Culture Shot: We (Like Alcohol in the System of an Expat) Are So Easily Assimilated

It's Friday night. The week has been filled with work, in my case kids screaming answers to questions they've only half listened to with answers they've only half formed before they started talking, and you (and I) both want to get as far down a bottle, or many bottles, of soju as one can over the course of a night. In a respectable way of course, we're civilized here in the Neon Republic of South Korea. 

So where do we go? Well, I'm no expert but I'll take you under my wing and show you around, it can be hard for the un-initiated to grasp the concept of drinking like a Korean here. 

"Chopsticks? I prefer chop-knives-and-forks but if you
insist!"

Round 1: The bell rings and we're raring to go at it with the old one-two. So we decide on where to go, seeing as we're probably Hank Marvin after a full day teaching English we'll go somewhere we can get some substantial food, and drink

of course. Barbecue is a great choice, we can cook our own meat and eat at the pace we set while feeling like Gods of the Griddle with out personal barbecue on the tabletop. We'll start with wine because I'm somewhat faint of heart and soju can be a struggle to start with. Especially when drinking the traditional rice beverage neat as Koreans are prone to doing. 

Round 2: We've made it through round 1 with barely a scratch on our sobreity, or so we are aware. We're here to drink, not to count bevvies! We move on up in the world and decide we're still feeling somewhat classy and hit on another bar. In here, as in most bars natives frequent, you must buy food with your alcohol

"Oh yummy, my favorite, I love red lettuce"
"Emmet, that's steamed octopus tentacles"

otherwise you definitely have  a drinking problem. We could exempt ourselves as we are foreigners or waygookin as we are co-called in Korean, but we're still fitting in and trying to keep in with the culture. Here we get more soju to accompany our delightful platter of: steamed octopus, raw beef which is to be mixed through with raw egg, pear strips and red pepper strips... Delicious. We're fitting in remember? One must not turn one's nose up at food no matter how unusual or downright incomprehensible it seems to our Westerner palettes. How does it taste? In truth, I've only had this once and the beef was tender yet tasted somewhat like what I can only describe as a rare steak and sawdust. However, the sauces on the side did something to temper the sawdusty taste of the beef. The octopus, red pepper and pear was all very delicious. Round 2 also features games played with the caps of the soju bottles which we've ploughed through like a John Deere through slurry. Each person takes a turn to attempt to flick the metal coil from the cap and whoever succeeds is the king and selects two other members of the party to drink. GUNBAE! Whew maybe we are getting drunk. By the way is it just me or are those silkworm cocoons looking more and more delicious? 

Oh dear... It was just me. At least I can't remember what my lessons this week were about

anymore, we're getting somewhere now. The last of the soju has been drank though so it's onwards and upwards.

This is the only photo I have of a Norebang and
I haven't any form of memory of being there.

Round 3: We're feeling happy, undoubtedly the best kind of drunk. Where to next? Well we whiled away many the hour with the soju and beef so our next choice could be Chicken and Beer but I can't drink beer so we'll opt for the most popular form of late night entertainment in Korea: The Norebang. "Emmet, are you quite sure?" "Oh definitely the natives go there all the time!" "But what on Earth is a norebang?" Well, I'm glad you've asked, because they are wonderful. A norebang is a building in which there are many private rooms with couches and TVs and karaoke machines, as well as more soju, just the ticket at this hour! So we sit for hours warbling along to the dulcet tones of Sinead O'Connor and Enya and even brave the gravelly tracks of U2 just to remind everyone that we are Irish! Lest they have forgotten it after our evening of assimilating. Maybe it's the three bottles of soju we've already drunk, maybe it's the thirst worked up from belting out The Cranberries Linger for the fourth time but the soju goes down much better in this place. 

Now, I'm afraid I'm going to have to call it a night because I'm tired and the crushing weight of how Irish I am, or perhaps my inebriation has left me feeling rather unwell and I fear I may throw up. But please let me know how rounds 4 and 5 waiting for the subway to reopen to take you home go.

Disclaimer: This is not always the typical foreigner night out but is a compendium of what a typical Korean night out has been for me here with my workmates. Also I nicked the norebang picture from Jamie on Facebook. Please find it in your hearts to forgive me.

