Trail of the Lion King

You don't see many of those wandering around in Seoul.

Fortunately I got back to Seoul in sufficient time to be able to go to the FA Cup Final between Seongnam and Suwon. Seongnam, who won last season’s Asian Champions League are having quite a poor season and have been out of play-off contention for a while. Suwon are faring a bit better and are still in this season’s ACL and looking good for no worse than a third or fourth place finish in the K-League.

I arrived at Seongnam in plenty of time and was in the ground a good hour before the scheduled two o’clock kick-off. I went for a seat in the West stand as that’s the one with the best roof. The sky had been overcast all morning and I was expecting rain before too long.

The Suwon fans had been allocated the South stand to my right. That stand holds a couple of thousand people and  there were already three hundred or so visiting supporters in there when I arrived. I was fairly confident that the visitors would fill it by kick-off time despite the poor weather. Suwon are one of the better supported teams in Korea and they probably took close on two thousand all the way down to Busan on the south coast for last year’s final.

I wasn’t so confident about the turnout from the Seongnam fans though, despite the final being played at their stadium. I’ve been to games at Tancheon before where they probably haven’t had more than about fifteen hundred people in the ground in total, including a fair percentage of schoolkids on freebies.

It didn't seem like Cup Final weather.

Ten minutes after I took my seat the rain started and a few minutes later the running track was submerged. I was curious to see how the pitch would hold up as it had been so poor last season that it didn’t seem to ever last any longer than six weeks at a time before it needed re-laying. The way the rain was coming down it wouldn’t have surprised me to see large sections of turf being washed away.

The rain continued  for twenty minutes or so before easing off half an hour before kick-off. The roof around three quarters of the stadium doesn’t really cover more than the back few rows so it was no surprise that most seats remained empty until the sun came out.

Suwon have a couple of  different groups of fans, the bog standard ‘Grandbleu’ and the slightly more ultra ‘Highland Este’. The latter group mark off their own area with tape, a bit like arsey campers at Glastonbury. Their hardcore image was spoilt a little though when they started waving balloons around like apprentice Morris Dancers.

They've been known to terrorise opposition fans by popping a balloon.

Suwon were in their all-white change strip whilst Seongnam wore their usual Watford gear. It was the visitors who started the better of the two teams and they wasted a couple of good chances in the first few minutes. Seongnam probably edged the first half though and had a decent opportunity with a long-range shot that was tipped over the bar by the Suwon keeper.

Despite Seongnam looking the better team Suwon had the best chance of the half when they had a goal disallowed for offside after thirty minutes. It looked ok to me but the linesman had his flag up straight away.

If you half close your eyes it could be Watford v Leeds.

At the interval we were treated to a performance by girl band Sistar. There was a buzz of excitement in the West stand that was far greater than anything the football had produced and it wouldn’t surprise me if some of the teenagers in the crowd were only there to see their idols lip-synch their way through their latest hit. It was probably just as well that the microphones weren’t switched on as mid-way through Sistar’s performance the rain started to fall heavily once more.

The Room Salon beckons.

Whilst the subs warmed up on what looked more like a river than a running track I kept glancing across to the baseball stadium next door. There was an amateur game going on that the players seemed desperate to finish but in the end the rain was too much for them. To make it worse for the players, they had to pull the covers over the bases themselves.

I'd have done a 'Tevez'.

The second half remained goalless until fifteen minutes from time when a glancing header from a corner put Seongnam a goal up. Suwon tried to come back into it but they couldn’t come up with that little bit of magic necessary to break down the Seongnam defence. In the final moments, Suwon had a player sent off for going ape-shit at the extra official behind the goal when a penalty appeal was turned down.

The winning goal.

It was a shame that the penalty appeal was turned down. Half an hour of extra time might have meant that I wouldn’t have got drenched on the way back to the subway. The win not only took the FA Cup to Seongnam but it meant that they qualified for next season’s Champions League too.

There are plenty of public holidays in Korea and National Foundation Day gave me an opportunity to go to another football game. Jen and I had been down in Mokpo for the weekend and on the way back up to Seoul we broke our KTX journey at Iksan to watch Jeonbuk take on the army team, Sangju Sangmu.

We’d seen Jeonbuk play the previous weekend in Jeju, a game in which Lee Dong Gook had been dropped to the bench to keep him fresh for the mid-week Champions League quarter-final against Cerezo Osaka. It was a decision that had paid off as he scored four times in a 6-1 victory over the Japanese visitors.

The goals earned the Lion King an unexpected recall to the national team, sixteen months on from his last appearance and thirteen years after his first. It was a surprise as he’d been informed by the new team manager after the last World Cup that his style of play wouldn’t fit in with the pacey football that they were hoping to play from then on.

He's even on the posters.

We got a taxi from Iksan to the World Cup stadium and so that the sun wouldn’t be in our eyes we decided to sit in the West Stand. Just like at the Boro it’s the priciest part of the ground. If you are going to go upmarket you might as well do it properly and so we bought twenty thousand won tickets for somewhere called the ‘Special Zone’. I was unsure what to expect and wondered whether ‘Special Zone’ actually meant something like ‘Obstructed View’.

