Veels geluk, Petro! Seemeeu Poespas! (Busan!)

It was our first weekend out of Seoul for a while and it was to visit Petro in Busan for her birthday. We took the train and it was my first time on the KTX (Korean Train Express) Korea’s high-speed train. It’s basically the exact same as the National Rail system in the UK… except that it runs on time, is reliable, is quick, they offer good customer service, the prices don’t rise every week, and the trains aren’t cancelled if there are a few leaves on the track. Basically the same.

We arrived in Busan and met Petro and the rest of the peasants. Many drinks were had and we checked-in to the pension at 3am.

For those that don’t know what a pension is, it’s a cheap guest house. It’s one room where by you sleep on the floor. When looking for a room price often dictates where you stay and sleeping on the floor is generally fine but with copious amounts of alcohol and an uncomfortable night led to the worst hangover I’ve ever had. That’s not an exaggeration, it was the worst hangover I’ve ever had. I felt horrendous. People often say that, it’s an overused phrase, but I felt so bad that morning that if someone had given me a rope I’d have made good use of it. It was a life low point. If I got hangovers like that every time I drank I would give up alcohol.

Busan is on the coast, and when you go you have to go to the beach. Unfortunately for us it was pissing down with rain and was bloody freezing but in true British style and bit of rain wasn’t going to stop us. It’s the equivalent of going to Brighton or Skegness, you have to go to the beach regardless of the weather. After the beach we went sightseeing around Gamcheon Cultural Village, a quaint place full of colour, art, and too many stairs.

We meandered around an interesting market and I stepped back into the 90s. We found an electronics shop that haven’t updated their stock since 1990. This was their shop window.

Seriously how do they make a living? Who still needs to buy a CD Walkman, a Dictaphone, a cassette player, or an old CRT television? Seriously? When was the last time they sold something? It was probably when Will Smith bought a cassette player when they were filming the intro for The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air.

Afterwards we found The Pub. A pub actually called The Pub. That’s such a great name. Karl and I have been thinking of opening up a decent British pub in Seoul and that would be the perfect name to steal. We also considered that once our pub is established of branching out into the exotic dancing industry and we were going to call the club The Titty Bar, two perfect names for two perfect places. One day… We arrived at The Pub just as my hangover wore off.

The drinks kept on coming and we had another night out in the university district of Busan. We went down to the beach armed with fireworks to celebrate Petro’s birthday with a bang! This seemed like a nice idea but 15 or so drunk people letting off explosives is actually a stupid terrifying idea. Worse of all someone had the brainwave to give the big-headed mong (Karl) the fireworks. This is a man who I hardly trust to hold a cigarette in his hand let alone gunpowder and a lit fuse. Luckily everyone came away unscathed.

Not entirely sure where we went after the beach but it was a good night and like most good nights there was the lure of a kebab. Upon closer inspection Karl and I noticed the chap selling the delights of the intoxicated was Turkish. Regardless of how drunk we get our hatred for Turkish people will never diminish. Karl and I have made up our minds and we have sided with the Cypriots, for this reason we refused the kebabs despite how delicious they looked. Along with Bof (the influencer), as a unity we also hate all things from Wolverhampton, Tottenham, and Derby, the four worst places on the earth.

Another night on the pension floor and to my delight… no hangover! This time around it was Karl who had the hangover and I was laughing at him. We stepped outside and to our surprise it was warm and there were clear skies. Not only were they clear but they were also blue, I didn’t think blue skies existed in Korea, as it turns out not all of the country is filled with pollution. We went back to the beach to retake all the pictures.

We headed to the pub for lunch and again in truly British fashion we had fish and chips by the seaside. One of the best parts of the weekend was seeing Karl’s cheeky smile when he realised the pub did gravy. The northerner went ahead and ruined his meal by flooding his plate with gravy, it was moronic but he was in heaven.

We opted for an afternoon cruise along the coast to finish off the weekend. It was delightful. The water was a little choppy which led to a rocky boat ride. Throughout the cruise they played some dodgy music, it almost sounded like weird Northern Korean propaganda music, we were supporting the regime and riding the waves at the same time!

We docked and made it safely back onto land. We all survived a Korean boat trip.

We walked down the beach and we noticed this guy.

Yeah, that’s a man in a thong. I mentioned earlier that there were blue skies and it was reasonably warm but it wasn’t that warm… actually scratch that, it’s never that warm! It’s April in Busan, not July on Copacabana Beach! There are children about, put that away!

We said our goodbyes and made our way to Busan Station to get the KTX back to Seoul, we checked our train tickets and realised that we’d missed our train by about an hour and a half. We never thought to check the time we were returning to Seoul, we really are a pair of mongs. We had to buy new tickets which meant we were standing for two and a half hours on the way back north. All-in-all it was a great weekend. It was awesome to catch up with Petro, Leon, Michael, Mikey, and meet many more new friends! 

Yes, I know… ooooh! New friend friends!

Mr. Gorbachev, Tear Down this Wall!

The cherry blossoms came and went last week and Korea went crazy for them. Everyone was telling me to go out and see them before it was too late. So I did just that, I soon realised how my life has changed. I left my apartment on two different occasions to go and look at flowers. We care so little about nature in the Fennell household that we haven’t even bothered to put up a Christmas tree in the last two years.  The flowers were nice, and it gave me the opportunity to feature in the most Asian picture I’m ever likely to be in.

During the week I also managed to find a football team to play for. I’d be craving to play football having not kicked a ball in over 4 months. I turned up and no one spoke English and rather predictably I couldn’t speak Korean but as we all know I had no concerns, football is a universal language and I got on just fine. Playing with an entire team that you don’t know can be awkward but it makes it even more so when you can’t communicate at all. Hopefully it doesn't lead to me picking up a stupid accent like Joey Barton.

