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The reason for our visit to Seoul (a place not usually visited on a tour of south-east Asia; mainly because of its north-eastern location), was that our good friend Nora and her family were celebrating New Years in this the “second largest urban agglomeration on the planet” (or in my words; huge city!). In order to be sure of making it there on time, we booked a flight from Vietnam on Boxing Day - but thanks to our previous extended boating adventure in Malaysia/Thailand, we still needed to boogie and get a shuffle on!
So we briefly visited Bangkok; where we accidentally walked into a political rally some sort, drove a golf buggy with some shopping centre staff to a red carpet event, and took a long walk through the slums (we weren’t lost – honest), before jumping on a train to the border with Cambodia. I’m going to fast forward the story here to save you wasting your whole lives reading, but suffice to say we had a long but fun trip through Cambodia to Saigon, Vietnam. Cambodia was I suppose similar to India, except that they drove on the wrong site of the road. Anyhow, against all odds we did make it to Saigon for Christmas, even with a slight visa related delay which briefly left us stuck in Phnom Penh - Cambodia’s capital.
Saigon was a crazy place to spend Christmas. You can keep yourself entertained for hours on end just by tying to cross the road. Top Gear recently described the roads here as “unorganised chaos”, and they are spot on. There is never a gap in the traffic, and so the only option is just to walk out into the flow. Once you get the hang of dogging in between bikes/cars/busses it’s not so bad really – but going back to waiting for the little green man seems alien elsewhere. I plan to return to North Vietnam in a few weeks, and you never know someone might sell me a bike (...some top gear copycatting on the cards maybe!?!) :-)
Flying into South Korea we made another slight error, in that we forgot to check the weather – arriving in t-shirt and shorts (Conor in Hawaiian shirt and flip-flops), we were shocked to find out it was -6 outside... once again oops! Arming myself with a strange piece of attire called a ‘scarf’ we spent a chilli New Year in Seoul. It was great to catch up with Nora and her family, and the street party as we welcomed in the New Year was not half bad; awesome in fact!
We then spent an extra week than intended in Seoul as we waited for China to accept that we are not American spies. So we moved into Bong Hostel – perhaps one of the best party hostels in the world. Bong (the owner) took everyone for Korean BBQ and beers most nights, as well as taking us to lots of special pre-opening nights in his soon-to-be-open new bar. The hostel was full of travellers, students and teachers, mainly from Australia, Canada, Finland, oh and Korea. Best of all, hanging around Seoul gave us the opportunity to explore some other places close by...
On one such trip we visited the demilitarised zone; the no-man’s-land between North (so ronery) and South Korea. A strange place to witness, it was particularly interesting to walk though some of the many ‘infiltration’ tunnels built by North Korea in preparation to send troops southwards. I also finally got to see a Tiger! Okay, it was in Korea’s biggest theme park, not quite the wild... but I did also get to see a monkey ride a pig and a sea lion play basket ball. Oh and travel on a rollercoaster that puts England’s attempts to shame.
Anyhow the Chinese have now accepted that we are not spies and so we jumped on a bumpy ferry and began the exploration of a new land. Beijing and the Great Wall here we come.... xxx