It was a sunny day so I had a couple of beers at a table in the concourse and watched the locals heating up their dried squid before we went to find our seats.

It seems a lot more popular with kids than I'd expect it to be.

The ‘Special Zone’ turned out to be a section that had probably been press seating during the World Cup, complete with tables in front of the seats. Once we’d sat down a waitress brought us a box of fried chicken and then a few minutes later she returned with a couple of beers. Occasionally I get nostalgic for the days of standing on the terraces but I think that is as much a lament for my lost youth as anything. Standing in the Holgate as a kid was great, but there wasn’t any beer, never mind a table to stand my cans on. I don‘t ever remember a waitress fighting her way through the crush to bring me a box of fried chicken either.

The view from the Special Zone

With no Champions League game on the horizon Lee Dong Gook had kept his place in the starting line-up, where he was joined by Brazilians Eninho and Luiz Henrique. I had a feeling that the Jeonbuk line-up would be far too strong for Sangju Sangmu. The army team’s early season form had vanished and they had now slid down into the bottom three. To make matters worse, half their squad had finished their twenty-one months military service a week earlier and returned to their regular clubs whilst the next intake of footballing squaddies wouldnt arrive until the close season.

It looked as if a few of the visiting fans had disappeared as well. I’d watched Sangmu away at Chunnam earlier in the year and there had been a decent turnout. For this game though, there probably weren’t fifty travelling supporters in total. Mind you, there weren’t many home fans either. I’d estimate around three thousand altogether.

Perhaps they should conscript some fans too.

Jeonbuk had plenty of chances early on and I was surprised that Sangmu managed to hold on for almost half an hour before conceding. Lee Dong Gook continued where he’d left off the previous week as he opened the scoring by sidestepping a defender and placing the ball carefully into the far corner. He then  almost scored a second when he lobbed the stranded keeper only to see the ball bounce up onto the bar and back out again.

Jeonbuk celebrate the opening goal.

It all got a little bit harder for Sangmu a few minutes later when their captain, Kim Chi Gon, was sent off. I didn’t see what he did but it looked as if he might have given the ref a bit too much lip. He’ll probably have to tone that sort of thing down if he doesn’t want to spend the rest of his army career doing press-ups on the parade ground.

Bang on half time Jeonbuk doubled their lead when Lee Dong Gook laid it back to Lee Seung Hyun who scored from the edge of the box. It should really have been three straight after the break when Lee Dong Gook put the ball past the post after a nice through ball from Eninho.

That miss looked as if it might prove costly a few minutes later when Sangmu pulled a goal back. Jeonbuk had been streets ahead of the visitors and a two-one scoreline didn’t remotely reflect what had gone on.

The Sangmu goal seemed to spark a bit of unrest amongst the home supporters and a banner was unfurled behind the goal. I’ve no idea what it said but it caused three security blokes to run from the halfway line and demand that it be rolled back up. I’d like to think that they were complaining about not getting any fried chicken or beer.

Whatever it said, it didn't say it for very long.

Jeonbuk seemed to step up a gear at that stage with Lee Seung Hyun restoring their two goal advantage with a close range tap in and then Eninho heading his side into a four-one lead. In between those two efforts Lee Dong Gook hit the post as Sangmu struggled with their one man disadvantage.

A couple of minutes from time Lee Dong Gook got his second of the game and his twenty-third of the season. He missed another very good chance just before the final whistle too. So, two goals, two efforts hitting the woodwork and two really good chances missed. What was a good afternoon for him could really have been phenomenal. If four goals gets you a national team recall, who knows what six would have warranted?

Jen and I took a taxi back to Iksan where we conveniently found an abandoned sofa outside of the station that proved ideal for finishing off the day with another couple of cans.

One day all railway stations will have seating like this.

The win extended Jeonbuk’s lead at the top of the table to five points with just three games remaining.

We are moving towards the end of the season now and in the second tier National League the battle for the play-off places is getting interesting. Not that the scramble for a top six position was of any relevance to this clash as Mokpo and Cheonan’s respective seasons had been over well before the league had taken its mid-season break. Mokpo went into this game third from bottom whilst Cheonan were only two places better off in the dizzy heights of tenth. As there is currently no promotion or relegation between the leagues in Korea there wasn’t therefore a great deal at stake.

Still, it was a chance for a weekend in a coastal town down south, so Jen and I made the three and a quarter hour KTX journey from Yongsan station on the Friday evening. We asked the cabbie to take us to where the hotels were and he dropped us off outside of a reasonable looking one near Peace Beach. We took a VIP room on the top floor for 120,000 won per night and it was very nice. It had a sea view and a large bed made of stone. Fortunately it also had an equally large bed with a conventional mattress for those of us who aren’t wholly convinced about the merits of sleeping on granite.

It was an Official Formula One Grand Prix Hotel, with a plaque outside to prove it. This wasn’t much to be proud of though as every hotel, restaurant, bar and coffee shop in town appeared to be similarly endorsed. The Korean F1 Grand Prix would be taking place in Mokpo a fortnight later and I suspected that everywhere would treble their prices, although I don’t imagine that the motor racing fraternity would be too impressed about paying a fortune to sleep on a bed with less ‘give’ than a pit straight wall.

