Halloween, Seoul Style

My first night out on the town, Halloween, Seoul style. This year, Halloween fell on a Friday, the last Friday of the month, which is club night in Hongdae, the party district. W20,000 gets unlimited access to most of the clubs and a one free drink. Sally and I met up with some of her friends who teach in Nowan, we met in our subway station, Nowan is ahead of us on the same line.
Sally was dressed as a vampire, custom fit teeth and all. I was dressed as a which in green tights and a homemade witch’s hat that took most of my morning to make. On the subway we meet Aphrodite (Carolyn), Athena (Sarah), Medusa (Amber), and Bacchus (Ryan). As Halloween isn’t really celebrated in Korea, we drew quite a few stares on the subway. In Hongdae we met Salt (Chirs), And (Aro), Pepper (Mike), and Guy in wig (Feo). All English teachers and they all mostly know each other from College.
We wandered around Hongdae for a while, marveling at the customs that some of the other North Americans had come up with. I marveled at how awesome Seoul is, again. This was first real experience with the nightlife in Seoul, apparently Hongdae is the place to be, it was hard to stay as group because the streets were so crowed. I had to constantly make sure that I could see someone from the group so as not to get lost. At one point I did lose the group and for a horrible moment I thought I was lost in Hongdae. But, they were right behind me, walking into a club. Sweet moment of relief. We started at the Joker Club or Red Joker Club, I’m not sure. First thing, it was necessary to visit the lady’s room, which was also the men’s room. The soju that started the evening off was yearning to be set free. I stood beside the urinals waiting for a stall to open.
The club wasn’t very full, but the music was decent, techno. We danced for a while, drank a bit, and then continued our wanderings. We checked out a couple of the popular clubs, all of which were very full, some of the guys grabbed some street food, plentiful and cheap. I did not get lost again. We talked to a power ranger, a mummy, Mr. Clean, and few others, had our picture taking by a hobo, and posed for a few Korean clubbers. V is for victory not peace I discovered.
We finally found ourselves in FF, a club much fuller than Joker. At first the music seemed promising, Justice and not to long after a dance remix of Peter, Bjorn, and John’s Young Folks, but if I recall, the music went downhill after that. It was still dancey and the dancing was good. I had taken off my witch hat because it was rather uncomfortable, but soon had to rescue it from the heads of dancing Koreans who thought it was hilarious. Once I even had it taken off my own head but a drunk boy who wanted to try it on. He was cute, so I let him, but only for moment, I worked hard on that hat, and it had to last for the rest of the weekend.
After a couple hours at the club we exited, looking for new adventures. We wandered around a bit more, we were all pretty tried, but the subway’s had stopped running so we rented a room at a noraebang, private karaoke! I was too mesmerized by the cheesy music videos depicting attractive Korean couples in tragic romances to sing, I watched music video after music video. They were matched to English songs, but usually made no sense and ended in tears. Not one couple got to be happy; it was like Laurlaine McDaniel wrote all the scripts. At one point I fell asleep, it was pretty late. At about five or six we finally left and dragged ourselves towards the subway, which was running again.
Back in Ssangmun, Sally and I stopped at Paris Baguette, which had just opened for the day, to grab a pastry or two before splitting up and falling into our respective beds. I went to bed at 7:30, the sun was already up.
I got out of bed at about 1:30 and prepared to do it all over again. I ate the bagel that Sunny had given me the day before picked out a different shirt to wear for my costume. I met Sally at her place at four to use her computer and watch Jaws and Jaws 2 on TV. We headed out to the Subway station to meet the gods once again, and this time we headed south of the river to Sincheon where some Americans own a bar and were having a Halloween party for English teachers. They had deals on food and drinks for everybody who came for the party. There was much dancing to crappy music; the guy in charge seemed to really be into Linkon Park (Bryan, this made me think of you) and Eminem.
I was hanging with same crew as the day before, but that bar atmosphere rather than the club atmosphere allowed me to actually talk to some of the people with whom I was spending my time. I talked to Aro, a Japanese fellow who was just visiting; he had lived with Chris as an exchange student. I don’t know if I have name spelled correctly, the emphasis is on the ro, a-RO. I also chatted with Feo, a very talkative and intelligent person who knows a lot of stuff and is also a newbi to Korea, much like myself. I met a Korean artist named Stich who also hangs with this crew, she seemed really cool. She had tattoos. They bar was a bit lame and mostly full of white faces, but it was still a good time. Ryan, Carolyn, Sally, and I took a taxi home, which was apparently a really long ride, but I fell asleep so it seemed really short. We got home early that night, 3:30 AM. However, Halloween wasn’t over yet.
Sunday evening, we went to Amber’s apartment in Madeul for a more relaxed sort of party. She invited a bunch of Koreans and we taught them how to carve pumpkins. There was a lot of food, party games, and prizes for the best costume and pumpkin. I got second in donut bobbing contest (I had never heard of donut bobbing either). We watched a bit of the Rocky Horror Picture Show, but soon left because we all falling asleep, it was an early party, so it ended early and we were home by 10:30. I have never in my life celebrated Halloween with such intensity. It was very good weekend, I couldn’t do it every weekend, but once and while, it is ok.