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Yesan v Goyang KB, Saturday 29th May 2010

June 7, 2010

It had been over three weeks since I’d been to a football match and with the K-League shut down for the World Cup, I thought I’d take the opportunity to go to another National League game. Most of the matches were taking place on the Friday night though and as I don’t finish work until after 6pm they are quite difficult to get to in time.

Not Yesan though, they had a more traditional Saturday three o’clock kick off and so that’s where I went. I had a bit of a mishap on the subway though where I got on the train going in the opposite direction. I didn’t realize until I’d traveled three stops out of my way and so I didn’t get to Yongsan railway station until 10am. There were plenty of trains to Yesan, but they were all booked solid for the next two hours. Fortunately you can buy a standing ticket and so that’s what I did. I paid 6,900 won (less than four quid) for a ticket on the 10.35am train, which got to Yesan an hour and three quarters later. It was quite a slow train, with plenty of stops, but it was direct so I wouldn’t have to change.

The train was starting from Yongsan station and so it was completely empty as it pulled into the platform. I noticed that it had a buffet carriage and so I got into that one, hoping there would be some unallocated seats in there. It was better than that though, as it had internet terminals, so I was able to sit at a computer and surf the net for the duration of the journey. It was just like being at work, but without the pesky interruptions for meetings or writing letters.

Anyway, in the hour and three quarters that I spent on the train I discovered that Yesan is famous for its apples and that Yesan FC, who are bottom of the National League, moved to Yesan two years ago. A move that was no doubt influenced by the prospect of all those apples. As I read about them I recognised their name and remembered that they were the team that I’d seen get beat at Incheon Korail on the opening day of the National League season.

Yesan turned out to be a quiet town, not really a place for tourists. In fact, it didn’t even get a mention in any of my guide books. Surprising really, particularly when they seem to make such a fuss about those apples. All of the shops appeared to be for practical things, like car maintenance, industrial equipment or trade places that sold stuff like light switches and sockets. I managed to get hold of a map from their town hall and discovered that I wasn’t too far from the football ground. I asked about hotels and was told by a girl with an extremely short skirt that showed off a pretty much perfect pair of legs they didn’t have any. Tourists all stayed at a spa town that you could get to in about twenty minutes in a taxi.

With plenty of time to spare I walked back into town and had a pizza for lunch before getting a taxi to the ground. The stadium didn’t look too busy. In fact, apart from a team bus outside there was no real sign that a match would be taking place. I walked through the main entrance and was stopped by a bloke at a desk. I was expecting him to tell me that I needed to buy a ticket from a kiosk on the other side of the ground. But, no, he had stopped me to hand me a paper bag with a sandwich and a carton of juice in. I thanked him whilst secretly wishing that I hadn’t just scoffed a whole pizza.

I took a left turn and went up some stairs, emerging as seems commonplace now, in the director’s box. I thought I’d adopt a lower profile at this game though and so I moved upwards a bit to a place more suitable for a lowlife with a couple of cans in his backpack. The stadium was oval shaped, with just the centre of the main stand above me having a roof. It had an artificial pitch inside a running track. Just before kick off club officials came up into the stand and shook hands with us. I have to say that they really seem to appreciate a bit of support here. Free admission, free food and a personal welcome from a club official. If I’d had my boots with me I’d have asked him if I could come on for the final twenty minutes.

In a further show of hospitality, both captains and the ref were presented with flowers before the start and then we all stood for the national anthem. Yesan, who were wearing an Italy strip last time I saw them, were dressed up as Chelsea today. Goyang, their opponents from the northern suburbs of Seoul were wearing white shirts with maroon shorts that looked like they had been washed a few times too often.

Within twenty seconds Goyang had taken the lead. The game was back underway again before the stadium clock had moved on from 15:00. As I settled back in my seat with a beer, I noticed how badly patched the artificial pitch was. It didn’t seem to affect the game though. To my left, just beyond the main stand were a small band of Yesan supporters, most of them with drums or tambourines. They kept the noise level up throughout the game. If there were any Goyang supporters in the crowd of maybe a hundred, I didn’t see them. Despite it being free to get in, there were quite a few people watching through the fence, having parked their cars on the road passing the stadium. 

Goyang were the better team, playing some very clever through balls, whilst Yesan tried to play on the break but were fairly easily contained. There weren’t any more goals before the interval and at half time I went for a slash only to meet one of the Yesan players coming out of the toilets as I went in. You don’t often see that at the Boro.

Yesan missed a good chance in the opening minute of the second half before Goyang went straight up the other end and made it two nil. If Yesan had taken their chance, people would have praised their attitude in coming out for the second half fired up, the coaches half time team talk, even their professionalism in remembering to go for a piss. By conceding themselves a moment later though, they will have been branded sloppy and half asleep. It’s a small margin between failure and success.

And that was about it, as the game finished up two nil to Goyang. As I came down from my seat and left through the main entrance, both sets of players were getting on their respective buses. So probably no showers in the dressing rooms either.

I walked back into town and then got a taxi to Deoksan, the nearby spa town that I’d been advised was the place to stay. The taxi dropped me off at the hotel suggested by the girl at the Town Hall, but it turned out to be a resort hotel where you had to be a member. I walked down the road for ten minutes and checked into the Ducksan spa hotel. That’s not a spelling mistake by the way, not unless they also spelt it wrongly on the sign on their roof. It cost me eighty thousand won for the night, which is quite expensive by Korean prices. When I checked in they told me that the hot spring spa was on the second floor. I asked them if they sold swimming trunks and they gave me a bit of an odd look before advising me that you didn’t wear any.

Maybe I’ve led a sheltered life but that seemed a bit odd to me, lolloping about in the nudey in front of lots of other people, albeit blokes. Still, I thought I might as well give it a try. You put all your gear into a locker and then just moved about between pools of differing temperatures and saunas, hoping that your privates didn’t shrink too much with the extremes of temperature or even worse, start to twitch if your mind wandered back to the girl with the legs from the Town Hall. Some of the men in there were having a shave and you could even have a haircut if you wanted. It was ok for about half an hour but then it got a bit boring.

