Sleeping To Dream: First night out in Seoul

Twas a fun night folks. My friend Jeff, who I've known since 3rd grade, came up to Seoul from Busan for the weekend. We went out to Hongdae, which is basically just street after street full of street vendors selling clothes, food, and bars. We sat down for some coffee before we went out to eat. One thing about Koreans you need to know is that they love to eat and drink while doing it. We went to a Korean barbecue place and had ourselves some derricious pork accompanied by a couple bottles of soju and 20 oz beers. The grate we grilled on had a groove in it that went all the way around on the outer edge which is used to put this egg, scallion, and kimchi mixture in. It's called Gae-ran Jjim, yummy. After becoming sufficiently tipsy and full, we headed to our next stop. It was a really dark cafe/bar, really similar to Hugo's. The ambience was great, only lit by candles. We ordered a bottle of rose scented/flavored soju and I ordered myself an IPA. The soju was out of this world, tasted like nothing I've ever had, magnifique!

IPA, this one's for you Ross!

What you know about that rose soju, hater?

By this time, we were plenty intoxicated, but in true Korean fashion we soldiered on to our next destination to imbibe. By the way, pretty much all the places we went to had food for you to order so you could eat while drinking. We walked into an old cabin looking tavern. Ordered a couple bottles of traditional Korean rice wine called Makkoli along with an order of seafood pancakes.

Makkoli out of tin bowls and seafood pancakes!

My favorite part of the night was talking with Jeff in Korean since we both kind of suck at it...well him more than me, but you know what I mean. Surprisingly Jeff's Korean isn't as bad as I thought it would be, it was quite entertaining. By this point I'm feeling REALLY good, but we stopped at another place. This place had privacy curtains for each booth where customers sat. We ordered a pitcher of strawberry soju with a bowl of fruit as our anju (food you eat while drinking, kind of like bar nuts, but better :)).

Pitcher of soju

Big ass bowl of fruit and ice water

Doneskis.

While drinking we longed for the company of some ladies, so we were prompted to shout "Agassi!" (means something like hey girl) in hopes of attracting some girls to join us. Didn't work lol. Drunken jackassery, but I was enjoying myself so I didn't care. Along the way we met a couple of Norwegian chicks and Jeff tried to get them to join us. They declined but said we should go to the club they were headed to. I didn't care, I kinda just wanted to drink, ya know? Seeing that Jeff and I are both Asian, we have an intrinsic love for karaoke. So what kind of night would it be if we didn't stop by a noraebang (karaoke room, in Korea, you and your guests get your own private room. Baller status, I know ;) )? In all of our drunken glory and shamelessness, Jeff and I proceeded to belt out some of our Korean favorites. To end the night we got some street food. Fried food dipped in spicy red rice cake sauce and odeng (fish cakes and broth). We parted ways as I got into a cab for a 20 minute ride home. By far the most fun night I've had since I've been in Korea but there's no way I could do it all the time. Maybe if it was less intense and I had more friends in the city to do it with. Anyway, it's nice to have a friend from back home here in the same country to meet up like this. Thank you, Jeff, for my first hangover in a couple of months! Below is just a shot of what the streets in the part of Hongdae we were in looked like and some other randoms. Nothing too exciting besides that. I'm really missing Christmas in Arkansas and I wish I could fly back just for the holidays but as you already know, I can't :( Have fun for me guys, wish I could be there. Until next time my Fayettevillains, love and miss y'all.

~JK