Coming in for landing

While one of my flights was delayed an hour, I'd say travel on the whole was OK getting here. It did make me late for drinks though.

After getting to the hostel, the employee had no idea who I am (yet) and no booking on record. I knew I should have done all the booking myself! A quick call to the manager whom the room was suppose to have been booked through sees me with  bed on the very top floor, with no elevator.

It's time to get over to Nonhyeon, a suburb near Gungnam, to meet with the lads. A dozen train stops and a few transfers get me across town in about 45mins.

I'm directed to down a wonderfully BBQ smelling street to where the group is, and jump right in. We hit a couple bars but keep it pretty light in the end.

I'm up early today and am convinced my phone hasn't updated the time zone, but eventually realise it's 10am in nz so no wonder I feel pretty good at 7am Korea time. I've found a quaint breakfast spot and start my day with a breakfast burrito and coffee.

Onwards!

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.