It’s all very well sweating out the impurities in a sauna, but all that lost fluid needs replacing and as the hotel didn’t seem to have a bar I wandered back up the road to where there were a few restaurants. The roadside had recently been planted with apple trees, perhaps to try and build upon the Yesan reputation for apples. I found a barbecue place that looked ok, but it was one of those without chairs and so I had to sit cross legged on the floor. I had the beef, but one beer was enough as I’m still not supple enough to get my legs under the table.

The next morning I decided against another sauna and got a taxi to Sudeoksa. It’s the oldest surviving original Buddhist temple in Korea, dating back about eight hundred years. I had a wander around before the coachloads of visitors got there and watched some monks chanting and praying.

I could have hiked to the top of Mount Sudeoksan, especially since the taxi had made it easier by dropping me about halfway up at the temple but decided not to bother and got a bus back to Yesan. It wound through all the little villages picking up people wherever they happened to be standing. There were lots of rice fields and people planting new crops. The bus driver watched out for my stop, told me when we had got there and then pointed out the right direction to walk. I booked a ticket for the train back to Seoul and went for some lunch. Since I was here I thought I’d better try one of their apples and bought an enormous one from a greengrocer for 1,500 won. That seemed a bit excessive; just wait until the trees at the side of the road start producing, that’ll cut the prices. I got the train back to Yongsan station, arriving back at ten to three.

Meanwhile, South Korea were taking on Belarus in their final warm up game before the World Cup squad was finalised. Lee Dong Gook was still with the squad of 26, but training by himself in an effort to show that he should be fit in time for their second game against Argentina.

Posted in Dead people and stuff, Football | 1 Comment »

Hiking on Dobongsan and a trip to Hongdo and Heuksando, 21st May 2010

June 7, 2010

View from the bottom

This weekend coincided with Buddha’s birthday and so I got the Friday off work. Excellent. Many happy returns, Bud, the extra days holiday is much appreciated.  So, what to do? I was going away the next day with my hiking group for a two day trip to a couple of islands off the South coast and since that was more of a partying trip by the look of it, I thought I might as well get my hiking fix on the Friday instead.

 I’d been re-reading one of my guidebooks and it mentioned a hike in Seoul that was supposed to be pretty good. It was at Dobongsan, about an hour north of me on the subway and looked ideal. One of the things that I’m not too keen on when I’m hiking in Korea are the crowds, I like to hike in the company of a small number of friends, not hundreds of strangers. However, if you are going alone and don’t have a map or much of a sense of direction, I can see the advantages of the hills being crowded with other people all on their way to the top.

 I got off the subway at Dobongsan and as expected just followed the swarms of hikers across the road towards the mountain. There were lots of stalls selling everything from hiking gear to food. I could probably have turned up completely unprepared and kitted myself out from scratch. As it was I limited myself to a bowl of potatoes and a neckerchief that was overprinted with a map of the National Park. Whilst I thought it might be useful for navigation, its main purpose was to keep the sun off my neck and to make me look like a twat.

Busy at the start

 I followed the crowd along the pavement until we left the road and entered the park. After a few minutes we came to a fork and almost everyone went left. I noticed a sign for something to the right, 350m away. It could have been a sewage works for all I knew, but I thought I might as well have a look anyway.  I wasn’t in a rush and one of the advantages of walking alone is you can go wherever you like. It turned out to be a temple, decorated with lanterns and with quite a few visitors milling about. I had a quick look and then had to decide between retracing my route to rejoin the throng of hikers or to press on up the path through the forest. I’d like to say it was a sense of adventure that kept me going along the unknown and much quieter route. But it wasn’t really, it was more an unwillingness to concede the gain in height that I’d already made. If I went back down to the main path I’d have to do all that uphill stuff for a second time.

A bit quieter here

 I pressed on upwards confident that the path must lead to somewhere and not too bothered which of the peaks that I got to the top of. There were a few other people heading the same way, but it was certainly the quietest I’d seen any route out here so far. After a while I came to a signpost that confirmed that I was still on the same mountain, although on a slightly less direct route which was fine by me. As I say, I wasn’t in a rush. About half way up there was a bit of a monument, although I’ve no idea what it was commemorating, and an hour or so later I reached the top. Some sections had been a bit strenuous and I’d had to haul myself up using the iron railings and rope thoughtfully provided, but overall it wasn’t too difficult.

Monument, about halfway up

 There were plenty of people at the peak, some in groups of a dozen or more, sat around elaborate picnics. There is a lot of effort goes into these picnics, with lots of different dishes, stools, blankets, even little napkins. A bit less effort from me though as I took my potatoes from my backpack. They aren’t too big on potatoes over here. As you may have guessed, it’s more a rice sort of place, and so they were just about the only ones I’d had since I got over here.

View from the top

 Now that I was back on track I could have a look at the guidebook again and it offered me a different option for getting down. I could walk a bit further along, nip up another peak and then descend via another Buddhist Temple at Mangwolsa. That seemed ok and that’s what I did.

 As I approached the temple there was quite a bit of noise, the usual drumming and bells. The path to the gate had been decorated with lanterns and there were more hung up inside. I stopped for a coffee and then went up the steps to a courtyard in front of the main temple. A group of Chinese girls were dancing in front of about a hundred people.

Happy Birthday Bud.

I watched for a while before they finished and the crowd dispersed.  I had a look around the temple and then made my way down the path and got the subway home.

I know, I know, but I didn't want my neck getting sunburnt.

 Next day was an early start. I had to meet my hiking group at 7.10am for the bus ride to Mokpo. The plan was to get a ferry there to an island about sixty miles away, Hongdo, stay overnight and then return the next day via a different island. We got there just before lunch and to my surprise it was pissing down. That was something that hadn’t entered my head. It had been so sunny the previous day that I hadn’t even brought a coat with me. It got worse, the organizer was informed by the ferry company that the conditions were marginally good enough to sail today, but the forecast was for rougher weather tomorrow and that if it materialized then the ferry wouldn’t sail. That would mean we would be stuck on the Korean version of Craggy Island on a day when I was supposed to be three hundred miles away at work.

