Which was kinda what happened last Sat.
Anda facebooked Butch and I on Friday, to inform us that the house party was going to be cancelled, as everyone was off to the 3rd Annual Seoul DJ Fest. Lame. We had a bit of a chat about what to do and the resulting decision was along the line of the 'if you can't beat em...' so that's pretty much what we did. Pretty good, as I love DJs and festivals, but bad as I missed the rice fields!
Anywho, I headed on over to Faye's Friday night, for the first time, which has been pretty lame of me, seeing as we've been 'married' for almost 2 months now. Contrary to what she says, Faye's apartment is pretty cool, though, I'll admit, smaller than mine by quite a way. Still, cozy is the word that springs to mind, rather than 'box'.
I got in pretty late, but hadn't eaten yet, so we decided to take a walk to the bustling SungKyunKwan uni area and grab us some nosh. We found a nice bar, which looked like it did pretty awesome food, so pointed out 2 of the dishes to the bar guy - who kindly informed us that one dish was enough to feed 4 Koreans. So, wisely, we opted for just one. While waiting for the food to arrive, we got the pleasure of trying bondeggi for the first time. How can I describe bondeggi? Well, for starters, it's boiled silkworms. Sound nice? In the words of Ruby, 'you don't even know!' These things smell like burning plastic, and taste even worse. (Faye and I knew of the smell, but you've got to try these things, hey??) Once you put the little guy into your mouth you can taste the aromatics, and then, when you bite down they pop. And it's not a nice pop. It's pus. So, just to reiterate, you put silkworm into mouth, get the taste, bite down and get a gob full of pus. Nice. The pus then sticks to your teeth, so, even after you've swallowed the horror that is bondeggi, you have the taste in your mouth and not even a swig of Cass can get rid of that bad boy. Hideous. I rarely heave, but I admit, that was definately a heave time.
Luckily the food came pretty much straight after the bondeggi was consumed, so we fell on it, much like ravenous hounds, partly as we were, but also just trying to get rid of the taste.
The food was lovely, much like a chicken curry, so we decided to ask for rice along with our dish, which as you may remember, we were told could feed 4 Koreans. And yup, you guessed it, we ate the lot. Felt like a freakshow too, seeing as people were craning to watch the fat westerners eat what seemed like the world. Many jokes about fat people later and a waddle to the till to pay 20 thou each, saw us heading out to brave a DVD Bang. We were told that it would be easy to find a DVD Bang, but this proved untrue. An hour later we wandered into SungKyunKwan's own MULTIBANG (henceforth it will only be typed in capitals.). The akashi told us that 'one time' would be 13,000 so in we went (after being offered t-shirts, he was clued up was that old dude). To be fair, the MULTIBANG had everything. Everything. Karaoke, Wii, DVD, everything you could imagine. Well cool. We decided to watch The Shutter (which was ok, for a western film trying to do Asian horror) and were just getting to the good bit when 'click' off went the tv. We peeked our head round the door and gave the man a sad look and, check it out! He put the rest of the film on for us! SCORE! Til we got to the pay desk anyway, when the cheeky beggar wanted 23000 for the film (which, sports fans, equates to about 11.50 for one film)!!! We acted dumb and pretended that we had no more money - whilst constantly sniggering - and promised we'd return with the money in the morning. I'm still waiting for the 'help I'm being chased by the mental MULTIBANG man' call from Faye. Ha, tip, if you're going to steal, don't do it on your doorstep! (Especially, if, like Tambo and his klepto adventures, you nick a full sized family portrait...).
When morning arrived, Faye and I hopped on a bus to the capital and met with Luna, Panda bear and Rob. We had a bit of a wander round some shops and went for a noodley based dinner, which was nice and then decided to head on over to the fest, minus Luna, who wasn't going to pay the 50,000 won ticket price as she couldn't stay all night. We did, however, acquire Song-in, Anda's friend from the rice fields, who turned out to be a)awesome and b) really helpful with all things. What a legend of a girl. We got to the site and instantly were accosted with a Korean Reggae band, which put me right in the mood! We got our tickets and had a wander around the two stages, saw about everyone we'd met in Korea, had a gander at the crazy outfits people had donned and got my bottle of soju confiscated. Arse. Cost me a thousand one that did. Ok, so it's only 50p, but still.
Anda facebooked Butch and I on Friday, to inform us that the house party was going to be cancelled, as everyone was off to the 3rd Annual Seoul DJ Fest. Lame. We had a bit of a chat about what to do and the resulting decision was along the line of the 'if you can't beat em...' so that's pretty much what we did. Pretty good, as I love DJs and festivals, but bad as I missed the rice fields!
Anywho, I headed on over to Faye's Friday night, for the first time, which has been pretty lame of me, seeing as we've been 'married' for almost 2 months now. Contrary to what she says, Faye's apartment is pretty cool, though, I'll admit, smaller than mine by quite a way. Still, cozy is the word that springs to mind, rather than 'box'.
I got in pretty late, but hadn't eaten yet, so we decided to take a walk to the bustling SungKyunKwan uni area and grab us some nosh. We found a nice bar, which looked like it did pretty awesome food, so pointed out 2 of the dishes to the bar guy - who kindly informed us that one dish was enough to feed 4 Koreans. So, wisely, we opted for just one. While waiting for the food to arrive, we got the pleasure of trying bondeggi for the first time. How can I describe bondeggi? Well, for starters, it's boiled silkworms. Sound nice? In the words of Ruby, 'you don't even know!' These things smell like burning plastic, and taste even worse. (Faye and I knew of the smell, but you've got to try these things, hey??) Once you put the little guy into your mouth you can taste the aromatics, and then, when you bite down they pop. And it's not a nice pop. It's pus. So, just to reiterate, you put silkworm into mouth, get the taste, bite down and get a gob full of pus. Nice. The pus then sticks to your teeth, so, even after you've swallowed the horror that is bondeggi, you have the taste in your mouth and not even a swig of Cass can get rid of that bad boy. Hideous. I rarely heave, but I admit, that was definately a heave time.
