Body and Seoul

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I finally spent a night on the town on Saturday! As I may or may not have mentioned earlier, our dorm has a curfew from midnight to 5:30am. What this means in real terms is that we are locked out for 5.5 hours. Which is a really effective way to make sure you don't become a party animal while at Yonsei. Not that I'm a party animal, but still.

Anyway, I planned for a week prior to Saturday to stay out all night. For someone like me who loves to sleep, that meant taking a disco nap the day of and mentally preparing myself to see the sun rise. It actually wasn't as hard as I thought it would be to stay up that long (can you tell I'm a lightweight on the party scene?). The wee hours of the night pass pretty quickly, especially when you spend your time dancing.

Before going out, I spent some time in the city having tea with a former Korea Foundation employee and current director of a Korea art networking company. She lives north of Anguk station in a hanok, the traditional Korean home. It was amazing. She invited over her architect friend who had done the renovation and restoration work on her home. It actually ended up in Korea's second most influential architecture magazine as an example of the re-discovery and revitalization of the hanok as a contemporary Korean home.

Her friend and I actually had lunch together at a nearby cafe and restaurant that he had also designed, incorporating contemporary design elements and traditional Korean architecture. It was awesome, and lunch was tasty too.

I headed back to the dorm for my nap and then at 7pm I met some of my fellow classmates to head over to Hongdae. I was bringing our Yonsei contingent to meet Chrisie and her Ewha contingent. We had dinner at a samgupsan (3 layer pork) restaurant and got to sit on the floor. Which is fun, but it's hell on my knees. (I'm getting so old!)

Next we went to a bar called Rising that had a nice atmosphere, very sleek. Andrew met us there and Karl and his friend from Busan, Shane, popped by for a bit.

By the time we left Rising at 12:30ish, I was past the point of no return- locked out! So we went to a expat rock bar/club called Funky Funky. We were going to go to a place called M2, but none of us were enthused by a 20,000 won cover charge. Screw that! I wouldn't pay that in DC. Funky Funky was only 5,000 won AND we got a free drink! When we got inside an Irish cover band was playing American classic rock songs. It was great. Lots of drunk Westerners dancing around. When the band ended they started playing some great songs, both oldies and newies. I didn't even notice the time passing.

At about 3am we left to go next door for the Korean hip hop experience at a club called Ska2. It had a 10,000 won cover and a free drink included. This was a totally different experience- very dark and very smoky, with lasers and lights all over the place. The hip hop wasn't that good, but they played a couple songs I knew. We left at about 4am, when I couldn't stand the smoke anymore.

By this time it was just Chrisie, her friend, and myself. We walked to a 24 hour coffee shop and sat around talking until the metro opened up at 5:30am. It was so funny to see the coffee shop empty out at about 5:20am. Everybody else was waiting too!

I made it home by about 6am and showered. My hair and clothes smelled like an ashtray, which was the worst part of the whole experience. Seoul definitely makes it easy to stay out all night. There were tons of drunk people out in the streets by the end of the night, but it didn't seem as sleazy as it could have. There were a couple people who couldn't hold their liquor, but for the most part it felt like Mardi Gras or Fourth of July- like a celebration that we were all taking part in. That's the best way I can think to describe it.

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Photos

Street with hanoks
One of the most photographed streets in Seoul

House of Double Happiness
Courtyard

Say Kimchi!
Group shot

Samgupsan
3 layer pork and our panchan (side dishes)

At Funky Funky
Irish cover band

Comments

[Dale]

WTF
They lock you out? That's... that blows my mind. On the one hand that means that when you go out, you really go out. And that's awesome. But obviously you can't go out regularly. And that just makes me sad. I donno what I'd do. Probably sleep on the streets.

[Chris]

LGg
How many times have you heard Lady Gaga over there? You would think that the curfew would create a larger gap between mildly responsible people and party animals in that 1% of the group would have 95% of the fun since they stay out all night all the time.

[warpgirl]

Lady Gaga
Actually, Lady Gaga is huge in Korea. They played Poker Face in a Korean hip-hop club I went to called SKA2 (don't ask me why) and it was awesome. She's done a couple concerts here too and I saw her on TV.