 We went for lunch, before making a decision on whether to get on the ferry. It was crab soup, with crabs cut in half, shells and all, providing the flavour. In addition there were some small crabs as a side dish. They were about the size of a penny and you just ate them whole. I had a couple and it was just like eating a shell full of sea water. They were soft rather than crunchy and whilst they tasted very fresh, there wasn’t much to them.

 Of the nine of us on the trip, three felt we shouldn’t travel. I don’t like missing work when I’m supposed to be there and two of the others, both Americans, felt the same way. We let the other six get on the ferry and we cleared off to the pub. A few beers later we were on the train back to Seoul after an interesting but ultimately pointless day out. From what I saw of Mokpo, it’s a working fishing and ferry port. Most of the shops seemed to sell stuff like fishing nets, buoys, wooden legs, parrots, you know the sort of thing. We worked our way through wine, makgeolli and beer on the journey back and I was fairly merry by the time I got home. The next day I felt pretty rough, which I attributed to those two mini crabs full of seawater. I’d been fine before I had them.

 Meanwhile, Lee Dong Gook wasn’t doing very much, just waiting to see how quickly his injury would clear up and whether he would make the final squad of twenty three.

Posted in Dead people and stuff, Hiking | 4 Comments »

South Korea v Ecuador, 16th May

June 3, 2010

This was looking as if it was going to be an even busier weekend than normal as different events kept cropping up as it got closer and I tried my best to fit them all in. Friday night was a ‘teambuilding’ dinner after work where about fifty of us went to a local Korean barbecue restaurant. I’d been here a few times before and the food is always pretty good. A charcoal barbecue is set into a hole in the middle of your table and you cook your own beef and pork, cutting it into small pieces with scissors and then eating it with spicy paste and wrapped in a lettuce leaf. You wash it down with beer and frequent shots of soju. This time we were in the room upstairs where you sit on cushions on the floor beside low tables. As a foreigner, and a not particularly supple foreigner at that, I was given about eight of the thin cushions to sit on. It was quite a precarious seat, especially as the empty soju bottles stated to mount up. I made my excuses at about ten o’clock, pretty much the worse for wear and leaving most of them still at it. There is quite a big after work drinking culture in Korea. As I’m not looking to build a career, just dropping in for a single project, there’s no need for me to adopt any of the customs that I’m not keen on and if I had a young family as a lot of them do, I would probably resent the time spent drinking with the same people that I’d just spent all day with. However, as I don’t have too many other commitments and I find my colleagues to be good company, I quite enjoy ‘teambuilding’ events like these. Although I doubt my liver would agree.

Saturdays have developed into hiking days, with a regular group of walkers. This week’s walk was due to start from Hoeryong and was a fair distance by subway from my apartment. Fortunately we weren’t due to meet up until 12.30pm which allowed my hangover to settle a little. I set off just before eleven and after some poor choices of subway line and some unusually long waits for trains, at noon I was still a change of line and seventeen stops away from the meeting place. They would no doubt have waited for me if I’d asked, but I didn’t want to be selfish and so phoned ahead to let them know that I wouldn’t be able to join them this week. As I had my hiking boots on I thought I might as well have a bit of a walk anyway and got off the train at the next station. It was Eungbong, over to the east of the city and just north of the Han River that runs through Seoul. As there was a path alongside the river I decided just to follow it until I got bored. It was quite an interesting walk. There wasn’t much happening on the river itself, a little bit of dragon boat training and the odd jet ski, a few fishermen, generally with four or five rods each, but every few hundred yards there would be permanent outdoor gym equipment, basketball courts, five a side pitches and badminton nets. I even passed a croquet pitch where a few pensioners were having a quite fiercely contested game. It was all free to use and seemed well taken care of and very popular. A cycle path ran alongside the path I was walking along and was also very popular with a mix of cyclists ranging from those on top of the range bikes and kitted out as if they were setting off to the Tour de France, to students on hired tandems and families with small children on bikes with stabilizers.

I walked for about three and a half hours, covering about ten miles and ending up on the other side of the city. It wasn’t the hike I’d planned for, but I saw parts of Seoul that up until now I’d only glimpsed from train windows, so it was a worthwhile day.

My plan for Sunday had initially revolved around the South Korea v Ecuador match in the evening. It was the only home ‘warm-up’ game for South Korea and I’d suspected that the Seoul World Cup Stadium would be close to its 65,000 capacity as the Korean fans gave their team a bit of a send off. Park Ji Sung, who is a superstar out here and appears in adverts in just about every media possible, would be playing and I was anticipating a bit of a party atmosphere.

Then I found out that the Korean Derby was taking place on the Sunday too. I’d been to the racetrack at Seoul a few weeks previously for a normal race meeting and it had been pretty busy. Whilst I didn’t care which horse won the Derby, I was quite keen to see if the spectacle differed much from the regular races day. The American girl I’ve been seeing isn’t much of a sports fan but has quite an inquisitive nature and so was happy to tag along to the races and the match. Then she mentioned that there was also a big lantern festival going on that day too, no doubt as part of the build up to Buddha’s birthday in a few days time.

Well, I’m all for festivals, even more so if there are naked flames involved, and so we thought we would try and squeeze that in too. First stop was the races. The crowds coming out of the subway were bigger than the last time I was here, which given that it was Derby Day wasn’t much of a surprise. The silkworm pupa on sale outside the station didn’t seem any more popular mind, despite the extra crowds. I was wondering if the 800 won admission charge would change with it being Derby Day, and it did. We were just waved through the turnstiles without having to pay.

After that though, it was all pretty much the same as the last time I was here. There was maybe a slightly larger crowd but no other indication that it was any different to a normal race day. I picked up an English form guide and discovered that the Derby itself wouldn’t be run until five o’clock. Well that didn’t really fit in with our plans so we hung about for about two hours, watching only three races due to the way that the races are so well spaced out around lunchtime and then cleared off to the Lantern Festival. There were still people coming in as we left about three o’clock and maybe that was the best way to do it. If I’m here next year on Derby Day, I’ll saunter up about half an hour before the big race, stick my bet on, collect my winnings and then celebrate with a tub of silkworms on the way out a few minutes later.

