Park Life

The last two weeks have flown by. It's been good weather (although a storm has consumed us for the day!), there's been two national holidays, so two more days off work. I've been exploring parts of Seoul, mainly Hongdae and Ewha.

Ewha has a womans university, so it's a great place for clothes shopping, with mainly pedestrian streets and the odd quirky little cafe. Hongdae is good by day or night. It's the centre of the "underground" scene in Seoul, complete with many funky shops, record stores, a massive variety of restaurants Mexican, Thai, Italian, French. This is more amazing then it sounds, because the outside influences in Korea are few and far between. There's also lines of stalls, mostly selling the same stuff, but occasionally I got a glimpse of something from Thailand or India.



In the middle of all this is a park that students and drop outs hang out in. It's the first time I've seen a park being used like this over here. Normally they are strictly used by families with small children and competitive skaters who go round and round the designated skating area. So it's quite refreshing to see alcoholics and students with punked hair playing guitar, bumming around and experimenting with the boundaries of conformity in their society. As the sun sets here, more and more people gather to drink soju (25%), hangout, then head to a bar or club. What's especially exciting about this is, they're not booking clubs. They're clubs as I recognise them. With cool music, good vibes and great times. Which is where I'll be heading off tonight to see some English DJs in club called M2. Some of these DJs were playing at the Flow festival last weekend, and I hope to be seeing some of the same faces again.