Rakhi: Joel and I went to Chinatown in Incheon yesterday; it's the biggest Chinatown in Korea so we thought we'd check it out and have some traditonal Chinese food. Little did we know we had an even better sight in store for us...
Incheon is on the western coast about 30 minutes by subway from us. It's a port city with fresh fish markets, promenades and lots of little islands that you can get boats out to. There are many different boats that you can get but I think we made the right choice. We set sail aboard 'Cosmos' at 2pm. As we walked up the ramp we could hear really, really loud rave style music with heavy bass coming from one of the events rooms. We wandered in and found 100+ old Korean men and women 'avin it large' on the dancefloor. They were going mental! There were hands up in the airs, whoops of enjoyment, bumping and grinding. Of course, we had to join in! We were the only people under sixty-five there! It was hysterical, these folk would put the clubbers in Sankey's to shame. Later, Joel and I went and sat on the upstairs deck, the views were lovely but what was even better was that it seemed to be some kind of chill out area for the older people to relax and have a break from raving! There were gangs of men and women sitting together eating dried squid (a favourite drinking snack -yuk!) and drinking soju (local strong spirit) and beer. Needless to say, there were a few wobbly legs getting off the boat but Koreans didn't earn their title 'The Irish of Asia' for nothing you know!

On Saturday, after visiting a Buddhist temple, Joel and I met up with some friends in Insadong which is the massive arts and craft area of Seoul. We decided (well, I decided!- I miss my mum's cooking) that it would be a really good idea to go for some Indian food. Every week in the Korea Times, there is an advert for a restaurant called 'Chakraa' which claims to be authentic Indian cooking, Indian owned and Indian run. I was slightly wary, as about a month ago, Joel and I spotted a restaurant called 'Delhi' in Gangnam and went to look at the menu. It was a fraud Indian restaurant that had things like 'curry pasta' on the menu (a speciality in Delhi you know!) and other strange fusion foods with an Indian/Korean twist- we gave it a miss. Unfortunately, we weren't so alert at the Spanish restaurant in Itaewon where the 'paella' could have doubled up as fried rice with soy sauce and my simple 'shrimp pasta' with a light sauce was actually a fishy broth with noodles and parmesan. Anyway, we thought we'd try Chakraa out- it did advertise Dosa's after all so there had to be some authenticity about the place. It turned out to be really good- not the cheapest Indian meal but it certainly satisfied all our taste buds.

The monsoon season is well and truly here now and i'm told that a typhoon is on it's way aswell. The humidity is incredible, I had to invest in a cliche oriental fan on Saturday as I was dripping with perspiration! Joel and I are on the top floor of an apartment block so it gets pretty hot at home and we only have one fan. We try to keep the windows open but the fly screens that pull accross aren't perfect so we've both woken up with mozzie bites on a couple of occassions. And, we ain't seen nothing yet- towards the end of July and throughout August it's going to get even hotter apparently! Yikes!