The best day's hiking ever
Well, poppets, I guess that the first thing to do is apologise for my recent silence. Fear not, I am not sitting alone in a corner of Korean rocking slowly backwards and forwards. Nor have the North Koreans penetrated the border and crossed into the south to see what this lemon soju thing is all about. No, no, I’m afraid that my social life has got quite in the way of my creativity- alcohol will do that to a girl. I thought that having the internet in my house would mean that I would email more but in fact it just means that I spend more time downloading Ali G clips. I have been so busy recently but I haven’t felt that I have had any stories to tell. I have been having a great time but thought that you didn’t really want a beer by beer account of every night that I go out or hear how many times I have been up to see the dawn sun in the last month or so. Now, the following story does, I admit, contain some alcohol but I like to think that the spirit of the story goes beyond that and that it is a story worth telling anyway.
So here goes….
I got a phone call on Friday night from Sam in Seoul letting me know that she hadn’t managed to get on a bus to Gangneung that night but she would be with me the next morning- ready for a long overdue weekend of hiking and general outdoor ness. Fair enough, I decided that I should really get to bed a bit early that night so as to not let her down. And that was my intention as I set off to get my arse-whooped playing Scrabble at Nanette’s house. It was still my intention as I opened my first beer. And it remained my intention until I left the bar around 5am- muttering something about a friend who was due to arrive in a couple of hours. The guilt that I felt through the tequila haze was tempered slightly by seeing the third member of our fearless hiking party go spinning off and crashing into a chair containing a guitar during a particularly hectic bout of drunken dancing. If I was bad at least I wasn’t as bad as her, I thought as she was carried out of the bar.
I guess the next time that the guilt hit in any real sense of the word was the phone call at 9.30am from Sam at the bus terminal in Gangneung, wondering where I was. But she seemed to clue in pretty quickly and got in a cab to my place rather than wait for me. Where I welcomed her clad in only my PJ’s and a duvet. I took some solace from the fact that I had even managed to be awake when she called and Sam seemed happy enough to make her own coffee while I crawled back into bed. Nanette’s phone was still switched off so there was no real rush to get ready.
Sam made herself at home and connected to the Radio One website so we could listen to the latest news from Glastonbury (large music festival back home in England). The festival was in full force and the dance music blared out of the speakers and filled the room- finally giving me enough energy to get out of bed and pack my bag for the weekend’s hike. But a sneaky thought had already crept into my head before I even hit the shower- I was feeling the urge to dance- an urge not easily satisfied in Gangneung. Fighting the urge I came out of the shower and then something had happened- Sam had had a similar idea. I can’t say exactly who suggested it but we appeared to be in one mind as I repacked my bag for a weekend’s clubbing. And so, two hours after arriving in Gangneung Sam found herself on a bus on the way back to Seoul. I love the spur of the moment and have long considered it an ideal time to make decisions- the signs were there and there seemed to be little point in ignoring them.
Shopping was, of course, our main priority before hitting the club for the night. Imagine my absolute joy and delight as we found the first ever hippy shop that I have seen in Korea- hooray, hooray! It was all I could do to stop myself dancing around the shop but I showed some restraint and just tried on two tops and bought one. Sam bought some new flip flops and it was time to head to her house to get seriously girlie- doing hair and make up (and the not so girlie swilling of beer, of course) before starting the long trek to the venue- carried along on the spontaneous decision and excellent shopping high. We took the subway as far as we could go before it stopped for the night (my mates in Gangneung rang and sang down the phone at me) and then we got into a taxi (my mates in Gangneung shrieked down the phone at me) and finally we pulled up outside the Sheraton Walker Hill Hotel- very posh and worryingly quiet. Were things about to finally start going wrong??
