Wow. It is such a blissful, blissful thing to be able to go online from my own computer. This is a luxury I will never again take for granted. After a week of not being able to use my laptop because my charger died, I am finally on my laptop again and I missed it. A lot. I still don’t have Internet in my apartment, but Starbucks apparently has free wi-fi and at this point, I will take what I can get.

I meant to write a couple of posts before now, but it’s been a busy weekend and I haven’t had much of a chance. But there’s quite a bit to share, so I figured I would break it into two posts, beginning with my first experience of nightlife in Seoul.

Friday night after work some of the other teachers and I went out for dinner and drinks in Itaewon, which is known as the foreign district of the city. A lot of English teachers hang out there, along with other foreigners, soldiers who are stationed in South Korea, and, apparently, transvestites. Now, anyone who has heard me speak for five minutes has heard me use the word tranny so I thought it was an interesting coincidence that the club next to the restaurant where we had dinner was called “Trans Show Pop.”

Thinking it would just be too unlikely that I would have found a tranny show my first night out in Seoul, I decided to investigate. About three levels down from the ground entrance, I discovered a swanky little club that had some great music playing, and what appeared to be three attractive older women sitting and waiting for patrons to arrive. There was no one else in the club but it was early and I thought that perhaps things didn’t get going until later on, so I went in to ask and realized, “Oh. I think they’re actually cross-dressing men.” I tried to ask when they opened, and they took one look at me and told me, “no, thank you.” I was rejected from a tranny show. There was almost too much irony in that for me to handle but I didn’t have much time to contemplate it because then it was time to find a bar that 1. wasn’t in the bowels of a suspicious-looking building and 2. wouldn’t kick me out for being the wrong kind of clientele.

And so we ventured off to find a new place to grab a drink. Along the way, I found no fewer than five places with the word “tran” prominent in the name of the bar (in most cases that was the only word I could read), and another called Trance, which is really, I think, to good to be true. And this was only in a two-block stretch. We finally decided on a place and made a few new friends (and by friends I mean people we were really enthused to be talking to for about 20 minutes before leaving for another bar, never to speak to them again) who informed me that there is a 7-foot cross dresser who stalks the streets of Itaewon. By then, I was less than impressed with what I had seen of the area but was willing to stick around a little longer to see if what this guy said was true.

Well, wouldn’t you know, 10 minutes later, one of the other teachers comes rushing into the bar, calling my name. I looked up and there she was: Ferocia Coutura. For those of you who are unfamiliar with this mythical creature, she is the inner diva of “Project Runway” winner Christian Siriano. As far as I knew, she was a figment of Christian’s imagination but when I saw this woman, I was sure I was looking at his muse. She actually was seven feet tall, with enormous blond hair, an almost equally enormous black bow (bows are very big here) and a sequined bustier.

After that, there was not much left to see so we headed for an Irish pub that we had heard a lot about. It was OK, but the highlight was trying a drink called a tic-tac, also a nod to Christian. The scene wasn’t really for me, though. It was mostly other foreigners and some soldiers and it really felt like I was at a dive bar in D.C. The food is supposed to be good there, so maybe I’ll give that a try when I’m craving good bar food but overall, I wasn’t really impressed. For the most part, I had kind of an uncomfortable feeling in Itaewon and rather than try to reason it away, I decided to go with my gut and I don’t think I’ll be going out there too often. I haven’t felt anxious or uncomfortable at all in any of the other areas I’ve been, so the fact that it only came up there told me something. There are some touristy things to do during the day and there are a few restaurants in Itaewon I’d like to try, but…that’s the only part of Seoul I haven’t been particularly keen on so far.

This post is getting long so I’m going to wrap it up and move on to the untran/not bar related elements of my weekend but first I have to share a very, very exciting discovery. After Itaewon, we took a cab to Hongdae, also a popular club area. It was getting late and we were all running out of steam by that point but before we left, one of the other teachers (the same one who found Ferocia aka Ilana, which was her real name) found something so incredible I really almost cried: “Little Praha in Seoul.” It really does look like you’re in Prague, with a replication of the astronomical clock and the tower on the Charles Bridge. My first question was whether or not they served Budvar Dark in their bar but the Korean host didn’t understand my question, although he did show me the beer menu. I took a business card and learned that there is a restaurant, wine bar, bakery and fine selection of “the best beer in the world.” Unless they have Budvar Dark, which I don’t think they do, that last part is obviously not true, but I am definitely planning on going back there. Of all the things I could have found in Seoul, that has to be the best. Well, one of them anyway.