5 November 2022
Siding with China
Exploring the Konkuk University nightlife area
Tonight I went somewhere I have never been in Seoul before. In fact an entire region of Seoul I have never been to before.
Most University areas are also nightlife areas, this is especially true for Konkuk. I saw this one night on YouTube, one of the many videos by 'Seoul Walker' who just wanders around Korea making high quality footage and streaming it to YouTube, sometimes live. I think he gets paid by places in Korea to do it now, so there you go, watching his videos sent me to Konkuk to spend a few of my precious dollars on dinner.
The area is famous for its China street, which is actually two streets. Somewhat interesting is there is a definite China side and non China side divided by the above ground subway line, tonight I sided with China. This differs from an actual Chinatown, I guess because it is not actually a government designated area for Chinatown related activities such as Mahjong, opium smoking and real estate investing.
The entire area is nice (both sides) and was starting to get really busy just as I left. Food options were plentiful. Oh and I guess it was also the return of photos of neon taken by standing in a crowd and holding my camera above my head trying to guess when it is straight and ensuring I am holding it still enough to press the shutter. Astute readers will recall when I was here earlier in the year the sun was still up at my bed time, which dulls the sweet sweet glow of neon lights, somewhat.
I arrived on the scene right on dusk. The subway line is above ground here. This reminded me a lot of a particular area of Taipei, where if there is no war, I will be in late April 2023.
These are all tarot reading booths set up on the road. And this is not all of them, there are hundreds of them stretching for at least a kilometre. Weird. The woman looked at her cards, looked into my eyes, and simply said 'I got nothing', which was strange because when I walked in she said 'No speak English!'
I initially walked past all the neon, to go to the very last Tarot card reader, and am now making my way back.
This place looked very inviting so I went downstairs and asked them what sort of activities go on in here, they said nothing at all, so I just said, OK bye, and left.
Neon against the almost black sky.
This is a shooting range, with dirty chicken plush toys hanging up for no known reason.
Aliens are coming.
Chinese street has lots of restaurants, but also a few legitimate looking grocers.
My bladder bested me, so I went into the nearby Lotte department store basement to use the facilities, the food options here for dinner all looked great, but not tonight!
Time to cancel myself. These are actually 9 different people.
Ahhh yes. Lanzhou style beef noodle soup. Tasted authentic. I spoke Chinese with the girl when I paid, she started it, the menu was in Korean so when I ordered from her I pointed and said Lanzhou La Mian cause I obviously have no idea how to say that in Korean. She then assumed I was a native Chinese speaker. I had to tell her to speak slowly but we understood enough of each other, she seemed amused that a strange looking Australian was speaking Chinese to her in Korea. That's my Chinese flex over for this trip, I will leave it to my mother to type 'your dinner looks good' using google translate in the comments :troll:.
I stopped traffic to take this photo. I was again reminded of an area of Taiwan, except there are not enough scooters here.
A bit more neon.
And after all of the above, this sign is super apt.