Travelling around the world is one of those things where you always seem to know someone who has just been or is just about to go somewhere exotic, but you never get round to doing yourself unless you're one of life's unfortunates whose job it is to travel so much that you start yawning at the merest hint of a foreign land.

   So I consider myself lucky indeed to be one of those people that has just been somewhere exotic. Exotic, perhaps is a little overstating Korea as I saw it, but certainly there are parts to the country which lie under that description. Either way, the visit is momentous enough to feel that I should record the adventure in some way, and this is my personal adventure.

   The following story comprises the highlights of a month in Korea from the middle of November to the middle of December 1994. It describes how I spent my spare time and skips past how I spent my working time. Since the latter outweighs the former timewise, by a ratio of four to one, then that's probably just as well. The tale includes some of my impressions and observations of the country, its people, and their culture.

Going to Korea and getting no sleep

   I'd guessed I was going to Korea a good two months or so before I was told, but as usual at work, nothing was really sorted out for definite until a few days beforehand. The Tuesday before I went I was told that they couldn't get the flights at the weekend because they were all booked up because of a conference in Seoul, however, the immediate Friday or the following Monday might be possible, and by the way, I was going for a month! As it turned out it was the following Tuesday, which was good because it meant Julie and I could spend a farewell weekend together. In fact she took the monday off work as well, and I only went in to work for about half a day or so.  They wouldn't let me have the Monday off as well, the stingey lot. We had a really nice few days together and then set off for Heathrow on the tuesday morning.

For the first few nights I had to make do with what little sleep I could get, which tended to be an hour or maybe two at the most. Even after the first week had passed I was getting little more than five or six hours a night. So many times I wished I had never been stupid enough to agree to come so far away and for so long. I wanted to get the next plane back. I even considered using my expenses money (Laser-Scan had given me around 1200 pounds worth of cash and travellers cheques) to go to Seoul, book a seat and get the next available flight back. I didn't of course, and now I'm glad I didn't but at the time I didn't care about the adventure and the experience before me. I wasn't interested in going out and exploring the local area or anything that we would have done if Julie and I had been there together. I suppose it might have helped if I had been out there with someone else from work, but in a way, I'm glad now that I did it all alone - it makes the trip seem more of a personal achievement without having that dependency on anyone else.

   The plane left at 1415 and it was 13 hours before we landed in Hong Kong. Hong Kong has got to be one of the most spectacular cities to fly into. The low pass over the city gives an excellent view of the masses of skyscrapers which litter the horizon like some crystallized rock face. The even lower pass over the obviously poorer part of the city leads to the runway on the waters edge, and the taxi back up the runway gives a splendid view of the city across the water. An hours stop in the airport meant that we hav around half an hour to wander around the airport gasping at the rediculously expensive wares which were apparently duty free. Most items seemed around twice the typical cost you would find elsewhere. I bought some postcards though!

   The flight on to Korea lasted three and a half hours. I was sat next to a chap from Hong Kong who had his baby with him alone for the first time on a plane. He was a photographer and spoke Korean well. He taught me how to say 'I am NOT American - I am English' on the basis that if I heard the word 'miguk' mentioned with reference to me then I  should say or rather pronounce 'miguk saram ani ay oh - yonguk saram ay oh!' after which most Koreans would then talk TO me instead of ABOUT me. The phrase never came in handy apart from to prove that I had learnt some Korean already, albeit not terribly useful Korean.

   Korean airport officials were much like airport offocials at any other airport - they make you feel guilty even if you're not. First impressions of a country often come from the airport but I don't specifically remember any distinctive first impressions other than the few minutes coming in to land at the airport, where the land was very brown and barren and rather non-descript. It seems odd to remember the landscape as being distinct for it's non-descriptiveness. Maybe I was just comparing it to the fantastic panaramas of Hong Kong.

   I was met at the airport by Mr Kim. Kim is the surname of about 30% of the population. His full name was Choo-Yeon Kim and his English was by far the best of all the people I met in Korea. In fact he majored in French before doing his three or four years national service in the military police and then working for Ssang-Yong - a huge organisation consisting of a wealth of hands in different pies, one particular hand being in computing services. Mr Kim was very amiable and quite European in his attitudes. I suppose I was expecting a Japanese style of dress, culture and formality, but I found this to be not so immediately visible to the casual observer.

   Mr Kim ushered me out of the airport to an expensive looking black limousine taxi. A quick conversation to the white gloved driver who was standing to attention beside the car and we were on our way to Seoul - a good 45 minute journey. By the time we arrived in the city it was dark which was just as well because it hid the fantastic skills of the Korean drivers to head for another car as fast as possible and then swerve away at the last second. Apparantly this activity is called 'driving in Seoul' and I was to experience it more drastically a few weeks later.

   We were to travel on from Seoul by train because it was the fastest and most comfortable way to travel, which I have to say is completely true. I tried rickety old buses, coaches, cars, taxis and trains and the train was definitely the best. Maybe it was something to do with being in first class on the super non-stop express out of Seoul.

   Two hours later we arrived in Taejon. During that time I really just wanted to go to sleep, but I chatted to Mr Kim instead and we went to the restaurant car where we were waited upon and I had my first experience of Korean food. Maybe I made a bad choice but I was not at all impressed. The beef was stringy and the meal rather bland which was surprising because it was most atypical of the food I was to eat for the next four weeks, which has only bland in as much as it was so hot and spicy that for the most part it masked any taste of the food itself and many foods tasted the same as a result.

   A twenty minute taxi ride in another cab and we were at the hotel. Amongst others, there are two types of taxi cabs - black and white. Black taxis are three times more expensive than hite, but much more comfortable and impressive. White taxis are rip off merchants and are likely to take you three times as far as necessary and so you end up paying just as much as black cabs anyway, and neither are they like to speak English. Silver taxis are somewhere in the middle. They just get on with the job and tend to speak enough English to get by. One problem though. Most of the drivers are complete maniacs. Mind you - being a maniac driver isn't restricted to being a taxi driver in this country. Korea has the worst reputation in the world as far as driving safety and number of accidents are concerned, although I was pleased to learn that it's getting better. Silver taxis are actually silver and blue generally and in Taejon are marked as Expo-taxi as a result of the recent World EXPO exhibition in the city. The taxis have standard taxi signs on the roofs of the cars, unless as a special treat for not having a (major?) accident within the last year, they are allowed to have a more elaborate taxi sign on the roof to distinguish them from the much larger quantity of cars who
must have obviously had a (major?) accident in the last year. Guess which taxis I opted for if I had a choice.

   Most Korean cars have replaceable corner pads on the extremities of the bumpers. These trendily shaped pads are to stop your car being damaged when you bump into another car. Not IF you bump, but when you bump. Most cars have these pads scuffed all over and leave trendy scrapes along the sides of other cars. It would appear that to have no scrapes on your car is to be an outcast of society. I was being driven around and was proud to be in the car on three seperate situations of contact with another vehicle, not to mention the occasions where the car was shoved against a high pavement or left the ground due to the surprise approach of a sleeping policeman at high speed. Incidentally, the phrase 'sleeping policeman' amuses the Koreans very much.

   Anyway, I'm sure to mention Koreans and their cars later in this story. We arrived at the Hotel Adria in the National Hot Spring Tourist Resort of Yusong, about seven miles from the outskirts of Taejon at about 8pm. I checked in with the help of Mr Kim. Mr Kim signed a piece of paper and told me that I had very good rates since the hotel chain was a cutomer of SsangYong and I had a 40% discount, but it wouldn't affect me personally since the hotel bills would be paid direct by SsangYong. I was particularly pleased at this since it meant that the twelve hundred pounds of expenses Laser-Scan had given me would not be 'wasted' on hotel bills. As it turned out, it was just as well SsangYong were paying direct because the bill came to around three thousand pounds, an impressive half of which was due to me having a phone in my room! Not just the 'having' of the phone, you understand, but the 'using' of the phone, which I later calculated to be at a rate of around one hundred and thirty pounds an hour when calling England.

   I was in awe of the hotel. It was definitely very impressive. Massive carvings from solid hunks of beautifully coloured wood filled the corners of a large atrium. Porters seemed to glide around in such a way as to stop guests touching anything other than the floor between entering the hotel and getting to their room. A mad dash of an uneducated guest towards his own luggage would be thwarted by a pink uniformed man already carrying the cases before the owner gets to them. An arm outstretched to push a door open would never reach the door in time. The porters beady eyes watched a guests every move to see whether they went for the revolving door or the single doors when entering the hotel.

