Trail of the Lion King

It was about time that I got along to see Lee Dong Gook play for Jeonbuk again and as they were playing at Daejeon which is only an hour away from Seoul, I had the ideal opportunity. I’d been to Daejeon last month when I’d seen the National League side Daejeon Hydro and Nuclear clinch the first stage of their league and then I’d popped into the Hanwha Eagles baseball game with the Doosan Bears. This time though, it was going to be the top division stuff, in another of the 2002 World Cup stadiums. In fact, if you can remember, it was at Daejeon where South Korea knocked Italy out in the quarter finals.

The game didnt kick off until 7pm Saturday and I’d been wondering for a few days how best to fill my weekend. I quite fancied doing a bit of hiking in the hills around Daejeon and toyed with the idea of heading down there on the Friday evening or early Saturday morning and getting my miles in before the game rather than on the Sunday. However,  I’ve recently been seeing an American girl and on Friday evening we found ourselves at a dvd bang instead.

Bang means room. So, thats another Korean word I know. Perhaps the language is slowly beginning to sink in without me realising. I can now say hello, thank you, count as far as two and I know the word for a silver fish used in the context of taking the mickey out of someone wearing a shiny suit. Not bad for nearly five months. Anyway, the dvd bang. It’s another one of those popular Korean things that I doubt would really catch on in the UK. Its just like a video shop, except after selecting your film you dont take it home, you give it to the bloke behind the counter and then you watch it in a private room. It’s a bit like the Noraebang karaoke places but without the requirement to sing quite so many Celine Dion ballads. The dvd bang  tend to be a bit smarter as well, small rooms with a big screen, big settee and a big amount of embarrassment for your schoolteacher date when she bumps into a former pupil on the way in. Apparently these places have a bit of a reputation as being somewhere for courting couples to spend an hour or two alone. Of course, as a film buff I wouldnt know anything about that sort of thing.

Saturday morning and it was pouring down in Seoul.That was a bit disappointing as I’d been planning on going for a ride on my bike. I’m aware that this is starting to sound like the blog of a fifteen year old boy, but it’s an age thats not far below the surface in most of us. I’d walked alongside the Han River a few weeks back, saw the cyclists and thinking that it might be a pleasant way to spend an afternoon I’d been to a bike shop last Sunday and got myself sorted.

The bike shop was north of the river and it took me a while to get there on the subway from my apartment in the south. My plan was to cycle to the river on my new machine, ride alongside it for a while and then head back home after about an hours pleasant meandering around. It didn’t quite go to plan, as I got lost on the way to the river and found myself heading in the wrong direction on a dual carriageway. By the time I’d found the river I was starting to feel the pace a bit. I got a bit of a second wind though and had a very enjoyable ride alongside the other cyclists, hikers, old biddies playing bowls, old blokes working out on the gym equipment and families having picnics. I passed a couple of football games where I was tempted to pull over and see if I could join in and a cafe where I stopped for a drink. It was all going pretty well until I started to  pick up the pace a bit,  my chain slipped off and my momentum hurled me sideways off my bike onto the tarmac.

Ouch. As they say.

I’d taken the skin off my elbow and given myself a few scrapes on my legs and feet. What was odd though was that nobody stopped to see if I was okay. Whilst I sat on the ground there must have been another twenty or thirty cyclists who passed by and did nothing more than generously swerve around me rather than ride straight over the top of me. I set off again a few minutes later, leaving a mixture of skin and dignity on the tarmac and rode on for about another half an hour or so before realising that if I wanted to cross the river I’d have to turn back to a bridge I’d passed before my crash. So, after about three hours of pedalling and dripping blood I eventually got back to my apartment, a little more tired and battered than I’d intended to be. Still, I’m sure it’s doing me good.

With no bike riding on the Saturday due to the rain I set off for Daejeon on the KTX train mid-afternoon and less than an hour later I was there. Fortunately the rain had stopped within about twenty minutes of me leaving Seoul.The last time I’d been in Daejeon I’d stayed in a hotel in the south east of the city, close to the station and the baseball ground. This time I decided that I would be better off in the Yusong Spa area in the north west, close to the World Cup stadium and the hills where I was planning to hike the following day. Daejeon has a subway that consists of just a single line, bless them, and I used it to make my way up to Yusong Spa. There were plenty of motels in the area around the subway station, with names ranging from the Cosy Motel to the Rich Motel. I settled on one called the Luxury Motel.

 Luxury sounds better than Cosy or Rich, and besides, it had four lifesize horses above its door.

