Sunday, December 30, 2007

House on Hooker Hill

It's been a while since I've written a post, so I'll talk about Korea and last night.


I've met new people, and more people, so that's a good thing. I've seen all of my friends who came here from Japan and gone drinking in Seoul a few times.

Suwon, the city I currently reside in, is a city of 1 million people. There are bars near Suwon station, which is only one stop away from my house. There's a fort built on a hill called Hwaseong which is a 15 minute walk from my house, and is a world heritage spot. The most popular bars are near Suwon station, and in another part of town which has a lot of foreigners.

Seoul's fun. I've been to a few areas, but two areas to drink. These areas are Iteawon and Gangnam. The first is an international place with a lot of GIs, English Teachers, Indians, Africans and any Koreans that want to learn English. It also has a nice place warmly called 'Hooker Hill'.

Gangnam is fun, it's also fairly international, but caters more to Koreans. There are bars, restaurants, and it's a good time. I've only been once, but I do plan on going again soon.

And now for a story. My friend Laurence and I wanted to do a night out on the town, meet some people, have a good time. We went from bar to bar in Itaewon, and didn't find any Koreas to talk to. Unfortunately, we went mostly into empty bars. We then went to the Canadian bar, drank a few, and asked some people to tell us of a few places in Itaewon to go to. They gave us the name of a few places, so we went to see them. One of the places was a bar on the top of hooker hill.

As Laurence and I were walking up hooker hill, there were tiny buildings, no bigger than maybe 3 rooms. There were women looking into the street by opening their doors just a bit. When an unsuspecting person, in this case myself and my friend Laurence, would walk by, they would grab the guy and try and drag them into the hut. While being dragged in, a nice American girl was yelling out "herpes, gonnorhea, STD central" just in case we didn't know.

I didn't go inside one of the huts, but I got to see it while the stubborn Korean prostitute tried to drag me in. There's a main room, and there were four women (including the ones trying to drag us in). They were dressed up... well like prostitutes. The place had two rooms that I saw, and I didn't see them that well, but there was a big velvet couch in one of them.

We went to the top, got sketched out, and decided to go back down the hill. We got accosted by the same group of women, and fought them off. She then said something in Korean which I'm sure wasn't flattering.

And that's a story of my adventure in Seoul.

Monday, December 10, 2007

A post, from Korea

So it has come to my attention that I haven't been posting enough messages from Korea. I've been here for about three weeks, and I've been to Seoul a few times, and I've gone out once in a while.

I got lucky enough to see some foreigners and they were a fun bunch. I'll see them later I'm sure, and they seem nice enough. So more foreigners is always good. I was also lucky enough to have nice co-workers. The boss is good some people got better deals in Korea, but there are far more people who got a lot worse. A LOT WORSE.

There haven't been any big adventures yet. Winter's coming, so it's less likely that there will be big adventures.

So, three weeks later, I can say that Korea's fun, but I miss Japan. A lot.