The Gem

The Grand Ole Opry, Itaewon.

For the past few months I have been something of a hermit.  After losing my Gangnam job, my money situation fluctuated between frugal and oh-shit.  Add in various factors like apartment furnishing, a trip to the States for Christmas, a fairly luxurious dinner at the top of Namsan Tower (I realize that these things are all elective expenses), and life in general and the sum of the parts was a not very social Tom.

Finally, after the alignment of the stars (payday with no huge expenses to worry about) I managed to take a trip to the pub with my coworkers.  It has solidified in my mind that if my school isn’t entirely the coolest place on earth, I got lucky again in that I have cool coworkers

We went to Itaewon.  In the past I have been extremely down on Itaewon.  Part of my disdain for that place is legitimate.  Saturday night that place turns into a horrible place.  I have, however, learned to appreciate it for what it is on the surface: an escape from the monolith of Korean society. 

Grand Ole Opry.  Itaewon, Seoul.
Take the Wolfhound.  We go here first.  It is a two floored Irish pub.  I had been here once before, briefly, with my girlfriend.  The place is actually owned by the same owner as a little sports pub in Yaksu that we frequent.  At that time there was a soccer game on TV and the place was teeming with screaming, chain-smoking, drunk Brits.  We turned around and found our western food elsewhere. 

Tonight it is a lot different.  A recent law that bans smoking in bars and restaurants with more than 50 seats saw to the cigarettes.  Further, the upstairs is open and we are led that way and shown to a booth. 

The place is accented with dark wood and plaques.  Off to one side a game of darts is underway.  It is owned by Koreans but it is no different than an Irish pub in Boston.  I can’t speak to its authenticity as an Irish Pub in Ireland but it hit the spot for us.  It serves a mishmash of burgers, sandwiches, pub grub, and Irish dishes like lamb stew.  I avoid all of this and get the chicken fingers.  Fucking great.  They might not actually even be great.  I don’t care.  I am so hungry that I load on the barbeque sauce just for extra sustenance. 

We talk and drink at two different tables before congregating together.  Sometimes going out with coworkers makes me wonder if my kindie teacher went out and got drunk with all the other kindie teachers at Beal School after work.  We pass the point of having really wonderful ideas and wander over to a bar called the Grand Ole Opry; which is the real point of this post.

We take a left outside of Wolfhound.  People are out.  Itaewon is at its prime.  Teachers, soldiers, and Koreans are at all manner of trashed.  Nobody is passed out on the curb yet, so it is still pretty early.  We cross the street and begin walking up a hill; or should I say: The Hill. 

Hooker Hill has served as an enigma since I arrived in Korea.  I had heard about it in seedy stories about wild nights out or in jokes.  I remember reading about some US soldier who damn near burned the whole place down when he knocked over a candle in one of the brothels that line the street.  He did take out one of them.  I had been there once, or rather, been near it with Larry the first time we went to Itaewon.  I caught a glimpse of it in the daytime a couple of weeks ago when I was looking for Golden Grahams cereal and Cheez-Its. 

Here we are though, right at the mouth of the beast.  We walk up the hill a little.  It is night time but I don’t see too many of the shady scenes that I expected.  Just a glass storefront and some drunk foreign guys sauntering down from further up the hill.  There could be great bars further on, at the top of the hill, but I just assume everyone is coming from a brothel.  It’s easier to lump them into stereotypes that way.

This bar we step into is called the Grand Ole Opry.  It is dark.  The sides of the bar are dimly lit in a pale, orange hue.  The lights are dimmed and diffused by the smoke of a dozen cigarettes.  It gives the appearance that candles or torches dance behind the shade.  The floors are dirty and the walls are covered with notes written on US dollar bills, Korean won, and probably a handful of other currencies.  Despite not being a thief, I think of taking some of them to both read the notes closer and then buy some candy later on.
In the center of the giant room, surrounded by groups of people who laugh deeply and loudly, is a small wooden dance floor.  As it is, nobody sets foot onto it.  Not for a while, anyway.

