The morning came with yet another 6 hour sleep (no one slept more than 6 hours a night the whole trip). We had a last complimentary breakfast, collected our gift bags for competing and were on the bus to the airport heading to the capital city, Seoul Korea. In Korea, traditionally the kids live with their parents until they are married, thus being the case, when kids are young and don't have a place to do their romantic deals, they go to these "love motels" which are surrounding the city for approximately $30 a night. Can you guess where we stayed? You can only imagine the funny odd looks we got from locals when 3 white GUYS came walking out of our motel together. Motel Rich had alot of things shoved into this tiny room, like a 40 inch plasma, a computer, a nice bed, a big bathroom which could've served as another bedroom, and a tiny floor that Micky got they pleasure of sleeping on and 3 guys worth of luggage. That meant myself and Spenny got to share the love bed(the bed was terribly uncomfortable).
Once we finally got situated, we went out to check out the local area and get some food. Thankfully we found a place where the host was forgiving enough to deal with white people that had no idea what they were doing with the food. This was our first real traditional meal that we got to eat. It was cooked on a hot plate in the middle of our table, got free bottles of coke and no real idea of what we really ate but it was tasty.
After the food situation was taken care of, we headed off to Rami's (jarvis' girlfriend) good friends bar which was about a 30 min train ride away. Being you are allowed to drink in public out there, it was a must that us canadians grab some road pops for the train. Definately something we are not used to at home and were fully ready to take advantage of.
The rest of the night was a great time! Peter, the guy who basically set everything up for us to be flown out for the event down in Busan, and his friends along with some people that we had met at one time or another were in Vancouver, were out. So being I won some money in Busan, I couldn't resist buying a bottle of Moet to share around with everyone in thanks and gratefulness of getting us there. After the Champagne, shots of tequila, the plum brandy, beer, and jeigor shots, we finally ended that portion of the night with a song of "if ya gotta get er done" and headed back to the area of our hotel to have a final night cap at Bar X and call it a night.
Needless to say the next day and our only real day to explore the city and street skate, we were definitely feeling a tad rough from the night before. We got some food and a tonne of water in us, we were on our way. This city is absolutely huge! the StunTB skateboard team guided us to 3-4 of the best spots that any of us have ever seen before. You will find nothing of this quality in Canada. the first spot was a skate plaza, that looks kinda street but is technically a skatepark. It had rails, ledges, water gaps, boxes that have been brought in and granite brick ground. After My board took its second swim, we were off to the next spot. The next spot was a perfect 8 set with a 2 block off the side, which Spencer and Micky proceeded to kill for a few hours. The second spot was the best marble manny pad that i think any of us have ever skated. This was the type of manny that had smooth run up as it is, no slip marble that actually picked up speed once you got on. Everyone got something rounded up a trick here, than we were off for one more spot to finish off the evening. The next spot was this huge metal circle sculpture thing that Sascha Steindhorst(world cub of skateboarding judge) had told me about before we headed to Seoul. This thing is easily 50 feet high that you can completely skate as a fullpipe. With the downtown city background around it, it made for a good photo spot. Being there was another spot on the other side of this building, some locals had spotted us skating and came over to watch. In the end we got to meet and greet with them, take a couple photos and even help out on a trick or two for them. It was a good deal!
Once everyone was finally too exhausted to skate anymore, we headed down to another part of town and found a Korean barbeque spot. The best part about this situation was, some of the restaurants have "pickers" who stand out in the alley and try to persuade you to come and eat in their restaurant. I have experienced these types of persuasions before, but NOTHING like this. Everyone of us(except our local guides) thought these dudes were seriously gonna start shoving each other or even start swinging punches. All i could think about are the crazy photos of people at the stock market exchange going nuts buying their stocks. These three dudes were seriously trying to get us into their restaurant.
Once we finished dinner, Jarvis and Rami went off on their own way to spend their last night together, Micky went back to the hotel to chill and Spencer and myself with Yop as our guide did what any other Canadian would do on their last night of a great trip. Go drink with the locals. With out even knowing it, we ended up in the same part of town as Sonju's bar again, so we went back again for a couple drinks to say goodbye and thank her for the party we had there the night before. After that we went to this park where the locals with not alot to do or don't want to go to the bar go to chill, drink, hang out etc. We got there and there was a lady holding down a little market selling stuff to no one buying, a small group of guys hanging in a circle with one of them playing Nirvana and us getting harrassed by a very drunk guy. It was a fun time though, random drunk guys and girls try to skate our boards and give us a pretty good laugh at the same time we help them to stay on our boards. We don't wanna see them going to the hospital. 430am rolls around and we decide to finally get out of there back to the motel. Myself and Spencer both give our guide Yup our set ups out of thanks for showing us such a great time in his country.
The last and final couple hours we had before we had to rush to the airport, we decided we would go check out some of the underground mall that runs along the 100s of miles of subway lines. These things seriously never end. We walked in a straight line, atleast we thought so, walked back to where we came in and what do you know, we were lost. Thats how nuts these things are. We all bought a few last souvenirs etc and headed back, but not without thinking we lost someone. Micky stepped over to another shop for a second without telling anyone and sure enough we all freaked out thinking we lost the kid. His mother would not be happy! We headed back to the hotel got our stuff and got out of there. Our van cab, was a limo van. it was impressive. It actually had better seats than our flights did, which was kind of depressing once we got onto our flight later that afternoon. We had roughly an hour drive, which meant a last bit of time to take photos and reminisce the week that had passed for to quick now that it was over.
We filled all our duty free needs got on our flight, popped a couple gravol and that was that, we were in Vancouver before we knew it. It was depressing getting back into Vancouver. You always think its a busy city till you finally go somewhere that is ACTUALLY 10 times busier, bigger, and more built than Vancouver. Each and every one of us had a great time and cannot wait to go back there given the opportunity.
We have to thank Jarvis, Rami, Peter and everyone else we cannot name right now for getting us to Korea for this amazing adventure that we will soon not forget!