It's official. Hamilton and Massa can fight over our room.

Over the course of the weekend we saw a few of Mokpo’s sights. If you take a stroll along the seafront there are a couple of large rocks that are supposed to look like blokes with old fashioned hats on. There was, as ever, some half-arsed fairy story about how the rocks came to be there. This is quite a common thing in Korea, making up legends about rocks based upon their supposed resemblance to anything from a dragon or a lion to a fridge freezer. Well maybe not kitchen appliances, but it’s only a matter of time. On the plus side however, it does stop people from cutting the rocks up and making beds out of them.

The resemblance to a couple of blokes with hats on was uncanny.

Mokpo doesn’t appear to have much in the way of beaches, it still seems to be more of a working fishing port than a seaside resort, with a lot of ferry traffic to the outlying islands as well places like Japan, China and Russia. When the tide is out it’s more mud than sand, although that does give the locals a chance to dig about in it for whatever creatures live in mud at the seaside.

The golden sands of Mokpo.

The shops along the seafront weren’t your normal seaside shops either. They did sell buckets and spades but they were of the galvanised heavy duty kind rather than something that a kid would use to build a sandcastle. Amongst the shops selling trawling nets and lobster pots there were even a couple of places that were selling anchors. I did wonder just how often a sea captain would fancy a nice new anchor. It doesn’t seem like your usual Saturday morning impulse buy. Maybe they get them bought for their birthdays.

There were plenty of shops selling fish too, some of them alive in tanks, some of them drying on racks, some of them propped up and grinning at you like Spongebob Squarepants merchandise. How could you cut up and eat a skate with a face like that?

Penny for the Guy?

We took a boat trip out to a couple of nearby islands. The ferry picks up from Mokpo and then does a two hour round trip that you can extend by getting off at an island or two. You then resume the journey when the ferry makes its next appearance a couple of hours later.

Our boat.

At the first island, Dalli Do,  people were surprised when we got off the boat. It was generally assumed that we were making a mistake as in the words of one local woman who lived just next to the ferry docking place, “There’s nothing here”. I’m a bit like that with Stockton sometimes, but you never really appreciate fully what a place has to offer when it’s your home town.

As it happens, she was right. We spent a pleasant hour and a half or so walking around a small island with not much there other than small farms. There were a couple of churches and with it being Sunday morning we saw a few locals heading off to a service. One farmer, dressed very smartly in a suit and tie, travelled there on his mini-tractor with his equally smartly dressed wife sat in the trailer behind.

Unfortunately I didn’t get a photo of the farmer and his wife, I just wasn’t quick enough as they passed by. I did manage to take a picture of a dead snake that we saw though. It was moving just that little bit slower.

It looks like the local mice had been getting their own back.

In theory the second island was the bigger attraction, it boasted outdoor swimming pools, flower gardens and restaurants. If I had to describe Oedal Do  in a single word though, I would choose ‘shut’. I’m sure it’s an interesting place to visit in the Summer but out of season it didn’t even boast a dapper looking farmer or a recently deceased snake.

A dog looking at a bit of rope is about as exciting as it gets on Oedal Do.

So, that’s the Mokpo touristy stuff. Time for the meaningless end of season battle between Mokpo City and Cheonan City. There’s a perfectly good thirteen thousand capacity football stadium in Mokpo town centre, the Yudal stadium, but as it’s not shiny or new anymore Mokpo play their games on the outskirts of the town at the Mokpo International Football Centre instead. I’m not too sure where the ‘International’ part of the title comes from either, unless visiting sailors hire the place for a kickabout. It’s got half a dozen or so pitches, some grass, some artificial. We got a taxi from the sea front that took twenty minutes and cost seven thousand won.

The grass pitch that our game was on had a few rows of seats all the way around with a bigger covered stand along one side, whilst a small roof provided a bit of shade for some of the people along the opposite side. It can accommodate six thousand spectators apparently and whilst there wasnt a running track, there was space to fit one in between the stand we were in and the pitch.

The main stand.

Mokpo were in their usual kit of blue shirts and white shorts, visitors Cheonan in an unusual combination of grey shirts and maroon shorts. Jen reckoned that they had probably stuck the strips in the washing machine at too high a temperature with something that they shouldn’t have. Cheonan completed their Sunday League look with grey socks. It was as if they had forgotten their PE kits and had to just make do with whatever they were wearing.

There were probably about two hundred people watching including the five Mokpo Ultras behind the goal to our left. They weren’t the most vocal of fans and if someone from the tourist board had replaced them with  a selection of rocks then I doubt anyone other than their Mams would have noticed. All it would need is a legend about the five loyal supporters who had turned to stone after watching another ninety minutes of mis-placed passes, squandered chances and defensive clearances that end up on the pitch next door. The rocks would probably attract more visitors than any football match would.

It looks as if the petrifaction process has already started for one of them.

Mokpo had most of the early play with the Cheonan keeper making a couple of very good  saves in the opening quarter of an hour. It was Cheonan who took the lead though with a penalty after twenty minutes. I don’t know what it was awarded for as I was too busy trying to take a photo of a woman with a dog.