   To me, the hotel wasn't so much a hotel as my home for the next month. First impressions of my new home were very good. My room was excellent - everything I needed, except for Hong Kong Satellite TV that is. There was only one problem that I worried about for the first few days, and that eclipsed all other things. I was missing Julie more than I believed it was ever possible to miss anyone. The first few nights I suffered. I was hit very hard by jetlag and slept very little for the first three or four nights. The first night I slept barely an hour in total and after four days I was lucky to get three or four hours. This and being there alone combined with my pining for Julie left me feeling very sorry for myself indeed. I thought many things which seem rediculous now, but I felt so rotten at the time that I never want to feel like that again for the rest of my life. I considered asking Laser-Scan to get me back to England or I would resign and use my expenses money to get the next available flight back to Julie. Of course I never did, but that was the kind of thing going through my mind.
 

Julie nearly comes to Korea, but I phone her instead

   I spoke to Nigel  ( my boss ) several times, and he suggested that it might be possible to get Julie to fly out to stay for a week. Certainly that made me feel a little better at such a prospect, but the jetlag was wearing off as well and I was getting a little more sleep. As it turned out, the saga of 'getting Julie to Korea' was totally farcical, right from the moment I arrived at the airport. Originally when the people from KMT were in England and had been asking me about my coming to Korea, I had mentioned my desire to have Julie come over with me for a week. I still don't know whether they ever intended to pay for her flight or whether we were expected to pay for it ourselves, but when Mr Kim met me at the airport he told me he was also expecting my girlfriend to be with me. Not only had he already bought train tickets for the two of us from Seoul to Taejon but had also booked us a slap up meal at some expensive hotel, for the evening of our arrival. When I learned this, I was gutted at the prospect of having missed out on such an opportunity, as was Julie when I told her what had been lined up.

   I spoke of the matter to Mr Kim over a cider (7 up!) whilst waiting for the train in Seoul, and he had suggested that the remaining money from SsangYongs budget for my travel expenses could be used to pay for part of her flight to Korea, provided this would be OK with Laser-Scan. It was the 'OKwith Laser-Scan' bit which caused the problem. Initially Nigel had thought that Laser-Scan might be able to cough up the remaining couple of hundred pounds required to pay for the flight. Unfortunately, his idea of coughing up the extra couple of hundred pounds was to try and hide the difference in the books somewhere and not tell anyone else about it. There were to be two further complications with this. Firstly, the way SsangYong work their accounts meant that they were unable to pay both Laser-Scan for my consultancy fee, as well as myself for the part payment of the plane flight, and since Nigel was not telling Laser-Scan about the plan, then the plane flight could not appear on the bill, which would obviously be questioned by accounts. Secondly, the difference which Nigel planned to hide in the books turned out not to be a couple of hundred, but nearer eight hundred, since it was that much nearer Christmas and the flights were more than double what my flight had cost. This was not entirely true, however, since Julie did some checking back in England. She found a flight for eight hundred pounds which meant that if Nigel could come up with two hundred, SsangYong with four hundred and we could find two hundred between ourselves, then it could all happen.

   However, problems prevailed regarding who was actually going to pay for the flight and how SsangYong were going to pay their cut. It seemed that SsangYong would need to pay me all the money for the flight and my consultancy fee, and then I would pay Laser-Scan just the cost of the consultancy, and keep the cut of the plane flight. This of course meant that Nigel would have to tell his boss and accounts what was going on, and there could be no way of 'hiding' Laser-Scans cut of the plane flight in the books.

   Whilst all this was going on, Julie and myself were getting more and more despondant about the fact that it was by now too late to do anything about it anyway since flights were rapidly becoming booked for the Christmas period. Eventually we decided nothing was going to happen and that we would instead go to Paris over the New Year period, and that this would actually be preferable to her coming over to Korea. In retrospect this was probably true. Later, a couple of days before I left Korea, I met up with Mr Kim in Seoul and he voiced his disappointment at not being able to meet my girlfriend. He mentioned that SsangYong had sort of decided to pay for her to come over after all. Of course it was all too late then anyway, since we had booked the ferry to France and resigned ourselves to the fact that she wasn't coming over, and I was only in Korea for another two days anyway. I contented myself rather cynically with the fact that despite Mr Kim and SsangYongs generosity, Laser-Scan would have to be involved in the matter somewhere, and things wouldn't have worked out anyway.

   Rather ironcally, a few months later when SsangYong came round to paying Laser-Scan, the money was supposed to go into my account anyway, and then I was going to pay Laser- Scan. Something to do with their accounting system and the fact that it was me who actually did the work in Korea. I'll never understand all the options and problems which so often raised and lowered our hopes of being in Korea together, but I do know that our opinion of Laser-Scan was much reduced as a result of the saga. I look back on the matter with some glee in the fact that my telephone bills to Julie from my hotel room cost over fifteen hundred pounds - more than enough to have flown Julie to Korea for a week and to have had several hundred left over for sightseeing and spending money.

The first weekend and Songni San

   Sightseeing was something I enjoyed doing very much in Korea. Seventy five percent of the country is mountainous land, which means that there are any number of extremely beautiful areas of scenic landscape around the country. On the first weekend, I was missing Julie immensely and very much wanted to be left alone to mope in my hotel room. Had I had my way I probably would have, but fortunately I didn't have much choice in the matter. I finished work at about 2pm on the Saturday and got taken back to the hotel. At that point I really didn't know waht to do. I was at a complete loss. I was on my own in a strange country where trying to make people understand me (and vice versa) was almost more effort than it was worth and usually didn't get the results I wanted anyway. I moped about not really wanting to do anything because I was missing Julie so much. Finally, when I was bored of switching channels on the TV just to make sure that there was only still a load of rubbish on, I decided to go out and have a look round the local area of the hotel. I was very aware of the fact that I was the only non-Korean person around and I was being 'looked' at. I went towards the shopping are  in the hope that it might be a little more touristy than the hotel area, and indeed it was but there was very little to interest me.  I walked arounf the block a couple of time and eventually came back to the hotel and watched the rubbish on TV for the rest of the day.

   Sunday was different. The plan as I understood it was to have Mr Lim come round to the hotel and to spend some time teaching each other our respective languages. Mr Lim was to arrive at the hotel at about ten in the morning. When he actually arrived and rang me from the foyer to say he was here to pick me up then I figured that instead of staying at the hotel then we were to go back to his place to learn. But it was a pleasant surprise when he said we would go somewhere to do some sightseeing. He asked me if I liked mountains, to which my response was a definite yes. I had brought with me, on that occasion, a travel and survival guide to Korea and I showed him some pictures of a place called Taedun San which looked ideal. He said that we might go there some other time during my stay, and that today we could go to a place called Songni San. At the time I was calling these places Taedunsan mountain and Songnisan mountain, until I learnt that san actually meant mountain. I suppose it's like saying naan bread, when naan means bread anyway. So, we headed off to Songni San in Mr Lims little Kia Pride and about an hour and numerous twisty hairpin bends later we arrived.

   Songni San is a small mountain which is famous in Korea for the massive bronze statue of the budha, and other very old budhist relics of the past. The nearby town of Songni Dong, I'm sure is based on the existance of tourists who have to pass through the town on their way to the mountain itself.  Mr Lim bypassed the ever so touristy main street and took me to an empty hotel restaurant for a meal. A man was standing outside the gotel as we arrived and as we got out of the car he came up to Mr Lim gesturing towards the hotel, presumably to try and persuade us to go in. The place itself had one person in as we entered but as soon as we sat down, half a dozen people appeared from the kitchen area. Two people took our order and the table was served by a white gloved waiter who looked as though he could double as the bouncer. I had spent a few hours the evening before trying to kill time by learning the symbols which make up Hangul - the Korean language. With a little time to decipher character by character I could read Korean words but wouldn't have a clue what the words actually meant. I showed off my knowledge by reading the words on the window of the restaurant, which was made harder by the fact that the letters were stuck on the window and were back to front when seen from inside the restaurant. Mr Lim was impressed though.

   As we were leaving the restaurant, I got my wallet out, but Mr Lim shook his hand and said he would pay as it was his treat. He told me I should wait outside whilst he paid, which I thought was a bit odd, but I thought nothing more of it. Mr Lim wouldn't hear of me paying for anything that day. He was very generous - infuriatingly so at times. By the time my month was up, I was feeling guilty that I had all this expenses money and other people kept paying for things, presumably out of thier own pockets, and wouldn't hear of me paying for myself.

   Songni mountain is inside Songni national park and there was a small entry fee for visitors to walk up to the massive statue of the standing Buddha and to see the other national treasures inside the park. There was a route up to the top of the mountain but Mr Lim said it takes over two hours and he wasn't keen on the idea. It seemed a great shame to be there on the spot and miss out on the opportunity to get a tremendous view of the area. I had to make do with postcards.

   On the way back to Taejon, we went to Taejon Dam - the fifth largest dam in Korea. The dam itself was impressive but wasn't particularly pretty. However it's built quite high up a small mountain, and the view from the viewpoint above the dam was very pretty indeed. The ranges of mountains faded off into the distance in a gradually diminishing shade of grey. It was a great shame that I didn't have my camera with me that day - by the time I had realised we were going to go sightseeing, then it was too late to ask Mr Lim to go back to the hotel for me to get the camera.

