Sick ears

So I spent Saturday morning at the hospital. But I'll stop you there and tell you that the story isn't that great. The only reason I went to a hospital was because they offer much better service in English.

It was for my ears. I wish I could say what was wrong, but swimmer's ear, an ear infection and fluid buildup have all been ruled out thanks to a few misdiagnoses (plural folks). It was back with a pulsing vengeance these last few weeks, to the extent that I decided to wake up at 9 on Saturday and take a train to the Korea University Hospital.

This was my second time being in an Asian hospital, the first being the mandatory health check/drug test my company made me do. They definitely have adopted a more assembly line approach to dealing with patients over here. I was bumped around to a whole bunch of doctors with very very specific duties. I had prongs and spouts inserted deep into my head through my ears and nose as foul-tasting liquid coursed through my sinuses. It was pretty lousy but I at least felt like they were doing something. I'm going back next weekend to see if the medicine they gave me took.

That same day I also saw something else I can officially check off my list of "only in Korea" experiences, and dog lovers should probably just skip right over the next paragraph.

So they definitely still eat dog here, however it's a very small market of old people and hillbillys that do it. While wandering a back alley with Gord we came across a dog meat shop that sold live caged pups for eating. What made it visibly different from an extremely cruel pet store was that the pieces of dog available to buy were prominently on display. It was really unsettling and the owners were probably aware of the reputation that eating dog has with anyone not Korean because they were kind of giving us the "yeah, so?" look. So, see disturbing dog meat store: check.

Disturbing paragraph over. That evening Gord and I pulled an all-nighter in Hongdae, my first since being here. Because the trains stop at midnight, unless you want to cab home, it's all night or goodnight. We went all night and didn't get home until sunup. I took a video to capture the experience:

One of the places we patronized that night.

We did Norae-bang (karaoke) at this place called Dollhouse which looked like Little Bo Peep's enchanted castle. They put us in a room with a huge window that looked out onto the street, or rather, the whole street looked in onto us. It was like the red light district in Amsterdam except with drunk singing white people instead of, y'know, whores.

Not pictured: Little Bo Peep

Believe it or not the next day we actually woke up at noon! The day wasn't wasted so we went on a cruise of the Han River on a ridiculous pirate ship.

Arr! All aboard tourists!

Week end. It's Monday night now and I'm hoping to plow through this week just as fast as I've plowed through the other ones. $5 pizza and Clint: For A Few Dollars More!

See you next time something interesting happens!