Year 1: The Adventure Begins Part 2

So ... picture this ... you are in a bar. A beautiful woman is seated at the table with you. She is showing you cleavage and hanging on your every word. Just as you suggest breakfast in bed you hear someone knocking. It gets louder. Then you wake up in the dark in a strange place with someone knocking on your door. You stumble to get it open it and ...

There is Matt and Dave. Drunk. Telling me to come on out. They will show me the area. At first I thought that I had slept a whole day away. But I hadn't. I had slept a whole 2 hours. It was midnight. What the hell. Life is an adventure. :)

Dave leads us around the corner of the building. There is a corner store with tables and chairs outside. We meet up with some more friends of theirs. One of them, a Scottish guy named Patrick, stood out. Very friendly. Easy to talk to. He kind of took charge and picked where we were going. Road King.

I was going to ask Dave how far it was from here. Dave wasn't here man. Neither was Matt. The fuckers woke me, got me to come out, and then buggered off leaving me with complete strangers. Patrick seemed cool enough so what the hell. I knew I wouldn't get back to sleep easily. A couple of drinks might help. Off we went.

The walk there didn't take long. I tried to pick out some land marks in case I had to find my way back alone. That was hard. There was so much neon and so many people it was hard to focus on any one thing. And the noise. Holy shit the noise. It seemed like every bar and restaurant was blaring music.

The number of people out at midnight on a Thursday was amazing. It did seem kind of strong. Lots of women holding hands, walking arm in arm. Quite a few guys holding on to each other too. I have never cared about other peoples sexuality but this wasn't what I was lead to expect in Korea. Hilda went on and on about how conservative Koreans are. Even Lonely Planet mentioned it. Homophobic was even mentioned several times. So it seemed strange to see this many people acting like this.

Another thing that stuck out was the women. Lots of attractive women dressed up skimpily. Now I don't have anything wrong with that. Eye candy is always good. But back home some of them could easily be mistaken for hookers. They definitely had the uniform on.

My first impression of Road King was that it was a bit of a dive. A hole in the wall bar. Loud music and lots of people.

Ok, have to stop for a minute. Back home we didn't usually go out drinking on weeknights. We didn't want to go to work hungover or just tired. Bars close at 2AM at the latest.

Where I lived in the 'burbs by 9PM it started quieting down. By 10PM you don't see many cars on the road. By midnight you might see 1 or 2 in an hour. It gets quiet too.

So here I am, 1st night in South Korea. It is after midnight on a Thursday night, Friday morning. The streets are filled with people and noise. The bar is pretty full. You aren't in Kansas anymore Toto.

The bar was kind of dark. Definitely a little dingy. But it was comfortable. We got a table and drank some beer. After the first beer I started yawning. The trip was starting to get to me. Patrick said he would walk me home. I wasn't sure I could find the way. Another guy, Irish Chris, came along.

Halfway there I heard a woman scream. I looked and saw a man and a woman. He gripped her right arm by the wrist with both hands and yanked down hard. She screamed again.

I yelled "What the fuck are you doing? You are dead!" And I started towards the guy. Patrick and Chris grabbed my arms and dragged me back. They were saying I shouldn't get involved. It made me wonder what planet I was on. You see a guy beating on a woman, in public even, and do nothing? WTF?

The guy started shouting stuff back while bowing rapidly. (Now I know he was spouting apologies and excuses.) He had let go of the woman and she ran off. He ended up taking off in another direction.

Patrick told me that while he would love to beat the shit out of a guy like that it wasn't the way of life here. Publicly and privately guys beat the shit out of their girlfriends or wives. As foreigners we would just get in trouble if we stepped in. There is no self-defense law, or defense of others law, in South Korea. To add insult to good intentions he told me that 9 times out of 10 she will just take the abuse and side with the boyfriend if the cops came. It could easily end up me getting in trouble. The woman was probably heading to his place where he would kick the shit out of her because he was embarrased. What the fuck?

We got back to my place. I said bye and pretty much got to sleep as soon as my head hit the pillow.

Quite the first day ... and I had only been in Cheongju 5 hours or so.