Taste the Rainbow

It's not St Patty's, unless there's green beer!

So St Patricks day just passed and I had quite the adventure. Well the Thursday itself wasn't very interesting. My school had a themed St Patricks activity day, which can only be described as fun but exhausting. But the real fun was had at Seoul's St Patrick's Day Festival in Insadong.

NO BEER?!!?!??! What the hell!?

Insadong is already pretty touristy at the best of times, so on Saturday it was pure madness. I've never seen so many Westerners in one place (in Korea) in my entire life. The main event was held in a square, where there was 'traditional' dancing, free balloons (who doesn't want that?), a U2 cover band, and more! The festival can be best described as foreigners standing in a circle with drinks in hand and chatting for 4 hours. Good times! In fact there was so much drinking that the GS25 & Family Marts (the local convenience stores) were either filled with foreigners waiting to buy alcohol, or completely empty of beer.

Dear random man in skirt, I wonder what voices & songs you were dancing to in your head

Later that evening we all headed off to Hongdae (one of the bar areas near a university near where I live), for some evening drinks. We first stopped off for some green beer and checked out the rather disturbing sites of hongdae (Why would a guy dance around randomly in a skirt? Did he want to feel pretty?)

To anyone else it just looks like people dancing to silence

One of the cooler sites of hongdae was definitely the 'Silent Disco'. Basically you trade in your ID card for a free pair of wireless headphones (with a balloon so you can look extra cool), and everyone is plugged into the same network and listens to the same songs and tunes that a DJ is playing. It's pretty damn fun! Furthermore, there are random photographers who wander around taking photographs which appear on an overhead projection screen. A pretty damn cool experience!

The 'Used Cassettes'

Then to finish off the night, we headed to a bar to check out 3 local bands playing. We couldn't really hear any lyrics, but the music was good. In fact, it was one hell of a good day! Thank god for St Patrick's Day!