I will briefly digress here to talk about riding the subway. Much like "The L" in Chicago all the novelty and shine of mass transit fades away after a few months. The Seoul Metro is just a necessary evil at this point and quite a nasty one at that. It is always too crowded to sit down, the transfers are confusing, and it seems to take forever. The ride to Jamsil was no exception. One train was so crowded that we literally couldn't get on at the station. All the Koreans rammed and jammed their tiny little bodies in and there was no room for us. When we finally did get on it was so crowded that you didn't have to hold on to anything to brace yourself--you couldn't have fallen down if you tried.
We arrived at the Olympic complex and quickly found the basketball arena. To be honest, we really just followed Korean people wearing NBA jerseys. We bought some of the cheaper tickets in the upper deck and marched up the stairs to our seats. We were getting settled in and remarking how our seats were actually pretty decent when a Korean usher comes up. Here we go.
Turned out that the lower bowl wasn't full and they wanted people in the seats for the TV cameras so he told us we could move down and sit wherever we wanted--score one for the good guys. Buy the cheapest tickets and score seats a few rows off the floor. The game itself was pretty hilarious. The NBA "legends" consisted of Dominque Wilkins, Robert Horry, Vlade Divac, and Tim Hardaway. The coach was Kareem Abdul-Jabbar but he never actually did any coaching. He just sat on the bench with a towel over his head and gave a brief interview at half-time.
Obviously D-Wilkins is like 55 years old and Vlade Divac was horribly out of shape so it was quite humorous watching these little Korean all-stars just sprinting past them up and down the floor. The Koreans had ZERO inside presence but they didn't really need it as they proceeded to shoot the lights out from 3 and basically blow the NBA squad away. My favorite part was during warm-ups when the Korean fans were "ooohing and ahhhhing" over the most routine, basic dunks. Any person over 6'8" can jump and put the ball through a 10 foot rim but the Koreans thought they were at the All-Star dunk contest. All in all a really fun event and certainly something I didn't envision doing when I left for Korea.
This past weekend was a two day dance music festival in Seoul called Global Gathering. After out last experience with the World DJ Festival we knew this wasn't something we'd want to miss. It turned out to be a really good adventure and hopefully a semi-interesting story.
We set off from Suwon around 4 and despite doing our best to research the event online we basically knew nothing about where the festival was. Luckily we recently discovered that you can dial "1330" on your phone and get this English speaking helpline designed for tourists in Seoul. So our strategy was to take the high-speed train (rather than the subway :)) into Seoul, get food, and then call 1330 and have them help us get there. The high-speed train takes about 30 minutes instead of over an hour on the subway which is a huge plus. Charlie and I played golf on his "hand phone" and we arrived at Seoul Station around 5:15.
Next we call 1330 and they tell us to take the subway to the World Cup Stadium and then take a taxi from there. They assure Charlie that taxis will know "Global Gathering." So we decipher the subway map and head to the platform to wait. It is 6 stops away so in my mind I'm thinking that should take about 30 minutes. So we wait on the platform, play umpteen more rounds of cell phone golf, and 40 minutes later the stupid train arrives. We board the train, sit down, and prepare to set off. Unfortunately the train sat there for another 25 minutes not moving. So we've now wasted almost an hour and we haven't moved. Charlie finally set a deadline for getting off and that came and went so we departed the train and caught a taxi to the World Cup Stadium.
After a delicious meal at Pizza Hut we decided to grab a few alcoholic beverages for the road because I read (incorrectly) online that Global Gathering was alcohol-free. Charlie and I grab a few Budweisers and bottle of Soju to split on our journey and we once again set off in search of a cab. At this point Ben realizes that he knows where the park is because it is the same location as the DJ Festival and we had to walk there from the WC Stadium last time. He admits it is quite the hike so we go through the horrible process of trying to wave down and cab and get 1330 on the line to give the driver directions.
Ben gets put on hold, numerous cab drivers blow by us, and I keep drinking all the while laughing about how silly this whole ordeal is becoming. Finally we manage to get through to 1330 and wave down a cab. We're off again! Unfortunately 5 minutes later the guy starts saying something in Korean and pointing. He then makes a U-turn and we realize he doesn't know where he's supposed to be taking us. We just get out and decide to go the rest on foot. About 30 minutes, 2 bathroom stops, and 2 beers later we arrived after hiking up and around this seemingly big hill in the middle of a huge park. All-in-all it took us about 5 hours to get from Suwon to GG but it is a funny story and good memory.
Once inside we met up with some of Ben's soccer teammates (people we know from NOW Bar) and former Talkster legend, the Tominator. We unfortunately missed the two HUGE Korean pop music sensations, G-Dragon and 2NE1, but what can you do? We still told the students that we saw them and it made all of them extremely jealous! Tom informs us that he had already been kicked out of GG three times, once for puking on stage during 2NE1. He just kept buying new tickets (about $80 each) and coming back in for more. How he got on stage is anyone's guess. The other evictions were for puking or similar drunken antics. What a guy.
We then proceed to do some more shots, drink a few beers, and get our dancing groove on for the night's shows. It was really a great time and much like DJ Festival the weather was absolutely perfect. The headliner was a group called Underworld and it was a really awesome time. After a night of dancing and drinking we headed home.
Take it easy, but take it.
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