So it's my first night in Seoul, and I decide to go out on the town. I'll just take the elevator down and...
"F"?! F isn't a floor, crazy Koreans! You guys! You're almost as bad as the Japanese! Oh wait your fear of the number 4 is EXACTLY THE SAME. Not impressed.
Yup, my love hotel for the week. Hotel Major. I got to see plenty of middle aged men go through its doors with embarrassed/nervous teenage girls. Occasionally one of them would have a soul-dead middle aged woman with them, but mostly just the young girls.
After walking around for a little while, I promise myself to only drink at bars with the funniest of names. Although, really, BAR for LONER is just honest. Already making good on my promise, I eat dinner at a chain restaurant called Beer Factory. I figure chances are good I can get a drink there.
I also get a big skillet of delicious okonomiyaki. Or at least the menu said it was okonomiyaki, but I've never actually had it before, so I have no clue if the Korean-based European-style pub take on it is accurate. I also have Korean beer and officially start learning that Korean beer is pretty shitty.
I leave, and some stuff happens that I didn't get pictures of:
-A young guy in a suit on a street corner stops me and asks if I want a young girl. I say no thanks, and he just gives up. Just like that. It was kind of depressing to see a pimp with so little work ethic.
-The phone thing. Okay, I'm walking along that same street, and next to a Gentleman's Massage Club I hear ringing. I look around, and there's a cell phone lying on the curb. I keep thinking one of the other drunk people walking around will do something about it, but no one seems to notice. I walk past a few more times, and finally I pick it up. Which is about where my plan ends. It hits me I can hit redial, and just see what happens. I do so. A guy picks up, and I use some phrase in my guidebook asking if he speaks English. He claims he does, but I have my doubts since the only words I could sort of make out sounded like he kept saying he was a bus driver over and over. Eventually I just hang up and walk around, confused and even more anxious. A few blocks down I see a cop car, so I tap on the window and pretty much force the phone on them. As cool as it would have been to keep my curb-phone, getting mistakenly accused of theft is not the way I want to go to Korean prison.
-I'd also like to point out that these guys are fucking apeshit for billiards. There are billiard halls in every building complex around here. Just nuts.
-I try to go into what looks like a fairly classy bar, and have my first encounter with a Whiskey Bar. In these establishments, you pay 100-300 bucks for a bottle of the stuff and they also give you snacks and pop or something. I exit.
Dodging all the drunken stumblers out (and noting the awesome atmosphere towards public drunkenness for future use) I go into a convenience store and buy some necessities.
2 Korean beers, a Korean bitch drink (with something like a 4% alcohol content, KGB Vodka was making promises with its name that its contents could not back up) and some ice cream. Just the way God intended. Until, however:
Tragedy strikes. I have no spoon. FUCK YOUUUUUUUUUU KOREAN ICE CREAM
These PC Bangs are everywhere, and I guess is where all the StarCraft is played. This is certainly the most forlorn PC Bang I've seen. That, or maybe there's just nothing inside. If only.
Finally, we must end this post on a bittersweet note.
Ah, Sexy Luxury Music Room. You promised to combine so many of my interests like no establishment before. I will tell you now, dear reader, lest you wait in vain for stories of euphoria and joy inside those walls, that it was not to be. I and others with me tried to go in, but there was a gate barring the door, locked and chained. It would be fair to imagine that every song about a broken heart is really about me never getting to go inside the Sexy Luxury Music Room.
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