Apparently not, we located the party in the lower ground floor and were ready to rock and roll. The reason that we had chosen this particular event to bestow our dancing talents on was that a Dutch DJ that Sam had seen several times was playing- Johan Gielin (Sam, correct my spelling!) so we were a little disconcerted, on entering the venue, to be greeted by a magic show- on ice no less! It lasted less time than it took us to locate the bar and drink the first round of 2 shots and a beer each- about five minutes then! (I was sent to the bar for each of the subsequent rounds due to my complete inability to really grasp the concept of ‘Rock, scissors, paper’ no matter how long I live in Korea where it is the basis for most decisions up to and possibly including who the next president will be) As ‘Born Slippy’ burst into life through the speakers, 1500 people knew that they were in for a good night. We would be dancing for a long time to come, some of us with cell phones in our hands to get our revenge for all the shrieking earlier.
Two beers and less than an hour later something disturbing happened to me as a burp turned out to be more solid than usual and I was left holding the results in my hands- oops! Fortunately we hadn’t eaten much that day and so it was only a little mistake (the African-Mexican restaurant that we had gone to for dinner had failed to really excite our appetites) though I guess that this, combined with all the excitement and general jumping up and down might have been the cause of the problem in the first place. Seeing my distress and not having any tissues, Sam gallantly wiped my hand on her trousers. And the dancing continued. The Koreans were definitely in the majority in the crowd that night and they were larging it with the best of them. They even loved the cheesy DJ speak (‘Come on, Seoul, let’s make some noise!!!!’) but towards the end they had largely dispersed leaving the hard-core foreigner crowd behind- all ten of us. The Korean contingent had been throwing themselves at the DJ every time he approached the edge of the stage all night (though the less said about Sam’s attempted stage invasion the better. Suffice to say that I think security came off worse in the deal) so it was really no great surprise that as he left the stage, Johan found himself escorted out by the remaining Koreans in the crowd.
By the time the Korean DJ came on we were feeling a little worse for wear and decided to leave too. We had to stop just outside the door though as people were getting autographs from the man himself. Shaking off my English reserve I threw myself into the crowd and got one too- well, everyone else was doing it! Then Sam leaned in and told a little teensy- weensy white lie- that she has flown over from Japan for this evening (being the informed young lady that she is she knew that he had had a two year residency in Japan) and he told us to wait while he got rid of the crowd.
What did he have in mind? Two more unlikely groupies it would be difficult to find but we waited. And he came back and took us to the hotel casino! I have never been in a casino before so immediately felt all James Bond and was looking around for people waiting for me to kiss their dice to bring them lucky. But it wasn’t really like that- pretty quiet and full of Japanese businessmen- there being no Korean punters allowed in the bar. We sat down at a roulette table and Johan took around a thousand euros out of his pocket and started to play. We giggled, drank beer and dared each other to touch the chips- not the coolest behaviour, I will admit.
When the euros in his pocket ran out, Johan disappeared and came back with a mixture of euros and dollars. Despite our lucky number losing time and again he still trusted us with a stack of chips each- which we promptly lost in less time than it took to read that sentence. In fact, we just lost and lost while all the Japanese businessmen around won again and again. One guy placed a million won bet and a short spin of the table later he walked away with two million. Johan ran off again and came back with traveller’s cheques as we tried, unsuccessfully, to get some more beer out of a passing hostess.
Fortunately Sam’s lie was never really in any danger of being discovered though the Dutch man was impressed with Sam’s Korean when she ordered the beer! When he disappeared the next time to get some more money (I can only assume that he had gone to his room to feel down the back of the couch for any spare change at this stage) we decided that we were too hungry to wait and pegged it outside to the nearest taxi- where the driver was less than impressed with our cries of ‘poke-um bab, juseyo’ (‘Fried rice, please!’) and just took us to the bottom of the hill before dumping us outside of the nearest convenience store. I got a pizza pocket (drunk food that I can’t believe I lived without last year in Mokpo) and we got into a cab. 50,000 won later and we were back at Sam’s house. Disconcertingly enough her flatmate was in exactly the same position that we had left him in nine hours before. Only my inability to string as much as two syllables together left me in no doubt that we had had quite a night. I collapsed onto the bed and refused to move until the next day- poor Sam slept on the floor!
