Meet me at the...Family Mart?

In Seoul there are millions of things a man of my age can do during the evening, but I'm only here for the year, so I must choose wisely. If I were to go to over 100 bars a night, I still would not see them all. If I went to well over 200 restaurants a day, I still would not see them all. If I went to over 7 sauna's a day, I still would not see them all. My point is that there are so many things to do here and so little time. So what have I done more than anything?

I have been going to the Family Mart. What is it? It's a convenience store. It has beer, snacks, ice cream, cigarettes, maps and everything else that you would see in the States and probably all over the world. There is one major difference: You can drink there. They have tables outside with chairs and you purchase your poison inside and then drink it outside. Korea has tons of cafe's, but these are not cafe's. Cafe's usually serve food and they usually have someone waiting on you. The Family Mart does not have those things. I has tables on the sidewalk and that's it. We go there for a host of reasons, but the biggest reason is that it's cheap. Bars are cheaper here than at home, but not by much. I enjoyed going to bars when I was at home, but usually preferred staying in with friends and drinking there. Since we all live in small apartments here, there are very few options besides the bars. That is why we go to the Family Mart.

In Korea there is a drink that is very popular. It's a drink that you see everyone drinking all the time. In my pictures on webshots you can see it. It's in a green bottle and it's called Soju. People drink it all over the world, but I had not ever seen it before. Ben said he saw it in Wales a few times, but it was certainly not consumed there like it is here. It's a potato liquor that tastes like vodka with a hint of rum. It's good and costs less than a dollar a pint. Yeah, it's that cheap.

So we'll meet there after work or dinner and sit at the tables for hours. We'll drink, laugh, talk and play drinking games while the busy Seoul streets bustle less than eight feet away. When people walk by they'll usually glare over at us and wonder why we are there and having so much fun. They do this because foreigners usually don't spend their evenings this way. The typical foreigners are mostly at the bars or hofs. Not us though, we join in with the older Korean population who chooses to sit and watch the city go by. We choose to play drinking games and wrestle in the streets. We choose the Family Mart.

By the way, while I was writing this Dave called.

"You want to meet at the Family Mart?"

So, I'm off...