Me likey karaoke

So I was sitting at home on Saturday, minding my own business, when I get a call from Dave and Tim. They were walking around Ximen Ding. Ximen Ding is like a small Times Square in Taipei. So they came over and we hung out for a while, and then we decided to meet some other people at a KTV. Now, for those of you who have never lived in Asia, KTV is Taiwan's version of the karaoke room. Karaoke rooms are huge in east Asia. In Korea they were called NoraeBang, in Taiwan it's KTV, and I don't know what they're called in Japan. But the principle is all the same. You go with your friends and rent a small room, and you sing karaoke together.

They were more numerous in Korea, but I've been to these places about ten times. They can be surprisingly fun, but the experience will be totally different, depending on whether you go with a foreigner crowd, or with locals. When you're with a bunch of other foreign teachers, you end up going to these places at 3, maybe 4AM. You've been drinking all night and it's a blast.. You can either bring in your own booze, or just buy it there. It's always a total free for all. The staff barely speak any English, and they don't want to have to deal with having to tell you to stop running around screaming, spilling beer on the equipment, sleeping on the lobby floor, etc. It's easier for them to just point and laugh.

But when you go with the locals, it's totally different. First off, while we stop in for a few hours at the end of the night, they will go for the entire night. Maybe 9PM to 2AM, and they're in there singing away the whole time. And you will never here any rock music, or even hip hop. They never play any "good" music. And it's not that it's all Chinese. They will sing quite a few English songs, depending on how well they can speak it. But they pick the lamest songs. This last weekend, they were singing Ashley Simpson...the guys, not the girls. They sit on the couches and let one or two people sing the song. Then when the song is over, they pass the mics to the next person. Totally different from the constant passing and mad grabbing of the mic when we go.

Then there's the songs. The selection of English songs can go from satisfactory at best, to down right awful in the worst cases. Sometimes the band's or song's name is written in the native writing script. This wasn't so bad in Korea, since the Korean writing system is easy to learn, and it's easier to write foreign words with. But in Taiwan it's ridiculous. They had, maybe, 100 English songs, but half the bands were written in Chinese. You'd be surprised how many songs you can't recognize without the band's name.

They're usually pretty cheap, much more so in Korea. In both Taiwan and Korea, they have really nice places. Marble, leather couches, catered food, the works. But in Korea they had lots of dive places. The nicer places can go as high as $100 and hour , but for around $1 a person, you could go at it for a few hours at the dives. Taiwan is lacking for dive KTVs, which is kind of surprising, considering it's a poorer country. Well, scratch that. They have some cheaper KTV's but they're only cheap because they send hookers in. Then you have to pay the hookers. So it ends up being more expensive, or at least, that's what I've been told...