After reliving yet another incredible weekend via friends’ facebook pictures, I realized that I have completely neglected to blog about the silent disco, or any of the details of how I spend my weekends for that matter. So, with that in mind, I dedicate blog #7 to the joys of Seoul nightlife!
My timing on this subject is interesting, given that I just recovered from my first bout of Korean food poisoning. Honestly, it was bound to happen—when you combine cheap packaged chicken with a society that shies away from preservatives, it’s only a matter of time until that $1.00 6:00 AM post nightclub chicken burger comes back to haunt you. After two days of chills, sweats, delirious dreams, and vomit, all I can say is this—thank God it was food and not the Soju that made me sick. It would be devastating to have to swear off Korean nectar and ambrosia due to taste aversion.
Today is Tuesday, however, and I have made a nearly full recovery and am already beginning to plan next weekend’s escapades. Something that I’ve noticed about myself since being here is that I truly seem to have begun reversing in the maturity cycle. I’m at the age when people have generally grown tired of the party scene, but I’m partying more than I ever have in my entire life. Granted, I never was much of a partier and I definitely avoided the club scene, but it’s quite a bit different here. I have a theory that soju is actually a genetic splice between water from the fountain of youth and the world’s greatest mood elevator. Honestly, I have been out until at least 5:00 AM every Saturday since I’ve been here. It’s absolutely fantastic, although the fact that I don’t get hung over probably gives me a slightly different perspective on all this than most.
Anyway, one of the coolest nighttime activities that I’ve discovered since coming here is the silent disco. My first encounter with this was on one of my earliest ventures into Hongdae when I was still in training. A bunch of my friends and I were walking down this crazy, brightly lit neon street that had this palpable energy of excitement, which I’ve come to realize comes with the territory in this neighborhood. We stopped outside a convenience store—undoubtedly to grab some soju for the road—and notice this park crammed with people dancing like crazy, but there isn’t any music playing. So, we stop and watch for awhile and notice that they’re all wearing headphones with helium balloons coming off the top of them. In the center of the crowd is a DJ spinning and TV screens all around with snapshots of people in the crowd in a slideshow. Clearly, this was quite a sight unlike any I had ever seen before. We asked someone what was going on and they explained that this was a silent disco! At the time, we didn’t check it out too much because we had to get back by curfew, but a few weeks later, we decided to try it for ourselves. So, how it works is that you pay the equivalent of $1.00 for a pair of headphones, and you rock out to this unbelievable DJ spinning house music! It is the craziest experience and has fast become one of the most popular Saturday night destinations for my friends and me. It’s a great place to start out the night because clearly, no one is monitoring what you do, so you stop over at the convenience store, grab some soju, and dance like crazy! The time seriously flies by, and it’s this awesome combination of people watching, drinking, dancing, and the outdoors. It’s also the perfect meeting place when you’re trying to organize an outing with 10+ people since there’s no way to get confused about where the night is starting.
The pattern for the last few weekends has been to stay at the silent disco until around 1:00 or 2:00, then head to a club. Now, I need to pause for a moment to acknowledge the fact that I never in a million years would have thought that I would even get dragged into a club here much less sing its praises in a blog. I loathe clubs in the U.S., in fact, I will drag my feet the whole way if my friends even make me enter a bar that has a dance floor. Maybe I’m jaded, but the clubs I’ve been to in the U.S. are gross! It strikes me as this huge meat market where some drunk or high dude with no rhythm comes and accosts me with his gyrating hips and sweats his designer imposter cologne all over my couture. Ick! And then if, God forbid! I want to sit on the sidelines and drown my boredom in a solo cocktail, some other nasty dude comes over and tries to spin his ‘sweet lines’ on me. Again, ICK! Never mind the fact that you can protest until you’re blue in the face and repeatedly talk about how amazing your boyfriend is (which I do) they don’t get it because, again, they’re drunk and/or high and therefore deaf I guess.
Anyway, clubs here are NOTHING like that! I don’t know if it’s the culture or the fact that I usually travel as part of a pack, but people here genuinely just seem to love the energy and the dancing. I have been to numerous clubs, and no one has so much has uttered a word to me or even gyrated in my general direction. It’s just, this crazy dance party with great music where confetti bursts out of the ceiling at random and everyone cheers! Point being, clubs here are actually fun! I think for me, though, the best part of clubs is watching my friends who are the reason I got dragged (initially anyway) to a club in the first place.
In one of my earlier blogs, I talked about Andryos a.k.a Jersey, and he is unquestionably the number 1 club-goer. The guy is a party animal, seriously. It’s hilarious because he always has on some skin tight graphic tee, and as soon as he has one foot in the door, that fist goes up and it gets pumpin’, straight Jersey shore style. He is always the first person up on the stage or the pole and he does not leave his perch until they kick us out. The funniest part though, is that he gets more attention from the men than the women I think. There are always a large group of guys surrounding him that become his own personal fan club. Everyone wants their pictures with him and they stand on the ground and cheer for him up on stage—maybe they think he really is a Jersey shore cast member, who knows?
KK, my Kenyan friend, is a close second on the party animal front. This guy LOVES house music, and I seriously don’t think I have ever witnessed someone get so much joy out of dancing. I never really see him dance with anyone, but the minute we walk in, he gets the biggest smile on his face that doesn’t go away all night. He’s also got this really bouncy way of dancing. If there’s any point in the night that we get separated, I just look for Jersey on stage, and the bouncing dark-skinned head in the crowd to find KK.
I myself don’t have too much stamina for dancing. Besides, my friends’ skills provide hours of entertainment ;-) I prefer to play the role as wing woman, more for my girl friends then my guy friends. Korean men are really shy, so my friends usually scope the crowd for someone that looks interesting, and then my role is to help them not-so-gracefully bump into them. Truthfully, our game needs a little fine tuning, but my friends seem to have lots of fun practicing.
So this concludes my ode to the Seoul club scene. More Korean hijinks to come…