Paris Hilton

I did manage to pay attention for the penalty which was easily put away to the keeper’s right by Hwang Ho Lyeong.

Cheonan City take the lead.

The younger Mokpo fans consoled themselves by randomly blowing horns into each others ears from close range. They’d been given them for free by some fella with an evil streak and a cardboard box full of them. He probably owned a hearing aid factory too.Their eardrums got a temporary reprieve after twenty five minutes when Mokpo got a free-kick on the left. In an admirable bit of teamwork one of the Mokpo fellas managed to get his fist to the Cheonan keepers face, whilst his teammate Yoo Woo Ram got his head to the ball. One all.

The equaliser.

Four minutes later the home team took the lead. A corner from the left was swung into the six yard box where everyone missed it and it bounced off the arse of Mokpo’s Kwon Soon Hak and into the net. They had another couple of good chances soon after but couldn’t add to their lead before half-time.

During the break we were treated to some belly dancers doing their stuff, followed by five teenage girls dancing to a K-Pop song. I could see how the belly dancers got the gig but the other girls looked to be doing nothing more than a short dance routine that wouldn’t normally be seen anywhere more public than their front rooms. I’d have preferred to see them all have a quick game of 5-a side instead, or maybe a penalty shoot-out.

Pan's People

Mokpo should have gone further ahead a few minutes into the second half. A free kick from thirty-five yards was parried by the visiting keeper only for the lad following up to somehow sky it over the bar when it looked far easier to score.

The fans around us were getting a bit excited at the prospect of a rare victory and were giving the ref a bit of stick. One bloke gave him non-stop slaver, usually some variant of “Sonovabitch”. A small kid, perhaps sensing that the ref’s eyesight was not his strongest point, shouted “Maerong” at him, which apparently means ‘I’m sticking my tongue out at you’.

There weren’t too many more chances in the second half, a Mokpo striker managed to hit the Cheonan keeper in the chops with a shot from close range, but that was about it. The win made no difference to the league positions, Mokpo remaining twelfth and Cheonan tenth.

View from the back of the stand

We got a taxi back into town and ended up at a restaurant where the prawns came fresh from a tank outside. They were cooked alive at the table and they didn’t half jump when the gas was lit underneath their pan.

On the way out afterwards we paused to look at some fish in one of the other tanks, a few of which were looking a bit lacklustre. The woman from the restaurant saw us staring at them and came outside. I thought she would probably give the fish a bit more oxygen to perk them up, but what she did was give the tank a good kicking until all the fish appeared rejuvenated and were swimming around like perfect specimens again. It made me wonder if I should have given that grinning skate a swift kick in the goolies to perk him up a bit as well.

Chuncheon is another one of those places that is miles away from Seoul, but you can get there on the subway. When it’s possible I can’t resist travelling that way rather than getting a quicker train or luxury bus. I suspect it’s because I’m tight with money.

Anyway, Jen and I set off from Yeoksam at quarter to nine in the morning and after changing to the Line Seven and then the Jungang Line we were at Chuncheon a couple of hours later. I thought the journey wasn’t too bad. Most of it was above ground and we had seats for almost all of it. Besides, what do you expect for 2,600 won?

It's a popular destination for old people.

Kick-off in the third division game between Chuncheon Citizen and league leaders Pocheon wasn’t until 3pm so we had time to sort out our accommodation first. We got a cab to Jungdo ferry terminal and then the ferry across to Jungdo Island. It’s a small island in the middle of a river, the ferry runs every half an hour between 9am and 6pm and it takes about five minutes to make the crossing. The island is quite famous as the location for a Korean soap, Winter Sonata, and there were photographs of the stars wherever you looked.

That's the ferry with Jungdo in the background.

I’d read somewhere on the internet that there were ‘cabins’ for rent on Jungdo and it seemed like it would make an interesting change from a hotel. It turns out that they do have ‘cabins’. They also have a pre-booking system as they are extremely popular on Saturday nights. Luckily someone had just cancelled and we got the last one for 55,000 won.

It was spacious enough, it had a bathroom, a cooker, sink, fridge, television and air-conditioning. Everything you could ask for really. Everything apart from a bed. Where the bed should have been there was just a floor. At first I thought we might have been burgled, but it seems that beds just haven’t caught on in Chuncheon yet. In my view then, it wasn’t a cabin. Cabins have beds. What we had rented was actually a shed.

Our shed.

There were a couple of duvets and a pair of quilts in a cupboard though. That was sufficient for me to be able to put the prospect of sleeping on a shed floor to the back of my mind for a few hours as we caught the ferry back across to Chuncheon and a Dak Galbi lunch.

Chuncheon likes to think it is famous for Dak Galbi. Perhaps it is, just not in the circles I mix in. In my circles Chuncheon is more rightly famous for people sleeping on shed floors. The Dak Galbi was good, not as spicy as the ones you get in Seoul, possibly because they used less oil, possibly because they tone it down for people from out of town. It was fine though.

Dak Galbi - It's mainly chicken and cabbage.