So next up was the Lantern Festival. My plan had been to spend a couple of hours there and then head off to the match. When we got there the streets were packed with people. There were stalls along the roadside offering various lantern making activities, insights into various different types of Buddhism and selling a variety of food. I had some sort of beans from Nepal that looked like peas, some of those clear noodles and some spicy dumpling that might have been pork. We were given lanterns with candles in for the parade later that evening and I thought that rather than dash off I’d rather miss the football on this occasion and stay at the festival. I might not get another chance to experience it all again, whilst I’d be watching South Korea play Argentina in the World Cup in a months time, that would probably be a bit better than a friendly against Ecuador. Apologies to those who read this far hoping for a match report, but that’s a risk you take with this blog. Still, if you keep reading I might tell you the score.

Anyway, it got dark and there was a lantern parade, which whilst it was quite impressive, wasn’t as much fun as I’d hoped it would be as we didn’t manage to find the place where everyone lined up. Instead of marching down the High Street brandishing flaming torches we ended up watching the parade from behind a barrier manned by policemen that looked no older than twelve years old. I didn’t even get to light my lantern. After an hour or so of floats and lanterns, we cleared off to a bar for beer and raw tuna.

Meanwhile South Korea won 2-0. Lee Dong Gook played just over an hour before being subbed with an injury that puts his World Cup participation in doubt. Interestingly, the match was reported as being a sellout, although attendances do get exaggerated here. It’s possible then that had we left the festival before the parade to get to the match we might not have got in, meaning that in the same day we would have turned up for, but failed to see the Derby, the Lantern Parade and the South Korea v Ecuador game. That would have been some hat trick.

Posted in Dead people and stuff, Football, Hiking, Horseracing | 5 Comments »

Geomdansan, 8th May

June 3, 2010

This was another weekend where my plans kept changing. It was the final week of the K-League before the mid-season break for the World Cup and initially I’d planned to head south to watch the game between Gwangu Sangmu and Gangwon. It wasn’t a game that particularly stood out from that week’s fixture list but what caught my attention was the nearby butterfly festival. A lot of places in Korea seem to try and publicise themselves by having festivals of one sort or another. The bullfighting one at Cheongdo being a prime example. Hampyeong’s big idea though was butterflies. Cheaper than bulls and less trouble if one escapes.

We used to catch butterflies in nets when we were kids, although we never really knew what to do with them once we caught them. Sometimes we would put them in a biscuit tin, sometimes a Tupperware container. If we remembered we would put a few holes in the lid to let some air in, although in the case of the Tupperware containers that didn’t always go down well with our Mams. Invariably, though, they all seemed to die within a few hours of being caught, which we took to be proof of the short life cycle of a butterfly rather than any consequence of our care regime.

I shot one once, when I was a bit older. It made the mistake of settling on a rock whilst it was my turn with the air rifle. I didn’t even put a pellet in the gun, just shot it with air from a range of about an inch. It just disintegrated. Anyway, I don’t do stuff like that these days, not least because I don’t have an air rifle, and so a trip to the butterfly festival before going on to a K-League match seemed a pretty good way to spend a weekend.

That was until a group that I’d been hiking with when I first arrived in Seoul suggested a trip to Jirisan. Jirisan is the second highest mountain in South Korea at 1915 metres and a weekend trip to tackle it would have meant an overnight bus ride and a 4.30am start in the dark. I liked that idea and so the butterflies would just have to wait for another year. Unfortunately, not enough other people fancied the early start and so the trip was cancelled at the last minute. I’d got my hiking head on by that time though and so I skipped the football and butterflies and went up Geomdansan with my other hiking group instead.

A bit crowded at the top

Geomdansan, at 657m, is nowhere near as high as Jirisan, but some stretches were a bit of a slog. It was enjoyable though and we had a bit of a picnic at the top before stopping at a barbeque restaurant at the bottom. There was plenty of makgeolli drunk on the way around with more at the end and a few shots of soju. I didn’t see a butterfly all day though.

More graves in the middle of nowhere

Whilst I was enjoying myself in the hills, Jeonbuk didn’t have a game. I don’t think it was their turn to miss out because of there being an odd number of teams in the K-League. It was more likely to be as a consequence of them having an Asian Champions League Game against Adelaide United in Australia four days later, which they won 3-2 courtesy of a Lee Dong Gook goal four minutes from the end of the second period of extra time. The lack of a final K-League game meant that Jeonbuk finished the first phase of the season in eighth position with sixteen points from ten games, eight points behind leaders Ulsan Horang-i, but with two games in hand.

Posted in Dead people and stuff, Hiking | Leave a Comment »

Suwon Bluewings v Daejeon Citizen, Wednesday 5th May

June 3, 2010

On Wednesday, we got the day off work as it was Children’s Day. An excellent concept, in my opinion, where families are encouraged to spend the day together. Unfortunately my children were six thousand miles away, so I decided to go to a football match instead. Somebody asked me recently if I miss them, now that I’ll only see them every four months or so, and I suppose that I do. Not as much as you might imagine, as I talk to them on the phone a couple of times a week and we send each other emails. What I do miss though, is them being children and there’s nothing I can do about that. I really enjoyed them being young. I have a great relationship with them as adults, but it’s not as much fun. They have their own grown-up lives now and I’m a smaller part of it than I was when they were kids. It’s just the way it is, I suppose.

I had a couple of different options for my choice of match. I had looked into going to Jeonbuk’s away game at Chunnam Dragons, but there didn’t seem to be a train back afterwards. In the end I settled for Suwon Bluewings against Daejeon Citizen. Suwon is a city just south of Seoul and you can get there with about an hours ride on the subway. When I got there I took a bus to Paldalmun, which is one of the main entrance gates to the Hwaseong fortress wall. The wall runs around the old city, it was originally built over two hundred years ago and is about three and a half miles all the way around. I thought I might was well have a wander around it before going to the match.

First though, I wanted something to eat. I stopped at a little café and had some pork dumplings. They were very nice, although as they had been deep fried I suspect that they probably weren’t too good for me. When I came out of the café I followed a sign for a palace, thinking that it would be something to do with the fortress wall. It wasn’t really, but there was a display of people dressed up in period costume, although which period I’d no idea, waving swords and sticks about. I watched them for a while and then conscious that I’d a wall to get around before the match I thought I’d better let them get on with cracking each others skulls and left them to it.