The next day we had lunch at Bennigans and shopped at Walmart then I got on a bus and went home- sleeping most of the way. In the spirit of Glastonbury we had decided not to shower on the Sunday so I was glad that I was seated a long way from my student who was on the same bus. When I arrived at my house I was rather unsurprised to find that I had left the fan on when leaving the day before in my haste to get to Seoul and get dancing.
And that, I hope, is a story worth telling! As ever, send me all your news as some of you have been far more slack than me!
Lots of love
H
xxx
So here goes….
I got a phone call on Friday night from Sam in Seoul letting me know that she hadn’t managed to get on a bus to Gangneung that night but she would be with me the next morning- ready for a long overdue weekend of hiking and general outdoor ness. Fair enough, I decided that I should really get to bed a bit early that night so as to not let her down. And that was my intention as I set off to get my arse-whooped playing Scrabble at Nanette’s house. It was still my intention as I opened my first beer. And it remained my intention until I left the bar around 5am- muttering something about a friend who was due to arrive in a couple of hours. The guilt that I felt through the tequila haze was tempered slightly by seeing the third member of our fearless hiking party go spinning off and crashing into a chair containing a guitar during a particularly hectic bout of drunken dancing. If I was bad at least I wasn’t as bad as her, I thought as she was carried out of the bar.
I guess the next time that the guilt hit in any real sense of the word was the phone call at 9.30am from Sam at the bus terminal in Gangneung, wondering where I was. But she seemed to clue in pretty quickly and got in a cab to my place rather than wait for me. Where I welcomed her clad in only my PJ’s and a duvet. I took some solace from the fact that I had even managed to be awake when she called and Sam seemed happy enough to make her own coffee while I crawled back into bed. Nanette’s phone was still switched off so there was no real rush to get ready.
Sam made herself at home and connected to the Radio One website so we could listen to the latest news from Glastonbury (large music festival back home in England). The festival was in full force and the dance music blared out of the speakers and filled the room- finally giving me enough energy to get out of bed and pack my bag for the weekend’s hike. But a sneaky thought had already crept into my head before I even hit the shower- I was feeling the urge to dance- an urge not easily satisfied in Gangneung. Fighting the urge I came out of the shower and then something had happened- Sam had had a similar idea. I can’t say exactly who suggested it but we appeared to be in one mind as I repacked my bag for a weekend’s clubbing. And so, two hours after arriving in Gangneung Sam found herself on a bus on the way back to Seoul. I love the spur of the moment and have long considered it an ideal time to make decisions- the signs were there and there seemed to be little point in ignoring them.
Shopping was, of course, our main priority before hitting the club for the night. Imagine my absolute joy and delight as we found the first ever hippy shop that I have seen in Korea- hooray, hooray! It was all I could do to stop myself dancing around the shop but I showed some restraint and just tried on two tops and bought one. Sam bought some new flip flops and it was time to head to her house to get seriously girlie- doing hair and make up (and the not so girlie swilling of beer, of course) before starting the long trek to the venue- carried along on the spontaneous decision and excellent shopping high. We took the subway as far as we could go before it stopped for the night (my mates in Gangneung rang and sang down the phone at me) and then we got into a taxi (my mates in Gangneung shrieked down the phone at me) and finally we pulled up outside the Sheraton Walker Hill Hotel- very posh and worryingly quiet. Were things about to finally start going wrong??
Apparently not, we located the party in the lower ground floor and were ready to rock and roll. The reason that we had chosen this particular event to bestow our dancing talents on was that a Dutch DJ that Sam had seen several times was playing- Johan Gielin (Sam, correct my spelling!) so we were a little disconcerted, on entering the venue, to be greeted by a magic show- on ice no less! It lasted less time than it took us to locate the bar and drink the first round of 2 shots and a beer each- about five minutes then! (I was sent to the bar for each of the subsequent rounds due to my complete inability to really grasp the concept of ‘Rock, scissors, paper’ no matter how long I live in Korea where it is the basis for most decisions up to and possibly including who the next president will be) As ‘Born Slippy’ burst into life through the speakers, 1500 people knew that they were in for a good night. We would be dancing for a long time to come, some of us with cell phones in our hands to get our revenge for all the shrieking earlier.