Scene Unseen: This Traveler's Experience of 'The Unseen Korea'

"Ah look: a temple."
"Yep must be Asia, I guess... South Korea"

In the brief time I've been here in Korea I've begun to notice the picture my friends and family back home have of Korea is that it's all bright lights, neon signs and temples, lot of temples. For example the one above is the Haedong Yonggungsa Temple (해동 용궁사) or the Dragon Gate Temple as I was told it translates roughly to by my bosses husband who showed us around. No, you aren't wrong about any of those things we have them here in abundance. On my way to school I can take a wrong turn and end up in a neon sign temple... Although that may be a love motel but that's a story for another time. However, there is so much more to see and do here, even in Busan alone there are more tourist attractions than you can shake a stick at! Not that I'm implying you, dear reader, go around shaking sticks at tourist attractions and the likes. Busan has even made it onto the Huffington Post list of '15 Places to Go Before They Get Famous', which if you give such articles credence is a big compliment to the city.

"But Emmet, we've seen all this sort of stuff before! Have you sold us the false promise of lesser known attractions of Forn Parts?" And to this I can hold my head high and say: I have not tried to cash in on the usual empty promise of something "unseen" and show you a part of Korea that not only are you unlikely to have seen but are also unlikely to expect.

Emma's is smiling because you may be struggling with believing this picture was taken in Korea.

This picture shows us the Gamcheon Cultural Village here in Busan which features a number of unusual buildings including the two you can see to the left of the center background that are designed to look like a white mug and a red lighthouse. This village was built during the Korean War when refugees from other parts of Korea flocked to Busan where the threat of fighting was far lower than the rest of the peninsula and so it began its life as somewhat of a slum as the refugees settled on a hillside close to the fish-monger district of Jagalchi. The village as it now stands is a colorful ramshackle of building crowding together to bath in the sunlight which lasts almost all day! We Irish, however, were lathered in sun lotion as our countenances are rather more sensitive to the harsh rays than the buildings and their residents.

As you travel through the narrow streets you follow arrows depicted as fish which lead the way to the art installations which have been housed in some of the empty buildings.These works of modern, contemporary art are a deliberate juxtaposition installed when the government decided to open the streets of Gamcheon as

"I see...But what is it?"
"It's art, you uncultured swine!"
"You don't know either it seems"

a cultural village. It is important to note that this didn't come without a lot of grumbling from local residents who were loath to be looked upon as some kind of quaint token of poverty-stricken art-installations and as such some streets are off-limits to tourists and have signs asking for quiet so as not to disturb the inhabitants. I think this is rather a fair request from those who do not want to be a tourist attraction and wish to remain undisturbed by noisy wanderers. There is also a trail you can follow around the village using your guide map on which you collect stamps from each of the buildings of note to show you've seen the whole place. Although, in typical fashion, Emma and I only discovered this on our way out of the maze of buildings.

"Did we just accidentally go hiking?
Cuz I'm telling people we went hiking"

After we left the village we stumbled upon a hiking park just outside the gates and decided to explore in search for the "Sculpture Park" which we assumed would have all manner of lewd statues, because, well, sometimes our Westerner roots put strange ideas into our heads about what societies on this side of the world make statues of. Sadly, we never managed to quite find our way to this park and so it shall have to remain in our imaginations as a shining stone conference of smutty statues. What we found instead was a long walk and some sore feet as neither of us had worn footwear appropriate for walking uphill and downhill like the men of that grand old Duke of York in search of the promised statue garden.

So you see, Korea is not just a country hundreds of temples all boasting the birth of some religious figure or other nor a Neon Republic of bright lights and big cities. As this single example has shown there is definitely more to this scene that that which we are used to seeing or hearing about. There is a veritable cache of historical sights to be seen.

So if you are planning a trip to visit, which I hope at least one of you readers are, there is much more here to be seen through the telephoto lens.

And hey, if you get here soon you can be one of those to follow the HuffPost's advice and get in before the floodgates open and the trove has been picked clean of all the original photos to post on Instagram!