After lunch we took a five minute taxi ride to nearby Songam Sports Town. Not only was there a twenty five thousand seater football ground, but there was a baseball stadium, a speed skating track complete with grandstands and a skateboarding/BMX arena that was bigger than anything I’d imagine exists in the UK. It shows what it’s possible to achieve when you don’t have a bed to laze around in on a morning.

We didn’t have to look for the proper entrance to the stadium as we were able just to walk in through the ambulance entrance, make our way along the running track and then up to the main stand where we sat as far from the Tannoy speakers as possible.

Looking along the main stand at Chuncheon

Chuncheon were wearing bee costumes, Pocheon a more traditional white shirt and black shorts combination. They spoiled it a bit by letting their keeper wear his QPR shirt. Mind you, there’s nothing wrong with a bee costume.

Nothing wrong as long as you don't value your dignity.

There was a bloke sat in front of us who spent the entire game secretly talking into a hidden microphone. Honestly. It looked as if he was on the phone to someone but was concealing the fact that he was talking into a microphone hidden inside his shirt. Every time something happened on the pitch he would pretend to cough or rub his chin and then relay the information as discreetly as possible. The only explanation I can think of is that he was working for a bookie or that he had a mate using the betting exchanges. If the fella on the other end of the line had instant notice of a goal or a penalty a couple of seconds before everyone else then he could back or lay at advantageous odds.

He was wearing a wire, just like on The Sopranos.

Pocheon took the lead after twelve minutes when someone seized on a goalmouth scramble and planted the ball high into the corner of the net. There were one or two away fans in the crowd and they celebrated as the lad in front quietly cleared his throat and mumbled away into his mike.

As far as home fans went, there were five behind the goal with a drum and a horn which is not a bad ratio of fans to musical instruments. There were maybe eighty spectators in total in the ground.

A drum, a horn and a loud hailer. Not bad between five.

Mind you, what we lacked in numbers of fans was more than made up for by the substitutes. Pocheon had thirteen blokes togged up and sat on the bench, Chuncheon looked to have more, although I think one might have been a mascot and the other someone who had got lost on the way to a fancy dress party.

At half-time when they were all warming up they should have just had a fifteen minute eleven a side game between themselves. Although it would have been a bit rough on anyone who would have to sit on the bench for the half-time substitutes game too. Maybe that’s the time when you look to move on.

The Pocheon bench.

It didn’t take long in the second half for Chuncheon to equalise. The big centre back with the dodgy perm met a free kick from the left to head home the equaliser from close range. It was fortunate that I saw it as I’d been temporarily distracted by a takeaway delivery arriving for someone a few seats further along. The bloke in front with the hidden mike caught it all though and was relaying the information before the ball hit the back of the net.

1-1.

Pocheon were the better team and their number seventeen headed them back in front with about twenty minutes left. The same lad made the game safe in injury time by finishing well after Chuncheon failed to clear a ball that had been bouncing around the penalty area for just that bit too long.

1-3.

At full time we could have stayed for a raffle and the chance to win a bike or a sack of rice. Instead we left them to it and got a taxi back to the ferry. The island was still pretty busy after the day trippers had gone home as there was a camp site near to the sheds.

I think we must have had the lowest occupancy rate with just the two of us in our shed. A few yards away there was a hut that wasn’t much bigger but was housing ten old blokes. Their wives were all in the hut next to them. They looked to be having a great old time with the men barbecuing stuff and knocking back the soju before letting their wives do the washing and tidying up.

Some of the wives clearing up the mess their husbands had made.

We called it a night at about nine. If you are going to have a crap night’s sleep then you might as well make it long enough for the odd periods where you aren’t awake to cumulatively amount to something worthwhile. Fortunately it started to rain shortly afterwards and the partying pensioners knocked it on the head too.

We’ve just had the Chuseok holiday in Korea. It’s the one where people head back to the town of their ancestors and pay their respects to the dead. That’s all well and good but with only three days off work, it didn’t seem worth trying to get to Sunderland Crematorium and back. And so free from graveside obligations, Jen and I went to Hong Kong instead.

It’s an interesting place. We did touristy stuff on the first day, taking the tram up to The Peak where we sat in the breeze looking down upon the city and then a taxi to Stanley where we wandered around along the seafront and pier.

Hazy looking view from The Peak.

The next day we went to Macau. Like Hong Kong it’s one of those places that was previously owned by someone else but now belongs to the Chinese. There are still a fair few of the old Portuguese style buildings to see, although the rain in the afternoon meant that we spent more time in a restaurant than we did sightseeing.

Not much left of this place

One of the main attractions of Macau for the visiting Chinese is the quantity of casinos, at least thirty odd of them in what is quite a compact place. We weren’t tempted, which is just as well as in shorts we wouldn’t have got in anyway, but plenty of other visitors were. So many in fact that it took us over an hour to clear immigration on the way in. Still, it’s worth a visit, although I’d recommend a mid-week out of season trip.

This was one of the quieter streets in Macau.

On the third day we went to Peng Chau. It’s a tiny island near Lantau. When I say tiny I mean it, maybe 500m x 600m. There aren’t any motor vehicles apart from fire engines.  Going there was a bit of a bonus as we hadn’t intended to, we’d planned on hiking up a couple of big hills on Lantau. Being the  responsible people that we are, we’d even visited the council offices to buy a proper map. Unfortunately the map didn’t cover the ferry terminal and we got on the wrong boat. We only realised our mistake as the ferry disappeared into the distance after dropping us at Peng Chau whilst we gazed at a map of the island that wasn’t far off being actual sized.

