Daejeon feels like home

Last weekend I went to Seoul for the first time. Among my peers, I was one of the last to go. I had other obligations that kept popping up that prevented me from going. Also, I don't have a girlfriend who needs to go to Seoul to shop for the latest fashions. I made plans to meet up with my friend, Edward, the friend who took me to the jimjilbang (찜질방) for the first time.

Travel between Daejeon and Seoul is easy. Korea has a KTX train that glides smoothly at speeds approaching 300 km/hr which are casually displayed on monitors all over each car. The ride itself takes a little over 50 minutes. I took the train with my friends Joe and Kirsten and since we booked tickets ahead of time we got our seats in the same row.

We arrived in Seoul and despite the swarming confusion of the rail station we easily made it to the subway line and I met up with Edward a few stops later. Edward and I set off for Hongdae for dinner and to check out the clubs. We were planning on being thrifty so we stowed our bags in a subway locker and went to dinner. We got a chicken dish that I was familiar with but the name escapes me...it was the hottest thing I have eaten in Korea so far and was delicious. After dinner we walked around a bit and made our way to some clubs. The area starts picking up around midnight and the streets were packed with people and something I hadn't seen for months: 외국인 aka foreigners. It felt weird being among other westerners in Korea. We went to some hip hop clubs and there were middle-class Koreans dressed like gangsters from the US...done unironically (or at least an approximation of what they perceived US gangsters looked like). Nothing against hip hop, its a fine music to listen to and I enjoy it, but at a club its slow and not my style for dancing. You get sweaty dancing to it, but only because you are crammed next to loads of overweight westerners. It sort of seemed like a lot of people were shuffling around, waiting for something cool to happen. In all fairness, the club was pretty cool looking and had an amazing sound system. The lights and fog machine were pretty high quality too. One other observation about Korean dance clubs: DJs will play the same songs throughout the night and sets don't get updated too often. It seems that people would prefer familiarity to something new and fresh.

Edward and I stayed for a bit and found a cab. Thankfully Edward is a Korean speaker and got us a cab. We continued our night of thrift and made our way to another jimjilbang (찜질방). This was reportedly the largest one in Seoul and boasted 5 floors of relaxation and cleansing. Seoul, like any major city, tends to leave you with a film of big-city grime. Taking a shower, scrubbing down then sitting in an array of different hot tubs in the wee hours of the night was the perfect solution. Next we got some fruit smoothies and headed to the crushed-salt floor hot room. It was about 120F and totally dry. A sign on the wall explained the anti-bacterial properties of the salt and any pathogens I may have picked up during the course of the night were surely destroyed here. We moved to the oxygen room and went to sleep. The next morning I hung out on the massage chairs and watched Korean dramas with about 20 other bleary-eyed Koreans.

Edward and I left to meet up with my South African friend Devon, who was arriving from Daejeon that day. We took the subway to yongsan, Korea's electronics mecca. I had a list of things that I needed and ended up walking away with the most cumbersome to carry: a cooling base for my laptop.

Edward had to meet another friend, so Devon and I made our way to the hotel he had booked for about $38. We met up with a group of friends from Daejeon and elsewhere who were also staying in our hotel. We checking in, opened the door...and unfortunately it was pretty romantic. We had booked a room at All In a "Love Motel". Like other Asian countries with high-density living and family structures that see children living with parents until they marry, a niche market has emerged for small motel rooms equipped for secret rendezvous. I suppose they also help to facilitate affairs, since secrecy seems to be pretty emphasized there. It's pretty cute that people still think that these sorts of things don't happen, especially given the ubiquity of the Love Motels everywhere.

So back to the unintentional lovebirds: Dan and Devon. Our room came with a smallish full sized bed, matching his and his robes and a multitude of grooming products. Despite its diminutive size, it was well equipped and better than other hotels I have stayed at in the US. The best feature: a 42" plasma TV crammed in as an afterthought.

We changed, met up with friends and went to dinner. There was a rotisserie chicken place around the corner from All In and we went there with about 10 friends. We devoured 4 chickens and 3x3000cc pitchers of beer. I suppose in the US I would be shocked to see a nearly a gallon of beer at our table, but here it is efficient and makes sense. The only thing keeping more beer from being served at one time is the strength limitation of the waitress.

As soon as dinner was over, Dev and I split from from the group and were back to hongdae with our friends Kyle and Megan who were staying in the room next to ours. Getting to where we needed to go via subway was effortless and fast. We got back to hongdae, walked around for a bit and decided to go to some nice bars before plunging into the pulsating depths of the electronic music clubs. We chose several rooftop establishments where the cost of beer apparently subsidized the cost of the view.

I got the inside scoop on where the hot new club was and we searched for a bit before finding it. We made friends with the uber-hip people in line and they were excited to hang with us in the club. It didn't surprise me, since Kyle and Megan have a breezy SoCal affect about them and Devon is a chill Saffa. Having friends in line was nice since they helped to argue the case for letting our SoCal friends in because they were in violation of the dress code. Apparently telling the bouncer that your friends are pro-surfers does very little to change their opinions. In the end, Megan and Kyle were denied entry despite our best efforts and we went to find shoes. We found about 30 shoe stores open for business and all of them sold only women's shoes. We asked employees if we could purchase their shoes off their feet for Kyle, but it was no use. We wouldn't be going to the club that night.

We lumbered to a nearby chicken and beer place only to find our friends from Daejeon, half of them sandal-clad. We had some beer, got sick of the massive group and took a cab back to our hotel's neighborhood. We found a small place and had a few beers there. We were back at the love motel by 3:00.

The blinds were so efficient that at 10am it was almost completely black in the room. We had no concept of time until we opened the window and peered outside. It was a gorgeous day and we got to the subway so we could see Itaewan, the cesspool of westerners. I immediately saw the things from back home that I didn't miss. The fast food chains. The XXL clothing stores. The seas of white folks taking over the sidewalks. It wasn't all bad. I don't mean to sound like some jaded, cynical gen-Xer. We did go to a Mexican restaurant that served surprisingly passable burritos. We also went to the famous "What the Book?" store for some english paperbacks. I got the newest Palahniuk novel and a book about understanding Korea and Korean culture.

That was basically it. I didn't have enough energy (nor the slightest desire) to go to the lantern festival that evening. I went to the KTX with Kyle and Megan and we got some of the last seats on the next train. It took about 50 minutes to travel from Seoul and another 25 of subway travel to get me home again.

When I walked from the subway stop to my house I felt like I had returned from a strange place. I felt like Daejeon was comfortable and familiar. It was green and there was a mountainous skyline. I wasn't bombarded by a cacophony of blaring sound. I was back home.