Careful, sonny

On the way to the wall I passed a hairdressers. The barber’s shops here are denoted by a red and blue pole outside. The only problem being that only some of them offer haircuts whilst the rest of them are brothels. I think the general rule is that if you can see inside and they have barber’s chairs then you will probably get a haircut, otherwise you won’t. To make life difficult, some do offer haircuts as part of an overall package at, I imagine, a bit more expensive price than a regular trim.

I had stuff to do so didn’t really have time to have some hairdresser fiddle with my bits afterwards, but I could have benefited from a haircut. It had been five weeks since the Japanese barber had shaved my head and some bits of it were starting to stick up at odd angles. The hairdresser’s shops have a different coloured pole to the barber’s, with a bit of yellow in them, so I thought I’d be safe with that. I went in and waited until the girl had finished with the old biddy in the chair. She didn’t speak any English, but I was able to mime the shaving of my head. To be fair, there wasn’t a lot else that she could have done with it. Maybe burnt the stubble off with a blowtorch, I suppose, but I was hardly likely to be looking for a curly perm or to have it highlighted. Ten minutes later and I was back outside after having my hair cut and washed for six thousand won. At that price I don’t think there was much prospect of any hanky panky.

Around the corner was the start of the fortress wall. It had been quite badly destroyed during the Japanese occupation but had been rebuilt using the original plans. I’d picked an uphill bit to begin with and for the next fifteen minutes had a steady climb until I was able to look down on the town. The wall was an impressive sight, although I couldn’t help but think that it would have been breachable by anyone with a twelve foot ladder. Perhaps they didn’t have them in the olden days.

I'd just walked up that.

Every hundred yards or so was a gatehouse or a temple, all with helpful explanations in English. A bit further around was a great big bell that you could ring for a thousand won. You hit it with what looked like a railway sleeper on a couple of ropes and you got three goes. The first was meant to signify gratitude and respect for your parents, the second was for the health of your family and the third one was to bring about the realisation of your dreams. Well, I don’t have too many dreams, not if you exclude the recurring one with Konnie Huq and the baby oil, but I was happy to toll the bell in honour of my parents and the health of my family.

I rang that. Three times.

Job done, I continued around the wall for about another thirty minutes until I came to an archery ground. It being Children’s Day, there were plenty of families shooting at the targets. I watched for a while, recalling how I used to take my children to Sherwood Forest when they were small. My son would dress as Robin Hood and fire arrows at my daughter, who would have to be anything from the Sheriff of Nottingham to a deer, depending upon whatever storyline my son could think up.

Safer than Sherwood Forest.

I’d spotted the Bluewings stadium from one of the higher points of the fortress and when I’d got about three quarters of the way around it was time to leave the wall and head for the stadium. It had been built for the 2002 World Cup and had a very distinctive roof, shaped to resemble a pair of wings. I bought a ticket for the East stand for 12,000 won, mainly so that I could get a good view of the winged roof opposite. There were no free pizzas this week, but we did all get given a banana on the way in instead.

No pizza this week

I wasn’t expecting a classic, Suwon were bottom of the league, with Daejeon just two places above them. There isn’t any relegation from the K-League so it doesn’t have the drastic financial implications of relegation in England, but the Suwon fans weren’t happy with their lot. There had been a few protests against the manager, Cha, and the rumours were that if they lost today he would resign.

Suwon fans

It was a decent sized crowd, with my stand being virtually full and with a lot of noise from the Suwon fans behind the goal to my right. It was goalless at half time and the best chance of the second half fell to Suwon’s Brazilian substitute Juninho. Yes really, but not him, and not the one who used to play for Lyon and who possibly still does either. There must be a Juninho factory somewhere. Brazil I imagine. That would be the sensible place to have it. Anyway, I was hoping that the crowd might sing his song, so I could join in for old time’s sake. Any chance of that disappeared though when he hit a penalty straight at the keeper.

Ole, ole, ole, ole, Juninho, ho, ho..

Daejeon lost a player with a quarter of an hour left when he gave the ref a bit of slaver and picked up his second yellow card. Despite the last few minutes being end to end stuff, it finished goalless. I ate my banana and headed back off to the fortress wall to finish the remainder of the circuit, before getting the subway back to Seoul. Meanwhile Jeonbuk lost 3-2 at Chunnam Dragons to slip to seventh place, five points off the top of the table. Lee Dong Gook didn’t get on the score sheet this week and was substituted after an hour.

The Wings

Posted in Dead people and stuff, Football, Haircuts, Hiking | 2 Comments »

My Beautiful Mint Life, Sunday 2nd May

June 2, 2010

My Beautiful Mint Life. It sounds like I’m showing off doesn’t it?  Well I’m not. Ok, maybe just a bit, but that’s the nature of blogs. They tend to either be a rant against the world or a bit of a smug ‘look at me, aren’t I having a great time’ sort of thing. I’m not really one for ranting, more for trying to have a great time so I suppose this blog falls into the latter category.

Anyway, My Beautiful Mint Life isn’t my latest attempt at telling you how wonderful everything is. No. It’s a festival, a music festival. Great name, eh. Perfect for a Teesside festival where those of you who don’t live there probably wont know that ‘mint’ is the word of choice for describing something that you quite like. Except this one wasn’t in Teesside, it was in Seoul.

One of the things that I have missed whilst I’ve been in Seoul is going to see bands. Hang on, perhaps this is turning into a ‘rant blog’ after all. I could have seen Bob Dylan about a month earlier, but it clashed with my trip to Japan to get my visa. Apart from that there hasn’t really been much else going on. I’ll particularly miss going to festivals. In recent years I’ve been cutting down on them, giving up Leeds and V, but I’ve still been going to the likes of Glastonbury and End of the Road when the opportunity arises. So the chance to see a music festival over here was something that I was keen to do.

