My buddy Matt Ball came out and spent several days in Seoul last week. He arrived Saturday night, the night I was still recovering from the Football Members Training. Sunday we met up and went to the MyungDung area. Down there is an old cathedral and a major shopping district. We then went to Dongdaemun stadium to another shopping area. The place is filled with hilarious t-shirts. Phrases that don’t make sense and so many t-shirts with just ridiculous typos.
Click to enlarge - Sunday mass
Click to enlarge - Read the quote
Monday Matt paid for a tour and visited some palaces. When he returned Mike and I met up with him and went to Itaewon so Mike could buy some shoes. Mike and I went to football practice and Matt met us up after and we went to the all you can eat meat buffet place for some BBQ.
Tuesday Matt went on the DMZ tour while I was in class. Then we went out to dinner that night and went out to Seoul Tower. Seoul Tower is located near the middle of the city up on a big hill, it’s kind of like the stratosphere and you get a 360 view of the city. We then went back to meet up with friends for a couple of bars and then after drinking a whole lot we went to the norae bong or karaoke room. There was about seven or eight of us and we sang songs for almost two hours. It was soon 4am and we went home to bed.
Click to enlarge - Ate some fish.
Seoul Tower
Matt singing his heart out
Wednesday Matt and I trekked down to the Korea National Museum. The museum was very nice, it was very big and had a lot of history inside. We spent several hours there. It was also free!
Korean warrior
We went back to the nearby area of the hotel and went to the Ewha area and had some bulgogi at a place I like to go to often. You get a full meal that is really good and it’s only 5,000 won ($3.75). We then went to Coldstone ice cream for desert. We had decided we didn’t want to stay out too late because of the early plane ride in the morning so we headed back toward the hotel, I was planning on getting my haircut the next day so I wanted to cruise by the area to make sure I knew where the place was that I wanted to go to. I was shocked to see that at 10:10pm they were still open cutting hair so we walked in. We waited for about 20 minutes and then they were ready for me. No one there this time could speak any English. I had to tell them how to cut my hair but I couldn’t do that, so somehow I had to show them. I picked up the GQ and Esquire magazines thinking I’d surely find something in there that would look similar to my hair style… but all the models are swapped out with Asian models in the Korean versions of GQ and Esquire! The closest thing I found in there was George Clooney, and that isn’t very close. Luckily there was a soccer magazine and I found some white guy with hair about the length I wanted it, so I showed her that photo. She cut it to about the right length however she used the thinning shears for the entire cut. So now I have very Asian looking hair. It was a nice place for a haircut, my roommate and I had went there before and it is only 10,000 won ($7.45).
We shoved off, went to bed and Matt flew out. We had a good time, it was nice getting to share some of my Seoul experiences with one of my long time friends.