Our group sits at a table on the side.  Even in the light that seems to whisp around me, contained in tobacco smoke, I can see that some of the bills pinned to the wall are ancient.  This place has probably been around for ages (I look up the history, later, and find almost nothing other than the bar owner’s anger over a recently enforced early curfew for U.S. troops; courtesy of a rape and some other pretty serious trouble).

Our beer comes.  I order a Cass.  We talk and I look around.  The clientele of this place throws me off.  I see cowboy hats.  Particularly, I see a ten-gallon hat.  The man wearing it is my age, perhaps a bit younger.  His hat is black and he wears a black button down-shirt that leads down to a flamboyant belt buckle.  He is polished.

I immediately take on this cocky attitude.  This place is so foreign to me.  I realize pretty quickly that I am more at home in a Korean hof than a country-western bar.  I am from New England.  This place in Itaewon is so damn far from my experiences in Shrewsbury, in Worcester, or in Boston.  I sneer.  I don’t do it maliciously.  I have the attitude of almost any New Englander in a place like that.  Maybe it’s because I realize I don’t fit in here.  Maybe it’s because I am taking it too seriously.     

Suddenly everyone is standing.  I am laughing about something and I recognize the words to the Star Spangled Banner.  I am in a state of light-hearted disbelief.  Hats are removed from heads and placed on hearts.  Eyes turn at attention and focus on the Stars and Stripes hanging from a dark wall.  Hanging next to it is the Confederate Flag. 

Immediately after the anthem is “And I’m proud to be an American…” which is perhaps my least favorite song of all time.  I sit down and wonder what will come out of the speakers next.

The night wears down and we have some laughs.  What comes from the speakers is a steady stream of new and old country, a spatter of folk and blue grass.  At the end of the night, before a group of us make our exit into the Itaewon night, I see the man in the cowboy hat dancing with a girl.  If she is Korean or not I don’t now remember.  It strikes me that they are not grinding or bumping or anything like that.  He is smiling as they waltz along to the music.  I don’t know if it’s a waltz but it was classy and even through the booze and the smoke I could see his smile. 

We are greeted by hookers.   They sit behind glass in the storefronts (actually brothels) across the street from the Opry.  I am beginning to feel a little guilt over my immediate disdain for the Opry, but my first thought is about how much money these places must make from a bunch of whisky-drunk country dudes.
I see a girl, a bit larger than the average Korean girl.  She is sitting on a chair behind glass.  The lighting is red and dim but she seems to be reading something.  She shifts in her seat and I can tell she is barely even wearing shorts.  Behind her is an older lady, fully dressed that I take to be the madam.  Another girl walks out but she barely pays our group more than a vaguely annoyed glance. 

We make our way to the main drag and fight for a taxi and go home.

When I wake up I get to thinking about the Opry.  I feel a bit bad about the stereotype I had for, well, most of the people in there.  I get to thinking about how it might be the most legitimate “old west” saloon I have ever or will ever go to. 

It was smoky.  The bartenders were gruff old women.  There were pictures of one in a whole bunch of different countries.  Whether she picked up a pension for Americana on her travels or just fell into the Opry, I don’t know.  There were cowboy hats and belt-buckles worn with pride instead of irony.  People seemed to drink hard and smoke hard.  Likely, everyone in that place could have handled themselves in a brawl.  And, like every bar in the West according to Deadwood, it was surrounded by prostitutes and the grime of a seedy and dirty road in a seedy and dirty neighborhood.

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Seoul, Part II

Sometimes travel is about all sorts of righteous ideals: self growth, lessons in understanding, adventures, etc. Sometimes, though, travel is about not losing your shit. By no fault of the Tomgi Hotel I did not sleep. It has been happening all too frequently that I go to bed and do not find sleep. I stare at the ceiling in misery as the room grows bright. I then have to face my day through the eyes of a guy who isn’t really there at all.