Not the busiest of fishing ports.

Still, Peng Chau was worth a visit. We climbed the 95m Finger Hill and covered just about every path on the island before getting a mid-afternoon ferry back to Hong Kong Island.

On the way down from Finger Hill, Peng Chau.

As you might expect Hong Kong was a strange mix of English and Chinese culture, typified by the food. One evening we ate in a British-influenced place where I had chips with curry sauce and a deep-fried mars bar, whilst somewhere else I had deep-fried baby pigeons complete with their heads.

I didn't bother photographing the deep-fried Mars Bar.

Anyway, this blog isn’t supposed to be a ‘what I did on my holidays’ sort of place, despite my life appearing at times to be one long holiday. It’s meant to be a Korean sporting blog and so I’d better tell you about the match. I know that it’s not Korean football but it’s as close as you are going to get this week.

I’d got lucky really as this was the opening weekend of the season. Hong Kong isn’t very big but it has ten First Division teams and another twelve in the second tier of its league.

The game that we went along to was at South China’s Hong Kong Stadium. It’s by far and away Hong Kong’s biggest stadium with a forty thousand capacity. The other eight top division grounds hold about twenty-five thousand people in total between the lot of them. Not surprisingly South China is historically Hong Kong’s most successful team.

It was sixty Hong Kong Dollars to get in, that’s about a fiver and you could sit anywhere you liked on the lower tiers. The previous game here had been between Chelsea and Aston Villa in a pre-season tournament and prices for that ranged from about a tenner to forty quid. It seems that watching people off the telly is more popular than watching your own team.

Hong Kong Stadium

We weren’t allowed to take any cans or bottles into the stadium, not even plastic bottles of water. That wasn’t much of a hardship though as they did sell pints of  Carlsberg inside as well as proper looking pies. Neither team had any players that I knew although last season South China had that Kezman bloke who used to be at Chelsea playing for them. Nicky Butt turned out for them a few times last year too, adding a Hong Kong League Cup winners medal to a collection that I suspect he had thought complete.

The home team wore an Arsenal style strip whilst Tuen Mun were dressed up as Chelsea. The crowd totalled about three thousand including the five hundred or so fans that the visitors had brought with them. Mind you, it’s hardly a long trip. I’d be surprised if anybody didn’t follow their team home and away in a place as small as Hong Kong.

Arsenal v Chelsea

South China had most of the early play but didn’t manage to get any shots on target and it was Tuen Mun who opened the scoring, a glancing header from Milutin Trnavac sneaking inside the post.

It was quite a physical game with a few crunching tackles and a fair bit of posturing from one or two of the players. Chan Hin Kwong picked up a booking after half an hour for hanging on to an opponents leg like a particularly clingy child being dropped off by his Mam for his first day at school. The visiting keeper made a decent save from the resulting South China free kick.

Vekjc Nemad palms it past the post

It got worse for South China a few minutes later when the South African Makhosonke Bhengu put Tuen Mun further into the lead, much to the delight of his scruffy looking manager Dejan Antonic. South China finished the half resorting to long range shots and they got a bit of stick from their fans as they left the field.

We moved seats at half time and I took my seventy Hong Kong dollar litre of Carlsberg behind the goal.

The view from the other end.

South China had a couple of decent chances early on in the second half and on the hour had a goal disallowed for climbing. They finally pulled a goal back with a quarter of an hour to go when Brazillian defender Wellingsson de Souza headed home.

The goal just increased the determination of Tuen Mun to timewaste, resulting in a further seven minutes being added on. They held on to frustrate South China and in particular their coach who was sent off for getting in a paddy and booting a bottle of water into the air. Perhaps that’s why they don’t allow you to take them into the ground.

All in all it was a pleasant couple of hours. The stadium has a nice backdrop of hills behind one goal, the beer was cold and the football pretty competitive. Much more enjoyable than a Chuseok visit to a graveyard.

There was no way that my son Tom could spend a fortnight in Korea and pass up the opportunity of seeing the Boro’s greatest ever Korean player, Lee Dong Gook. After all, he’d been there for half of the goals that the Lion King had scored for Middlesbrough. I, on the other hand, hadn’t seen either of them.

So, on a rainy Sunday morning, Tom, Jen and I caught the bus to Jeonju  from Seoul Central City station to see the Jeonbuk v Seongnam game. Tom was pretty impressed with the luxury bus. I don’t think we have buses with a two and one seating configuration in the UK. Certainly I don’t remember ever travelling anywhere over there and having such a large reclinable seat.

He was also quite taken with the service station and the bowls of roast potatoes that you can buy there. I’ve grown accustomed to a lot of the things that he’s seeing for the first time so it’s quite nice to get  the odd reminder of some of the differences.

