Adventures in South Korea 2!: Day at the Track

Spending a Saturday afternoon, throwing some money away at the racetrack was something we'd planned on doing since we first moved to Seoul and found out about it. For whatever reasons (mostly because we're lazy and it was far away), we kept putting it off and doing other things. Finally, just as our Korean adventure was coming to a close, we headed over to the track to try our luck.

As things usually go here, Korea stepped in and made things weird and not quite as fun as they could be... Our first stop once inside the park was at a Family Mart to pick up some cold beers to enjoy while watching the races, which we thought was what you did while at the track. Once again, the way we think is not the way Koreans think. Seoul Racecourse Park is a dry track. We've never heard of anything being 'dry' in Korea EVER, and certainly never assumed a racetrack would be the first. We could have purchased and consumed beer, soju or liquor on the subway ride there, but couldn't buy any once inside. You're already indulging in one vice, why stop there? In lieu of cold brewskis, we ended up with some refreshing bottled waters. ☹

On our way out of the Family Mart we noticed a grocery store. "Hmm, that's weird," we thought, "...but maybe that's where they sell beer?"

Nope. No alcohol of any kind. They did, however have TONS of raw meat. That was pretty much all they sold, actually. Apparently, while betting on horses in Korea, you don't drink, but grill meat (on a portable grill that you carried into the racetrack) instead.

YOU PEOPLE ARE SO STRANGE!

Horse stats

Sweet rides

Heading to their horses

Checking the outcomes

We came expecting the crowd to be mainly sleazy, older men, but the majority of the crowd was couples and families. Yep, FAMILIES! Horse racing is a dating and family venue in Korea!

Big money, no whammies!

???

Somehow we had to use this to place a bet...

All we were trying to do was use the tried and true gambling method of 'bet on the horse ridden by the most brightly dressed jockey,' but we had no idea how to translate that onto the betting sheet. The cellphone dictionary is usually more miss than hit with the translations, and betting/racing terms were no different. With it's 'help' we were able to guess our way through it, but we weren't feeling confident about it.

The first race (we didn't bet on this one)

We were pretty nervous taking our completed bet-sheet to the bookie, but she ran it through the computer and gave us a ticket, so we guessed that it worked!