Sunday, December 10, 2006

Hooker hill...

I've been to Itaewon (the foreigner district) but Saturday night I went there and just walked around the whole place to see how big or small it is. It ended up being a lot smaller than I expected but maybe I missed a few of the hidden, stretching alleyways, but I do think I hit them all.

We checked out this store called the DMZ. It was probably the toughest store I've ever been in. The inside and outside of the place is decked out with army camo shit that you'd have set up if you had a base in the middle of the forest. It was only tiny but they had so many things jammed in there that I swear it had more merchandise than Jim's Army and Navy but was only 1/10 of the size.

They had some crazy things in there like what appeared to me as North Korean soldier's hats. You know, the ones that look like a police officer's hat. Also, crazy storm jackets, and old machine gun, a bunch of broken army electronic equipment, and combat helmets.

I'm gonna start shopping there so next time you see me you probably won't be able to see me because I'll blend in perfectly with the background.

On our way out of this alley we were harassed to buy a custom made suit "really really cheap." I told him the only cheap I was interested in was free and he said "yeah yeah almost free." I shook this guy off really fast but Matt doesn't have that ability yet and politely tells the hagglers things like "Oh, okay, I might be back tomorrow" which causes the haggler to haggle even more.

We then went up the one main street I haven't walked up yet. This is where the big dance bars are called Cancun something and King Club. I haven't been to either of these places yet but I'm sure I'll end up stumbling in there some night. As you pass the big clubs, you walk by a few smaller establishments with signs only in English. I noticed the name on one of the signs: "Nymph Bar." And just as I was gonna point out the amusing name to Matt a scantily clad Russian girl opens the door and says "Hey, come in. Where you going?" and instantaneously the door of the next bar (called Bar Ing) opens and an under dressed Korean girl says "Come have some fun." I told them we were just walking so they closed the doors and let us be.

As we came back down the other side of the street the same thing happened at a bar called the "Cabin" and this girl was best the best looking girl yet, but we still kept walking. If I wasn't raised as a good Catholic I could probably spend a bit of money in this place, but thankfully I got that Catholic guilt.

Apparently, this is just the tip of the iceberg. Somewhere in this area is what's known as Homo Hill and thankfully we didn't stumble through that place.

There's another alleyway in this area that is just apartments but the doors are all open and as you walk through the hookers come out to the street and try to drag you in. I think this is the proper hooker hill and not the place with the bars. I'm gonna have to go check it out the next time I'm in Itaewon because it's things like this you can't see back home.

Well, you could probably find a somewhat similar place in Toronto or Vancouver but they'd all be junkies or crackheads and it probably wouldn't exactly be the safest place in the city to go. The same can probably be said here but the one major difference is that street drugs are not a problem in Korea and without drugs in the equation I think you can generally feel a lot safer.

I do have one question though. You a person feel safe in a place that's also referred to as "VD Hill?"

No comments: