I spent last weekend in Busan.
We are in the middle of monsoon season, and it has rained each day for at least a week, and the forecast is for this trend to continue, but we decided to try for an afternoon on the beach anyway. It worked out perfectly and rained Friday night, but the next round held off until Sat night, staying nice all day Saturday as we played a little beach frisbee and swam in the still chilly ocean.
After dinner, a couple of us decided to go to the casino. I was quite surprised to find out that the casino is for foreigners / tourists only, Koreans are not allowed to gamble! The plan was to just play a little blackjack and have a few drinks before heading out. It was small stakes (5000 won = $4 a hand minimum) so although I had some bad luck, I could rationalize that I broke even with a couple mildly expensive cocktails. But my buddy busted out of blackjack and decided to play a little roulette. He fared poorly and resorted to a defensive betting strategy of increasing his bet with each loss. All of a sudden he's out of chips and talking about going to the ATM again. Well, now at least I can talk about the time I saw my friend bet more than a million on a single spin of the wheel - I put what was left of my chips ~$70 down in a solidarity bet. Basically there were three numbers out of the 37 that could hit to bust both of us, and of course 36 red came up the winner.
The rest of the night we hung out at a bar or two, and saw a street fight involving a man in underwear with a large kitchen knife. Sunday the weather was bad, so I didn't do too much before heading back home. Overall a memorable weekend.
Wednesday, July 15, 2009
Sunday, July 5, 2009
Daegu
Like most countries, Korea is broken into provinces for local governance; there are 9 of them. In addition, the biggest cities are (geographically small) provinces of their own. Its like if Philly seceded from Pennsylvania, but Pittsburg would not be big enough to seperate. Anyway, the cities are Seoul, Incheon, Busan, Daejeon, Ulsan, Daegu, and Gwangju. Gwangju will be the last one I get to visit, as I spent last weekend celebrating the 4th of July and checking out Sean's home city of Daegu.
The weekend was basically one long party. I arrived Friday night in time for a late dinner followed by a walking tour of the downtown bar scene. An advantage of Daegu is that it is compact. It is a large enough city (a couple million) to host a significant ex-pat community, but it is small enough that the majority of the nightlife is concentrated, in all its epileptic neon glory, to a couple city blocks of downtown real estate.
Highlights from the first night included getting a free cocktail in a bag. Seriously, the new trend there is a little kiosk on the road that sells what looks like IV bags full of mixed drinks. Being American at midnight and in the right place at the right time earned us the treat.
Aided by the holiday mood I almost treated the weekend as a vacation from Korea. I ate almost exclusively American foods: hamburger and french fries, bbq ribs, eggs & bacon with biscuits and homestyle gravy, even some apple pie although it was served in a cup and a little over cinnamoned. One misguided Korean friend, having heard that it was a traditional holiday beverage, showed up to the bbq party with a can of eggnogg!
Saturday we got brunch at an America style cafe just outside of a US army base then went shopping for fireworks. We eventually found them right where I predicted: in a children's toy shop. Quick language note: the Korean word for fireworks literally translated is a compound word "fire-flower-play" this is an example of a playfull simplicity to the language. Others include fish="water-meat" watch="hand-neck-time-thing", key="open-easy"
In the mid-afternoon we went to a bbq on the roof party. It was a pleasant day for it and really a fun party. The sky had some threatening clouds, but the weather held out long enough to appreciate the rooftop a little, and get some grilling accomplished. They even had a kiddie pool which gave us the highlight of watching our host climb a tree and shake the branches when a girls dress got blown off the roof. It did start to rain after we had been there a little while, but this may have been a blessing in disguise as it broke the party up into a pair of apartments and the foyer at the top of the stairwell. It is always nice to have different rooms with different moods to wander between - basically there was a singing room, a drinking room, and a place to chat.