I paid the forty thousand won (about twenty two quid) and was given my key. No forms to fill in, no credit card swipe, it’s all very easy. My room was pretty good even if luxurious was pushing it slightly. It had a bed, which I mention just because not all Korean rooms do. In a lot of places you sleep on the floor which no matter how much of a spin you put on it is an experience that I’d struggle to describe as luxurious. As well as the bed I got air conditioning, a computer, a fridge, a water cooler and a big flat screen television. A big flat screen television that turned on as I inserted my key into the slot by the door and was tuned to a porn channel.

There wasnt much of a plot but the happy couple certainly seemed to get around a bit, managing to get their kit off and snatch a moment or two of fun everywhere from a field to a shop changing room. And all without bumping into former pupils too. It was getting on a bit though so after a while I thought I’d better leave them to it and get a taxi up to the stadium.

I got to the ground about an hour before kick off and bought a ticket for ten thousand won. It looked as if you could sit wherever you liked as the ticket didnt seem to specify a particular stand. With plenty of time in hand I joined a few fans sat outside a 7-Eleven convenience store and had  a beer whilst watching a line of people trying to win a vuvuzela by scoring a penalty past an inflatable goalkeeper. I was pleased to see that not many succeeded as whilst I enjoyed the novelty that the vuvuzelas brought to the World Cup I’d rather they didnt catch on elsewhere.

As kickoff approached I took my place in the North Stand with the Jeonbuk supporters. There were probably a few hundred of them there in a crowd that I’d estimate to be about five thousand. The stadium was well designed, with no running track and steep slopes to the stands ensuring that the fans were close to the pitch. I got a couple of Hite beers to see me through the first half as the teams came out and was pleased to see that Lee Dong Gook was back in the starting eleven after his two goals as a substitute the previous week.

Jeonbuk were in their usual luminous green shirts with Daejeon in maroon. Just before kick off the Jeonbuk fans unfurled a variety of home made banners that looked like they had been made after, or perhaps during, a particularly heavy drinking session. Quite a few of the Daejeon fans were playing those little cymbals alongside their songs and so sounded a bit like a group of Buddhist monks. Even so, it’s still better than the vuvuzelas.

Jeonbuk started the better of the two teams with Lee Dong Gook twice going close in the first quarter of an hour with a volley from the edge of the box and a close range header that was very well saved. The first goal wasn’t far away for Jeonbuk though as Tae-Uk Choi beat the Daejeon keeper at his near post. Ten minutes before half time Jeonbuk made it two as Lee Dong Gook and his fellow striker Krunoslav Lovrek broke clear. Lee Dong Gook drew the keeper and generously rolled the ball across an open goal for the Croatian to tap it into an empty net. The Jeonbuk fans chanted Lee Dong Gook’s name in recognition of his unselfishness.

The game was over just before half time as in another quick break Eninho added a third for Jeonbuk to finish Daejeon off. I got another couple of Hites for the second half and as darkness fell the Jeonbuk fans made the most of one of those days when it all goes right.

 Jeonbuk had a song which I’m sure was in English and appeared to consist mainly of the words,

“Don’t forget you’re shite, don’t forget you’re shite, don’t forget you’re shite, woah woh”

Aimed at the Daejeon fans as a bit of constructive criticism on the performance of their team it seemed to make perfect sense. But then, remembering the Korean tendency to pick up every piece of their litter before leaving I did wonder if they were actually reminding each other to tidy up after themselves before going home,

“Don’t forget your shite, don’t forget your shite, don’t forget your shite, woah woh”

Jeonbuk rounded off the day with a fourth goal, a long range shot from Luiz Henrique, fifteen minutes from the end. Lee Dong Gook had a few late chances, but despite the Jeonbuk crowd willing him on to get a goal it never quite fell right for him.

 At the final whistle I got the subway back to my hotel, the four horses above the door making it easier than normal to find it

Next day I got a taxi to Sutunggol and hiked up Bingyesan and Geumsubing. The first of those two peaks was 358 metres high and it took just over an hour walking through thick forest to reach it. In fact the forest was so dense that there wasn’t much of a view, even at the top.

 I had hoped that carrying on to the next peak, Geumsubong, which was listed at 532 metres, would mean a leisurely 150 metre stroll up a ridge. It didn’t. In a snakes and ladderesque disappointment there were a series of stairways downwards off the peak that meant ten minutes after being sat on the top of Bingyesan, I was down in the valley between the two hills with it all to do again.

An hour or so later I was at the top of Geumsubing sharing Makkeoli and food with three Korean lads I’d got talking to on the way up. Unusually, they werent kitted out for hiking as seems to be almost compulsory here, but were wearing quite smart shoes and trousers. Two of them were in the Korean Army and appeared to have just decided on a whim to have a quick jaunt up a couple of hills.

