Korean Ryan Goes to Seoul

NOTE: This post was originally written for my email list on 08/17/2004. It was edited today, 10/13/2004. I want to note that I got a good deal in the electronics mart when I visited it in this story. I got a CD player for less than $100 when the cheapest I could find it online was $180. Funny because I conducted the CD player transaction in English with very little haggling. If you read "The Benefits..." you'll see that I got a little fleeced when I bought a camera later (using only Korean). I still find that odd.

Damn, if I had enough time, I could write one of these every day. Really, that much crap happens to me over here. But you all should count yourself lucky that I keep it to the really interesting stuff. That said, welcome to the tale of my first trip to Seoul. Seoul, I should mention, is the third largest city in the world.

We took the fast train to Seoul. This is called the KTX and it goes nearly 190 mph (300 km/h if you're metric savvy, which is all we use over here). We got off the train in Seoul a mere 50 minutes after leaving Daejon, no small feet considering Daejon is about as far from Seoul as Chicago is from Fort Wayne.

After catching a cab, we immediately got stuck in traffic. It took us twenty or so minutes to go two city blocks. "We could walk faster," said Logan, a fellow Hoosier that works at my school. "Yeah, and we should," said Mike, this guy I hang out with in the bars sometimes. And we did.

After walking a few hundred meters, we saw what was backing up the traffic. A protest, a HUGE protest. We were well into the crowd before we realized what they were protesting: the US (I'm not sure specifically what, but it definitely was the US). We looked up and saw that we were right outside the US military base, gates bolted and guarded by about 100 riot police--and we were right in the thick of it.

We decided to just put our heads down and plow through. Three Americans wading through a sea of protesting Koreans is no fun--I've never been so nervous.

"Where are you from," we hear ring out in heavily accented English. "Canada," Logan yells back and we plow through some more. I'm glad Logan's a quick thinker.

Scratch what I said earlier, I HAD never been so nervous up until that point. I was even more so when we exited the crowd on the other side. In full formation, in full riot gear (4 foot clubs, sheilds, helmets--the works), there stood (no exaggeration) about 1,000 Korean riot police. And they didn't look friendly. They were ready to go, and were doing their best to stare us into submission. This went on for, quite literally, at least a quarter mile: riot police packed in formation ready to go.

About half way through, we noticed some American soldiers on a bridge overhead. They were, of course, laughing and pointing at us. We couldn't hear them, but I can only imagine they were saying, "look at those dumbfucks down there. Who wants to bet they won't make it out the other side?"

But we did.

From there we went directly to Itaewon, the foreigner sector of Seoul. It was just like an American city in that part, so I'll spare you the details. I will, however, say that whenever I tried to speak Korean to the Koreans in that area, they all answered me in English.

After a few beers and some good old American pool (Korean pool, by the way, is just bumper pool. Here, American pool is called pocket ball), we headed to the electronics mart. This is a sea of shops selling top of the line merchandise for less than half price. No joke. It's incredible. (Note: See "The Benefits of Knowning Half-Assed Korean (and the Aftermath)" for more on the electronics mart).

Skip forward a few hours of shopping, a great Indian restaurant, and some more Korean beer and we ended up in one of Koreas few gay bars. It's actually really hard to tell where these are because Korean men are very affectionate with each other naturally. In fact, if I didn't know this was a gay bar and didn't see the foreigners being as affectionate as the Koreans, I never would have know. Still, it had a quite atmosphere, so we stayed. I'm quite sure we were the only straight men in there, but it was a good time (and half off drinks).

Skip ahead a few more hours, a nice little hippie bar, and some falling asleep in a booth at some bar, and I ended up in a true, real-deal Korean hotel. A room in Korea is essentially a mat on the floor in a room that's not big enough for anything else, except MAYBE a TV. My room had a TV. It didn't work. But the place was only about $10 a night, so I didn't complain.

The next day was me wandering around before my much more drunk friends woke up. Not much to tell. Seoul looks like Daejon, just much much bigger. When the did finally wake up, we went to the art museum. This was great. They had a huge Dali exhibit up, that I'll tell anyone who is interested all about. Good times.

And thus concludes the Seoul adventure that starts out very interesting and kind of trails off into some garbled stuff about a museum if you hear it told in real life.

Ryan