I like the nightlife.

I've said the following line to too many people for it to be considered even remotely original, and to be honest, I stole it from my Lonely Planet Korean Phrasebook (which I recommend to anybody thinking of teaching in Korea):

"Drinking is Korea's national pastime."

For better or for worse, South Koreans don't seem to have any semblance of the Western notion of "problem drinking." Where buying liquor in most parts of Canada means being 19 (21 in the States -- poor bastards), wandering into a government-owned liquor store and paying mountains of "sin tax" on top of your pint of Captain Morgan ("mickey" of Captain Morgan for my Ontario readers); in Korea, you simply saunter in to your local "dis caunt stoa" or FamilyMart, pick up a cheap bottle of Soju or Hite, and continue about your business.

In Antigonish, Nova Scotia, if you open up your kitchen window while holding a bottle of Keith's and a gentlemanly RCMP officer catches you, he'll charge you with a $445 fine for public drunkenness. In Korea, you can walk down the street with a beer, drunkenly set fireworks off at the beach, play ball at the corner batting cage, or simultaneously vomit while pissing yourself, and you're more Korean then the day you received your Alien Registration Card.

It truly is an amazing place if you've recently graduated from university, enjoy beer, or are of any vague Canadian descent. The following is a run-down of the Korean night-life, starting with the drinks to which we've been introduced.

Soju -- A type of rice/sweet potato vodka. It's generally a 20% alcohol content, making it a bit stronger than wine. However, vodka by any other name, still tastes like fire water. Granted, it's a bit more mild than Smirnoff or Skyy, but it's still vodka. Picture a 50/50 vodka-water mix. Also, it's dirt cheap. It's about a dollar for a pint, and maybe 3 -4 bucks for a mammoth '66er' equivalent. What's more shocking is the Koreans love this stuff like it's holy water. Rarely will you find a mixed Soju drink. No sir, the Koreans like their Soju by the shot glass. And not only while raucously partying -- it's extremely common to see 5 -6 empty Soju bottles at a table of Koreans enjoying fried chicken at the neighborhood shack. Soju is king here. I've only challenged it once, and I lost my umbrella that night.

Hite -- For a beer with a name so remarkably similar to "shite," it's not half bad. We were told that Korean beer was indeed crap, so our expectations were low. We were pleasantly surprised, however, to stumble upon Hite. It's a very light beer, like Miller Genuine Draft. It goes down very easy. Koreans love their Hite. Also, as I pointed out in an earlier post, you can buy them in huge plastic jugs at convenience stores. It's no Keith's, but it will have to do until Ulsan opens up a trade route with Halifax.

...put them together and what do you have...

Car-ak-ju --This devilish cocktail was taught to me by a co-worker. It's a drop-shot extraordinare. In a large beer mug, insert one shot glass of Pepsi, followed by a shot glass of Soju (resulting in a leaning tower of doom). Fill the beer mug up with Hite until it almost reaches the top of the upper shot glass. Consume in one swift motion. Repeat as needed.

The Bars --

I know there are a lot of Maritimers reading this saying "Jake, why go to the bars if you can drink on the street?" Yes, you do have a point. As I mentioned, public drunkenness is almost an olympic sport here. We happen to live very close to Ilsan Beach, which is a fun little strip of bars and mini outdoor amusement zones. You can stroll on to the beach with whatever you please, be it alcoholic, explosive, or otherwise.

Even if you don't feel like going completely indoors, you can hit up a sidewalk Soju tent and enjoy liquor with random seafood, though Colleen and I usually avoid anything with tentacles. Here's a picture of Colleen and I sitting with Blah (a Thai name meaning 'fish') in a tent. The photo was taken by her fiancee and our co-worker, Simon. This was during typhoon min-ya, or whatever it was called. As you can imagine, it was a tad blustery in that tent.

Our Ilsan Beach area has tons of Korean bars, which are usually situated in what looks like office buildings, with bars stacked 4-7 stories high. The booze is cheap, and white-folk are treated like celebrities. You usually get some complimentary side dishes, like plums, boiled eggs, and other random crap, and Koreans usually like to order more food as well. I'm thinking the constant influx of snack food prevents any serious Soju poisoning from happening multiple times in one night. Here's a picture of our random complimentary scoff, along with a bottle of the infamous Soju:
A great feature about the Korean pubs, and restaraunts in general, is the airplane/doorbell style service button located at every table. One press of this puppy and you're in business. It avoids any of that awkward server interaction, which usually comes too often or not enough.
Beyond the Korean bars, which have thus far been our favourite spots, there are a number of "Westerner bars" located in Ulsan. At these places, you'll find imported beer from all over the world, at ridiculous prices (so far, the only Canadian selections we've found are Molson Canadian and Moosehead). You can get anything from Nacho's to Poutine. You're surrounded by white people playing pool and foosball. Basically, you feel 'right at home.' There seems to be a booming ex-patriot community around here, and we're just starting to scratch its surface.

Finally, we come to my favourite part of the nightlife in Ulsan, particularly that of our area near Ilsan Beach. The batting cages. These gems are surrounded by all kinds of ridiculous punching bag games and things of that nature. There are also these whacky rock-paper-scissors gambling games where you have the potential to win up to about $2.00 Canadian. In the following video, you'll see our co-worker Min-hi slugging it out in the cages, and yours truly cleaning up at the R-P-S machine. I must have walked away $3.00 in the good that night.

Well, that's a taste of the shadier side of our time here in Korea. I'm not sure why Colleen insisted that it be my post, but, I sure had a fun time telling you about it all. I now leave you with a picture of Korean men bronzing each other before taking the stage at the bodybuilding contest today at Ilsan Beach.
All the best,

Jake