On the way down we stopped at a river where, as customary, everyone removed their footwear and cooled their feet down.

At the bottom of the hill we nipped into a restaurant for some duck and what was possibly the spiciest pepper I’d had since getting here. We had a couple of kettles of makkeoli and one of the lads went through a litre of soju in about half an hour. Thats the equivalent of drinking two thirds of a bottle of vodka with your tea.

It was still early and with the makkeoli kicking in we headed back into town in their pickup truck, fortunately not driven by the soju drinker. He did come close to falling out of the door a couple of times though. We rounded the afternoon off at a billiard club where, to my relief, they agreed to play pool or ‘pocketball’ as they call it here, rather than billiards on the tables without any pockets. After a pleasant hour or so, I got the train back up to Seoul where it had eventually stopped raining.

Jeonbuk’s win had kept them in sixth place, but narrowed the gap to top of the table Jeju United to three points. Next week Jeonbuk are away to Gangwon and I think I’ll pop along to that one too.

I didn’t go to a World Cup until Germany four years ago, something that amazes me now. Although if I look back I can generally see why. From 1966 to 1978 I was too young. The next one in Spain in 1982 would have been a great one to go to however, I was seventeen and it was sandwiched between the summer after I’d left school where I’d hitchhiked around France and the year after when I’d partied in Ibiza. A world Cup in Spain seems like just the sort of thing I’d have wanted to do. Maybe my twenty five quid a week YOP Scheme didn’t stretch to it. Mexico in 1986 was too far away and besides I was at college in London, in the middle of a set of exams for a course that I’d rarely attended.

By 1990 I was married with a baby and the prospect of heading off to watch a World Cup was as likely as Bobby Robson actually naming me in the squad itself. I had managed to get myself divorced by the time the next tournament came around in the USA, but as a consequence was pretty skint and with childcare responsibilities. Same as with France 98. By the time of the 2002 tournament in Japan and South Korea I probably could have afforded to go and could easily have squared it with my kids, but I didn‘t bother. Perhaps I was put off by the reports in the newspapers of expensive flights and travel difficulties. A shame really, as when I visit some of the World Cup stadiums now I can imagine how good it must have been.

So Germany in 2006 was my first tournament and I had a fantastic time. So good that I resolved to go to South Africa and do it all again. I wavered a bit between tournaments, discouraged once again by the media forebodings about expensive flights, lack of accommodation and the near certainty that I would be mugged and murdered before I’d even cleared customs. As tends to happen with me though I bought the tickets on a whim one afternoon and that was that.

This happened about nine months before the tournament was due to start and before the qualifiers were even known. Cape Town was already sold out and so I’d gone for two matches in Johannesburg and one in nearby Rustenburg. My friend Paul, who had been to Germany with me, was happy to come along despite him not really bothering much with football these days.

We flew into Johannesburg on the second day of the competition, the evening of England’s game with the USA. We were staying in Rustenburg, where the match was taking place, but unfortunately weren’t scheduled to land until half time. By the time we got to Rustenburg the match was over and we were just in time for the post mortem, which centred mainly around Rob Green and his inability to prevent the tamest of shots from crossing the line.

We didnt have a match until the Monday, Holland against Denmark in Johannesburg, so on Sunday we decided to go hiking. First though, we had to collect our match tickets. In an attempt to cut down on touting, FIFA had decided not to send out tickets by post, but to make everyone collect them in person in South Africa. You could pick them up at any of the designated collection points and so we got Jan, a South African who worked at our guest house and who had very kindly volunteered to drop us off at the place we planned to hike, to detour to the local mall where the collection point had been set up. Jan told us that the previous day the place had been packed and that he had needed to pull a few strings to avoid a long wait. Hardly surprising I thought, with England and the USA in town. The next game in Rustenburg was one that we were attending, New Zealand v Slovakia in two days time, and somehow I doubted that it would have the same clamour for tickets.

When we got there, the place was empty, apart from security guards and ticket staff. The requirements for picking up your tickets were your passport and the credit card that you had bought them with. I’d brought neither, my passport was back at the guest house and the credit card had expired and been replaced. It didnt matter, my driving licence and the new credit card were sufficient and a couple of minutes later two tickets were printed for each of the Holland v Denmark, New Zealand v Slovakia and Argentina v South Korea games. It all worked very well, although I was grateful that we hadn‘t been trying to collect them the day before.

Jan dropped us off at The Kloof, a national park with a great big ravine in it. We spent a few hours climbing up it, alongside a waterfall and then hiking through the hills and woods around it.

