Soju is bad for the legs…
Called my Korean friend Hyun (Chang Hyun Ro) on Sunday night when I got home. He got on the subway and came out from Seoul where he lives. I taxied to the station to meet him and practised my Korean on the driver. Lost in translation is now my life!
Hyun is now 29 years and it’s been six years since we met at Victoria Uni. He says I got fat and bald and have a big forehead. I say he’s old and ugly and has a big ass. Taxi driver cracks up. We got dropped off at a bar near my house and had beers with a fruit platter and started to catch up. Hyun has a pretty typical Korean life. He has a nice girlfriend, a job that is similar to a Law clerk and lives alone in a house that his brother bought in Seoul. He works 8am-6pm plus some Saturdays till 3/4pm. I say I want some Soju so we got to a local restaurant - Soju is only really drunken with dinner/food.
Because Daekjung is so close to the DMZ (Demilitarised Zone - on the border of Kim Jong Ill’s communist North and President Lee’s democratic South Korea) - the bar caters mainly for soldiers (as does Happy Bar and Love bar which are girl bars but not in the topless or stripbar sense - soldiers/men go there to talk with girls specifically). For a thorough and intensely interesting learning experience about the North/South division, check out this link:
So at the restaurant we have a typical Korean BBQ platter and plenty of Soju and some plum wine which is very sweet and more of a girls drink. We joke and laugh and get more drunk. I ask him how to say ‘I want to pay now’ in Korean and go up to the counter. I also joke with the waiter that Hyun is a foreigner. But I am 3,000won (around $5) short so it backfires bigtime! By now it is around 2am so we go for one more drink at another restaurant and then head home.
Hyun shows me how to use my washing machine and then we crash - luckily I brought my sleeping bag from NZ so he can sleep on the floor (my bed is slightly bigger than a single). We wake on Monday at 5am as Hyun has to catch subway back to Seoul for work at 8am. I hobble to the bus stop with a crippled leg and send him on his way. Thankfully I can go home and sleep till 12pm.
link