Eating and drinking Korean style

   After the dam, I dropped off my puchases so far at the hotel, and headed off to a Korean restaurant with Mr Lim. This was the first opportunity to see some of Taejon town centre. The restaurant was very near to the EXPO centre. EXPO is a world exhibition of technology at its best and had been held in the city the previous year, and has done the city some great favours in the way of supplying permanent living quarters and entertainment to the people of the city. Sadly I never got to go the exhibition itself, which whilst not being anywhere near as spectacular as at the time of the EXPO itself, definitely warranted a visit. Taejon is the science city of Korea, with massive science parks dedicated to research and development.

   The area we ended up in at around five o'clock in the evening seemed extremely desolate and at first glance there didn't seem to be anything open at all. On closer inspection all the restaurants, of which there were many, were open but devoid of people inside them. Mr Lim and I entered one on a block corner and as if by magic the shopkeeper appeared to serve us. We had to take off our shoes and sit on a thin silk cushion on the floor at a long low table. Every four feet or so along the table their appear to be a basin with a griddle over the top. It turned out to be a type of indoor barbecuein which a bowl of red hot charcoal is placed, and although we didn't get to use it this time, I did enjoy many meals using this method of cooking. Instead, we were brought a portable gas stove and a large rectagular flat metal tray which was to act as our frying pan. All the noodles and cut vegetables were laid around the outside and the meat fried and cooked in the cetre of the tray. We were given a pile of lettuce leaves each and the idea was to roll up the meat and vegetables inside a leaf of lettuce and eat it all in one or two bites. It was delicious - if this was a taste of Korean food to come then I was in for a good time. We had a few bottles of rice wine (at 16% a little stronger stronger than normal wine) and Mr Lim was noticeably louder and more vocal towards the end of the meal - as if he wasn't vocal enough already!

   To add to this, after the meal we went to an OB Lounge which is a kind of cross between a coffee house, a wine bar and a pub. OB Lounges are a remnant of an era of very common stand bars where people would just stand in the bar to drink, but they got phased out, tables got added and so did TV and videos and Hong Kong Star TV. Now they're trendy but quiet places to go for a comfortable relaxing drink and a chat, as we did for an hour or two. I loved the place. It was simple but the music, lighting and decor was very effective in making you feel as though you just wanted to stay there all night, which I suspect you probably could have done if you wished! With the drinks you receive free 'anju' which are snacks such as peanuts or popcorn. I asked what OB stood for, and regretted it when he said (presumably as a joke!) 'old member' and got involved in a tortuous explanation of something which I later realised to be an 'old boy'. The OB Lounges don't just sell OB curiously enough. They sell all the popular beers (Crown, Nex and Hite which I liked best, being made with natural mineral water) which seemed to be advertised in Korea at least as much as 'English' beers in England and with a lot more persuasive power. At least that's the way it appeared. TV advertising in Korea is obvious and has more noticeable effect, as opposed to British advertising where the subliminal and subconscious techniques take over.

   By the time we left the OB Lounge, Mr Lim wasn't really in a fit state to drive, but drive he did. My hotel was about ten minutes drive away, but rather than drive me there, he explained that he had had too much to drink, and then proceeded to spend fifteen minutes driving around the maze of small dark streets trying to find me a taxi. I couldn't understand the logic, unless he just didn't want to venture out into the main city streets for fear of being caught. He eventually parked near a main road, hailed a taxi, gave me some money and told him where to take me. I sat in the back of the taxi hoping that Mr Lim had told him to take me to the right hotel.
 

Eating and drinking Hotel Adria style

   I was quite warm when I got back to the hotel, so I took a nice cold can out of the fridge. Most of the cans I had no idea what they where. A few were obvious like the Nescafe coffee drink and the Coke. The was some red ginseng drink which I brought back to England with me but I'm not sure what happened to that. I think it stayed in the fridge for ages and then got thrown out. I never plucked up the courage to drink any more cans from that hotel room fridge after the one I had that night. I'd decided to pour it into a glass because I was curious to see the colour of the liquid I was about to drink. It was a translucent milky white an was slightly fizzy. I tried some but it was disgusting - reminiscent of a drink which looked like off white milk I'd tried in Spain once. As I poured it down the sink I noticed the date on the bottom of the can - June 1993. I checked everything else in the fridge - it all ranged from a couple of months in date to a couple of years out of date. I figured guests rarely took drinks from the fridge, and that the contents of the fridge was even more rarely re-stocked. That night I left a note for the maid. I wasn't sure that an English message would get through, so I searched through my phrasebook for a convenient sentence and copied out in my best handwriting (which must appear to the koreans like an English speaking five year old's writing would to me) the translation for 'this is not fresh'. It did the job, sort of. The next day when I got back to the hotel, none of the drinks were more than a couple of months out of date, which I presumed was as good as I could expect.

   The meal at the restaurant in Songni Dong was only my second korean meal apart from the firey hot meals served in the canteen of the KMT research centre. During the week we ate meals in the canteen at lunchtime. In the evening I usuallly ate back at the hotel, making full use of room service and the fact that SsangYong were paying for the hotel bill direct. Seeing as I was there for a month I thought I would probably work my way through the whole menu, but I actually tried relatively little. During that whole time I never ate in the hotel lounge - I just kept myself to myself and stayed in my room. It wasn't a conscious decision to stay alone, but I'm quite self conscious if I know that strangers are looking at me. It's not so bad when I'm with someone else but when I'm on my own I just like to melt into the background and be the one to watch other people rather than the other way round.

   I ate breakfasts and evening meals in my room and got to know the room service waiters quite well. One waiter who spoke a little English used to ask me how my day had been what I was doing at the weekend. After a couple of weeks obviously felt that he knew me well enough to pull out a piece of paper from his pocket one morning and ask me to have a look at it. It was a very rough and basic cv which had been scribbled out in pencil as if by a child of ten. He asked my if I would mind reading it and checking it for spelling mistakes and grammer, so I spent five minutes going through it for him. He explained that he was not happy there at the Hotel Adria and was seeking employment elsewhere and he wanted to work at the Hilton and he needed to send a cv in English if he wanted to work there. I wonder if he ever made it. I wouldn't have thought so, judging by the contents of the cv. I had a choice of just spending a few minutes going through waht he'd done, or telling him how he should rewrite the whole thing. I did the former which was just as well because a few minutes after he left the room I received a phone call from the front desk asking if the bell man had brought me breakfast  and if he had left yet. I said that he had, but of course I didn't mention about the guy's cv.
 
   The next day when the same waiter brought me dinner in my room I tried to explain to the waiter that I'd had the phone call asking after his whereabouts, and that he needn't worry because I'd just said that he brought the meal and gone away again. The waiter was aghast and said a few words and pointed at me very agitatedly. I realised that he'd misunderstood me. He thought that I was telling him that after he had left the room I had rung the front desk to tell them about his cv. I tried desperately to explain that this was not the case, and after immense patience and lots of arm movements I think I finally got through to him. I hope so. I hate to think what he might have done to my meals over the next few weeks if he thought I'd really done that.

Eating and drinking Chinese style

   I don't know if Chinese restaurants are a universal thing and it doesn't matter which country you go to in the world; you'll always be able to find a chinese restaurant. For some reason I was surprised to find Chinese restaurants in Korea. I shouldn't have been because it's just next door. Maybe I thought that in oriental countries, then the food of the country itself would be fairly similar, and there would be no need to have specific chinese restaurants. How wrong could I be? The food in Korea is nothing like any Chinese meal I'd had before, but then that doesn't mean anything because the Chinese meals I had in Korea were nothing like the ones I had before either. This was 'real' Chinese food.

   A couple of days after I'd arrived and had got over some of the jetlag enough to not want to go straight home and try to go to sleep mmediately, Dr Oh took myself and the rest of his group out to a Chinese restaurant just over the road from my hotel. We went in three cars and as Dr Oh was trying to park he nudged another very expensive looking car, much to the consternation of someone who was watching from the entrance to the restaurant. Fortunately there didn't seem to be any damage because the owner wandered over, had a quick look, wandered back and continued his conversation with someone else. He didn't even bother to say anything to Dr Oh!

