Have you met Jack?

After Macau, we hit up Sneaker Street and picked up a pair of shoes. It's known as such for the hundreds of branded sneaker shops that line it, formed as a result of the multiple boys schools in the area - a perfect market. Not far away was a massive souvenir market where we spent way too much money, but picked up a couple of memorable items for ourselves.

The next night, we attack Lan Kwai Fong again, getting there about 9pm (early by night out standards) so we could take care of the friend we left there last time - Jack Daniels. The two of us powered our way through the remaining 4/5ths of the bottle over a couple of hours, but for all the drinking it seemed a little lackluster with just the two of us. Queue crying girl.

She had been at the table next to us for a while, and had seemingly been getting entertained by someone performing magic tricks in the bar, but as time went on we could see she wasnt happy, the odd tear visible despite her attempts to look composed. Enter Shayne the Consoler.

It took a couple attempts, but I convince her to join us and forget her troubles with a couple of handsome kiwis. Turns out she'd just been dumped from a 3yr relationship. Queue alcohol.

We harras Josephine and George to come join us, and we party way longer than we should have, given we all had flights the next day. Josephine has too much and she barfs all over the footpath. Another one we've ruined, bringing the total to 9 now.

John and I are rudely awakened by the cleaning staff at 1pm. We were suppose to check out an hour prior. We'd done a bit of packing the day before, but the room was a mess of bottles, cans and paper. We stuff our things haphazardly into our bags and got the hell out of there before they could see the state of the room.

We're at the aiport as I write this, waiting for boarding to begin. Its been a whirlwind trip through Korea, Hong Kong, and Macau, but seriously...

I'm too old for this shit.

And now, Macau

We met up with George and Josephine in the party district of Hong Kong - Lan Kwai Fong. We were actually about to call it a night after shopping in some very hot weather when they contacted us, but never being one to pass up a party, we headed out to find them.

The area is absolutelty filthy. Filthy for the sweating heat, filthy for the rubbish, and filthy for the sea of international tourists looking for a good night out. We joined them.

We bar hopped a bit and as the night went on, a plan was hatched to go to Macau the next day. Unfortunately for John and I,  that was about 4hrs away.  We crashed at their nearby hostel so we'd have a better chance of getting to the ferry with them. We'd be going in full dress in 30° weather, but we had to do something other than drink while we are here, and this was our chance.

As we rush for the ferry, I'm absolutely starving. My looking around for some food at the terminal has the net result of everyone getting on the ferry but me, where it promptly departs. Well fuck. What's worse is that I have John's return ticket. Good luck with that one, John. Bonvoyage!

Luckily, an attendant helps get me on the next boat 30 mins later. The trip itself takes about an hour and a half, where I reconnect with the group. We hire a tour guide and mini van to take us around Macau, and it really made the trip worthwhile for us. We visit the old fortress and museum, as well as the facade of the ruins of St Paul's church. Being a former Portuguese territory, we sampled some very nice food as well.

Gambling is legal in Macau, and with 18 million tourists every year, its easy to see why there are so many casinos. Macau itself only has half a million inhabitants, but the casinos provide the local governement with so much money that they can keep reclaiming land and building new islands for yet more casinos and hotels. We tried our luck at the Venetian Casino, but none of us come out in the black.

Thinking we have time in hand, we board the casino shuttle to head to the ferry terminal. Our bad luck continues when we find its taken us to the wrong one. Well shit. Whats more is that our tickets are for the last ferry of the night. Double shit. We board a taxi that luckily races us over to the correct terminal, and we make our boat.

We're all craving a good nights sleep by this stage but John and I have a quiet drink in our room before calling lights out.

Hong Kong Mong Kok

We had a couple of big "last nights" in Korea. Thursday was an insane night with the music producer, where we had two bottles of spirits and chased that with clubbing until 7am. We then chased that with BBQ before going to bed.

Friday night was yet more madness at the Cheeky Kiwi, again. After many promises to the patient staff, we arrived there 15 minutes before closing, and peoceeded to drink them dry. Fish amd chips were on tap for our group of 13, and we managed to get the guesthouse owner along for the fun.

In a return and subsequent fall from form, Gilbert arrived late and was promptly drowned in shots by the owner of the bar. He actually put up a HiExpat blog about how great the bar is too (presumably while sober and after being reminded of the night from others).

We all got terribly drunk, and when paying the bill, I made it rain with 50k notes in rather spectacular fashion before flipping the staff off, on video. I apologized once I saw it...

Monday saw us reach Hong Kong, and holy hell, the wind drives the 'feels like' temperstures up to 40°. We settled in and went walkabout around our local area to find some good eats and more gifts.

