Monday night shenanigans

Koreans are crazy.

We left lab fairly early (17:30) to get some dinner. They boys took me to a traditional Korean market, Kwan Jang. They explained that it was like the original supermarket, an open market of everything before places like E-Mart and HomePlus became prominent in Korea.

The old marketplace, full of small specialized shops.

I had raw beef, and then raw liver and some other animal part they couldn't identify. They finally asked the waitress before we left and the translation I got was "cow's asshole." Fantastic. I think that just means tripe, but whatever. I actually thought the raw beef was good, but neither the liver nor gray dust-cloth looking meat were good. The sesame oil dipping sauce, however, was good enough to make eating those two things bearable.

Raw meat on a bed of Asian pears. If that's not enough raw for you, it comes with an uncooked egg.

Sungmin and Doohoon enjoyed explaining Korean male culture to me.

Suhyuk and Minho also told about what it is to be a real man in Korea...

And that is to eat food for [sexual] stamina.

In case you are feeling adventurous, this is where we ate. I didn't get sick!

We left and went to another place in the market for Korean mung bean pancakes, called bindae ddeok (similar to pajeon). They were a really satisfying snack, especially coupled with makoli, an unfiltered rice wine.

Towards the middle of Kwang Jang Market.

Friends, food, & makoli. How else would you spend your Monday?

From there we walked to a Manchester United pub near the Cheonggyecheon and had some tandoori chicken and beer. The night wasn't finished there, though.

Park Ji-sung likes tandoori chicken, too.

We ended the night alongside the Cheongygecheon stream, a city project to reinvigorate the downtown area with a nice walking area and clear water. The walking trail was very beautiful and clean, with lots of families and couples walking about. The only problem was the occasional group of loud drunk guys playing in the water...

How we do in the Cheonggyecheon.

These two lost the rock, paper, scissors match and had to get in first.

Eventually they all jumped in.

My camera got wet, as visible by the hazy glow around the evening's later pictures.

At about 24:30 we finally mobilized to leave, having begun the night about 6 hours before then. I slept until 13:00 on Tuesday, but still got lots done at work that day. A glorious way to start the week.