Korea, Land of Lady Bars

After dragging my 140 pounds of luggage around downtown Seoul in search of a hostel Friday night when Zac and I arrived in Seoul, I was in need of some food and drink.  Bombarded with neon promises of "Hof" whiskey, wine and food, Zac and I somehow managed to choose the most unsavory of places as our first "Welcome to Korea" experiences. 

We first stepped into the "Red Bar" which sounded harmless enough until you got inside and realized the women were wearing nothing but bikinis and beers cost $15 a piece.  A polite tall waitress with a bit of a pooch sticking out of her striped bikini told us in a tone that suggested we might not be welcome to stay that this bar was a "little expensive."  Walking out laughing, we searched the streets for another place that could be fun, but they all seemed to be nearly empty.  We grabbed a quick beer at one of these before it closed and went looking for something else when we heard dance music.  We walked in the door of what appeared to be a karaoke club and received bewildered looks from the employees.  Again, a tall woman spoke English:  "Sorry, this is a lady bar."  We hadn't made it five steps out the door before she came after telling us with a hurried sense of secrecy to "come, come." Apparently, she and the others had decided that we could have a room (complete with dance music, adult videos and pleather couch) for $50 for "just two."  We tried to find a nice way to say no to her kind insistence as we backed out the door.

It was only a few days later that we decided a nice shoulder or foot massage would be nice.  Finding little info in our guidebook, we asked some people at our hostel who told us that any barber shop should be able to give massages though they may not be ones to "tell your mother about."  Unphased, we went looking  for candy striped barber signs and found them everywhere.  Finding the shops they advertised proved to be a bit more frustrating.  After searching around buildings for two or three shops, we finally saw a white woman enter a shop, so we opened the door to a blue-lit front room where a little old man on a couch watching TV stood guard.  We both did massage sign language while I tried my best to pronounce the Korean word for "massage" correctly.  They man looked at us like we were nuts and cried "No, no!" as he emphatically waved us out the door. 

We thought we had found another prospect and walked down some stairs to a little hidden door.  Inside door #2, a wrinkled lady who must have been at least 55 sat in a tight, red low-cut top and a flared black and white spandex mini skirt.  Upon seeing her, I hightailed it up the stairs before deciding that they probably still knew how to give a massage and there was no hurt in asking since we had been looking for so long.  So we asked and thought we had agreed to pay $6 a piece for shoulder and back massages when the lady reached into my wallet and counted out the equivalent of $60 in Korean won.  For one.  We walked out and decided to give up our search in exchange for Baskin Robbins ice cream, an almost equivalent relaxant.