Big ass hill

After leaving Daejeon, we soon got word from our friend Yan that she passed her presentation and now has her doctorate. In fact, the real reason I went to meet with my old professor was that he was also one of the five on the judging panel. My goal was to butter him up with memories of us crazy exchange students so he'd go into the presentation happy. Mission accomplished.

Tuesday, we met up with Younni and Gina to have chimek along the Han river. The area was abuzz with activity, and not just from the swarms of sandflies. The whole river has bike tracks along its shores, and plenty of grassy areas for people to hang out. So prevalent is the chicken and beer culture along the river are the delivery drivers talking up potential customers and making the orders for them. There's even a restaurant with the stuff here.

As night fell, the bridge lit up with an aurora of coloured lights, and fountains poured out along its length. Quite stunning really.

Wednesday, we finally got to Namsan Tower. We took the healthy (or perhaps stupid) option of walking up the bastard. 1.2km of stairs had us sweating and cursing in all the languages we knew how to.

Hitting the summit, we're greeted with the 1600 pandas exhibition, consisting of a panda for every one of the current living pandas in the world. Though, they're split up among multiple locations here in Seoul.

$10 later and we're at the top of the tower itself, which provides 360° views of the city, if only we could see it all. Smog is a real problem here, but we could still make out the silloette of more skyscrapers in the distance.

Like Paris, this is a spot for couples to attach love-locks to the fencing and other purpose built structures. I shudder to think how many there are.

On the way back, we passed through Myongdong and did some souvenir shopping. They make it easy here, with 5/10 packs of an all manner of trinkets.

Today, John piked, so I went looking for the archery range by myself. Unfortunately for me, it was closed, and to think it only required 10km of walking to find that out. 

Meet and Greet

Tuesday evening, John and I went to meet with the owner of an up and coming kpop studio. He gave us an insiders guide to the trials and tribulations of being in a position such as his. We then went out and drank.

Wednesday, we met up with Jake, my original supporter from Daejeon. He took us to a famous pa-chon restaurant, where we promptly fucked up the mixing of soju, beer, and a red wine like drink that was suppose to have three layers of drink/colour in the glass. Instead, it looked like a bloody mess from Hannibal Lecter's backwash.

This didn't stop us though, and we hit up two more bars before settling down at one for the rest of the morning. $300 later and our egos in shatters at losing drink bets to some girls over multiple games of darts, we emerged at 6am and headed back to the hostel.

Thursday we have no recollection of, nor any photographic clues.

Friday we took Gilbert, one of the volunteers at the guesthouse, to the Cheeky Kiwi bar, where one of the owners helped us get him absolutely smashed. The best part was hearing about how he puked up 7 times and had still had to teach english the next day. Topics of the day were alcohol, hangovers, and barfing.
Saturday was back to Cheeky Kiwi for some initial quiet drinks. The owner of the hostel had other ideas though. After getting back to our own hostel, he then took us to another branch of the hostel chain, where in we met several more kiwi's. Off to Cheeky Kiwi we again went, and karaoke until daylight.

Sunday, we actually got on the train and went to Daejeon to meet our friend Yan. There, we went bowling, where despite John's initial bullshitting, he actually did quite well and won the games. Tomorrow I'll be meeting one of my former professors from the university I studied at here, and then its back to Seoul for more shenanigans.

Ultra tired

The weekend has come and gone, taking with it our strength and sensibilities. I do of course refer primarily to the Ultra Music Festival and it's two days of drinking and thrashing.

Highlights if the festival for me would have to be Skrillix, Hardwell, Snoop Dogg, Lil' John, and Porter Robertson. The second day had vastly more attendees than the first, and even with our premium admission tickets, we had to queue for 20 minutes before we could skip the majority of the general admissions line. Regards, we were subject to multiple temperature checks and copious amounts if hand sanitizer before making it to the drinks stand.

Snoop Dogg is an exceptional performer, and drew the roaming crowds to his stage with ease. Unlike most of the acts, he was actually singing live as well, and had the crowd eating from the palm of his hand. Lil' John was also quite surprising with his set, and had the crowd going nuts when Turn Down For What came on.

We pushed to the front for Skrillex and Hardwell at the main stage, where the throngs of fans were squeezed shoulder to shoulder. It was like a furnace with all the body heat, and the only way to cool yourself down was to throw your arms in the air to catch the divine breeze. This of course made it difficult to get drinks, leaving us tired, thirty, and soaked in sweat.

Porter was a very chilled out set, with plenty of room near the back to sit down with a bottle of water and soak in the specticle of lights. His tunes are a lot more melodic when compared to the thumping tracks of the main stage performers.

Between the two days of performances,  we had maybe 4 hours sleep, courtesy of meeting a couple Korean girls from Busan and drinking until 7 am. Viva la Korea.

Sunday was suppose to be a day of rest, but instead turned into 6L of soju and mixer. I felt absolutely rotten today, but some chicken has righted me now.

We then headed out to GoT night in Gungnam, and damn! That ending.

Hongdae

As per usual, our plans have either been disrupted by MERS or by our sleeping past midday.

The DMZ tours have been canceled for a while due to the outbreak, but the concert looks set to continue,  provided we can pass a thermographic scan at the gate, and a quick consultation with medical staff. The odd thing though, is that it's mostly a hospital outbreak, which is exasterbated by the fact that Koreans go to the doctor for every little thing, stretching services and actually infecting people that go there for something else.

After a horrendous night of soju on Tuesday,  we went walking around Hongdae University with a couple of the drinkers from the previous night - Elliot and Marie.

There were multiple exhibitions on display, in addition to the cool and art installations across the campus.

Later that night, we met with Jake, whom was my korean helper/buddy during the semester I studied here. He has a fancy job at LG, and despite our best efforts, we couldn't coax any free sample phones out of him. He introduced us to a few of his colleagues,  and we hit the bars. We kept it reasonably quiet, and stopped by his brother's restaurant along the way.

I spent the extra time I had that night/morning finishing off The Naked God, the final book of a 4500 page trilogy. Queue book hangover (or regular hangover if you don't believe that). It was 5:30am by this stage.

Today, we're going to meet a kpop producer we became aware of via YouTube. He has a recording studio towards the northeast of the city, and has a few albums set for release soon.

Should be interesting.

The weekend pt2

Despite having written about the weekend in hongdae during the pub crawl, there are certain facts that must be brought to light.

It's coming up 8am nz time, and I know my colleagues are desperate for some story from the great beyond. I'm almost finished the nights dawn trilogy for those aware of the trilogy, and I don't know what I'm going to do about the book hangover I'll end up with.

I remember two things about that night in hongdae above all others: break dancing,  and water pistols.

We had an American Chinese with us that was quite capable if spinning his shit on the dance floor.  Unfortunately for one guy, he had quite the leg flair, and George,  the b_boy, with the aide of centrifugal force, nailed one bystander in the nads with several G's of centrifugal force.  We all laughed hysterically. Wrong place, wrong time.

The other honor for the night was John's.  Most people realize what's going on if you're handed a water pistol during a pub crawl, but not John

Rather than prescribe the sweet alcoholic contents of the water gun to the mouths of other pub crawlers, John nailed one guy right in the eyes with it. Not just a single dose though - John was so convinced that this was part of a game that he sprayed its liveliness all over the poor guys face. He was left screaming in dismay, understandably.

Since the weekend though, we kept it quiet on Sunday.  Unfortunately for Seoul,  we were ready to drink on Monday,  and proceed to carve shit up. Game of thrones night was so god damn awesome that i had to repeatedly stop my cohorts from spoiling anything for me. OMG dragons.

After this,  we raged in a few bars in gungnam before getting a taxi home.

We're worried about the Ultra concert being cancel led, as this weekend has been a long time coming.  Mers is gripping a lot of activities in Seoul,  and the DMZ tours have already been suspended. We have to see what happens.

We're drinking in the hostel now, at 5:24am.

The weekend

Friday was boozy enough as it was. A group of us 10 hostel goers went out to a hof room for drinking. It's a bar/restaurant where everything is separated into private rooms for the groups that visit. Queue drinking until 6am, where I stumbled back to the hostel. After waking up at the cracks of noon (Korea time, 3rd behind nz), I chilled at the hostel waiting for John.  Unbeknownst to be though, he'd nay gone to bed 30mins before I got up. I didn't see him until 6pm.

This night was only exceeded by the pub crawl we did a few hours later. We met up with HotSauce  (aka Tasos from Greece) whom organises the event, and joined almost 2 dozen others to rampage through Hongdae. 2 pitchers of Jack Daniels and coke were a welcome change from all the soju and beer we were having.

We went through 5 bars/clubs, during which we stopped for some monster pizza slices to keep us from falling of the deep end. It was another mid to late morning return to the hostel.

Thank god for Sunday though. We did nothing.  Absolutely nothing, and it was glorious. A week of hard partying had exhausted me, and a lazy day was exactly what the doctor ordered.

Speaking of which, the MERS hysteria is rapidly rising, with over a thousand schools closing, twice that in quarantine (most self imposed) and confirmed cases in other cities here in Korea. There are a whole lot more surgical masks being worn these days, but the only thing I'm worried about is the concert this weekend being canceled, as it was perhaps the highlight of this whole adventure.

