Interesting First Impression

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So...a few days off from my bustling life as an English teacher in the hotspot that is known as Nanao, Japan, (Google it, you won't find much) why not take a vacation to South Korea.

A little research and a few phone calls led to two friends joining the adventure. Mike and Chris were up to the task that was Seoul. Skipping out early on a mid-year conference, we dashed to the train station to catch what would be our first of many trains that day. Luckily our friend drove us to the station and we boarded the train just on time. Our goal, get from the inaka countryside to Tokyo, then to Seoul. This is alot more difficult then we thought. But this is about Korea, not Japan, hence I will leave it at that.

Seoul, SOUTH KOREA

If you noticed, the title of this is "interesting first impression" so this is what I shall describe. After landing in Seoul and catching a bus into the city the time was 1:00am. Armed only with backpacks and a few thousand won (I wouldn't let Chris buy a Lonely Planet, terrible things those are...) we decided to ask a taxi driver to take us to some accomodation. I had researched a couple areas and asked him to take us to Itaewon. After getting our message across that we wanted cheap accomodation he flicked the meter and started racing down the deserted Seoul streets. Ten minutes later he turned down a street and pointed down a dimly-lit alleyway saying cheap, cheap. Figuring this was the end of the cab ride, we got out and handed him a mitt-full of change (somehow we had amassed about 30 coins in the 20 minutes we'd been in the country), he wasn't happy about this but after counting it realized there was nothing he could do.

Shifting our attention to this alley, we look at the corner bar to notice it is noneother than a transvestite bar, classy area! Ignoring this warning sign, we attack the alleyway optimistically. Ten steps later we get approached by a girl offering

sex massagee's

. The key here is pronouncing the

ge

as you would in gene made it quite funny. Pleasantly declining, we continued down the alleyway past a few more trans bars and settled on Kum Sung Motel. After waking up the owner and settling on two rooms (he wouldn't let us all crash in one) we headed up to the rooms. Trying to open the door with the key was troublesome, though it may have been the distracting, loud moans of a couple having sex in the room across the hall.

We decided to walk around the area and grab some Korean beer, and some street food. Settling on some local stalls, we ate our first dose of local kimchi and various other local grub. Met some interesting characters, especially two guys from Russia who kept proclaiming Russia as the "Number 1 country, with the Number 1 military" to which my American friends didn't appreciate or agree with (of course). Being a bystander, I found the whole argument to be very entertaining and thoroughly enjoyed it. Wanting to explore early the next day we bid adieu to our Russian friends and headed back to Kum Sung. Luckily our neighbours were as tired as we were and we were able to have a deep sleep to relative quiet.

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Photos

City Centre
Middle of the city, where to go now...

Kum Sung Motel (obviously)
Our humble abode...

Good ol' Street Food
Delicious, especially the Korean style yakitori