Expats Behaving Badly

Ahhh, Halloween. The only time of the year where you're allowed to dress up and eat all of the candy that you want to. In a way it's like taking a time machine back to childhood (except with all of the benefits of being an adult, like liquor, kickass bedtimes, and no nervous parents checking for razors in the Tootsie Rolls).

As we mentioned before they don't technically celebrate Halloween in Korea, but that doesn't stop ambitious children from trying to milk the local Expats of all their candy. It also doesn't stop the local teachers from partying it up and from finding whatever costumes are available to buy.

Jo and I were invited to go to a party downtown with some friends and found ourselves with the interesting problem of having to locate one of said costumes. After raiding the bargain bin at a local department store we set out for the pub downtown that was hosting the soiree.


As you can see, my and Jo's creativity only spreads so far. She threw on some devil horns (to pull together a pretty sexy she-devil look, if I do say so myself) and I put on a monster mask. I suppose that I could have done a little more to look scary. But in my defense a lot of men find wearing pink to be a pretty scary feat in itself.

Our friends Kate and Adamo put more effort into their look. In Korea it's pretty common to see couples wearing matching outfits so they decided to follow that fashion trend.

As you can see they make a lovely Korean couple. Their beautiful shirts proudly proclaim their love for Ulsan. The best part is that most Koreans probably didn't even realize that they were wearing costumes.


I'm not entirely sure what our friend Robin is supposed to be. I think that he's supposed to be a Vietnamese farmer or rebel but I don't remember what he told me as I was a little....hmmm...a little under the weather, yeah that's it.

I don't know who the guy standing beside him is. But it looks like a skeleton and a clown hooked up and gave birth to his face.

This was by far our favorite costume of the night (if you look carefully you can actually see that there are two aliens). These guys spent a lot of time on their costumes and it shows. They were wearing stilts and towered over the rest of the crowd. This is the kind of costume Jo and I would have worn if we weren't lazy. Damn our lazy nature, damn it to hell.

After a few drinks and some mingling we were informed that the night's festivities included a parade and a costume contest in front of a department store. On a normal day white and black people attract a lot of attention in Korea. We're stared at all the time and it's impossible to blend in. Now imagine what it would be like with 50 or so foreigners dressed in crazy costumes (keeping in mind that Korean's don't celebrate Halloween) walking through the streets.

At first we were hesitant but after our trepidation fought our inebriation, and lost, we left for the parade.

The pictures are a little fuzzy (as our condition worsened as the night went on) but you can kind of see below what the parade looked like:

The bar even had a banner made for the event. The parade route was about ten blocks long and we certainly attracted our fair share of attention.



Most of the locals were really, really surprised but in good spirits when they spotted us. As you can see by the man above.

After a few minutes we attracted a fairly large crowd as dozens of locals ran up to the parade trying to snap photos of the crazy waygooks. Thankfully for me I was wearing a mask and won't have to see myself on the cover of "Stupid Foreigners" anytime soon. However, here's hoping that Jo makes it.


Here's a photo of the costume contest that took place at the end of the Parade. It had everything from a Spice Girl, to the cast of the Wizard of Oz, to the cool green aliens. Personally I think that the girl in the devil horns stole the show. Unfortunately the judges were biased against lazy people and awarded the aliens the top prize.

After the festivities the hosts announced that we would be marching to a famous intersection and taking it over for a few minutes to get an overhead snapshot of the group. This is probably where common sense should have kicked in, but it seems that inebriation once again took control of the ship. Our group marched to the intersection and did indeed walk out into the middle of it for a photo of the largest assembly of constumers in the city's history.

The "professional" photographer probably got a great shot from his rooftop perch but this was all I could manage to pull off:


I barely managed to get half the crowd into the photo and didn't capture the traffic waiting on all four sides either. I'm not sure how much the Koreans enjoyed the drunk waygooks blocking their roads but for the most part they were pretty cool about it.

The only vehicle that seemed antsy about the situation was this guy:


Haha, in retrospect we're probably lucky this bus didn't mow us all over. The people in the windows look a little shocked and annoyed. If drunk Russians were blocking my way back in Canada I would probably get pissed. Luckily for us the Koreans understand the power of inebriation and were mellow.

After the photo we made our way back to the bar for some discussions on Marxist vs Hegelian dialectics. Or maybe we just went back and drank a lot. Who can remember these things?

Judging from this photo you can bet that Joanna sure doesn't remember. It's not everyday you see a whole bottle of wine emptied into just two glasses, good times.

Once the pub kinda' died down a couple of us went out to a Norae Bang, otherwise known as a Korean Karaoke Joint.

The Karaoke situation in Korea is intense and completely different from back home. Instead of being in one big room with dozens of strangers, you rent out individual rooms and party with friends.


The room we had was great and included nine televisions, a giant leather couch, 4 big speakers, and enough English songs to entertain two drunk Canadians, a drunk Scot, and a drunk Aussie.

I'm not going to say too much about the experience because it warrants its own blog. But I will leave you with this sexy shot of a future Frank Sinatra:


That's right ladies and gentlemen, not only do I play Korean karaoke rooms but I'm available for weddings, Bar Mitzvahs, and special romantic evenings when your old Michael Bolton tape just won't cut it.

We were out until 4 in the morning and it was definitely the best Halloween we've had in years.

Hopefully all of you have a great Halloween and remember to not eat any candies that haven't been checked by a reliable adult.

Cheers

Shayne