Ladies Night

One of my best friends is leaving Korea. After three years she's decided to go back to that out in the boonies place called New York. With the date of her departure approaching, she's been trying to relive all of the things that she's been doing for the past three years. If I happen not to be in the mood to accompany her, she "blackmails" me by whining: "hey, I am leaving soon." Hmmmph, those New Yorkers, they know how to get what they want. One of the things on her list is "the ladies night" at Itaewon, officially called Seoul's "special tourist zone." Yep, there are some tourists, but mostly this is the place where English teachers and G.I.'s gather for a fun night out. The main street is lined with stalls that sell everything: clothes and accessories(brand-name rip offs); tacky souvenirs; instant coffee; Korean 'fast food' i.e. topkeoki [rice cakes in gooey red-hot-pepper paste], chicken kebobs, roasted potatos, mandu [pasta filled with kimchi or meat]; kimbop [California rolls]; odaeng [something like a fish hot-dog], etc. There are also numerous stores, fast food restaurants [KFC, Burger King, MacDonalds, Dunkin Donuts]; a hotel; bars; strip joints; "gentlemen's entertainment parlours" [you know what I mean]. Itaewon has a very bad reputation among Koreans but they love to come here and mingle with 'nasty' foreigners. The attraction of the unknown, eh? With my girls, Jiwon, Clare, Andrea, I come here more or less regularly on a Thursday night 'cause a bar called Helios has a ladies night. We can drink for free from 9 to 11 pm (used to be till 12, but they changed it, cheapos!). We drink and dance and drink and dance and then we move to another place called The Loft for more free drinks -a generous German owner lets ladies booze till 2:00 am- Gott bless him. Riight in front of the entrance to the building where the Loft is situated our is favorite "pojang macha" [food tent] with a beautiful smiley ajumma [an older married woman] who's always happy to see us. A night of drinking and dancing simply cannot end in any other way than with shivering on the street while stuffing down our throats topkeoki, kamja [potatos], chicken kebobs, kimbop and the like. Last night we were trying to find a Western boyfriend for a Korean friend of a Korean friend. Although she's as pretty as they come, her search was unsuccessful, and she was a bit disappointed. I guess she has this misconception that "all Western men are sexual predators." Well, they [the predators] were not in a much of a hunting mood which means we have to take her to Itaewon again. It could be worse. After the food, it's off to finding a taxi and feeling sick on the way home, not for drinking too much but for Seoul taxi drivers being lunatics who don't believe in drivng safely and speed limits. It's a miracle that during my time in Seoul a car hit me only once, and that I was involved in only 2 car accidents. I should have been dead or at least seriously injured. Someone's watching over me. Thank you.