Although I couldn’t have been that keen, as it ran for two days and I only went to one of them, the second day, Sunday. Another thing that I’ve been missing is going hiking (see, definitely one of those rant blogs, I’ll be complaining about work colleagues not appreciating me and locals pushing in front of me in queues next, it’s how these things work), so I decided to go hiking on the Saturday. The downside of this was that something had to give and this week that was the football. Apologies then, if you actually read this because you have an interest in Korean football. Although if that’s the case, then you’ve probably realized that you have to wade through an awful lot of dross just to find out the Jeonbuk result. Skip straight to the end now if you want to find out how Lee Dong Gook got on.

Seoul Racetrack from the top of a hill

So on Saturday I hiked up Mt. Cheonggyesan with a hiking group that I’d found on the internet. They were a friendly and interesting bunch, a mixture of mainly Koreans and Americans, with the odd Brit as well. Particularly odd, I suspect they thought, but that’s just my way. We walked for about five hours, with frequent stops for makgeolli, that milky looking Korean rice wine, bits of cake and pretty much any excuse for a chat that we could think of. One of the benefits of hiking with a group is that you don’t have any responsibility for where you go. I quite like that. It’s laziness I suppose, but as navigation isn’t one of my strong points, it’s a lot more enjoyable to leave it to people with a map and a sense of direction. At one stage when we were near the top we were able to look down on the racecourse that I’d visited a few weeks earlier and we passed some old burial mounds as well. When we were back down again we called into a Korean restaurant for more makgeolli and a barbeque. As the new boy I had to make a speech, which despite being kept down to about fifteen seconds, I was later told was too long. Fair point.

Graves

Sunday I didn’t have to make any speeches, but I did have to do a bit of navigation. I’d been seeing an American girl and thought that I’d take her along to the festival for a bit of company. Some things I prefer doing alone, the trips to football matches, for example, but some things benefit from having a drinking companion and, for me, music festivals fall into that category.

It was a bit of a trek to get there as it took place right on the outskirts of Seoul, three stops from the end of Line 3 at Jeongbalsan. I’d naively assumed that it would be signposted from the subway exit, but it wasn’t. We wandered about aimlessly for a while before I spotted a sign for it, quite close to the subway exit as it happens. We bought our day tickets, exchanged them for wristbands and went in. It wasn’t a particularly big festival, set in the grounds of a college I think. There were three stages, a main stage with tiered seating, a second stage where you just sat on the grass and a third stage that we didn’t bother even walking around to. There were probably about a thousand people in there, so it was easy to get around and get served.

It was a very pleasant way to spend a day, sitting in the sun listening to music whilst knocking back a variety of drinks. I started with beer, switched to bags of sangria that resembled blood bags from a hospital, tried beer with tomato, which I wasn’t too keen on and then moved onto some other stuff which I no longer remember. Possibly tequila sunrises. Without the accompanying coffee this time though I think.

The bands were pretty good, mainly folkie type guitar bands, with the odd acoustic one thrown in and a little bit of easy listening and jazz. Towards the end there was a flamenco style band who were very well received. It got a bit colder as it moved towards the finishing time of ten o’clock, but I’d brought a coat so that was fine too. My Beautiful Mint Life indeed.

Meanwhile, for those of you who are keeping up with his progress, Lee Dong Gook scored an injury time equalizer for Jeonbuk in their home draw with league leaders Gyeongnam. He was also named as one of the six strikers in the provisional World Cup squad of thirty. A couple of the others are pretty young and inexperienced, so as long as he stays fit it looks as though his good run of form will earn him a trip to South Africa.

Posted in Dead people and stuff, Hiking, Horseracing, Music | Leave a Comment »

Seoul United v Youngkwang, Sunday 18th April 2010

June 1, 2010

After taking in a baseball game last week it was time to get back to the football with a first visit to the third tier of the Korean League system, the K3 Division. Seoul United has only been around since 2007, which makes them relatively longstanding in the constantly changing Korean football scene. Initially they played their games in the Olympic Stadium next to where I’d watched the baseball game but they had moved this season to the slightly more appropriate Hyochang Stadium. I say slightly more appropriate as with a fifteen thousand capacity it is still probably a hundred times bigger than it needs to be, but it’s a step in the right direction. If they can keep trading down until they play their matches in the back alley with a stone for a ball they should eventually get it just about right.

I got the Line 6 subway to the perfectly named Hyochang Park station. It was a bit of an arse on as the bits where I had to change line seemed to involve walking further than I was traveling on the train. Once I got there though the stadium was easy to find as I just followed the signs for the park before stumbling across the stadium a few minutes from the station. It was five to two, over an hour to go before the kick off time listed on the website I’d used, but I could see that there was already a match in progress. There was an open gate that was used for getting ambulances in and out and I just walked through that. I couldn’t get straight up to the seats nearby where a few people were sat and so just kept on walking towards the halfway line until I found a stairway and took a seat in the director’s box. It’s all about confidence I reckon. If you behave as if you should be there, you rarely get challenged. When I was a kid one of my mates used to regularly get into Ayresome Park for free just by walking up to the main entrance with two cups of tea in his hand. If he was challenged, which he rarely was, he would just say that he had already gone into the ground once and that his Dad had sent him down for the teas. He never got turned away. Mind you, getting into Seoul United Director’s Box for free was hardly comparable. They would probably have let me be a director if I had asked nicely.

VIP Entrance

The teams looked quite young, so perhaps it wasn’t the Seoul United match, possibly an academy or university game. One team was in green shirts and shorts, the other in a purple strip with a broad yellow stripe similar to the white one that Birmingham had when Trevor Francis was a kid. The scoreboard said 0-0 and 17 minutes gone, which confused me a little as I couldn’t see how they would finish the match before the scheduled 3pm start for the Seoul United game. Hopefully it was seventeen minutes into the second half, in which case it would tie in nicely.

It was quite a good standard, with the players having decent technical skill and a tendency to try and keep the ball. The pitch was artificial, which is quite handy I suppose if you are going to play back to back games on it. There was a running track, as there usually is at these municipal stadiums and a roof over the main stand where I was sat, with the rest of the ground open to the elements. There were probably about a hundred people watching, most of them seeming to be subs, squad members or families of the players. It was a bit like a Boro reserve game in that respect, although not quite as well attended. There were few chances initially as both teams kept their shape. The Green team hit the bar after about half an hour, tempting me to do the same, before opening the scoring a few minutes later. Birmingham equalized a minute or two later, frustratingly without me noticing which were the home team whilst the scoreboard was just showing the single goal. Not that it made any difference I suppose.

