Clubbing in Hongdae

The last Friday of every month in Hongdae, a neighbourhood in Seoul, there is the Hongdae clubbing festival. For about $20, you get entrance into all the participating clubs and a drink. Of course, being broke, having this event happen every month, and only having been in Korea for about a week, we decided we should check this out.

We took the bus with some of the other teachers from our school. If you know where the bus goes, it can be quicker than the subway since it goes direct and you don’t have to transfer. Oh, you can also drink on the bus on the way there. We grabbed a bottle of soju and some Poweraide. The soju is just like vodka, and at a dollar for a little bottle you can’t go wrong.

Hongdae is a pretty cool area. It’s a very trendy university neighbourhood full of little clubs and dingy bars. There’s lots of basement hangouts with cheap drinks and packed full of alternative Korean bands and lots of university-aged partyers. They have a lot of art festivals, cafes, and little galleries too, but that’s not why we were here this night.

We partied until pretty late. Not late enough to take the subway back home when it opens at 5am, but pretty close. Maybe next time. We checked out a pretty good range of places too. No idea what any of the names were. The first place had some hilarious Korean bands playing in the basement to a packed crowd. We did Jaggerbombs because we could. The next few bars had a mix of hip hop and techno. For the most part it was K-pop music mixed in with all the regular Western club tracks.

We took a cab home, which isn’t too bad when you split it. I guess I tried some street meet too. Some chicken wrap thing. It was no shawarma, but it’ll have to hold me over.