One time after dinner my Korean friends were debating where to go next. After short deliberation they decided to go to a PC Bang, which means internet cafe in Korean. Since I didn't feel like checking my emails, I said I would go home. My friends tried to convince me to stay, but a stiff dark room full with computers wasn't exactly my idea of a nice evening and so I left.
They seemed really surprised that I would not go, and I was really surprised that they came up with something like PC Bang. Yet back then we all lived in dorms, which we shared with room-mates, thus I explained to myself, that they wanted to chat on skype or enjoy a few minutes of semi-privacy while surfing the web. How wrong I was I learned only much much later.
Time and again my Korean friends, all together, would go to a PC Bang - to them going to a PC Bang was just another form of group activity, just like playing pool, or drinking, or coffee.
Despite having lived in Asia for two years I have never been to a PC Bang, I just cannot understand what is so fun about collective web-surfing. Whenever my friends tried to tag me along, I would just say, that it's a cultural difference, that I just cannot overcome.
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