Steve Visits Sangju

So Steven finally decided to come and visit me in my smaller and more country city. In fact, I just returned from dropping him off at the bus terminal and I believe his final words were, “Dude, I had a great time. Sangju kicked my ass.” So long, until next time Steven. Indeed, it was wicked fun. But the beginning is normally a better place to start recounting the weekend antics, rather the end.

*Cue wavy outro signaling dream-like sequence*

Friday – In preparation for the arrival of Steve, I first needed to arrange his sleeping quarters aka on the floor next to my bed. So, I took a solo trip to E-Mart to find a floor cushion, blanket and pillow. Mission Complete. Preparation Complete. I got Steve off the bus at around 10pm after he took a 3.5 hour bus ride from Incheon and he looked pretty tired. Our first order of business was to drop some stuff off in my apartment and then immediately hit the town. We met up with Rick, Simon and a few Korean people at a popular Western style restaurant, named Suyouki (pronounced: So-yoo-gi). Literally, it was nothing out of the ordinary. Afterwards things started to get a little interesting.

We decided that we were going to try and summon our inner Justin Timberlake, Eminem, Billy Joel (thanks Johnny) and Lady Gaga (if you’re Steve) at a Karaoke bar, literally on the opposite corner from Suyouki. In the three minutes it should take to wait for the crosswalks and lights, we somehow managed to coerce a group of girls to come sing with us. Under normal circumstances, this sounds fantastic; however, we soon learned that they were not of legal drinking ages. Therefore, due to the gossipy nature of our small city and the fact that we are foreigners, we had to try and get them to leave. This was no easy task. I am pretty sure, if my memory serves me well, that Steve actually picked a girl up and pushed her out of the door.

Our next location in attempt to achieve Nirvana was at a restaurant/bar known as Fish and Grill. It was at this point that we all ‘cut the film’. ‘Cut the film’ is a Konglish (similar to Spanglish) phrase that is slang for blacked out. If you think of your memory as a movie projector and you cut it…I shouldn’t have to spell it out for you. What I was told is that Steve was legless and sleeping. In a comedic attempt to find out how serious Steve’s condition was, on the way out of the bar, Rick gave Steve a swift kick in the bum. Steve’s reaction: wake up and chase Rick down a side street. I guess his hypothesis was thusly proved shortly after the 100 meter dash.

Saturday – Waking up literally at 1pm can sometimes make you feel as though the day had been slightly wasted, however, in our case it was equivalent to morning time. Slowly we got up and prepared for a day of excitement. I showed Steve a few of the more popular locations around the city. We went to a pizza joint, arcade and a coffee shop. Soon the night rolled in and we were already looking for a place to eat dinner.

We called Rick and proceeded to meet up at a restaurant named Olkeume. I had attempted to eat there once before, but it was closed, so we were back for round 2. We ordered a certain type of chicken called ‘Bul Dak’. ‘Bul’ means ‘fire’ and ‘Dak’ means ‘chicken’. Put them both together and you get the hottest thing I’ve ever attempted to eat. I use the word attempt, because I could only stomach a couple pieces. It was hot enough to instantly put chest hair on a woman. The only way I can properly explain exactly how hot the food was, is, pardon me, fucking hot. Rick and Steve persevered a bit longer than I could handle and, all the while, sweating uncontrollably. I was actually impressed that they could handle such intense pain for so long, but the jokes on them. On Sunday it’s going to be just as spicy in the other direction.

After dinner, we decided to pretty much have a repeat of Friday night. We bar hopped and hopped some more to a bunch of different places. This time, we stayed away from the soju as long as possible. Unfortunately, it’s probably not possible to drink and at the same time avoid soju consumption. It’s the equivalent of trying to play baseball without a glove. The only thing that was different was that our group was only the 4 Westerners. Surprisingly, for probably the first time ever, there were no Korean’s present. The abridged version of Saturday night was that it was a good time and nobody cut the film.

Sunday – If you open an English phrase book and turn to the definition of ‘Lazy Sunday’ you may find a picture of Steve and I. Aside from leaving my apartment to go and grab some Chinese noodles in the morning for breakfast, we did nothing more than relax. T’was a good day. I helped Steve find his bus to Incheon at 7:10pm, which means his ETA is about 10:30pm. Not bad at all.

All in all, the weekend was awesome. I was able to prove to Steve that my city exists and is quite ‘country style’. It absolutely kicked his ass (and mine as well), but in a way that I am sure Steve will want to come visit again. I’ll leave everybody with a funny observation I made about Koreans on Saturday night. We were at VIPS drinking and eating a fruit platter that had grapes the size of golf balls on it. I noticed that the owner was eating the grapes in such a way that she was spitting out the skin. I turned to Steve and said, “They eat live octopus, any fish, squid, cows, pigs, chickens, silkworms and they draw the line at grape skin. Something seems amiss.”