Friday night in South Korea. As with the majority of countries, the number of options really depends on how much money you have. Considering “alien” English teachers have one of the most highly paid jobs in Korea, this is never normally a problem (unless you splurged the week before on a shiny new piece of technological equipment, or a trip to South East Asia).
Nearest to home is a drink in your own “dong” (meaning neighborhood, each one being pretty much a self-sufficient village). This has the benefit of being a convenient stop on your way home from work. There are more bars in each dong then there are people but not many choices beyond beer and the Korean version of sake; soju. If you’re hungry its fried pork, fried chicken or over-priced pizza. Of course the options are less limited when it comes to food but you have to learn how to read the menu first, otherwise no doubt you will end up with a sea-food omelet with dried-squid “service” on the side.
Moving a little further afield there is the downtown area of whichever city you live in. Here you will find the booking clubs. Massive, visually fantastic, and very loud, this is how you would imagine an Asian super-club to be. Except the number of tables far out-does the size of the dance floor and the D.J.s talk FAR more than they should. The purpose of these clubs is for young people to hook-up. Each table has a small lamp on it and when guys spot a girl they like, they give their lamp a wave and one of the club staff will drag her over.
Of course the girls go to these clubs with the expectation that this will happen, but in Korea “no” means “yes” so the whole night will be filled with girls fighting desperately to get away from their captors while their friends giggle helplessly behind their hands. A fun night can definitely be had here, especially if the club does not try rip you off because you are foreign, and if you are a girl and craving eye-candy, the half-naked club dancers are true examples of how HOT Asian men can be.
If what you are wanting is a night that has greater resemblance to one you might have back in your home country, Seoul is the place. Hop on the bullet train and you will be there in a couple of beers. There are a few areas that are currently in vogue with foreigners and young Koreans alike, and here the options are as varied as in any major city.
My personal favorite is to spend the night drinking cheap Jagermeister and rocking out at the string of alternative and live clubs, punctuated with breaks sprawled out on silk cushions smoking hubbly in underground dens. A trip to Seoul is also an important opportunity to eat non-Korean food and it is essential to gorge yourself on Mexican or Indian before you limp back home. The cheapest and most convenient accommodation on these binges is sex motels. Comfortable, plenty of complimentary water, and noises coming through the very thin walls that you will soon get used to.
Of course there are always the Friday nights when all you want to do is sit back with a nice bottle of red and watch a movie. For this there are “DVD bangs”. These are private rooms decked out with couches and big screens which, for a small fee, can accommodate a few friends and a movie of your choice from the establishments’ extensive collection. Harder to find is the nice bottle of red.
And for those that didn’t have time to get their hair/nails/facial done during the week, salons and beauticians are open and pumping 24hrs for your convenience. I wouldn’t however recommend getting a bikini wax or complicated hair style done at 4 in the morning, these poor people work 6 days a week.
Whatever your choice may be for Friday night the end result will inevitably be a Nora Bang (a private Karaoke room). It’s no cliché, Asians really are obsessed! Nora bangs range from the luxuriously extravagant to the ultra seedy variety at which you are expected to call up some “ladies” to come join you. The disco lights, forgiving P.A. systems and B.Y.O.B policies make everybody a rockstar, especially since this is the time of the night that is rarely remembered by anybody, in any part of the world.
© Olivia Grant
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