There didn’t seem to be much urgency and with no substitutions I was beginning to doubt that it was the second half. As the ref blew his whistle my suspicions were confirmed as both teams wandered off without the usual post match handshakes and bowing. I walked around the stand for a bit before heading down to the main entrance for a look around. I went outside and looking up noticed a banner advertising the Seoul United game but with a 5pm kickoff. Bugger, that wasn’t so good. I had stuff planned for that evening in town and at best I’d have to leave at half time, maybe an hour in at the most.

With two and a half hours still to go before kick off I decided to skip the second half of the kids game and have a walk around Hyochang Park. It was a pleasant enough place, with plenty of families playing on the swings or having a picnic. There were some tombs of minor royals and some of martyrs from the years of the Japanese oppression. The martyr tombs were quite interesting as you got the story of what had lead to them being there, generally it was something like lobbing a bomb at a Japanese general, before being executed and having their remains relocated to Seoul many years later. One bloke had a tomb with a slightly smaller headstone than the others. I thought perhaps he might have just chucked a brick at a Japanese corporal or something, but no, it was because his body hadn’t been recovered yet. It was a nice gesture though to give him a grave even though he wasn’t in it.

There was a walking trail around the park, helpfully marked with distance posts, and I followed it for an hour or so, occasionally overtaking an old granny or two who all seemed to be wearing the most outrageously sized sun visors. They were more like welders masks. Some of the younger people were walking small dogs, usually some variant on a Chihuahua. They seem pretty popular over here.

I got back to the outside of the ground with still an hour to go before kickoff and I decided I’d had enough for the day. I didn’t really want to hang around just to see the first half and so I headed back down the hill and got the subway home. Meanwhile a 1-0 away win for Jeonbuk at Gwangju moved them up into fourth place, three points behind league leaders Seoul. Lee Dong Gook, who had continued his goal scoring run in midweek with an Asian Champions League goal, played the full ninety minutes but missed out on a goal for the first time in six matches.

Posted in Dead people and stuff, Football | 6 Comments »

Temples and Tombs

April 6, 2010

 

 During my first weekend in Korea I didn’t get to see a football match. I’d had a bit of an eventful night out in one of the livelier parts of town, Itaewon, on the Friday, followed by having to view a few apartments on the Saturday whilst nursing a hangover. The combination of the previous nights drinking, no breakfast and a touch of car sickness was making me a little nauseous and was introducing a note of tension to my apartment search. I don’t know what the house viewing etiquette is like in Korea, but certainly back in the UK if you asked to use the bathroom whilst looking around and then vomited loudly in their toilet, you probably wouldn’t be regarded as a particularly desirable tenant. Even less desirable if you failed to reach the bathroom and just hurled your guts up in their front room. But what would you do then, particularly if you didn’t speak a word of Korean? Just smile and shrug, perhaps? How about bowing? I’ve already noticed that they do that quite a bit over here. But if so, how deeply? I read in one of the guide books that the full bow to the waist is rarely used in Korea these days and it’s more usual now just to lower the head a bit. Well, if you have already lowered your head once and deposited the previous evening’s noodles across their polished wooden floor then I doubt that looking like you may be doing it again is going to make amends. Perhaps a quick nod of the head and then running for the door would be the best option, particularly if your potential landlord felt obliged to politely return the bow before grabbing a kitchen knife and giving chase. The downside with attempting a speedy exit though is that with all of the apartments I’d seen I’d had to take my shoes off before entering. It’s not easy to make a quick getaway when you are struggling to tie your laces. Fortunately I managed to stave off the urge to vomit and after viewing four apartments and enduring four traffic jams I found one that would do.

So, with the accommodation for the next nine months sorted out, what to do for the rest of the weekend? I’d checked the fixtures for the Sunday games and saw that the club that is nearest to me, Seoul F.C, was playing away. Not really knowing where the other clubs were, or even how to use the subway yet, I thought I’d leave the football for a week and just have a wander around. There were a couple of places in the guidebook that were reasonably close to my hotel, a Buddhist temple at Bongeunsa and the tombs of some of the long dead Kings and Queens of Korea. I had a walk along to the temple first and discovered that rather than it being one big building, it was actually a number of small temples on the same site, some no bigger than and bearing a remarkable resemblance to a garden shed. The various temples seemed very similar to each other in that they were all just rooms for praying in. That’s the nature of temples I suppose. I’m not really one for praying, but I am one for noseying around. First though, I had to take my shoes off again, that’s even more of an important thing in temples apparently than it is in apartments.

 There weren’t any security lockers or places to exchange your shoes ‘ten pin bowling style’ for a pair of slippers. Instead you just left them outside the door of the temple with everyone else’s and went inside in your socks. I left my size twelve’s alongside a few dozen pairs of much smaller footwear and went in. The inside of the temple was pretty much like any church hall or community centre, that is with the exception of the three great big gold painted Buddha’s that filled one side of the room. We didn’t have anything like them in the church hall at home, which is probably just as well really as there wouldn’t have been much space left for the ping pong table. There were about fifty people sat or knelt on the floor, bowing or praying, possibly even both. I stood just inside the door, watched for a while and said a brief prayer asking that nobody would be led into temptation to have it away with my shoes and then I slipped back outside again.

 The power of prayer is obviously pretty good in Bongeunsa as my shoes were exactly where I left them, possibly helped by them being a good three or four sizes bigger than anything worn by any of the other worshippers and also them being a whole lot scruffier than most of the other footwear. I’m a bit doubtful as to whether you could leave your shoes like that in the UK. You certainly couldn’t have done it in Norton when I was a kid. The temptation to swap all the shoes left by the congregation outside of St Joseph’s church with those left around the corner at St Mary’s would have been too much for us to resist. Even if we couldn’t have been bothered to move a sackful of shoes then I’m sure we would have found time to carefully distribute a box of eggs into the toes of some of the shoes before retiring to a safe distance to watch the fun unfold as the worshippers attempted to head for home.