Luckily the food came pretty much straight after the bondeggi was consumed, so we fell on it, much like ravenous hounds, partly as we were, but also just trying to get rid of the taste.
The food was lovely, much like a chicken curry, so we decided to ask for rice along with our dish, which as you may remember, we were told could feed 4 Koreans. And yup, you guessed it, we ate the lot. Felt like a freakshow too, seeing as people were craning to watch the fat westerners eat what seemed like the world. Many jokes about fat people later and a waddle to the till to pay 20 thou each, saw us heading out to brave a DVD Bang. We were told that it would be easy to find a DVD Bang, but this proved untrue. An hour later we wandered into SungKyunKwan's own MULTIBANG (henceforth it will only be typed in capitals.). The akashi told us that 'one time' would be 13,000 so in we went (after being offered t-shirts, he was clued up was that old dude). To be fair, the MULTIBANG had everything. Everything. Karaoke, Wii, DVD, everything you could imagine. Well cool. We decided to watch The Shutter (which was ok, for a western film trying to do Asian horror) and were just getting to the good bit when 'click' off went the tv. We peeked our head round the door and gave the man a sad look and, check it out! He put the rest of the film on for us! SCORE! Til we got to the pay desk anyway, when the cheeky beggar wanted 23000 for the film (which, sports fans, equates to about 11.50 for one film)!!! We acted dumb and pretended that we had no more money - whilst constantly sniggering - and promised we'd return with the money in the morning. I'm still waiting for the 'help I'm being chased by the mental MULTIBANG man' call from Faye. Ha, tip, if you're going to steal, don't do it on your doorstep! (Especially, if, like Tambo and his klepto adventures, you nick a full sized family portrait...).
When morning arrived, Faye and I hopped on a bus to the capital and met with Luna, Panda bear and Rob. We had a bit of a wander round some shops and went for a noodley based dinner, which was nice and then decided to head on over to the fest, minus Luna, who wasn't going to pay the 50,000 won ticket price as she couldn't stay all night. We did, however, acquire Song-in, Anda's friend from the rice fields, who turned out to be a)awesome and b) really helpful with all things. What a legend of a girl. We got to the site and instantly were accosted with a Korean Reggae band, which put me right in the mood! We got our tickets and had a wander around the two stages, saw about everyone we'd met in Korea, had a gander at the crazy outfits people had donned and got my bottle of soju confiscated. Arse. Cost me a thousand one that did. Ok, so it's only 50p, but still.
After a bit of a dance I decided that I had to get rid of my backpack, as being in a crowd of people with a huge bag and a backpack is not fun, so I decided to head back to the station to drop my stuff off and pick up Ruby and Tambo, who were on their way.
When I arrived at the station I found out that the bloody lockers were broken and then, after a trip 4 stops down, that other tube stations lockers were broken too. Arse. Ruby, however, told me that we could head back to the Olympic Stadium (near the site of the fest) and leave our stuff in the Homeplus there, so instead of spending thousands of won, I spent 100, ace!
After I'd dropped my bag off and picked up some ddubokki from the local vendor Tambo arrived. I tried to trick him into the joys of bondeggi, but, alas, he wasn't to be fooled that they tasted like heaven, partly due to Ruby's heaving at my mention of the tasty treats. Still, not to be put off, Tambo stepped up like a man and tried one. And heaved . And heaved again. There's a video of it somewhere, which is possibly the funniest thing this year.
Anyway, after that, we headed, with the rest of the bondeggi cup back to the festival. One arrival we played the 'isn't it nice' trick again, this time with Anda, who ate the damn thing happily, until she heaved. Heehee, what fun bondeggi can be!
We jumped right into the swing of all things festivally after that plus met with Mike and Frank and I can honestly say that even though I was a bit conscious of the price I was well 'appy to be there! I did the usual disappear to the side for a bit of a dance and met such folk as 'weird Canadian man' 'wig man' and my personal favourite, 'Antonio, the man dressed as Jesus.' Now there was a hottie. A hot Jesus hottie. Never thought I'd say that!
There was only one mar on the night, which was Anda being punched in the face and dragged by the hair through the mud. Some stupid bloody random Korean bloke got lairy and decided to take it out on her. Mike took care of her though, and punched the guy, which ended up turning into a big fight and causing a bit of trouble. God, I hate fighting. But still, it happens, that guy was a cock and deserved it really. Still, Anda, Rob and Song-in left after that, which was a downer, but the night went on with soju, fun and more dancing. I think in the end we stayed 'til about 7, listening to random bands and feeling slightly like we were at Glasto or something, then Faye, Ruby and I wandered home, well, Faye and Ruby did, I just wandered after them li
ke a zombie, feeling sick and a bit sad that I had to stop dancing. Bad times.Still, Laura is now here (she's with Seoul Ben as we speak, I'm meeting up with her tomorrow), it was teacher's day today and I got lots of presents and cards bearing the legend 'I love you teacher' and 'thanks for being' and 'please keep healthy' (they have a teacher's day here, which is where the kids parents send teachers things so they're nice to their kids for the rest of the year, I'm yet to report whether it had the desired effect or not...)etc etc and the Frames gig is tomorrow! Roll on the weekend!
=o)
Oh my gosh! I need to lie down now...that took all my days energy...I haven't read so much since school! ;)
ReplyDeleteLove the tales of the weird food! Cant wait for my very own burnt plastic taste bondeggi...you do indeed, just have to try these things ;)
Ha, you should learn the read then! ;o) x
ReplyDelete