Let me be clear: the lads only went to see boobs. In hindsight, it was foolish to assume he spoke English. He stared at the lads, eyes narrowed in his attempt to stand upright. He responded in Russian, prompting his friend to appear from behind the group of British expats: a taller, stubbly, grey-haired man with whose smoking seemed to age him 20 years.
He came within three inches of the tallest Briton. If this had been the only miscommunication of the night, it would have been enough. But Texas Street is like that: you want one thing, you get another. Or take the street itself.
But Texas Street is not that. Named by American soldiers sometime after the Korean War, the murky three-block stretch lies mostly in darkness but for the Cyrillic neon signs. Surrounded by cheap motels and willfully ignored by most native Koreans, it sits quietly one block west of Busan Station, cushioned to the south of Chinatown, by the water and the docks. It has only sort of worked. Russian and American sailors can now buy cheap jewelry or leather goods there during the day, indulging in different leathered goods at night.
It felt eerily calm for a Friday in early November. I arrived with the band of british expats near midnight, finding only tall, blonde-haired Russians and tiny, dark-skinned Filipinos standing idly outside. Instead we found only two middle-aged prostitutes, heavy-set with heavier make-up, sitting in black leather jackets and slowly drinking their beers in silence by the bar.
We laughed it off, drank our 5,won bottles of Hite beer and left in search of a livelier club. En route we were stopped by a nervous-looking American man, skinny with greasy black hair who asked us if we knew of a cheap jjimjilbang where he could crash for the night. A Filipino in fishnets sat next to me with the song book. I asked her age, and she told me she was How long had she been in Busan? Just two months. Prostitution in South Korea is a paradox.