   When we went in to the restaurant, we were shown to our own room - very ornate with paintings on the ceilings, gold filigree all over and a huge round table in the centre to seat the eight of us. I figured that having our own room, it must be an expensive place to eat, but I later discovered that it was not uncommon to be given a seperate room away from the main area of the restaurant - even if there's only two or three people in the group. I had other reasons for thinking it was an expensive restaurant though. Nowhere on the menu could I see an item that was less than 25,000 won (twenty pounds) a dish, and many of them were around 50 or 60,000 won (forty or fifty pounds). I nearly fell of my chair when I worked out the bill based on the fact that everybody seemed to be having about seven dishes each! A little later it dawned on  me that we had been given a menu specifically for eight people and the prices were for a dish big enough to split between eight of us. The waiter (of which there were up to three at any one time) started off by putting three or four little dishes in front of us - one with soy sauce, one with what I think was onion soaked in something, one with black bean sauce, and naturally one with kimchi. The idea was to dip the onion in the black bean sauce (not the soy sauce) before eating it. the soy sauce was for use as a dip for the main dishes which came round next. The dishes came one after the other. The platter would come arranged exquisitely and then be completely ruined when it was dished out to us. As we finished each dish then the next one would come round, unlike here, where you have everything in front of you at any one time. After 6 dishes or so, it was time for something else - a choice between a massive bowl of noodles  in black bean sauce, ( a very cheap and popular dish called 'cha ja myon'), or egg fried rice and vegetables, which I opted for despite being completely stuffed. Finally after that, there was another round of onion and black bean sauce. Every dish we ate was started in a fresh bowl - we had no chance to mix dishes. In this country we have everything at once and usually mix everything on the one plate. If the Korean Chinese restaurant is the real thing then they make a great play of using fresh bowls and seperating every dish, so that the meal effectively consists of maybe ten courses.

   To drink, I tried some soju, which is about 25 percent alcohol and is distilled from fermented grains or potatoes. My guide book described it as tasting somewhere between bacardi white rum and furniture polish remover. I would tend towards the latter of those two descriptions - I wasn't keen on it. I had beer the rest of the time. I liked the beer there. There were a few very popular beers such as OB and Crown but I liked Hite which is brewed using mineral water and tastes significantly better for it in my opinion. The Koreans have a custom of pouring other people's drinks but never your  own. If you pour drinks for everyone then you must compliment someone by choosing them to pour your own drink. This custom seemed to show itself when there was a larger group of people, but not so much when there was only two or three.
 

Morning blues

   Working at Laser-Scan,  I was used to semi-flexi working hours. Waking up naturally in the morning when your body is ready to wake up is bliss. I'd expected a regime of relatively early starts in the morning to completely throw me, but it was surprisingly easy. Maybe it was because I knew someone was coming to pick me up in the mornings at 8.30, or maybe it was because I knew breakfast was being delivered by room service. Perhaps it was the jetlag which threw me completely and an early morning start really didn't make any difference to the nine hour time difference anyway. Often in the morning I'd give Julie a ring, just before she went to bed, so that helped as well. Waking up naturally at 6.30 wasn't uncommon, but then neither was falling asleep again to be woken by room service with breakfast! About halfway through the month my wind up alarm clock broke when I was setting the alarm time. I couldn't change what time the alarm went off and it was stuck at about 10.30am. I had to make sure the alarm was always three or four hours fast in order to wake me up at the right time, so rather ironically, according to my alarm clock I was getting up at about the same time as I always did in England! In retrospect I should have bought a new alarm clock on expenses.

   Mornings were always a time to try and predict what time breakfast would arrive - if indeed it arrived at all, which it didn't on a few occasions. How late would room service be? Did I have time for a shower? Should I ring Julie? Should I wait for breakfast to arrive? Only once did I get caught in the shower when room service arrived, which wasn't bad I thought. The one sure thing I could be gauranteed was that room service wouldn't arrive early. I was even more sure of that than I was sure that they wouldn't have got my order right!

Walking to Taejon, and walking, and walking, and ...

   One Sunday I decided to go for a walk. Maps seemed hard to come by for the area. I could find none in Yusong, the touristy hotel area in which I was staying. However KMT where I was working had a book of maps of towns in Korea to show where their mobile radio ttransmitters were, and one of the maps was of the general Taejon area, so that was good enough to get me started. All the names were in Korean of course, but all I needed were the main roads in order to get to Taejon centre and then I could go to the tourist office there. I left at about 9am when it was icy cold. I had two jumpers on and my coat and gloves. Miss Im had said it would take about an hour to an hour or so to walk to Taejon. It took twice that at least. And it was a very boring walk - very little scenary. At one point I stopped to ask directions from a couple of people at a taxi breakers yard. I did notice that the taxis which were most smashed up didn't have the special 'good driver' taxi sign on top of the car. Asking directions was a mistake because they obviously wanted to be as helpful as possible. I'd showed them my map and wanted to know if I was on the right road. But they wanted to know where I was going and to tell me exactly how to get there. They couldn't make head nor tail of the map so combined with the fact that they couldn't speak a word of English they were having considerable difficulty getting anything across to me. After about ten minutes I just started nodding to everything they said, as if I understood, and left them talking amongst themselves about the best way to the railway station.

   I eventually found the railway station and the tourist office nearby. Not having had much luck using English before, I had looked up a few choice phrases  in my phrasebook, and asked if they had a map of the town and any tourist information. All I got was a grunt and a stare as if I was completely mad. (How easily people see through me!) I tried again in English which got a much better response. Armed with several maps and details of things to see and do in Taejon, I headed for the nearest of them - Chungang market. Unlike Yusong market, this one catered for everything - not just food. I was interested in buying some silk since it's extremely cheap in Korea, but I found nothing that appealed to me. What silk I did find was patterned or had pictures along one edge so that it could be made into a kind of wraparound sarong affair. I browsed around the market for a while but found little of interest.

   Whereever I go, I have a desire to climb to the highest point aound. I'm not sure why but I get a kick out of being at the highest point, especially if it's taken a lot of effort to get there. The highest point around Taejon was  south of the town, in Pomunsan Park. 'San' means mountain. I followed a steep road up past a funfair to the start of the mountain trail, and followed the trail to the top of pomunsan. It was a very steep trail, made slightly easier by having thousands of steps built into it with brown plastic imitation tree trunks. I was very hot and very out of breath when I got to the top, but the view was really quite amazing. I stopped for a few pictures, but it was very cold, and I cooled down very quickly. I decided to keep moving, and besides, I had spotted another, higher peak in the mountains about a mile away or so. I wouldn't be satisfied going to the second highest peak! To get to this peak required scrambling up a steep slope whilst holding on to a rope tied to a tree at the top. Amazingly men and women who must have been eighty or so were climbing up this slope like they came up here for a walk after work everyday. Maybe they did.

  The view from Sirubok as this peak was called, was even more amazing. I could literally see right round the mountain. There were dozens of mountains in the distance, each a slighly greyer colour than the ones in front, due to the impurities in the air. I could see down onto the whole town of Taejon and the plain on which it was built. (Taejon means great plain). In the distance I could see Yusong and could follow the path I had just spent the last few hours walking along. I used up lots of film from Sirubok. On top of the mountain was  a shelter, rather like a circular conservatory, but without the glass in the windows. A man was ticking off the number of people that were arriving at the mountain top via several paths and then ticking them off again as they left. Presumably making sure that the number of people leaving was equal to the number of people arriving. I wonder what happens if the two don't tally. As I reached the shelter, someone spoke to me, saying 'hello, young man' in perfect English. He was Korean but his English was excellent, and we had a chat. His was the best English I heard the whole time I was in Korea. Sometimes I felt a bit conscious of my appearance. I didn't see one single other western face during my stay in Taejon. Seoul was different.

   Having satisfied my quest for height, I headed down the moutain and back to the market and the shopping area. I was looking for postcards, but they're very hard to come by in Taejon. I found none, even in the Taejon Department Store, which is very popular with tourists. Quite by accident I found a huge underground shopping area. I had intended to cross a road via a subway, but found to my amazement a criss-cross network of shopping malls under the streets. At the end of one of the malls, sixteen massive TV screens comprised a free public cinema. I stopped to watch a Bruce willis film for a while. I spent ages browsing around the shops looking for bargains, but was disappointed.

   I was stopped in one of the malls by A Korean chap who recognised me as English and who had a friend in London. I had noticed the man before because as I had walked past him half an hour before in the street, he looked as though he was about to say something to me but then thought better of it. His English was very poor, and I had trouble making out much of it. Every other word seemed to be 'goggi' or 'poggi'. Maybe it's the equivalent of 'umm' and 'err'. He liked talking. Unfortunately, his talking was quite random and disjointed, and after a while his monologue would loop back on itself and start all over again. He talked about London Bridge, Burberry coats, Scotch whiskey, Margeret Thatcher, Churchill, The Channel tunnel, Anglo Saxons, Rome and about where I was working. And a host of other things. After a sentence or two on each subject, he'd flip to something completely unrelated. Like a word disassociation game. I stayed to talk to him for a while because I found him rather funny in a way, but after twenty minutes I was getting bored. I made my excuses, and considered myslf lucky to get away after another ten minutes, during which we said goodbye about five times.

