My night in Seoul

On Saturday, Leigh, Caitlin and I ventured out to Seoul. We were supposed to be meeting some other people there, but then bumped into one of them in the Village - they'd been and returned already! Feeling adventurous and brave, and discovering that Leigh had been out there once before, we decided to go anyway, so off to the bus stop we went. The bus ride was a nightmare, as on the first four stops we picked up most of the local population, then as we hit the express section of the journey on the highway, we also hit traffic, and sat on the overheated bus for ages in a stop-start nightmare. Apparently nobody gives up seats here either - if you're lucky enough to get one you must deserve it - and Leigh had to persuade a mother with a sleeping child to take hers...

Arriving in Seoul, we walked down to a place called Hongdae - an abbreviation of Hongik Daehakgyo, or Hongik University - and therefore achingly hip and full of students as well as a huge contingent of foreigners who go there because Itaewon, the other nightspot, has too many foreigners... yes, it's a bit of a catch 22. We descended beneath the street to our first bar, Zen Bar, which turned out to be a gorgeous den with a big rectangular bar in the centre, deep comfy bar stools on the edges, and low tables by the walls. A massive flat screen TV showed hip-hop music videos and one wall was covered in a mural depicting Buddha as a black hip-hop DJ :) Very interesting! It wasn't long before the girls sitting next to us started talking to Leigh about their university courses, and a lad from the table behind us approached Cait and I clutching a bottle of Jack Daniels and a tot glass - to practise his English. After a couple of shots, I'm not sure my English was a good thing for an English learner to be listening to! Also, the level of English in Korea is fairly low compared to other countries I've been to, and the lack of attention paid to pronouns, articles and l's and r's means that it takes a while to tune the ear to Korean English. Hard work for a Saturday night. :D

After meeting so many Koreans, I was a little disappointed when other foreigners started turning up, but we ended up following them to a couple of other places to dance, none as pleasant as Zen Bar :)

It also started to rain, a freezing, hard rain, and as none of us had brought coats or umbrellas, the locals were treated to the sight of three foreign girls running screaming from shelter to shelter. What can I say, we're representing South Africa here in Korea... We ended up looking rather drowned - hence this picture:

Public transport is difficult to use to get to Paju between midnight and 6am so at 3am when we wanted to go home, we had to wave down a taxi. It amazes me that you can use a taxi to get somewhere it takes a bus 1 hour 45 minutes to reach... but the driver seemed amenable and we all bundled inside. Now, I'm not sure what happened exactly, I think I may have dozed a little, but the next thing I knew, Caitlin was gesticulating wildly and trying to communicate in a mixture of mime and broken English with the driver, and I didn't recognise any of the landscape outside the window... yes, we were lost. The driver stopped in the middle of a 4 lane highway (road rules are optional in Korea at the best of times, so at 4am there's really no rules at all) to ask a police officer for directions, which meant we three had to all sit up straight and look professional and sober, but even the policeman's directions couldn't get us home. We drove around for about half an hour, none of us recognising any major sites (unsurprising as we've only been to the edge of Paju town itself once since arriving), until finally somebody gave us directions that led us.... around the corner to the Village gate. Yes, ladies and gentlemen, we had been driving around aimlessly for close to 45 minutes less than two blocks away from the Village. Three cheers for the clueless foreigners.

However, there is a silver lining: I am absolutely determined to (a) get a good map, and (b) learn at least basic Korean very soon....