I got Seoul

What can you do in the world's fifth largest city in 24 hours?

Well, quite a lot actually.

Even with a reasonable departure time of 11 am we stuffed one day and night with a bunch of fun activities. Four of us manged to get a return group ticket for the bullet train which meant a journey the distance of London to Glasgow in 1 hour 50 minutes for only 50,000 won, that's 25 quid!!! Fantastic value and service. The train journey is always fun with plenty of banter and maybe a game of cards or two. As soon as you arrive in Seoul you can feel the buzz of activity, maybe it's just the group mentality of gearing up for a fun day or it could be the 30 story buildings which loom over the train station, the mega plasma TVs on the side of many buildings, the choca traffic which snakes away trough the myriad of twist and turns, or just the bustle and noise of one of the most densely packed cities in the world. Either ways we were ready to rock the capital.

First off was accommodation, which we hadn't booked. After a brief detour on the subway we arrived in the Sinchon area and decide to give our Korean a try and barter for a price. We manged to get a 3 bedroom deal in a pretty nice but standard motel. Yes 3 beds. One person would be on the floor and two would be in the double bed. Well that's all we need. And how much? well 25,000 each, 12 pound. So far so good.

No time for a lunch we grab a Burger King and jumped in a taxi for a 30 min drive to the race course. Built for the Olympics it is a huge racecourse divided into a family stand, a men's stand and a small but well kitted out foreigner lounge. We arrived in time for the last 3 races, however t was just enough to get s few bets on and end wanting more. we watched the first race from the comfort of the foreigner lounge and then watched the next two track side , right at the finishing line. In my opinion it adds so much more tot he excitement. I won only 54,000 but hey that is more than the train tickets so I was pretty happy with that. Unfortunately no alcohol is allowed and we made no attempt to hide our Familymart plastic bag full of cans. I think we could easily bring it in in a back pack or even just some soju mixed with coke, but we had to leave the beer at the locker and drink it after the races. We all left the races up or even which was much better than last time. Another taxi ride back to Sinchon and time for dinner.

Mexican food is something I have become a big fan of and strangely this happened in Korea. We went to an American franchise 'On the Border' which was mobbed. I have never seen so many way gooks in one place. We were told it was a 40 minute wait. Instead of sitting in the queue we thought it was time for a beer and decided to sit at the bar. Well way hey, for some reason menus were brought to us and we ordered within 10 minutes. Our luck was running good. I ate some awesome enchiladas, a few beers and polished it off with a Margarita.

We hit a bar in Hong-dae which had a huge collection of vinyls, Cds and music DVDs. We were asked to request a few songs I wrote down a list of my favourite guitar hero tracks which I had been busting a move to this week. They had all our choices an played them happily. After debating about what to do next we bought some beer from a shop. Yes, no cut off time in Korea, and jumped in a taxi to the plush Walkerhill casino. We polished off the cans over the 20 minute drive, the taxi driver didn't mind at all, and arrived pleasantly drunken. After blowing my first 100,000 at roulette I whipped out my last 100,000 and Phil decided to bet on the answers to specific questions. When is your mother's birthday? How old is your sister? When did you break your virginity? Sadly this didn't seem to work either until I asked him at what age he had his first w***. '11' he said (a bit young eh?). Bang it hits and I am 300,000 richer. I hit the number, the quad bet, and the odd. Phil shook my hand in congratulations and reminded me that it was that very hand that did that lucky deed 14 years ago. As with all good gamblers you should know when to stop. Sadly I am not one of them. I stocked up on all the free booze and left the casino an hour later exactly even. However it was excellent fun and it was all free.

Now this is where it gets interesting. We got yet another taxi back to the uni district and what do I hear from up above me. It isn't Bloc Party is it? It is. I run up the stairs to this bar which is packed with foreigners . In my excitement i somehow get served first at the bar and head to the dance floor. After bloc party was finished we did decide it was too busy so we left and headed to the shisha bar next door. Phil who has been talking about a whiskey set all day spots a bottle of Jim Bean for $50 and orders it before Harry and Alex can join us at the table. Well we are off on the hard stuff and order a shisha pipe to accompany the inebriation. About half way through however we realise it is getting late, around 3am and we should go to a club before it's dead. We fill the quarter remaining bottle of whiskey to the top with coke. Seal it up and simply carry it out of the shisha bar and into a near by club. (Witnessed in the following photos). We go to this club called FF show which has a great indie feel to it. The walls are postered with the Beatles, Franz Ferdinand, and Maximo Park. I couldn't feel more at home and the fact it was in the basement made it even better. I even met a Korean who had a Celtic tracky on. Wow! I went up to him and just started kissing the badge (yes I was that drunk) and it turned out he had been to Scotland and was a big Celtic fan. He bought me a drink and before I introduced hm to my mates.

Now this club is busy and has a good mix of Koreans and Foreigners but I don't think it was ready for what happened next. In the delirium of dancing to Maximo park Alex dragged me up on stage with his massive paws. Now he is a brilliant guy who I just got to know properly this weekend, I would say about 6 foot 6', long hair and plays the guitar amazingly. Like someone straight out of Guitar Hero. I am sure I fell backwards into the crowd at some point but we were basically going for broke. I was back up and dancing when I realised Alex's t-shirt had a gaping hole under the left arm. Instead of pointing it out however I just yanked it and in a Hulk Hogan style the whole rip went in a clean circle leaving him with a top part looking something like a boob tube. The crowd goes wild and in his testosterone fueled enthusiasm he jumps from the stage on to a speaker, lifts his hands up like a rock star and starts swinging from the ventilation shafts on the ceiling. If you ever wondered how a hairy ape, intoxicated with whiskey and let lose in a jungle gym with loud music would look like, then this was it. It wasn't until after the shafts started to give way did he return back to the speaker, at this point I was back on the dance floor, laughing like a hyena and turned around just in time for Alex to finish his performance with a stage dive on top of me and Phil. This in turn created a mosh pit which is when we decide to make and exit and head to a Norae bang.

I don't remember much of it apart from free ice cream which i just kept eating until the 10 litre tubs were completely finished. Trying to find my way back to our singing room I encounter Alex again who was also lost. We must have hit about 7 or 8 rooms continually walking in on couples singing or groups of business men. Bare in mind that Alex is wearing a denim jacket with a boob tube just covering his shoulders and nipples and my face is covered in sticky white ice cream. I wonder what they must have thought. A nice young man, taking out his girlfriend for the first time. Singing the Korean version of 'I Can Be Your Hero', setting the mood in the 'gilded candle' themed room and then we show up , mumble something about where are we and start waving.
This, in the end was too much for me and I promptly fell asleep in our rooms floor (heated, clean and cosy) before making my way home.

Well that's a lot for one trip. The next day we stumbled around the market area, seen a few interesting bonsai trees and fake football tops and headed home