Night Out in Seoul

I am in Hong Kong right now. Couldn't access blogger from China cuz Google and the Commies hate each other. Can't we all get along, so I can pour my little heart out on whereiscat? Make love, not war, peeps. Ok, I am gonna digress now to my ridiculous night out in Seoul. Met up with M like at around 8ish, and didn't come back to my hotel until 6am... crazy crazy. The day started out innocent enough... pretty view of Seoul under blue skies.

Yay, time for dinner... Your dearest kitty Cat in Seoul.

We went to a little alley way lined with restaurants that specialized in stewed pork bones soup, and sliced pork and oyster wrap. Korean restaurants tend to specialize in one item and when you go there, there is no need for a menu, cuz the waitress will bring out the same thing for everybody.

Here pork bellies are stewing outside. Hm, maybe I should just eat this, hehe.

Restaurant bustling with diners...

Here is the first part of the two part dish -- sliced pork, oysters, obligatory kimchee and lettuce.

Ready to be eaten... I was hesitant about eating raw oysters in a foreign country, then I was like, oh whatevers, we live once... Oh, my tummy, wah!

We struck up a conversation with these diners... Asians are incredibly social, especially when they are in their home territory. Oh do you see the pot on each table, that's for the pork bone soup. They put lots of perilla leaves in there, kind of unusual.

Mmm, yummy bone...

After gnawing on the bone, we walked around Seoul, and saw a street lined with food vendors in plastic tents...

The street food du jour in Seoul right now seems to be boiled snails... something about them kind of gross me out right now, don't know why, but ewe, can't believe I ate them.

I ate this?

The soju made me do it! Bad bad soju.

In addition to cheap sustenance, this is also the place you come for relationship issues...

We went to the little creek that runs through central Seoul after eating the snails... and it was lit with lanterns in celebration of Buddha's birthday.

I am putting this pic up solely to show off my terrific camera. I heart you Canon Powershot!

After lantern viewing at the creek, we decided to experience the ultimate Korean pastime, public bath house! Here is it's very green entrance. It was so weird. This place had like 6 levels and each level had different types of entertainment -- video arcades, nail salon, open air movie theater, massage... Everybody walked around in bathhouse PJs. At around midnight, most bathhouse-goers went to the central hall and slept on the floor. The hall had a throne, which was occupied by two girls, and around the hall, there were like saunas and massage chairs... the saunas were slightly disconcerting since the entrance resembled that of a brick oven... so I opted not to cook myself and slept on one of the massage chairs instead...until 6am.