Another Day In Insadong And Night In Itaewon

Much like many others we have had, we spent last weekend in Seoul. A pleasant afternoon meandering through the arty streets and boutiques of Insadong. The evening and night developed into something strange and ultimately very amusing.

Jorge, Kristin, Samantha and myself had a chilled day in Insadong, and decided to got over to Itaewon to grab something to eat a Mexican place Jorge knew of. After having our fill, we did the usual thing and went to Geckos for a drink. There we happened to bump into Kenny and his mate Jonny. So we stuck around and had a few beers with them. Eventually Dorothy and Ian turned up too, soon followed by Ben. So the gang all been here and all, we made a night of it.

We were sensible, and came back to Suwon pretty early, rather than falling prey to an nasty Itaewon all-nighter. A last drink with the guys in Zapi's and we went home, Kenny in tow, as we said he could crash at ours. He lives another 30minutes south of Suwon, and he'd way missed the subway.

He had a Playstation 2 with him, so we grabbed a pitcher of beer, and planned to have a few games before bed. It wasn't long before 2.30am came around, and thoughts of sleep were not too far from our minds.

Then there was a knock at the door. It was our neighbour from the 5th floor. Asking to borrow a hammer! Slightly bemused by the request, we dutifully found him a hammer, and invited him to have a drink with us. He went away, hammer in hand, and after hearing some banging returned with his mate. Turns out they are both mature students at the university near here.

They brought Soju, always a mistake. A couple of shots of that and I was done in, crashing on the sofa. Leaving Samantha and Kenny to entertain the guests. The bit I missed of the evening, was the more drunk of the two, having gone home supposedly to bed, returning. He had on only his shorts, and was brandishing a fried egg on a spatula. This he thrust at Kenny, and declared that he'd made it for him.

Needless to say Kenny accepted graciously, if not more than a little confused by our new friend's gift. Anyway, that was the weird twist to what had been quite a sedate Saturday. Sunday, well we didn't do much at all. Kenny hung around, Dorothy and Ian popped round. Nothing compared to the strange happenings of the night before.