I was told upon my checkout from the Tomgi Hotel that I could extend my stay by another night, but it would cost me. One thing about Korea is that it is still common for a hotel to charge for four hour blocks of time during the day. Checkout was at noon, to leave my things in the room while I searched for an Xbox repair man would cost me 30,000W for the hours of 12 - 4 and another 30,000W for 4 - 8. Not willing to pay an extra 60,000W for what basically amounted to a very fancy storage locker I packed my bags and told the desk clerk that I would return at 8pm. I then set out with one heavy backpack and a camera bag. I was sweating profusely before I got to the first metro station.

Yongsan is miserable if you don’t have a plan. There was no giant neon sign that read: “Are you a moron!? Did you lug your Xbox power supply directly into the wall hoping to kill some zombies only to see death as the sparks flew by and your nose filled with ozone? I got your back-ee.” No, there was no sign. Instead there were about 5 floors with random groupings of computer parts dealers, speaker salesmen, and video game stores.

No problem, I thought. I would walk this building of the market first, then double back holding my broken equipment and saying “fix-ee?” until somebody helped me or I struck out. I would then begin walking the streets of Yongsan and hope for the best.

The first thing that went wrong (sans-insomnia) almost led to my unraveling: The escalators of the building were not working. I would be lying if I said I was appreciating the exercise of walking up and down 5 steep flights of dirty stairs with my bags hanging from my back. Whatever trouble I was having just to keep my eyes open was doubled by the sweat that was POURING into my eyes and all over my body. Others were eating ramen in the little convenience stores, some were buying parts to make a computer that could take down an entire nation's network if they weren’t so busy playing Starcraft II; I looked like I was about to keel over on Mt. Everest.

I walked around all five small but packed floors with no luck. I stepped off of the stairs hoping to find the advertised food court. I found only closed or long abandoned stores and a dirty floor with a few men who looked like they had taken in too much soju the night before. The basement, it seems, is where those defeated by Yongsan come to die. Promised the indulgence of a lunch and some coffee I found only despair and shoulder pain as I sat with the rest of the downtrodden trying to muster a collective will to go on.

A week later I would return to this very spot to meet Larry. I would walk down one dark hallway to find, of all things, one of two Hooters in Korea. Really Korea?

Somewhere inside I realized that I couldn’t eat or find somewhere to sleep or otherwise get on out of Yongsan until I found somebody to fix my power supply.

I walked up the first set of stairs and was let down by the first floor. Again, up the stairs and disappointed on the second floor. I was starting to wonder, on the third floor after being shooed away by a video game store, if I just looked like a lost cause. There I was, a derelict fool carrying a busted power supply with a full pack while sweating profusely like an addict who can no longer think straight without his stuff.

Floor number 4 was almost the end of me. There were 4 identical video game stores, each of which with a small line of 20-somethings asking questions or sampling games as the clerk fumbled beneath the counters for parts of hardware. I sat and sweated through three lines to be told “anio (no)” by three grumpy men. I was starting to think blowing $100 to have a new part shipped to me wasn’t so bad when the fourth clerk told me that he could fix the thing for 25,000W cash.

I could have cried. My interest in fighting fake wars or killing zombies was non existent; it had been replaced by the urge to stop carrying the damned power supply around. I asked him how long it would take, if I had time to eat. He told me I could pick it up in 4 days. Son of a bitch.

The heat and fatigue can make you do strange things. It was around 2pm; I left my hotel at 10am and I couldn’t return until 8pm. My pack was all the lighter without the power supply / bane of my existence but it was still there along with my camera.

I was completely soaked. I had spent a long time walking around Yongsan (there was classy mall next to the market) and I was starting to let my misery get the best of me. I couldn’t think straight and found myself just sitting on the curb listening to the cicadas and sweating.

