IN KOREA: April 2007

Today Keith, Addison, Oscar, Wanjun and I decided to go to grab some western food, so we went to the Pizza Hut in Onyang. It was a mix date because Keith had invited 4 chinese girls who live off-campus but are here on exchange from China. It was pretty fun because there were 4 different languages being spoken: English, Korean, Mandarin and Cantonese (Only Wanjun and I). We ate 2 pizzas, one of them was a Korean deluxe and the other was a cheese stuff crust with cheese dipping sauce. You could tear off the crust bits to dip in the cheese. We also had the side dishes which had fruit and potatoe salad, pumpkin salad, pasta and chef salad. Also had unlimited coca-cola. The total bill came to 69,800 which wasn't too bad because we were all stuffed. We continued to walk around Onyang to buy some groceries and just take a look around. We spent a total of 4.5 hours there and now I am very tired. I only had 3 hours of sleep last night. Pictures will be up soon!

Again, I think asians are big on the arm heart thingy:

After the Samunori event, around 15 international students and a few koreans decided to go to Seoul for Club Day. Club Day happens on the last Friday of every month. There are two locations, one in Hongdae and the other in a district that I do not know. It is basically a night where everyone comes out to go clubbing. People pay 15,000won and they can go to any club of the 40 clubs in the Hongdae area.

We got there at around 11pm and decided to go to a bar first to drink. The bar we went to was called HoBar which is pretty famous in the area because they have I think 4 locations all close to each order. We ordered 2 bottles of Jack Daniels for the 15 of us internationals and we polished that off pretty fast. I think I had around 9 shots which is alot for me. The set included a can of coke and some fruit and the price was 59,000 per set.

After HoBar, we decided to hit the clubs. We went to DD's at first and it really sucked. It was a small square room with one bar and they had I swear 100 people in that tiny room. You couldn't even get to the bar or the otherside of the room. No room to dance, no place to chill, just a dark jail type room. If there was a fire, everyone would of died in there.

We decided to just drink a bit outside the club on the streets (which is ok) and we ended up meeting some people from Singapore and America. We also saw this old man get into a fight with a younger guy but it got broken up pretty fast. The fight was not like a fight I have usually seen, it was more of a wack on the head and that was it. Supposedly the old man drunk man had hit a girl earlier. We decided to go to our second destination which was Sclub. We took the Americans and Singaporean girls with us and that club was not that good, but better than DD's. It had more open space but the smoke machine and smoke from ciggerettes was hurting my eyes. The guy to girl ratio inside was aroun 3-1 which also was not good. We decided to stay here for most of the night because this was the only club that had room to dance (although the space was quite small). I ended up chatting with the workers at the front door who had to check if people were wearing the clubday wrist band or not. Their english was really good because the guy, B.K., was born in Indonesia and studied at an international school and the girl, Jay, was born in South Africa. I ended up getting a free tequila shot from B.K. and a dance with Jay which was cool.

At around 4am some of my friends decided to leave but Keith and I stayed back and wandered the streets. We went into this club called The Hole and it was a bit bigger, but more packed. The place was very dark with no windows and black walls. There were no lights besides the stage lights that had a strobe effect that almost gave me a seizure because they were so bright but going on and off at a slow pace. Again, 3-1 guy ratio so we decided to go back to SClub. We just danced a bit more and Keith, Han, Joon and I decided to get some breakfast at 6am. We went to an Udon noodle place which helped our stomachs.

From there, we seperated our ways. Joon went home and Keith went to find Oscar, Ray, and Addison at the motel they picked. I went with Han to Sigil station where he went home and I had to transfer to Yeongdupo station to buy a KOrail train back to Onyang. I got lost at the station and ended up exiting and going back in, a 900won mistake. I made it safely to Onyang but I thought I had miss my stop so I was a bit worried. Out of the station I was too tired to get the bus so I paid 9000won to take a taxi back to the Global Village. When I got back, I just passed out.

All in all it was an alright experience. Not really what I expected but it is ok. I do not think I will do it again though. Total money spent was 70,000won. 26,000won just for transportation.

On the way to the clubs:

Walking to the bar:

At the HObar with some friends:

I couldn't find any pictures of the clubs and etc but I took the following at around 6am. The streets were still pretty busy:

Mmmm breakfast of champions!

The subway we took back to Yeongdempo had some cool advertising. They had Pepsi cans attached to the hooks where you can hold if you have no seat. I thought it was pretty cool!