Some people thinking about sneaking eggs into other people's shoes.

I read afterwards that had I been in town a few weeks earlier then my shoes would have been at much greater risk. In February the Korean Police had arrested a man who had managed to steal 59,000 pairs of shoes from outside temples and restaurants. That’s what happens when sticking eggs into shoes as a child goes unpunished. I’ve no idea whether he only stole shoes in his own size that he intended to wear or whether he had a bit of a thing for something like bright red stiletto’s with 6” heels. Mind you, I didn’t notice many pairs like that outside of the temples, although perhaps every pair that had ever been sold in Korea was currently bagged up as evidence at the Seoul cop shop. Still, a bloke needs a hobby I suppose.

 With the shoe robber no longer much of a threat I wandered further up the hill, glancing into those temples where the door was slightly open and I could see what was going on without having to untie my laces again. It was mainly just more bowing and praying, so I continued up to the top of the hill to see the great big Buddha. I wasn’t overly impressed; it looked quite recently built and was possibly made of concrete. It was about sixty feet high however, which I suppose was relatively noteworthy in a country where the average person seems to be about five feet tall. Some people were lighting candles in front of it or burning incense before saying more prayers. I did a quick circuit of it, headed back down the hill and exited past the gift shop, slightly disappointed that despite one of the temples reputedly dating from the mid nineteenth century, nothing that I’d seen looked to be remotely old. It was more like a Buddha Theme Park than a historical site.

This Buddha was a bit smaller

 Twenty minutes walk away from the temples was a park with the royal tombs in them. I quite like tombs and have seen some fascinating ones over the years including, on a trip to Rome to watch the Boro, one situated below a church in which they had monk skeletons sat around in their habits and with the walls and ceilings decorated with what I presumed were spare bones. You probably don’t need all of the bones when reassembling a dead monk, I imagine they are a bit like an Airfix kit in that respect, you can build it perfectly well and still have a few pieces remaining in the box that, with a little imagination, are just right for decorating your walls. I did hope at the time that it might just influence someone on one of those house makeover programmes where neighbours do up each others houses in an afternoon with a budget of about thirty quid…

 “That space above the fireplace is a bit plain. Tell you what, why don’t you go out into the garden, dig their cat up and glue a few bits on at random. And if you have time after painting the carpet purple nip up to the cemetery and see if you can get a couple of his Grandad’s thigh bones, I reckon they would love a bedside lamp made out of them”

 I visited a tomb in Orkney a few years ago, The Tomb of the Eagles, which was pretty much a family sideline where a farmer had excavated burial mounds on their land which turned out to be the final resting place of people who, a few thousand years ago, thought it would be cool to be accompanied to the afterlife with birds of prey. Fair enough, although I suspect that if you tried it these days the RSPB might have something to say about it. Not to mention the undertaker…

 “You want what put in with him? Where the f**k do you think I’ll get half a dozen Golden Eagles from? Tesco’s? What wrong with a photo of his kids and the Carling Cup Final programme like everyone else has?”

 The best thing about the Tomb of the Eagles though was that on the windowsill of the farmhouse conservatory were a few artifacts that, unlike in most official museums, visitors were allowed to handle. As well as a collection of eagle bones and some bits of pottery, there was a human skull which we passed around between us. It was a little bizarre really, how old do corpses have to be before it becomes acceptable to dig them up and toss them around for amusement?

 I think I would rather I was left in peace. I’d always thought I’d like one of those Zoroastrian ceremonies, where you are just left out in the open and the sparrows snack on you until you are gone. That’s got to be better than waking up from a deep coma six feet under or just as they are turning the gas up at the crematorium. Or at least I did before I saw a programme about it on the telly. There’s nothing peaceful about it. In an effort to speed things up the deceased had his legs, arse and back scored with a knife, possibly, I speculated, with the Zorro ‘Z’ and then a flock of vultures descended and tore him apart in about an hour. If he had had his flesh stuffed with rosemary and garlic I wouldn’t have been surprised. So, after seeing that, my current preferred method of disposal is to donate my body to one of those Forensic Science study places where they just leave you out in the garden to measure the rate of decomposition. That seems much better than waking up after a misdiagnosis and discovering yourself in a coffin with nothing more than an old football programme to read or finding some Tibetan funeral director stuffing herbs into the cuts in your back.

 Anyway, I’ve digressed a bit, so back to the royal tombs in the park in Seoul. There were a few of them and whilst some were as indistinguishable from the park keeper’s sheds as the temples at Bongeunsa, there were three quite good ones. Just mounds really, no eagle or monk bones to see, but plenty of statues around them and about five hundred years old. It wasn’t difficult to imagine how the park would have been in those days, which for those with an especially limited imagination, was pretty much the same as it is now.

An old statue

 There weren’t many other people wandering around from tomb to tomb, but of those that were, a surprising number of them were wearing surgical style facemasks. Perhaps M*A*S*H had been a bigger influence on the place than I’d thought. The masks seem pretty popular in Seoul, they sell them in the little corner shops alongside the sweets and the pot noodles. Coupled with a hat pulled down over the eyes it meant that most people were fairly well disguised, which I suppose is ideal for them if they were planning to nick your shoes. It struck me that if Michael Jackson had ever moved here he could have blended in perfectly with his hat and mask. He could have gone about his business in complete anonymity as long as he had managed to resist the urge to break into a verse of Billy Jean, moonwalk down the High Street or invite small boys back to his apartment to stroke his monkey.

 Meanwhile, about three hundred miles to the South, Jeonbuk Motors were playing away to Jeju United in their second league game of the season. After failing to score in his club’s opening league match or in the midweek Asian Champions League game, Lee Dong Gook had been dropped to the bench. He came on as a second half substitute but he didn’t manage to get a goal in what finished as a 2-2 draw. But I guess that if you are a Boro fan, you could have seen that coming. Next week though, it’s the Lion King in the flesh as Jeonbuk Motors visit Seoul and I get to see my first live K-League match.

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