   By then it was about six. I'd seen everything I wanted to see that I knew about, so I headed back to Yusong, arriving about two and a quarter hours later. I was so exhausted. As I approached yusong and the mass of hotels, I was looking out for the one which had Hotel Adria on the top, but couldn't see it. Luckily I remembered the route from the morning. The reason I couldn't see it was because it was in English on one side, but Korean from the side I was approaching from. When I got to my hotel room, I was so happy at not having to walk anymore. I worked out I'd walked about twenty five miles, not including browsing round the shops and the market. I slept well that night.
 

Kimchi - no escape

   Kimchi is the Korean national dish. There are lots of different types of kimchi, but the most common is one made with cabbage, ginger, garlic and chilli. Everyone in Korea likes kimchi, but to the visitor its most certainly an acquired taste, being extremely hot. It used to be made popularly by covering tha cabbage in the spices in a pot and leaving aside for a couple of months, but nowadays, it's made in huge factories using a special refrigeration process which reduces the time to a couple of days or so. Wherever you go to eat in Korea, you can be gauranteed to be served some kimchi in the meal somewhere. One day, four of us went into the nearest shopping centre and found a pizza restaurant. I eagerly looked at the menu for a 'Meat Feast' or an 'American Hot'. I was out of luck - not so much as a 'Quatro Stagioni' in sight. There were a couple of basic ones like cheese and tomato, but most of the pizzas had been Koreanized for the Korean tongue. Top of the list was kimchi pizza, which like all the other pizzas, comes with a side plate of more kimchi. I had cheese and tomato. One of the offputting factors with kimchi is that you have this bowl of cabbage with chilli sauce over it and you put some in your mouth and it's stone cold. You bite into the cabbage and it's a mixture of being rubbery and crunchy at the same time. Rubbery on the outside and crunchy on the inside. (The opposite of an armadillo!) Meanwhile your tongue is saying 'Get this stuff out of here - it's too hot', and so you just swallow it and politely leave the rest
alone.

Getting Insurance

   Soon after returning from Korea, the plan was for Julie and I to go to Paris for a week or so over the New Year period. We intended to tke the car and alternate the driving so I tried to sort out the insurance whilst I was still in Korea in case we had to wait a while for anything to come through. I rang up the insurance broker from the hotel, and made the inquiry. They said they would ring back with the details, so I started giving them the full telephone number of the hotel in Korea. At this point the chap on the other end ralised I wasn't in the same country. I had to ring the insurance broker back!
 

Climbing Taedunsan with a soldier

   I didn't have many days left completely to myself, but when the opportunity arose, I certainly made the most of it. One of the most memorable days out was the trip to Taedunsan. Taedunsan is one of the best craggy peaks in Korea from which to survey the surrounding countryside. Not just because of the views, but also because of the climb to the top.

   I caught a taxi from the hotel to the bus station. At the station I felt pleased with my self because I managed to make myself understood that I wanted a return ticket to the mountain, and I also understood when she told me the number of the stand at which to wait. I didn't have to wait long to get on the coach, but once on, we still had to wait another twenty minutes or so. In that time, three or four salesmen came on the coach trying to sell such delicacies as what I think were flat dried cuttlefish. I resisted the temptation.

   The coach looked a rickety old thing, although probably exactly what I might expect trundling along the deadly dusty mountain roads in the urban areas of the Korean outback. I sat by the window and hoped nobody would sit next to me, but I was out of luck. He looked about the same age as me, and was dressed in entirely the correct gear for walking up a mountain - unlike me. He had a thick jacket and a backpack and was wearing good walking boots with thick socks. I had a thickish jacket, and was wearing a beaten up old pair of trainers. He ahd plenty of food and drink. I had a small can of orange and a couple of bars of chocolate.

   I was conscious of being the only western face on a packed bus, but not bothered by it. On the contrary, I liked it because it gave more of the feeling of exploring an unknown country on my own. It gives the sense of having to survive on your own and of stepping off the beaten track.  The Korean chap next to me on the bus tried to start up a conversation by asking where I was from and if  I was here on holiday. I forget his name now - that is if he actually ever told me his name. His English was very poor indeed - only slightly better than my Korean. Much of our conversation involved drawing pictures or writing poorly spelt words on a scrap of paper as it was trying to talk to each other. He told me he was a soldier who was on holiday. He seemed a relatively normal chap compared to the person who had stopped me in the underground shopping malls of Taejon.

   The bus journey consisted of preiods of intensely trying to get across some topic of discussion between each other and periods of staring out of the window, watching the Korean rural life pass by. There was very little flat land on the journey, this being indicative of the Korean landscape as a whole. Much of the not-strictly-mountainous land had been utilised for farmland, but almost every field seemed to be on a different level to its neighbours. Hedges divided the plots and grassy steps led from one field to another, making the use of tractors impossible. Instead they used what appeared to be an engine sat on top of a pair of wheels, and a long curved pole coming backwards from the axle, on the back of which was a seat on top of another pair of wheels. These minimalist vehicles were common forms of transport for farmers, and could even be seen on the major roads in Taejon. Much of the land was used for growing ginseng, with plots being covered in the black sacking covered frames in order to keep the plants out of direct sunlight.

   The first thing on arrival at Taedunsan was to look at the top of the mountain. I could just about distinguish a silver monument on the top, glistening in the winter sun. The second thing was to find out the time of the buses back. I didn't fancy being stranded two hours drive from the hotel, in the middle of nowhere. The soldier who had been sitting next to me on the bus, offered to be my guide up the mountain. Or rather he told me, rather than just offering. I thought this was great until we actually started up the mountain and he told me that he was a member of an alpine walking club and often went in for that kind of thing.

   There was no way to get to the start of the trek without walking past the dozens of restaurants and tacky gift shops, that littered one side of the road. They could wait until after the climb. My guide as he had become, paid for both of us to enter the enclosure where the climb began. It amounted to around thirty pence which seemed pretty cheap. I later discovered that there were further charges to get past stategic points on the mountain side. It was impossible to get to the top without avoiding paying at least three tolls.

   The trek was remorselessly steep all the way up. Steps had been cut into the rock along some of the route, and where the rocks got to big and the path too steep, railings or ropes had been placed in order to help you pull yourself up. The soldier set the pace in true alpine style. We stopped three times on the way up, for which I was more thankfull than I tried to show. Keeping up with him was taking so much concentration that I wasn't getting much chance to see the breathtaking view. The shops at the bottom of the mountain sold small cans of drink for four hundred won. At various stages along the path, stalls had been set up to sell souvenirs and cold drinks. The further up the path, the more expensive the items got, until at the highest stall, the same small cans of drink had nearly quadrupled in price.

   We had asked someone at the bottom of the mountain how long the walk had taken them, and were told about two and a half hours. We made double that pace! Where there were people waiting to get past a crowded section of the path, we took an alternative route, clambering over enormous boulders and using trees as support. This soldier meant business, and I intended to mean whatever he meant. I was going to match him step for step, whatever it took. We got to the top in an hour and a half including a stop for lunch. The soldier and I pooled our food resources, and shared what we had between us, which basically meant that I ate half his lunch and he had one of my small bars of chocolate.

   But there was more to the trek than just climbing the rocky path. About halfway up the path split. We had the choice of a very steep section of rock, or what were known as the iron stairs. This was essentially a ladder with over one hundred steps, with either end attached to an outcrop of rock overlooking a deep vertically walled gully. This looked worrying enough to climb, but further down the path was Kumgang bridge. A narrow suspension bridge over eight metres in length stretched between two peaks of rock. The floor of the bridge was a wire mesh enabling you to see the bottom of the gully some five hundred metres below. The bridge was apparently able to take a maximum of two hundred people. There were a dozen or so when we crossed, and the bridge vibrated with every footstep. This crossing had to be the best thrill of the climb, and supplied some of the best views.

   At the top of the mountain was the Pioneer Tower at a height of 876m. Not a vast height, but an exhilerating climb indeed. It was extremely cold and once we had stopped climbing, we lost heat very quickly. So quickly in fact, that we stayed only long enough to take a few photographs. We then started our descent again in order to keep warm. We did the whole climb from to bottom to top and back in the two and a half hours that the other climber had suggested it would take to reach the top alone. The sense of achievement, both in doing the climb in that time and doing the climb at all was tremendous. It was certainly a trek to remember and probably the high point of the entire trip. (Excuse the pun!)

   Back at the bottom we had some time to kill before the next bus, so I looked around some of the tacky tourist shops. Looking back now, I can't for the life of me think why, but I bought what must have been the most tacky of all possible tacky things. I bought a lamp. No ordinary lamp mind. This lamp was made from a stripped branch of a tree and was about a foot high or so. The branch was mounted on a flat stand, and at two extremities, had small flat sections upon which was mounted a small white china oil lanp, and small china housing for an electric bulb. The wire to the bulb was wound round the branch and exited through the flat base. The whole thing had been immersed in some kind of thick treacle-like varnish and been left to drip dry. It was a horribly unlikely souvenir to buy, but for some impulsive reason I decided that of all the things in the shop which I could afford, then that was what I wanted. The soldier haggled with the shopkeeper and I got a discount of around ten percent. One day I may fix the light to work with a British socket and fill the lamp with oil, and see what the thing looks like, but I'm not holding my breath.