We got to Jeonju at about two o’clock. As the match didn’t kick off for another five hours we had a wander around the Hanok Village. On the face of it, this is a bit of Jeonju’s history, a place where you can see the old fashioned single-storey houses that most folk lived in before apartment blocks took over. The reality though is that they are being constantly refurbished and upgraded. It’s only about eight months since Jen and I were last there and already since then there are a couple of new Italian restaurants, a Paris Baguette cafe and a few more art and craft places.

Just wait until someone invents 'upstairs'.

We followed up the Hanok Village visit with a wander along the market by the river. There wasn’t much in the way of livestock, a bucket or two of eels, but there were plenty of chicken carcasses displayed in the heat and attracting the flies. We watched a mouse scampering around the boxes of vegetables at one stall whilst the owner stretched out on a bench and caught up on her sleep.

With an hour to go to kick-off we caught a taxi up to the World Cup Stadium. It takes around fifteen minutes from Jeonju centre. After sorting the tickets for behind the goal we got some free beer at the Hite van.  Again, I’ve got used to stuff like that but it’s not something Tom encounters too often in the UK.

Free beer. Really.

We took our seats behind the goal where for the first time since the day before I was able to have a beer with my son whilst watching a football match. Why does it have to be like that? We used to go to rugby games a lot where drinking in your seat is seen as perfectly normal. At the cricket you’d be regarded as a bit odd if you didn’t have a drink in your hand. But football is different. Even once the game became fashionable after Euro 96 things still didn’t change.

Jeonbuk fans.

Fortunately Lee Dong Gook was in the starting line up. It would have been a bit rough if Tom had travelled six thousand miles to see him warm the bench. There was no place for Luiz Henrique but Croatian striker Krunoslav Lovrek was starting on the left side of midfield. It didn’t take Jeonbuk long to take the lead, an own goal from Jeong Ho Jeong putting the home team ahead.

Almost another one for Jeonbuk.

Twenty minutes into the second half Kim Dong Chan made it two with a well-taken finish after Lee Dong Gook had controlled the ball on the edge of the box and played him in. We cleared off five minutes before the final whistle in an attempt to get a taxi to Iksan station. It didn’t work though and we ended up having to walk for about fifteen minutes to the junction of the main road into Jeonju. We flagged one down before long though and got to the station with about ten minutes to spare before our train departed.

The win took Jeonbuk six points clear at the top of the table with eleven games to play whilst the defeat for last seasons Asian Champions League winners Seongnam dropped them to second from bottom.

After watching the game between Suwon City and Mokpo in the afternoon, Tom and I decided that we would take in a second National League match. Ansan is only sixteen kilometres from Suwon and so we just hopped in a cab. We could have got the subway but there are fourteen stops between Suwon and Gojan stations and I suspected that it would have taken all of the hour that we had to spare between the games.

The taxi wasn’t much quicker mind, taking forty minutes, and it was certainly more expensive at twenty two thousand won. It did have the advantage of efficient air-conditioning though and there are times when I’d happily pay a lot more money than that for forty minutes in the cold. Conveniently there is an enormous Lotte supermarket underneath the Wa Stadium and we called in and picked up a couple of litre bottles of Cass each. The novel opportunity, for Tom at least, of being able to drink whilst watching a football match was one that couldn’t really be missed.

One day all supermarkets will be like this.

It was just after kick-off time when we got to one of the stadium entrances. It was locked. Nothing unusual there though, as there is often just a single gate open. What was a little more worrying was that we could see the pitch and there weren’t any players on it.  I did wonder if I’d got the time or the date mixed up. We’d already seen one game that afternoon, so with a couple of litres of beer in hand it didn’t seem like that big an issue.

We walked further around the stadium and as we got to the other side we could hear the sounds of a football match in progress. Players shouting, a ref’s whistle, the murmuring of the crowd and enough drums to start a marching jazz band. It seems that, like the Suwon Big Bird, the Wa Stadium has a practice pitch next to it. Just before we got there we noticed an open gate to the main stadium so we went in for a look around at the slightly more impressive neighbour.

Big, but not much going on.

It’s very nice really, although a little excessive for a National League team with a few hundred fans. Ten minutes or so after kick-off we made our way into the practice pitch and were directed around the running track to a stand that ran the length of the pitch. It was only about four seats deep but it probably held five or six hundred people. It was just about full and the only option for Tom and I was to stand at the back. It was all working out pretty well. If we could stand at the Boro and drink from litre bottles of beer whilst watching the game then you’d get no complaints from us.

The view as we came in. Hallelujah are in white.

We had five drummers to our right, just by the long jump sandpit that was keeping the younger fans busy. They kept up a steady beat throughout the game and led the chants. I joined in with “Hallelujah, Hallelujah” as due to me not being much of a church-goer, I don’t often get a chance to do that.

Five drummers drumming

Hallelujah was formed by Christian missionaries apparently and  like all good missionaries have been moving about a bit, spreading the word about the benefits of keeping faith in the big fella. Particularly if you have a decent winger putting the ball into the box for him. Ho-hum. They were booted out of Iksan by stroppy Buddhists and then had a spell in Gimpo before settling in the promised land of Ansan a few years ago.