It's lunch time on Monday now, and we're planning a trip to Namsan tower with a couple of Americans. Later tonight it's Game of Thrones night, followed by a visit to the Outback Steakhouse for its $5 all you can drink beer.

Gungnam

The plan for the night was to head to the biggest club in gungnam. We had a half dozen hostel guests with us for what was sure to be a great night. Unfortunately, our group would have made up a third of the people in there had we gone in. With a 30k entry fee, we checked with some of those coming out to see if it was worth it, and the answer was a resounding no.

We hit up another bar in gungnam and followed that with karaoke.  I suspect videos may have been transmitted to certain work colleagues,  but hey you've gotta share the love sometimes.

It was 6:30 by the time we got back. Gogo Poweraide.

Cheeky Kiwis

We had a really quiet day, but stick a few New Zealanders in a room and that all changes.

We headed to the Cheeky Kiwi bar in Sinchon about 20 mins away at around 7:30. We got on really well with the owner, and ended up staying there until 3 am! It was a quiet night for them, as it often is during the week. They closed up at 12 and had a few drinks with us. The owner has some pretty crazy stories about the locals, both Korean and kiwi.

I had a monster of a burger on top of a couple buckets of beer and a kiwifruit teapot, that they gave us as a late birthday present. We will head there again this weekend hopefully.

Good on you mate.

Funny you should say that

As we often do, we mission for some food to help us get over the night before. It was a heavy night of drinking and there could be only one solution - steak tacos.

It's the morning of the 2nd and we walk half an hour to the taco place. It's about the only exercise we do at the moment. We'd been to this place last year with Daniel and thought it was awesome, and it still is now.

After breakfast/lunch, we relax at the hostel as the evening approaches. John's taken care of most of the arrangements for my birthday party, and we end up at a spicy seafood restaurant to begin the night. We were a group of about 10-12 in the end.

Unfortunately for me, there's a birthday tradition in Korean culture. The guest of honor has to drink a concoction made from whatever happens to be in arms reach. I'm taunted with the threat of a sock going into the glass,  and while it was mostly soju, also added was spicy sauce, jalapeños,  cabbage, wasabi paste, and something fishy. It looked like a lumpy red mess in a cup, but I chopped it back regardless.

We moved on to the park and applied copious amounts of cheap beer, soju, and champaign. Because we were from a mix of hostels, we found a number of other guests at the park that we joined in with. Having reached critical mass, we head for Thursday Party bar, where things take a sharp turn.

One or two of the group get into words with what could have been either other patrons, or the staff. One of the throws their drink on the wait staff, and a bit of jostling ensues. They're pried apart and our group is promptly kicked out under threat of police intervention. We ditch the heavily intoxicated trouble makers and decide to get more food, hitting up the Japanese Izakaya restaurant for the task.

We eat and drink through to 5 am,  on a Tuesday, and grab some KFC for breakfast. We're contacted by the troublemaker to ask what happened, and what he might be done to end up in a jail cell this morning. We give him the details we know, but can only imagine what happened after we parted ways.

Plans for the evening get of the 3rd is to check out the Cheeky Kiwi bar in the next suburb over.

The long night approaches

We wandered around the university area and grabbed some grub, deciding that we ought to go find ourselves a clothing store as well. Shorts were on the agenda as we filed into the mega UniQlo store just outside the subway station. The Korean style of shorts barely touch the knees, and slide thigh high if seated. Despite thinking I look weird, I can certainly appreciate the even shorter pairs the girls wear. 

We met up with Younis again for chicken and beer, then went looking for rum. There are a huge number of soju/beer pubs, but finding the real deal at 6pm on a Monday proved difficult. 10 bars and 30mins later, we eventually got into Thursday Party pub for rum and darts. Doing so nearly derailed our plans for the night. 

We grabbed a taxi and headed out towards Gungnam for a Game of Thrones night, where it quickly became evident that we had a problem. The main arterial roads have a given street name, and every non-arterial street that comes off of it will have the same street name with a block number it. Despite showing a picture of the address to the driver and needing to be at the 63rd block, we were dropped off some 80 blocks away from our destination at the 146th.  The second taxi got us to within 10 blocks, and we legged it from there. We were already 45 minutes late for the meet up, but we were determined to find this fucking address as a matter of principle. Wandering around the backstreets of our meeting point, we get lucky and find Daniel, who was on his way to the GoT party we were late for. Omg that episode was one of the best in ages. 