   In the shop there had been a dish of cubes of rice cakes. I tried one. It was like a very chewy marshmellow, and was intrigued as to how they were made from rice. I was shortly to find out. Outside half a dozen shops along the road, there were massive sections of tree trunk about a metre high and the same in diameter. The tops were slightly hollowed out and smoothed to create a shallow bowl-like shape. These were used to mix rice and water until it was a coarse sticky mess. Then, these sticky lumps were pounded into a fine textured substance with a huge wooden mallet. The mallet would be brought right back over the shoulder and swung round to smash the wet lump as hard as possible. You would imagine that the mixture would be simply splattered over everything in sight, but not so. Although it looked easy, there was an art to pounding the rice in such a way to make a load smacking sound and making a good dent in the rice cake. The soldier spoke to one guy who was pounding the rice, and I was passed the mallet to have a go myself. The first two times I could feel I wasn't doing it right, but the third time I caught the rice full on, and got a resounding slap as the mallet made contact. That got me claps and cheers all round, so I guess I got it right.

   By this time, our stomachs were thinking of food, so we had a meal in a seedy little cafe in the corner of the bus station. We had kimbap and some sort of soup. Kimbap is similar to sushi. It consists of rice rolled into a cylinder and wrapped in sheets of special dried seaweed, and the whole thing filled in the centre with strips of fish, vegetable and ham. The whole thing is then cut into slices about two centimetres thick. These are often dipped in the soup before eating. The Koreans seem to use rice for many and varied uses when it comes to food. Much in the same way as we might use potatoes.

   We still had a little time to kill, so we went to a small video game arcade. I beat the soldier at tetris, and I won a keyring when I popped three balloons with three darts at one of the stalls. The soldier may have been on home ground up the mountain, but now it was my turn! He must have been tired though because he fell asleep almost all the way back, with his head lolling around on my shoulder at times. It started snowing half way home, and by the time we reached Taejon, the snow was laying thick and fast, and by night time, everything was covered in several inches of snow.
 

Laundry laughs

   One of the good things about being in a decent hotel is that you have a laundry service. At the Hotel Adria, the laundry service is pretty good. You shove everything in a bag, and if you're paranoid about losing something then you mark each item off on a price list and put that on top of the washing bag. Then when you come back at the end of a hard working day you find the shirts and trousers all ironed and hung up on hangers in the wardrobe, and everything else all neatly ironed and folded inside the bag. The first time I was fooled by the fact that the shirts were already hung up. I was all ready to complain about my missing shirts when I happened to notice more hangers in my wardrobe than before. The second round of laundry, halfway through my stay was a comic farce. I got back to the hotel to discover that I had someone elses laundry. The shirts in the wardrobe looked definitively Korean and rather military in cut and colour. The laundry bag had my room number on it, but not my clothes. I rang reception to explain and they sent someone to my room. the bell boy arrived with my bag of clothes, which had someone elses room number on it. A simple mix up, I figured. I explain about the shirts as well. He took the Korean ones away and came back a few minutes later with mine.

   I was tired that night, and I couldn't be bothered to unpack the laundry from it's bag or remove the shirts from their protective plastic covers. I went to bed and thought no more of the matter until I got home the next day to find The Korean shirts back in the wardobe in place of mine and the other laundry bag back, with mine nowhere to be seen. I knew then how the chap felt in the film Groundhog Day, where he relives the same day over and over again. I was transported back exactly twenty four hours to when I had come home to find my wrong laundry. I figured that the maids had been a little over zealous in their jobs, and that having found a bag laundry with an apparantly wrong room number, they had moved it to what must be the correct room. And so the two lots of laundry had been swapped back over again. I don't laugh very often when I'm on my own, but this little incident brought tears of laughter rolling down my cheeks.

   Fearing (with experience as good reason) that I was unlikely to be able to explain this mess over the phone with reception I went down to the front desk, taking the shirts and laundry bag with me as evidence. After lengthy explanations to two or three people of various degrees of understanding, they talked amongst each other with much nodding and shaking of heads and gesticulating. Finally smiles broke out as they realized what had happened. One of the girls said something and pointed disapprovingly at the laundry. I took it to mean that she didn't think much of the dress style. I was glad it wasn't my own washing, with my worn Y-Fronts on top!

   The bell boy was assigned to help me out and we went up to the room whose number had been on my own bag of washing. There was no reply to the knocking or the ringing of the doorbell. The bell boy went to the maid's room on that floor and had a look at a row of lights, and told me that the light was on, so he must be in. When you enter the room, you have to leave the key in a special holder, in order to have lighting and electricity to the room (apart from essentials such as the fridge which are on all the time). It stops wasting electricity when there's nobody there to use it, and it also means that if the lights are on then the guest must be in (or has locked his key in).

   The bell boy went back to the room and knocked louder and shouted at him to open the door. There was no answer. I don't know if the bell boy heard anything, but I heard a few grunts and moans from inside the room, and suddenly realised why he wasn't answering the door. I moved up the corridor a little in case the guy did open the door and saw me as the reason for his being interrupted. I would have been really embarrassed if he saw me and then we met again in the lift or something. Anyway, there was still no answer, so the bell boy rang the room from a telephone in the corridor. After a few rings someone answered and the bell boy told him in no uncertain terms to open the door. This worked, and the bell boy marched in, explained about the laundry and came out a minute later with all my washing. I was still hiding further up the corridor. The bell boy told me, smiling, that the chap had explained he was tired and had been resting and had fallen asleep.

   And if that was true then I am the Queen of Sheba's pet giraffe!
 

Dinner with Dr Oh and no Karaoke

   One Friday evening Dr Oh invited myself and the rest of the department back to his flat for a meal. There were about seven or eight people in the department so it was quite a dinner party for Mrs Oh to prepare for. The tradition for the man to entertain the guests while the wife slaves away in the kitchen preparing the meal is still quite common. In fact she did not even eat with us, but was continually bringing fesh food to the table or washing up. I don't agree with that custom one little bit, of course, but it's just the Korean way of life. Dinner at Dr Oh's was the only insight I got into Korean family lifestyle. We all sat cross legged on the floor at a low table to eat. As was usual there were large numbers of side dishes from meat and fish to vegetables and octopus. There was also a bowl of fried ginseng which was rather nice. We were given Korean beer and Scotch whisky to drink.

   Dr Oh has three children of ages about four five and six. It was the birthday of one of the girls and I was told that she had been taught how to say her name and her age in English. Dr Oh suggested I prompt her by asking her if it was her birthday, and to ask her name. I tried a couple of times, but she was so she she just giggled and looked away with out saying anything. Poor Dr Oh! I'm sure he was disappointed that she hadn't spoken to me in English.

   After the main course there was fruit and nuts for dessert. A huge bowl of macadamia nuts as placed in the middle of the table, and I wasted no time in getting rid of a good proportion of those!

   After the meal had finished, there was talk of what to do next. Mr Lim was doing his absolute utmost to persuade everyone, particularly me, to go to a Karaoke club. Karaoke is a very popular pasttime in Korea, and clubs can be seen in the streets all over the place, with laser disc signs hung above the entrances. I, on the other hand, was doing my absolute utmost not to be persuaded. I won, thankfully. I had heard about when a couple of the Koreans had come over to England earlier in the year. They had requested to go to a Korean restaurant, so they and the Managing Director and one of the other directors had driven down to London from Cambridge. They had then gone on to a Karaoke bar afterwards and had a room to just the four of them to sing along. I had no intention of a similar thing happening again if I was to be involved.

Borrowing a bike
 
   One weekend Mr Song had arranged with a colleague of his for me to be able to borrow a bike during my stay. I was to collect the bike after work had finished unexpectedly early on a Saturday afternoon due to the electricity being turned off - an electrician's job intended to take half an hour had turned into several hours due to the electrician receiving a large electric shock. Miss Im gave me a lift to the flats where she and a number of other KMT employees lived. ( KMT buy flats for their employees to live in!) She showed me where the bike was and Mr song had already given me the combination number for the lock. I was full of good intentions to ride west out of town to a nearby country park area and cycle up one of the nearby mountains.

   Unfortunately, I didn't get more than about half a mile. It turns out that the mountain bike I was borrowing didn't actually belong to the guy who worked at KMT, but his young son, and the bike was uncomfortably small for me to ride any distance. And besides it was damned cold. I had masses of warm clothing and a pair of gloves, but it was so icy cold that cycling along for any length of time would have been unbearable for any exposed skin. So, back to the flats I went, and was just locking up the bicycle again when Mr Song turned up. He lived in the same block of flats. I explained about the size of the bike, and he offered to take me back to my hotel, which was lucky because it was a long walk, and I had no idea about the buses.