The cicadas in the Korean heat are absurd. I leaned against a pole next to a street overloaded in traffic, pedestrians, and fog and listened as the buzz grew from distant to jackhammer loud in a wild crescendo. I looked for them in the trees like everybody else but found nothing- largely due to the fact that my glasses were sitting somewhere in Cheongju. At it’s peak I could not hear the traffic right in front of me because it was overpowered by the heat bugs.

I saw the building right where Larry said it would be. It looked something like Boston’s South Station with cfogged windows, neon writing, and a covered entrance. I stumbled half dead and delirious and sat under the trees next to a bubbling fountain and a vine covered wooden fence. I sat there for 15 minutes and watched as Koreans came and left before I mustered the courage to go through the doors and into the lobby. I heard splashing water and smelled chlorine. I stood in line for one minute before deciding that this was entirely too big of a leap along the path of “going native” for me to handle.

I left the sanctuary, walked a half mile or so and bought a metro ticket for Itaewon. Itaewon now has a Taco Bell and I guess my plan was to spend the next 6 or so hours eating tacos. I sat in the station looking utterly depressed and desperate until the sane part of my mind that had yet to be melted to its core told me a 6 hour taco binge was a bad idea. So, I headed back to the Dragon Hill Spa.

Dragon Hill Spa is a Korean bathhouse. While public bathhouses generally stir up stories of ancient Rome or less ancient San Francisco, they do not have the same connotation here. They are socially acceptable places to go to relax. Perhaps for the rarity of baths in Korean apartments, or for the desire for a relaxing social experience these places are a staple of Korean culture. They are a must according to any guidebook you read. Korean bathhouses are a place to distress, relax, and kill time (say 6 or so hours). Korean bathhouses are also butt-ass naked.

I will spare you the grim details and give you only vague ideas of my experience. They are like a giant locker room full of closet nudists. There are enough doors off of the changing area to inspire a legitimate fear in the heart of a westerner that he might accidentally walk out into the coed clothed area. There after showering one walks down a path and hop into a giant tub that is usually just shy of boiling and soak for as long as you can bare it. The water is often infused with herbs and the tubs are usually full beyond the capacity of awkwardness. You then jump into a small pool of cold water and repeat the process which produces a feeling of tingling euphoria.

If you are a westerner you spend most of your time staring at the ceiling and avoiding the kid swimming toward you with swimming goggles.

I spent a couple of hours in the tubs, most of which in the cold pool until I felt restored and headed to the sleeping room. I dried off, put on my uniform and stepped into one of the strangest places I have been to in Korea.

It was a room the size of a large classroom. It’s ceilings were low and everything was bathed in a warm light that passed through narrow, fogged windows. Here and there somebody slept on a mat or sprawled on the floor based on how much they rolled. Everybody wore the same faded shorts and t-shirt uniform. I laid down and drifted off to the soothing sound of the piped in crashing surf soundtrack that was drowned out by the sound of 25 mean with no self-awareness snoring like my father and grandfather had created some anti-sleep demon.

I woke up a few hours later. When I laid down the place truly seemed tranquil and I was at ease. I felt as though I was experiencing some vital part of Korean culture and that by stepping into a place like this I was being accepted in a strange sort of way. When I woke up it reminded me of some sort of hippie-cult commune and got one out of there. Manson probably had a sleeping room.

The rest of the night was uneventful. I ate a couple of tacos in Itaewon and made a little bit of peace with the neighborhood that gave me a bitter taste for Seoul. I accidentally took a metro back to Yongsan and had to backtrack and transfer to get back to Anguk, but soon enough I found myself enjoying a beer on a giant bed in a beautiful hotel room. The next day I would get lost and almost lose my marbles trying to get to a bus terminal and again do battle with the heat. That night though, I sat and watched The Office, Community, and a healthy dose of America’s Funniest Home Videos. All was right with the world.