Queue chicken and beer for dinner with Dan, the joint we went to had the new favoured soju, and we ended up going through a couple bottles of the orange flavoured kind. It's dangerously easy to drink, even when straight shorting as we did. We were a mess. 

We parted ways and tried our luck with another taxi, which again didn't get it quite right. It took some walking to find a landmark we recognised in our drunken stupor, after which we promptly evacuated the contents of our stomachs, and in Johns case it was all over his shorts, shoes, and an unfortunately nearby parked car that was holding him up. 

It's been a hazy morning, and we're trying to figure out if we actually paid our bill at the restaurant last night. I can calculate down to a 40k difference in what I started the day with to what I have now, but Daniel is going to go and double check with them today. 

Carter, the hostel manager, surprised me with some birthday treats from a mainstay bakery chain in Korea called Paris baguette. 

 

Immediate plans are food. Tonight we'll try to round a few people up for a birthday dinner in my honour, where we will not go gently into the night. 

Just a tad messy

In a mega city of 28 million people, you have to appreciate when you run into someone you know, especially as a foreigner. 

No sooner had we destroyed a platter of chicken and a jug of beer that we see Younis stroll past the restaurant. We met Younis at the hostel last year, and he happened to be visiting someone nearby when we spotted him. 

Despite his protests, we drag him in for a beer and get to catching up and reminiscing about the escapades of yesteryear. We plan to meet up again later that night and part ways. I pick up some soju on the way back to the hostel and we get started on socialising with the other guests. 

I didn't know whether to be shocked at the potential trouble we might have been in, or impressed that we have a reputation, when a guy called Nathan walked in and asked if we were the kiwis.  As always, we through caution to the wind and got him drinking with us. Nathan is from Switzerland and works with Greenpeace, so our conversations inevitably took a turn towards the political spectrum of matters. I hate that I do it, but I do so love having an opinion on everything. He's interested in going to the DMZ this week, do we may well end up joining him. 

Turns out that a couple other guests and hostel employees let him know we were coming, as there seemed to be a lack of enthusiasm for going out among the other guests that night. It was a Sunday after all, but not as far as John and I were concerned. 

We taxi up to the university and wander around looking for somewhere lively. We started drinking again in the park (not as bad as it sounds) until Younis arrived and ended up in a cozy restaurant with copious amounts beer. I was happily hammering it down and didn't actually notice the shot glasses at the bottom of my drinks for some time. Enter biligerant and loud Shayne. We were already in a bit of a state, so we had gotten the table next to us to order our food and drinks, which included a shot of soju in our beers. 

We wrapped things up at about 3am, and this morning we've downed our poweraides over some sandwiches. We'll go for a wander up towards the university and do a bit of shopping. We've really got no plans for the day, so who knows where we'll end up. 

It's gonna be hot

We've made it to the hostel without trouble, and are getting ourselves ready for some chicken and beer. Being a Saturday night, I'll be disappointed if things don't escalate to the next level.

Weather wise, it's about as horrible as you can expect. We'll need to keep ourselves properly "hydrated" for the foreseeable future, but that was on the cards already. 

Starting simple

Well, here we go again.

As I wrap up my last day at work, I still feel like I've not made enough plans for this, my 3rd year in a row heading to South Korea, and my fourth trip overall. I suppose half the fun is rocking up there and just seeing where the drink takes us. Hongdae, the area my mate John and I will be staying in, is a university district, and it's been difficult to get ourselves into any real trouble (so far) there amongst the sea of equally stumbling locals.

I'm taking Friday the 29th off from work to get some last things organized and to say adios to this bloody cold country for a while. Meat packs and beer boxes are on the menu that afternoon, as John and I have a few people around for a farewell party, something we've done the last couple years for no reason other than it's a good excuse to catch up with a lot of people at once.

At the risk of lowering my colleagues opinion of me, I've linked this blog on my work intranet profile so everyone can have a laugh at my escapades and misfortunes. I think the best part about keeping a blog like this during what's sure to be an alcohol fueled trip is that the stories are there to be remembered further down the line after the Soju (and bank account) has faded. I'm always surprised at how much I remember the next day after an eventful night, given as I'm half hangover and tapping these blog posts out on a phone, but that's the effect of noodles and Poweraide I suppose.

The last two years I've gone to Korea, there's been some massive trouble. First was a fiasco in even getting to Korea and then having no real money until we got to Japan 3 weeks later. The second was nearly getting kicked out of the flat because someone wasn't paying the rent while I was away. It's a little sobering getting a notice of ending tenancy when you're 10000km away, after which I promptly got into a fresh bottle to rectify. I'm feeling good this year though. Nothing can possibly go wrong.

Nothing.