   He dropped off his laundry on the way, and I explained about my problems with the laundry at the hotel, which he found very amusing. On the way to the hotel there were some road humps, one of which Mr Song hadn't seen until too late, and the car gave a huge lurch as we went over it at speed. Mr Song thought it very funny when I told him that in England they were commonly known as sleeping policemen.
 

Ginseng and the market

   Ginseng is one of Koreas major exports (others probably include Hyundai, Daewoo and Kia cars). It's cheaper in Korea than anywhere else in the world. There are two types - white and red, the latter being much more expensive and is grown under government controlled supervision. White ginseng is used for making ginseng wine, tea and for cooking or just plain eating raw. I tried ginseng rice, where the ginseng is added to the rice during cooking. I tried it deep fried which I liked most, and I tried it as raw ginseng root when Mr Song took me shopping in town one lunchtime. He was very keen that I should try some and bought two hundred grams of roots for around 12,000 won (ten pounds). When I went on a bus out into the countryside, I saw where ginseng was being grown. Rows upon rows of black canvas or thatched constructions a metre or so high. Apparantly, ginseng should be grown protected from direct sunlight and harvested after about six years growth.

   When I tried the raw ginseng root, I declared to Mr Song that I would like to take some home with me. I thought it wouldbe nice to take some home for people to try. Mr Song suggested that it would be better to buy it from a market where it would be cheaper. He recommended one which would be open the last Friday before I left. I forget the name of the market but the name corresponds to how many days the market lasts and how often it occurs. The market Mr Song took me to was open one day in six. The market in nearby Taegu was open one day in four. The first I saw of the market as we approached were the spice and vegetable sellers. Pepper, lumps of salt, macadamia nuts, spices and I don't know what else, were piled up to a metre high on pieces of sacking. Some of the piles looked like chunks of earth - even Mr Song didn't know what they were. Dozens of sacks full of small red chillis covered the pavement for a hundred yards or so. The chillis are used to make kimchi in seriously large amounts. Nearer the centre of the market we found the old women selling ginseng. I bought about seven hundred grams of the root for 10,000 won - around eight or nine pounds. I don't know how much that would have cost me in England, but it's sure to be a small fortune. We walked around the rest of the market and I bought some chopsticks and a couple of traditional dark brown heavy Korean bowls, which to date I still haven't used. We passed the fish market - mountains of fish, crab, squid, octopus, and lobster - some of these still slithering about in their trays. Mr Song bought a load of small silver fish, about an inch long. Apparantly you can cook them or just eat them raw, head, tail
eyes and all. Yuk!

   We stopped for a bite to eat in one of the dozens of restaurants around the market area. I say restaurants but they were converted living areas in people's houses, some of which spilled out on to the street amongst the market stalls. I tried another typically Korean dish - mandu. Mandu is meat and vegetables rolled into a dumpling about three inches in diameter. These were delicious and very cheap. We were given a sauce and some soup to go with it and the idea is to dip the mandu in the sauce and have the soup with the main course instead of at the beginning of the meal as we do in England. It's traditional to share one bowl of soup between two people, and usually the soup contains kimchi of some kind. The kimchi which comes in the soup is usually not too hot compared to the ones smothered in chilli. The soup we had didn't have kimchi in it, but a lot of soft white cubes, which I discovered to be made from peas. I had trouble believing this, since there was no semblance of colour to it. Mr Song pointed out huge blocks of the stuff in the market, two or three feet on each side. This market was small by Korean standards, but to me it was massive considering it was dedicated to food. At one of the stalls, Mr Song suggested I try some cinnamon straight from the stick. I broke a piece off  but before I could eat it, Mr Song suggested I try a smaller piece. I was glad he did - it was nice but very strong indeed.

Going to Seoul with Mr Song
 

   The last weekend before I came home, I was invited by Mr Kim to go to Seoul and see some of the sights. I was looking forward to this weekend since it was a good last chance to do some serious shopping before coming home. Although I worked the Saturday morning, Mr Song and I got away early in the afternoon. He wanted to go to Seoul to see his sister, so he'd offered to give me a lift to the capital to meet Mr Kim, but I'd have to make my own way back on the Sunday night.

   It was easily a two hour drive from Taejon to Seoul. We stopped off at a service station for a drink, and I witnessed the production of walnut cakes. Apparantly, these walnut cakes are on sale at almost every service station on the freeways, and at the largest of the services they have a machine to churn out the cakes about one every second or two. It was fascinating watching the sequence of the little cakes being made. the machine was about eight feet long and consisted of a conveyor of moulds going round and round. The cake mixture would be squirted into moulds three at a time into each half of the mould, and then the filling would be squirted onto one half and the other half of the mould flipped over to encase the cakes while they were fire heated on their way round the circuit. Half the mould would then be flipped back over to reveal three lightly toasted walnut cakes ready to be packed straight into bags or boxes to be sold. Mr Song bought a bag and I bought a box to take back home with me. Once back in the car we tried them. They were very hot and very disgusting! Only after had I tried one did I inquire as to what the filling consisted of. Bean curd. The horrible things didn't have a shred of walnut in them - just a sponge filled with bean curd. They were called walnut cakes because the mould in which they were made was shaped like a walnut!

   Rarely am I scared by someone else's driving but once we reached the outskirts of Seoul, then I came as close as ever want to get to just opening the car door and getting out and walking. At least in Taejon, there seemed to be some ordered rules about driving, but in Seoul there were no rules. London and New York just do not compare with this city. We reached the hotel where I was to meet Mr Lee. Mr Song missed the point at which he meant to turn left to cross the road to the hotel car park, so he drove up the road a bit, and proceeded to attempt a u-turn in a heaving mass of traffic in four lanes in each direction. He failed to make the turn and reversed into the oncoming mass of cars. But his mobile phone rang at that point and so he completed the manouevre whilst talking to Mr Lee, telling him
that he was in the middle of a turn in the road, right outside the window.
 

With Mr Lee in Seoul

   I was meeting Mr Lee because Mr Kim couln't make it for the Saturday night so Lee was entertaining me for the night. The hotel was classy - very classy indeed. Mr Lee asked me if I would like to stay there for the night. The plan had been to stay with Lee's family, but he thought I might like to stay in the centre of the city instead. Naturally I said I would love to stay at the Hotel Sofitel. He took me to the cash desk and spoke to the desk clerk. I was given a form to fill in, and then I was asked how I would like to pay. I looked at Lee. I had assumed that Lee's company, SsangYong, would be picking up the tab. I must have had a look which said I hadn't understood, because Lee informed me that I was being asked how I would pay. He also said that Ssangyong had an account with the hotel and I would get one third off which would make it only 140,000 won for the night (about one hundred and ten pounds). A couple of gulps and deep breath later I came back to my senses and guessed Laser-Scan would be paying for my expenses and hoped this would include a night in one of Seouls plushest hotels.

   I dropped off my bag in my room and had a quick look round. TV with Satellite, video subscripotion, and Hong Kong Star TV. Fridge stacked with food and drink. A bar with plenty to choose from. Three telephones, an office area, and a complementary gift selection of exotic fruit. The view looked over Seoul and to the mountains in the distance. I was fairly impressed, but I also felt out of place and beneath the level of the clientele that the hotel would attract. It was an odd feeling and not very nice. Maybe it wasn't helping being on my own and looking forward so much to coming home a couple of days later.

   From the hotel Mr Song, Mr Lee and I went for a quick drive round the centre of the city and on to a Korean restaurant. I had been given the choice of an American Diner style restaurant and the Korean. I felt obliged to go for the latter, and realised as we entered, that during the month I hadn't eaten out once in a proper busy Korean restaurant. None of the restaurants in Taejon, were ever busy. Every time, the places had had only a couple of tables being used, and often, we had been the only people eating at all. Here, we had to wait half an hour before being ushered to a table.

   It was to be an impressive meal by any standards. The tables were simply not large enough to hold the twenty six different dishes which accompanied the main course, and as one dish came close to being finished it was immediately replaced by another. The dishes ranged from different types of kimchi and vegetables, to whole fish and other meats. There was raw octopus and squid, and some dishes which I never did find out what they were. I was probably better off not knowing though. That meal did a lot towards putting me off seafood for life.

   After the meal, Mr Song went off to meet his sister, and Mr Lee took me on a more detailed drive around the city. I'd mentioned I would like to go the the Seoul tower and that was where we ended up an hour or so later. It's called by several names, one being the Seoul Tower and another being Namsan Tower, since it stands on the top of Namsan mountain which is actually a very large hill in the middle of the city. This adds to the apparent height of the tower, to give an overall extremely impressive appearance. It's the tallest tower in Asia. there's an observation deck near the top, and a revolving restaurant. The view of the surrounding city is extremely impressive, even at night.