When the first party ended (i.e. ran out of booze) We stopped briefly at a different rooftop party to pick up a girl to talk to and a bottle of soju to drink for the cab ride downtown. I had a good time that night. Met a lot of cool foreigners (a surprising number of them English, Irish, and Scottish), and when I was talking to the natives my Korean was in rare form, bolstered as it was by the confidance imbued by alcohol and flirtatious girls.
Sunday Sean and I were a little hungover, but a good way to cure that is to go have lunch at a cafe with outdoor tables where you can watch the human traffic in the park. Walking around, we had a little time to kill before his language exchange and my bus back home, so we went to a rather unusual place. It was a cafe with a $3.50 cover charge that got you access to the self serve bar that had coffee, iced green tea, and some breads. It was a library cafe: tons of books on shelves scattered throughout the place. All Korean as far as I saw. The gimic was that for two bucks extra you could dip your feet into a fishbowl, and the little guys would nibble the dead skin and calluses off your toes. It was ticklish and bizzarre.
I slept on the bus ride back home.
The weekend was basically one long party. I arrived Friday night in time for a late dinner followed by a walking tour of the downtown bar scene. An advantage of Daegu is that it is compact. It is a large enough city (a couple million) to host a significant ex-pat community, but it is small enough that the majority of the nightlife is concentrated, in all its epileptic neon glory, to a couple city blocks of downtown real estate.
Highlights from the first night included getting a free cocktail in a bag. Seriously, the new trend there is a little kiosk on the road that sells what looks like IV bags full of mixed drinks. Being American at midnight and in the right place at the right time earned us the treat.
Aided by the holiday mood I almost treated the weekend as a vacation from Korea. I ate almost exclusively American foods: hamburger and french fries, bbq ribs, eggs & bacon with biscuits and homestyle gravy, even some apple pie although it was served in a cup and a little over cinnamoned. One misguided Korean friend, having heard that it was a traditional holiday beverage, showed up to the bbq party with a can of eggnogg!
Saturday we got brunch at an America style cafe just outside of a US army base then went shopping for fireworks. We eventually found them right where I predicted: in a children's toy shop. Quick language note: the Korean word for fireworks literally translated is a compound word "fire-flower-play" this is an example of a playfull simplicity to the language. Others include fish="water-meat" watch="hand-neck-time-thing", key="open-easy"
In the mid-afternoon we went to a bbq on the roof party. It was a pleasant day for it and really a fun party. The sky had some threatening clouds, but the weather held out long enough to appreciate the rooftop a little, and get some grilling accomplished. They even had a kiddie pool which gave us the highlight of watching our host climb a tree and shake the branches when a girls dress got blown off the roof. It did start to rain after we had been there a little while, but this may have been a blessing in disguise as it broke the party up into a pair of apartments and the foyer at the top of the stairwell. It is always nice to have different rooms with different moods to wander between - basically there was a singing room, a drinking room, and a place to chat.
When the first party ended (i.e. ran out of booze) We stopped briefly at a different rooftop party to pick up a girl to talk to and a bottle of soju to drink for the cab ride downtown. I had a good time that night. Met a lot of cool foreigners (a surprising number of them English, Irish, and Scottish), and when I was talking to the natives my Korean was in rare form, bolstered as it was by the confidance imbued by alcohol and flirtatious girls.
Sunday Sean and I were a little hungover, but a good way to cure that is to go have lunch at a cafe with outdoor tables where you can watch the human traffic in the park. Walking around, we had a little time to kill before his language exchange and my bus back home, so we went to a rather unusual place. It was a cafe with a $3.50 cover charge that got you access to the self serve bar that had coffee, iced green tea, and some breads. It was a library cafe: tons of books on shelves scattered throughout the place. All Korean as far as I saw. The gimic was that for two bucks extra you could dip your feet into a fishbowl, and the little guys would nibble the dead skin and calluses off your toes. It was ticklish and bizzarre.
I slept on the bus ride back home.
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