The score was nil-nil as we arrived and it was still that way at half-time. The football was a lot better than we’d seen earlier in the day at Suwon, with a lot more movement off the ball. Surprising really as Hallelujah are struggling near the bottom of the table, whilst Korail aren’t a great deal better off. Perhaps both teams crapness made the other look good.

Not much brotherly love in that challenge.

Korail took the lead ten minutes into the second half as Lee In Kyu knocked the ball home at the back post. Hallelujah were never out of it though, or at least not until five minutes from time when Korail clinched the points with an Ahn Byung Gun header. At the final whistle the Hallelujah players dropped to their knees and had a collective prayer session. No doubt thanking the Lord that there isn’t any relegation from the National League to the Challengers League.

Thank you God for keeping the rain away. And the stroppy Iksan Buddhists.

Tom and I got  the subway from Gojan back to Yeoksam. It didn’t take much more than an hour and so I’ll probably nip back at some point to watch Hallelujah play in the main stadium. Maybe even combine it with getting a few groceries in.

My son Tom is visiting me at the moment. It’s not the best time of year for a holiday in Korea with the rainy season having dragged on for longer than is usual and with the dry days being hot enough to make you want to dodge from one air-conditioned building to another. Still, you have to be somewhere and I understand that the weather in Teesside isn’t too clever at the moment either.

Like me, he is happy enough to watch football in most conditions and so we decided to take in Suwon City’s game with Mokpo in the National League. For those that don’t know, the National League is the second of the three divisions. Suwon City are actually the reigning champions, defending their title because there is currently no promotion and relegation. There is speculation that the match-fixing scandal will change this and that from next season it will be four-up and four-down between the top two divisions. That strikes me as an unneccessarily large step for what are currently leagues of sixteen and fourteen teams respectively. It will be interesting to see what happens if one of the clubs owned by a large corporation ends up in the bottom four. I’d expect that some West Ham style cheating from the Korean FA will take place to allow the status quo to be maintained.

It took us quite a while to work out where Suwon City play their games. Googling them or looking on various websites gives different venues. According to the source, they either play at the Suwon Civil Stadium, or the nearby Kyunngi-Seat stadium, or the practice pitch next to the Suwon Big Bird World Cup Stadium. In the end we gambled on the practice pitch but we got Jen to write down the names of the other grounds in Korean just in case we had to made a tour of Suwon by taxi.

We took the subway to Sadang and then the 7001 bus to Suwon. Tom seemed to have charmed a couple of old biddies on the way there in a way that I never seem to these days. Perhaps I’m too old for them

Seoul subway

Getting the bus is far quicker than doing the whole journey by tube and there is a stop  right next to the Bluewings stadium. We stayed on board though and went a bit further into town in search of some air-conditioned lunch. Tom didn’t seem too keen on still-wriggling squid legs or a few silkworm pupae, so we had a pizza and then wandered back up towards the Big Bird stadium. There were signs along the road that appeared to date from the 2002 World Cup. Korea is developing at such a pace that I was surprised to see them and I doubt that they will still be there in five years time.

This way to the Big Bird.

We had a look around the outside of the Suwon World Cup Stadium. Tom was pretty impressed by the open-air exercise equipment, speculating that it would be quickly weighed in for scrap value in the UK. The practice pitch is shown on the maps of the area near the main stadium and so it wasn’t too difficult to find. There was a single stand, a running track and a couple of tents for the players to get changed in.

The players were led out a good fifteen minutes before the kick-off time. They have to be, there is that much for them to do these days. They were presented to some old bloke out of the crowd, they posed for photos with the mascots, kicked footballs in to the stand and as has become compulsory stood with one hand in the air and made a solemn promise only to take bribes if it’s definitely worth their while.

"We promise not to spend our bribes on hookers and fast cars"

There were probably two hundred or so people in the stand including what looked like a couple of kid’s football teams. It’s a free afternoon out after all, albeit one without air-conditioning.

Suwon were in red and blue stripes with red shorts whilst Mokpo wore blue shirts and white shorts. The Mokpo players looked a lot taller overall than their Suwon counterparts. Away keeper Cho Sang Won must have been at least 6’4“ and he had a couple of ugly looking centre halves of a similar height in front of him. I doubted that Suwon would have much joy at set pieces.

View towards the main stand. Actually, it's the only stand.

I was wrong of course. Twenty odd minutes in a Suwon corner was flicked on and then scrambled home from about three yards. The Mokpo coach was sat a few feet away from us in the stand and he wasn’t too pleased. 

The football in general was quite poor with players going to ground easily, misplaced passes and little movement off the ball. There were plenty of niggling fouls too that disrupted any flow that might have developed.

Hand of God?

At the interval the subs warmed up on the pitch and it looked as if each side had nine or ten of them, which seems a little excessive to me. Although I’ve no idea how much, if anything, players at this level earn. If you aren’t paying them anything then I don’t suppose it costs much more to have an extra few bodies on the bench.

In the second half we got more of the same, the highlight being a well deserved equaliser from Mokpo’s Hong Deok Jong. The Suwon goalie got his fingers to the shot from the edge of the box but it was too well placed to keep out.

A Suwon defender wellies it upfield.

The game finished one each with the point not being enough to move Mokpo off the foot of the table whilst Suwon remained on course for the end of season play-offs.