   We went to see the famous bridge over the Han River which had been in the world's headlines a year or so previous due to it's collapsing in the peak of rush hour, killing fifty or so people. The Koreans viewed this national disaster as something of an embarrasment, and are not keen to discuss the subject with foreigners. The Koreans are proud of their construction capabilities and the collapse of a section of bridge only twenty years old does not help their credibility.

   After driving around the city on a whirlwind tour of the sights, we ended up in a Korean modern style cafe. These cafes are popular in the city, especially with the young adult population, and are a cross between a large stylish modern living room, a wine bar and a viennese style coffee house, if one can imagine such a combination. I rather liked it - comfortable sofas with good music and waiter service, but a bill at the end unfortunately. We had coffee and chatted for a while. Mr Lee was trying to persuade me to stay an extra couple of days to train some of his staff in the project I'd been working on for the previous four weeks. But there was no way he was going to get me to stay, with my return so close at
hand.

   Mr Lee dropped me back at the hotel. I was reluctant indeed, to go to sleep since I was paying a hundred and ten pounds for the room, and of the sixteen hours during which it was my room, I had already spent six in town and was set to spend another eight asleep. That left two hours awake effectively at fifty five pounds per waking hour. I watched Hong Kong's Star TV for a while and spent some time flipping between dozens of channels before I concluded that there was nothing to stay awake for, and went to bed.
 

With Mr Kim in Seoul

   Mr Kim met me at the hotel the next morning, almost an hour late. He had brought a friend with him who was to drive us around for the morning. We started off with the Royal Kyongbok Palace. First built in 1392 it was burnt down during a Japanese invasion in 1592 and rebuilt in 1867. Some of the building were quite beautiful. There was a collection of pagodas, which had been brought by the Japanese from other parts of the country. The peaceful grounds were impressive and seemed a thousand miles away from the chaotic ten lane freeways which skirt past the outer walls. In the grounds of the palace is the National Folk Museum, which is supposed to be one of the best museums in Korea. It was definitely one of the best laid out and most organised exhibits that I saw in Korea. There's a good display of moveable metal type which was used two hundred years before the supposed invention in the west of exactly the same thing.

   Lunch was next on the agenda, at an Italian restaurant above a designer clothes shop in the city. Mr Kims friend was a little nervous and despite his poor English explained that after lunch, he had a blind date and that he did not want to be late. since he had been our driver then we continued to travel by taxi. The afternoon was for shopping. We went to Itaewon market, which isn't a market so much as a mass of small shops crammed in to a long road, and spilling off into the side streets. Disappointingly, there were no silk shirt bargains to be had. In fact clothes did not seem cheap at all. I did find some bargain cartoon ties though. I bought Aladdin, Bugs Bunny, and Snoopy ties at just two pounds each. I now wish I had bought a whole stack of the ties, not just for myself, but because I could easily have sold them back in England for a hundred percent profit.

   I bought a traditional polished wooden vase for Julie. It was a very good quality red varnished wooden vase with a very long thin neck wide enough to get a couple of flowers in at a pinch. One one side was a picture made of mother of pearl. The women in the shop was a very persuasive saleswomen. At one point Kim was on my side against her, and she told him he was very naughty and that he should be on her side. After lengthy haggling, I got the price down to two thirds of the marked price. When I asked if she took credit cards, she gave me a nasty look, as if all the haggling had been in vain if I was going to pay by credit card after all that. I didn't. If I wanted that price, then I had to pay cash. Although I had seen similar items in Taejon for more money and I had indeed got a good price, then I still felt that I had been bullied into buying the vase. These market sellers are ruthless!

   After the market, we went to a cafe for a couple of drinks. This cafe was smaller and more homely than the one Lee had taken me too. We had a good chat about lots of things. Lee had been interested mostly in work, but Kim was more down to earth. His English was excellent. His degree had been in French, maybe with something else - I can't remember. He was interested in my ensuing trip to Paris with Julie, since his ex girlfriend had lived in Paris for a time and he had gone to visit her on half a dozen or more occasions. I felt at home talking to Kim, as though we had many things in common, although what they might have been, I can't imagine!

   I took the opportunity to buy masses of postcards that day in seoul, and ended up coming back from Korea with a pile of postcards three inches thick. After my failure to find postcards in Taejon, I went mad and bought with a vengeance in seoul. Who knew when I might be there again. Maybe never. And that was the attitude to everything I did in Korea. I was there for only a month. I was working an average of twelve hours a day during the week and six hous on saturday. This doesn't leave much time to see the sights and sounds of Korea, but I seemed to have done so much in that spare time that I did have.

   Kim came with me to the bus station in order that he could help me out with getting transport back to Taejon. I was able to get a ticket, but only for a bus at a specific time. It seems then, that if your bus is not the first bus, then you can join a secondary queue for a bus which might be leaving before the one you've actually bought a ticket for. If there end up being places left on the bus before it leaves, then the places are filled from this secondary queue. I failed to get the earlier bus by only a couple of people. Fares were cheap though - the two hour journey cost only three pounds, and was in relative comfort compared to the rickety thing which had taken us to Taedunsan. The bus dropped me off back at Yusong, albeit in an area of Yusong from which I had no way of getting my bearings. I just decided to start walking towards where the sky was lit brightest by the neon. That worked as well as if I had a streetmap of the city in front of me.

Back to Seoul with Mr Song

   I returned to Seoul two days later, but this time I was on my way home. I was working furiously right up to the minute I left the building. A few photos were taken and I was swamped with gifts. I was given a rather nice KMT watch, some small traditional Korean drums, and I was given a cased Korean doll to take back for Julie, which had been the idea of Dr Oh's wife. Before I knew it, I was out of the KMT Research Centre, and all the work I had put in to the last month was suddenly finished. It was all over and there was no more I could do, despite having a hundred and one things I still wanted to do. It was hard to believe I was going home. Korea, Taejon, the Adria Hotel, the Research Centre had all become home and Song, Lim, Im and Oh had almost been like family. We'd spent more than eighty percent of our waking hours together working on the same project. Despite looking forward to coming home very much, I was sad to leave.

   The drive to Seoul was less fraught than a couple of days previous. We had left Taejon with easily enough time to spare before check in time, and we arrived at the Capital in good time, so we decided to do a little sight seeing. We drove along the bank of the Han River, heading for the 63 floor Golden Tower. The traffic was attrocious and we lost a lot of time. It was a shame we didn't have more time to look round the tower. There was a large shopping centre in the basement and massive glass walled aquariums on one of the other floors which looked well worh a visit. The view from the Observation floor was quite breathtaking, as was the lift ride to the top. The lift was a totally glass walled affair which travelled up the outside of the building, providing a two hundred degree view of the River and Seoul city centre on the other side of the river and The Seoul Tower on Namsan mountain in the distance.

   After the Golden Tower, we headed for the airport. Easier said than done. Mr Song got lost and didn't have a map. He had thought there was a road he knew, but he went round and round a one way system without getting anywhere useful. Traffic meanwhile was building up quickly as rush hour approached, and I was starting to think I was glad I had told Mr Song that my check in time was an hour before it really needed to be. While Mr Song was getting stressed about finding a road he knew, then I was still staying calm and telling him there was plenty of time. Eventually we found a tortuous route which got us onto a road to the airport and then I was shaking hands and wishing him as warm agoodbye as I possibly could. I was glad it was him who had taken me to the airport - I liked him most of all.

   I did a little shopping in the airport and spent most of my American Dollars on a small pair of compact zoom binoculars since they seemed fairly good value for money. I'd never heard of Dong-Won before but about six months later I saw exactly the same binoculars on sale in England under the more recognised name of Praktica. Although not as expensive as Hong Kong, there seemed to be precious little duty free shopping that was much cheaper than typical British high street shops.

   By the time the plane was ready to board it was dark, and I wasn't to see daylight for over twenty hours. There was a short stopover at Hong Kong, with just enough time to stretch legs in the airport and to have a last chance look at the duty free and to buy some postcards with some American Dollars I still had left. I was very tired when I got back in the early hours of the morning. I hadn't been able to sleep on the plane. I was so pleased to see Julie again, but I think some of the elation was lost by being so tired. It had been arranged to go to Bristol with everyone and go to the Bier Keller, and although we went, I wasn't up to enjoying it very much. Fortunately though, the jetlag didn't last as long or affect me as badly as it had on the journey out.
 

At home

   I'm writing this story almost a year after it all happened, but the events and my impressions are all fresh in my mind as though it were only yesterday. I did seek help, though, from the letters that I wrote to Julie during that time. The story has become more of a short novel at around seventeen and a half thousand words, but I felt it important to record my observations and experiences of such a memorable month, and as such, has grown out of all proportion to my original intentions. It's been a chance to relive some of the emotions of triumph, beauty, despair and laughter. I have fond memories of the people I worked with in Korea and of the Country itself. I often wonder what they're all doing now.