I watched Arsenal not win again on Saturday night. Despite not winning they still managed to (unconvincingly) progress to the FA Cup final. It’s slightly disappointing to say that the most celebrated goal of the season was a late equaliser against Wigan but even so football is about success and we won a huge game, an FA Cup semi-final. Having said that Arsenal have been getting a lot of stick about celebrating the victory too much as it was “just Wigan”. But it’s more than that, the celebrations were about getting to the final, getting the monkey off our backs, the possibility of tasting success for the first time in almost a decade, it shows how much this win meant to the players and the fans. In 21 games against Wigan we’ve beaten them 15 times so it’s not the victory we we’re celebrating. When it seems that the media is constantly against you, every set back is mocked, and Arsenal’s lack of a trophy for 9 years is highlighted every game, and when the team qualifies for the FA Cup final it’s still marked as they shouldn’t celebrate as they’ve only beaten Wigan (who are the current cup holders and the team who knocked out the favourites in the previous round). You can only tolerate this for so long so I say they can poke their opinion up their arses. I’m rather bored of hearing the same old drivel from the likes of Andy Townsend, Garth Crooks, Mark Lawrenson, Jamie Radknapp, Stan Collymore, David Pleat, Roy Keane, Michael Owen, Alan Shearer, the list goes on… Why aren’t these punditry jobs given to statisticians who can back up opinions with facts and figures, or to respected journalists who have a record of being unbiased and informative? Instead they go to former professionals who offer no insight. As Karl Pilkington put it these people are like dung beetles pushing bullshit around the room.

Arsenal won the penalty shoot-out, they progressed to the FA Cup final, and I for one am going to enjoy it. I’m just hoping we can see another fortunate result in the final against Hull City (just less stressful this time, please).

On Sunday we did a spot of sightseeing and went to Berlin Square. It was less of a square and more of a corner. Interesting to see the wall but it is still only 3 blocks of concrete.

Here are a series of pictures of me with famous walls. Wall-to-wall walls.

The Berlin Wall

The Great Wall of China

Hadrian’s Wall

Wall-e

No bullshit. 

After we went to an all you can drink makgeolli bar. Makgeolli’s not bad, it’s basically alcoholic milk. All you can drink is always a challenge, not the best idea on a Sunday evening but it’s never stopped me before.

Anyway, off to Busan this weekend for a peasant reunion.

Ain't No Mountain High Enough

It’s been a while since the last instalment from The Tefl-on Don. On my latest adventure I went hiking, a pretty nerdy activity. The only other time I’ve had the opportunity to go hiking was when I was at school and it was part of the Duke of Edinburgh Award. Do you want to give up your weekends to hike on a wet Welsh mountain, or to volunteer at cleaning arses an old people’s home, or how about getting molested by a “supervisor”? Maybe that’s why I’ve never been hiking before because I associate it with shitty arses and paedophilia. Anyway, that’s the Duke of Edinburgh in a nutshell.

I rounded the troops and we went hiking up Achasan Mountain (possibly the smallest mountain in Seoul, but still a mountain all the same). Hung over from a steady Friday night in Cheonho it didn’t seem like such a good idea that morning but we powered through. It was a steady stroll to the top, not too steep but pretty long. The higher you go the better the view, at only 287m high it didn’t take too long to get to the top but even so it was high enough for me.  I can tick it off the bucket list now and can write off climbing Everest, I’m content with that. We found a viewing point and we cracked open the soju. After such an achievement it seemed rude not to have a celebratory drink. It probably wasn’t the best idea to have a few drinks and then stumble down the mountain but never mind. As we enjoyed the view it was perfect for a photo opportunity. I pulled out my Arsenal flag that I kept quiet from the guys and held it proud (even despite the shocking end to the season that we’re currently having). I stood there with Karl as two true Brits abroad. Karl wearing his Nottingham Forest shirt and the Arsenal flag blowing in the wind, you can take the boys out of England… The only things missing were our Union Jack shorts and bright red British tans.

We decided to carry on the trail which for some reason continued up, we in fact weren’t at the top of the mountain so we carried on, finally we reached the summit. Having reached the top officially we had to drink some more soju just to make the arrival official.

We sat down on the grass and enjoyed the view. For only the second time in Korea I was racially targeted. A Korean guy told us to get off the grass as there was a sign which said we couldn’t sit there, understandable I suppose. So we got up and moved but he didn’t seem to mind the other 20-30 Korean people sitting on the grass. Maybe the sign said “No dirty foreigners are allowed to sit on the grass”. I should have remained seated and I would have been known as the Rosa Parks of Achasan Mountain. I’ll know for next time.

One of the problems with being at the top of a mountain slightly hung over is that after walking for many miles you have to walk all the way back down. You start to question whose stupid idea was this? Then I realised it was mine.

We reached the bottom and Scott’s pedometer read that we had hiked 9 miles. It got me thinking about the song by Marvin Gaye & Tammi Terrell – Ain’t No Mountain High Enough. The lyrics to that song are:

There ain't no mountain high enough
Ain't no valley low enough
Ain't no river wide enough
To keep me from getting to you

They’d obviously never hiked a mountain between them. I'd just hiked a mountain - there are plenty of mountains high enough to keep me from plenty of people. It's exhausting. I don’t think I like anyone enough to climb a mountain just to see them. What kind of person says that, anyway?

“Where are you?”

“I'm on the other side of a mountain, through a low valley, and across a river. If you want to see me then you've got to go through that.”

Not worth it.

Anyway, it was another new adventure for the Tefl-on Don. Maybe I’ll do it again, who knows?