What did I eat today?  Kimchi Jigae (kimchi soup, sour and spicy deliciousness), and Curry Dongas (pork cutlet with curry, made by me to get rid of the rest of my curry).

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Itaewon

I have been to some pretty shady places in my life but Itaewon takes the cake. I laid my head on a pair of shoes on the floor of the Grand Hyatt at 4 something in the morning and waited for sleep that would never come. It had been a long day.

It started with a 2 hour bus ride from Cheongju to Seoul. Larry sat beside me as I stared out the window after I giving up on a quick nap. The night before was spent at an outdoor bar in downtown Cheongju. Morning came too soon as it usually does after such nights.

An alley market in Seoul.

After passing beyond Cheonan the bus raced faster and faster to the northern megatropolis that I had seen in so many travel shows. The green hills and mountains that follow you always here gave way to gray buildings that had sprung from the land and cut into the yellow smog-clouds.

Seoul is a big place. Seoul is a monstrously big place. It blows the population of New York out of the water despite being dangerously close to the guns of the North. It might be fair to say that Korea is a country based around Seoul as a disproportionately huge percentage of the population lives within its limits.

After the bus dropped us off at the express terminal, Larry and I made our way to the subway. Here, not for the first time and probably not for the last, I was following Larry like a toddler on a child-leash; I was completely useless in navigation. It was the best I could to simply keep up and not get caught and swept away in the currents of black hair that rushed about us.

We boarded one train and then another that took us to our destination of Itaewon.

That evening we were to be guests of Larry’s friend Lucy who made the occasional escape from life to the Grand Hyatt that sits atop a great hill and so overlooks the city line of Seoul. On this occasion she was awaiting the arrival of her brother who had been held up in Japan.

The entrance to a market district
in Seoul.

The first sight of Itaewon is startling. On what seemed to be the main drag cutting off bustling side streets there was the blinding and jarring sight of white skin, black skin, blonde hair and every shape of eyes. Itaewon is a Mecca for expats in Seoul, and for this it is the home to some of the most dynamic scenes this peninsula has to offer.

We meandered through the main drag and everything was so familiar. In a strange sort of way, the things that we have grown accustomed to at home had become exotic to all of us now residing in Korea. I had seen McDonalds here and there, but here was a Subway and a Quizno’s right next to each other. There was an Outback Steakhouse and signs announcing the soon-to-arrive Taco Bell. No Moes, though.

The people and places of Itaewon seemed to be worth the trip alone.

We walked past Thai joints, a Mexican place and countless vendors selling everything you could ever want and stuff you could never need. There were thousands of socks and stands selling shirts that were so inappropriate that even I had trouble reading them.

We turned a corner and began to walk up the steepest hill that I had ever seen a car drive up and shortly decided that we would never make it to the Hyatt at the top. This hill, with no exaggeration, rivaled that of Mt. Wachusett at home.

If ever I was impressed by a cabbie’s driving skills, this was it. In a manual, this guy negotiated hairpin turns, uneven road levels and some pretty ridiculous graded roads that were not wide enough for two cars at once all the way up until we were let off to wander our way to a room on the 8th floor.

I have never stayed in a place like the Hyatt. I can take that statement further and say that I will probably never stay in a Hyatt. Sure, that night I would be sleeping in a Hyatt but that was as non-paying, unauthorized trespasser. Still, the place exudes of colonial retreats and unattainable wealth. On the back side of the lobby is a wall of windows that look on the eternally hazy sight of Seoul. Down a flight of stairs and through the spa are the indoor and outdoor pools.

Pools are important to me. I can and have stayed in truly horrible motels only because they had a giant hole in the ground full of chemically induced clear water. These pools: my god! Inside was a contoured and curvy pool set with rock. Outside and surrounded by deep green grass and a couple of open air lounges was a massive pool decorated with an inlaid grid beneath the water.