Two beers and less than an hour later something disturbing happened to me as a burp turned out to be more solid than usual and I was left holding the results in my hands- oops! Fortunately we hadn’t eaten much that day and so it was only a little mistake (the African-Mexican restaurant that we had gone to for dinner had failed to really excite our appetites) though I guess that this, combined with all the excitement and general jumping up and down might have been the cause of the problem in the first place. Seeing my distress and not having any tissues, Sam gallantly wiped my hand on her trousers. And the dancing continued. The Koreans were definitely in the majority in the crowd that night and they were larging it with the best of them. They even loved the cheesy DJ speak (‘Come on, Seoul, let’s make some noise!!!!’) but towards the end they had largely dispersed leaving the hard-core foreigner crowd behind- all ten of us. The Korean contingent had been throwing themselves at the DJ every time he approached the edge of the stage all night (though the less said about Sam’s attempted stage invasion the better. Suffice to say that I think security came off worse in the deal) so it was really no great surprise that as he left the stage, Johan found himself escorted out by the remaining Koreans in the crowd.
By the time the Korean DJ came on we were feeling a little worse for wear and decided to leave too. We had to stop just outside the door though as people were getting autographs from the man himself. Shaking off my English reserve I threw myself into the crowd and got one too- well, everyone else was doing it! Then Sam leaned in and told a little teensy- weensy white lie- that she has flown over from Japan for this evening (being the informed young lady that she is she knew that he had had a two year residency in Japan) and he told us to wait while he got rid of the crowd.
What did he have in mind? Two more unlikely groupies it would be difficult to find but we waited. And he came back and took us to the hotel casino! I have never been in a casino before so immediately felt all James Bond and was looking around for people waiting for me to kiss their dice to bring them lucky. But it wasn’t really like that- pretty quiet and full of Japanese businessmen- there being no Korean punters allowed in the bar. We sat down at a roulette table and Johan took around a thousand euros out of his pocket and started to play. We giggled, drank beer and dared each other to touch the chips- not the coolest behaviour, I will admit.
When the euros in his pocket ran out, Johan disappeared and came back with a mixture of euros and dollars. Despite our lucky number losing time and again he still trusted us with a stack of chips each- which we promptly lost in less time than it took to read that sentence. In fact, we just lost and lost while all the Japanese businessmen around won again and again. One guy placed a million won bet and a short spin of the table later he walked away with two million. Johan ran off again and came back with traveller’s cheques as we tried, unsuccessfully, to get some more beer out of a passing hostess.
Fortunately Sam’s lie was never really in any danger of being discovered though the Dutch man was impressed with Sam’s Korean when she ordered the beer! When he disappeared the next time to get some more money (I can only assume that he had gone to his room to feel down the back of the couch for any spare change at this stage) we decided that we were too hungry to wait and pegged it outside to the nearest taxi- where the driver was less than impressed with our cries of ‘poke-um bab, juseyo’ (‘Fried rice, please!’) and just took us to the bottom of the hill before dumping us outside of the nearest convenience store. I got a pizza pocket (drunk food that I can’t believe I lived without last year in Mokpo) and we got into a cab. 50,000 won later and we were back at Sam’s house. Disconcertingly enough her flatmate was in exactly the same position that we had left him in nine hours before. Only my inability to string as much as two syllables together left me in no doubt that we had had quite a night. I collapsed onto the bed and refused to move until the next day- poor Sam slept on the floor!
The next day we had lunch at Bennigans and shopped at Walmart then I got on a bus and went home- sleeping most of the way. In the spirit of Glastonbury we had decided not to shower on the Sunday so I was glad that I was seated a long way from my student who was on the same bus. When I arrived at my house I was rather unsurprised to find that I had left the fan on when leaving the day before in my haste to get to Seoul and get dancing.
And that, I hope, is a story worth telling! As ever, send me all your news as some of you have been far more slack than me!
Lots of love
H
xxx
posted by Helen @ 11:02 AM
