Bar developments (2 of 2): New Bar Lows.

That night that I hit up all the Korean bars, I discovered the city's only Mongolian karaoke bar (that I know of - yet!).

It was in a row of Korean restaurant-bars (Koreans love bars in restaurants, where you eat food with friends and maybe sometimes get a drink), and was in what I was told was a Korean karaoke lounge where all "the old Koreans" go and get drunk with their bartender friend who owns the place.

So, I walked next door, and on the door is the words "Mongol Karaoke", with Mongol in Cyrillic.

But, I step inside, and it's a typical karaoke lounge, with an older (female) bartender, and like a mixed crowd of 5 clients sitting at the bar, with one of them holding a microphone and singing while looking at the karaoke screen hanging over an empty stage.

The bartender takes my order then disappears, then some woman starts singing karaoke and I can't tell who, and then suddenly the bartender reappears and drops off a bowl of peanuts in front of me and I thank her, and only when she nods do I noticed that she has the microphone and is singing, and that she knows the song so well that she went back behind the bar away from the TV screens, dropped off the peanuts, and thanked me with a nod, all while singing (and she had a great voice!) and not missing a beat.

I was impressed.

Later, I asked her why the place was called Mongol Karaoke, and she said that was just the back karaoke rooms that they rent out.

After a while, I got the story -

Some Mongolians used to drift in every now and then and do karaoke, and they'd complain that there weren't enough Mongolian songs.

So, the owner got a lot of karaoke CDs of Mongolian songs and put the name "Mongol Karaoke" on the door to corner that section of the karaoke market; the bread-and-butter of the place is still Koreans, but the Koreans know it's a Korean place and keep coming, and now the Mongolians are devoted to it, even though they usually come around on weekends.

Right after that, the bartender offered me the book and said I should sing, so I flipped through pages of Koreans songs (in that Korean alphabet) till I got to some English stuff, and I looked for a singer that would have international appeal.  I remembered that the Carpenters were big in Korea (or maybe Japan?) from a bio of them that I read, so I sang chose "Superstar".

The version was a knock-off, and I was flat, and halfway through the 1st verse, 4 of the 5 clients called it a night and left.