“Hotel Rwanda?” Larry said. It was true, you had to wonder if any working Korean in Itaewon or anywhere else ever had the means to visit a place like this.

Traditional masks in Itaewon.

Another taxi took us past a military wedding party, down the hill and let us out onto that main drag. Larry, Lucy and I wandered to dinner where three incredible hamburgers and three very stiff drinks cost about 70,000W, which doesn’t translate to anything reasonable in U.S. currency.

Nearly a year without real beef, I am told, will make you do crazy things for the taste of a genuine hamburger.

Soon after we walked for a time to be accosted every ten feet by shady men offering custom suits and leather. With the setting of the sun, we met up with a girl named Katie and were off to Incheon to greet Lucy’s brother and take a taxi back to Itaewon for a night on the town.

There is no quick way back to Itaewon and there is no cheap way back. Indeed, if we didn’t find a taxi van we would have had to pay two taxi fares, as it was the van cost nearly $100.

Itaewon changes at night. Drastically.

Cart vendors for the most part disappear, to be replaced by Soju tents and kebab stands that pollute the air with intoxicating smells of afar and florescent lights that glow in the smoky haze. With nightfall, everything genuine or Korean about this place seems to flee into the hills.

Where as Cheongju or Cheonan nights see the school teachers out and about, Itaewon is the hub of vice for US Military personnel from the base at the edge of town. They come in the hundreds and they come with determination. Hard at work and hard at play.

An alley of Itaewon.

I do not begrudge the military their fun because god know what is to come with the North threatening open war, but it is hard to think what this place might have been like before they arrived. Korea is new to the realm of developed countries and Itaewon seems to be one of those places that was forced to sell its soul for the business.

We started the night off at a crowded bar, sweating even beneath an industrial fan. While westerners mingled and flirted and tried their luck with every girl around, we played asinine drinking games that all but assured that we would not be bothered.

At 1am the place died down fast and we were suddenly left with only a handful of small groups drinking at the bar. We set off in search of another spot and soon found ourselves wandering the night.

The air was saturated by laughter, shouting and slurred speech and the ground was covered in garbage. We stopped at a hole in the wall for Turkish gyros and were bumped around on the sidewalk as we ate; we stood in the way of everyone as they rushed from one drink to the next.

We passed bars and clubs of every sort. Music blared as people in every manner of dress and lack thereof passed us by. On the recommendation of two questionable girls we walked to the second floor of a building and walked into a bar that was barely worth the circle around the tables we made before we walked right back out again.

We passed through doors flanked by armed men in utility vests. It hip hop club that served us horrible Jack and Cokes as we watched the smoky dance floor bump and grind. The elevated stage was apparently reserved for those that were too cool or too bad to smile as they shouted along to songs raps that pulsed with the strobes. We left with another layer of sweat and grime.

As the night wore on we struck out again and again until any buzz we had had turned into plain fatigue. We found ourselves at the junction of the night and morality. As people questioned their willingness to go on we looked about the hills to our side and behind us.

At our side was one of the few openly gay districts of Korea. It is called Homo Hill. Behind us was Hooker Hill. No explanation needed.

Truth be told, dirty and grimy and sleazy as Itaewon is, there was something familiar about it. Itaewon has the feeling of every lawless frontier town in any Western and bares a remarkable resemblance to every Pirate movie representation of Tortuga.

In the end, the night ended here. Lucy and her brother went back to the hotel and the rest of us drank beer outside of a convenience store watching a group of hammered French argue and mumble. We walked down the street one last time as the MP’s began to make their rounds to at least feign control and enforcement of a 3am curfew.

So, at 4am I laid down beneath a table at the Hyatt with horrible heartburn, shoes for a pillow and an extra T-shirt as a blanket. Outside the night was just beginning to wind down. Those that remembered where they were from returned or else made a bed on the curb.

The next day the streets were as clean as ever and men peddling custom suits returned as though the night before was just a fading fever dream.

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