Whirlwind pt.5

(or a night out in seoul)

after a long day of walking in the cold shopping and shopping and shopping, we were going to meet up with a friend of kim's from the US - Dan lives and teaches in seoul. we were going to meet him in the Hongik University area, which is only one subway stop from our guest house, so we headed back to the guest house to drop off all our bags.

only one stop...so we walked it!

we stopped off for some bbq on the way and walked the one stop on the subway instead of taking it... gotta work off all that pork! so we were to meet dan at - get this! - the HO Bar! he thinks they screwed up the english translation of the chinese character for 'how' since it's posted outside... oh well, it was so funny.

so we walked up the street to look for the Ho Bar and found it:
unfortunately we didn't notice the III (three) on it... guess what!? there are five Ho Bars!!! so after exploring two of the three floors, we called dan to figure out what the deal was and were informed that we were at the wrong Ho Bar. he came to meet us down the street and kim was going to take us to a 'drum bar' but we couldn't find it either! turns out it closed a couple of weeks ago... so we ended up at:

Ho Bar 1.

from left to right: Cyndi, Scott, Dan, Kim, and Kim.

i got a little creative after a few gin and tonics...

me in the mirror at the entrance to Ho Bar... taken as we were leaving.

to go, of course, to noraebang!!! Dan and Scott wanted to take us to the "luxury" noraebang:
it was really fancy inside and reminded me of a wedding hall more than a karaoke bar... but it was so packed with people (including small children - and at 2am...) that we would have had to wait forever for a room so we moved on... we ended up at a regular noraebang where we promptly pulled out the beers we'd bought at the corner store... unfortunately the guy who ran place saw it and told us we had to leave... we got our money back and went in search of another... not a hard thing to find in korea. we ended up in a sort of dodgy one, not that most of them aren't dodgy... as long as there's an english section we're ok.

it was still nicer than a lot of the noraebangs i've been to... comfy couches.

i think this was bohemian rhapsody... a favourite at the noraebang!

there was a space heater in the room to keep us toasty and a bottle opener on the table which we assumed meant no problems with our pre-bought beer... well, at least we didn't get kicked out of this one... after an hour we weren't ready to leave, so we got a second hour. about five minutes later scott tried to unplug the space heater, but unplugged the karaoke machine instead! we lost our chosen songs and about ten minutes of our paid for time... since we had to get the guy to come and re-set it... oh well, it was great times anyway! noraebang always is a great time... i think it's way better than regular karaoke, it's like having your own room to have a party in... so much fun.

after two hours of singing we headed back to our lovely little guest house at around four am... stay tuned for more shopping and touring in the big city... up next: gangnam - the beginning of the eternal search for merrell hiking shoes, mexican food, and english books!