Sunday, January 19, 2014

Day 20: Noraebang (노래방)

Been a while since I have started this blog about my 46 days of adventure in Korea, and I hope it has been a little bit useful to anyone who is intending to visit Korea for travelling purposes / summer school. On the other hand, I am extremely encouraged by the visitors to this blog from all over the world. Hello to everyone out there! (: Do leave me a comment letting me know how I can improve better.

Okay so Day 20 is the start of my second week of ISS semester. This is yet another typical lunch in the Business School cafeteria - Squid and pork bibimbap. Look at the little donut they give you hahah funny how you get a sweet dish in the middle of everything spicy / salty.


School that day was as per usual. Other than that, my lunch gang decided we should have a noraebang (노래방) session after school. For anyone who doesn't already know, noraebang is the Singapore's version of KTV (like K-box, like Teoheng, like Partyworld). And I am quite sure in other parts of the world, they have this kind of karaoke pubs too. I am not sure how it works in different parts of the world, but the ones in Singapore and Korea and I believe, Taiwan, works the same way. You get a room depending on the size of your group. There are usually two ways they charge - by person, or by room.

Korean Noraebang is a place that I have been looking forward to ever since I started getting in touch with K-POP. It is no different from Singapore's ones, but except that the majority of the songs there are Korean songs (but of course). You still get a few Chinese songs, quite a bit of Japanese and English songs, and some Indonesian/Malay songs as well. So as you can see, it is a very diverse place anyone can go to.


Korean Noraebangs also have a lot of sound effects, like those of people clapping hands, those of loud cheers, and we had fun with those when each of us sang a song. I can read Hanguel, but my reading speed is pretty slow especially for the fast songs, but I am awesome with 2AM's songs. 2AM mostly sings ballad songs but also because of that, the mood gets a bit low hahah so I only sang one or two (also because I only know that few). A noraebang session can range from 5,000KRW for 2 hours per pax to 20,000KRW for 2 hours per pax. It all depends on the room size, the service, the quality. But to me, it doesn't really matter, except that this one we went is really quite cramped.

After a noraebang session, we decided to head out for dinner. Below is a dish of stir-fried pork intestines, otherwise known as makchang or gopchang. The last time I ate this, we had to BBQ it ourselves, but this time round, they had it cooked for us.


You should have seen this all over Korean variety shows already! And yes I get to experience that first-hand. You stuffed the food onto the vegetables, put sauce and garlic and many things (I don't know the order), and stuff it into your mouth. A burst of happiness really. (:


Oh I miss this so much right now ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh. And we also experienced one of the worst monsoon rains that night. A 15-mins walk home was so terribly hard, with the umbrella almost flying off my hands gosh.

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