It was a really hot day despite it being the middle of  their winter. This being Africa, I was hoping to see some wildlife and wasn’t disappointed. We saw some sort of deer get a bit skittish as we surprised it and then watched a Black Eagle gliding in the valley below us as well as dragonflies and butterflies that looked nothing like the ones at home. It was great to look out onto the plains from the top of The Kloof, it all looked so, well, African. I tried a Tarzan style elephant call, but it didnt have the desired effect.

Having hiked a bit in Korea lately where you often have to queue at busy sections of the paths, it was a pleasure to be away from the crowds. Once we got beyond the bottom of the ravine we didnt see any other walkers. We bumped into a couple of rangers cooling their feet in a stream and another group of them later, presumably on poacher patrol, but that was it.

We got down to the bottom again about four hours later only to discover that the short cut we had taken had meant that we had missed the monkeys that congregate around the regular path. A woman who lived nearby told us that they just come into the houses, raid the fridge and if anyone tries to stop them they are capable of biting your arm clean off. Sounds like my kids I thought, although I doubt that the monkeys put the empty food wrappers back in the fridge.

We caught the end of the Ghana v Serbia game in a bar where we knocked back cans of Castle beer at less than a quid a go before Jan arrived to give us a lift back. The place where we were staying was in the suburbs of Rustenburg and in a stroke of good luck was only about twenty minutes walk from the Fans Park. All we had heard before we came out were warnings about security, but Jan was adamant that it was safe to walk around Rustenburg at night. We took his advice and set off to watch the Germany v Australia game on the big screen.

We walked in the dark through a residential area, noticing just how much colder it had got since the hiking earlier in the day. I doubt that the temperature was much above freezing, although it was a very still night. All of the houses had big fences and gates, most of them topped with barbed wire. The windows and doors tended to have bars on them and most of the houses also had a guard dog and security signs promising everything from shooting to electrocution to anyone considering attempting to pop a Herald and Post through the letterbox.

We rarely saw anyone else walking, so whilst it seemed safe enough, I suspect that most people didnt feel it was advisable. We amused ourselves by barking at the guard dogs, setting off a chain reaction amongst them that probably had a few householders reaching for their elephant guns.

Once at the Fans Park we were searched and were quickly inside. It was a big field, possibly the grounds of a school and about the size of six football pitches. There were numerous food stalls around the perimeter, an enormous and well stocked beer tent and a stage and big screen at one end. The only downside was the lack of people. I’d spent a day at a Fans Park in Munich four years previously and there were thousands there, tens of thousands probably. Tonight though I’d estimate that the crowd was somewhere between two and three hundred. We had a few beers at fifteen rand a pop and watched a very good performance from Germany as they comprehensively beat Australia, before we got lost on the walk back.

Meanwhile, South Korea had beaten Greece in their first game giving them a great chance of qualifying for the knockout stages.It was also reported on the radio that condom sales had gone up fivefold in Korea following the victory. Typical, just when I’m out of town too. I dont think Lee Dong Gook got off the bench, no doubt they were keeping him back for the big game against Argentina on Thursday.  

Monday and it was our first game, Holland against Denmark in Johannesburg. We had looked into the transport options and the easiest way of getting there was to hire a car and driver for the day. Bartes turned up at 9am in his 4×4. He was a South African builder who was earning a bit of extra cash by doing driving jobs during the World Cup.

`I’ve just got to drop off the wildebeast head on the roof at a taxidermist first` he said as we got into his car. The place that we drove to was shut, but he was given directions to another before almost reversing over a Yorkshire terrier as he turned his car around. We got there without adding to the carcass count and went inside. There were plenty of stuffed heads on the wall and a variety of works in progress in the barn outside. Bartes tipped out the head from the sack on the roof and told us that it had cost him three thousand rand to shoot it and another three thousand rand to have it stuffed. By the time we got away it was already well after ten o’clock but it would have been the best excuse ever if we had missed the kick off.

We drove on to Johannesburg via the back roads, passing through a couple of townships where the houses were pretty basic. We also passed platinum mines, fields of orange trees and a sign saying `Hijacking Hotspot for next 4km` before we were dropped off at the Park and Ride at noon. It was very well organised, we queued for buses and within half an hour were at the stadium. It didnt take long to get through security and into the ground, although it then took us nearly an hour to find our seats as we were continually directed to our left, eventually performing more than an entire circuit of the stadium at various heights. It was very impressive though once we got to our seats, with a great view despite being in the second to back row.

The game itself was nothing special with Holland beating an unadventurous Denmark team with a couple of scrappy goals.

On the plus side, the vuvuzelas weren’t a big deal, just a background buzz that you didn‘t notice after a while and there were no queues for the thirty rand Budweisers with most people joining the seperate queues for soft drinks. At full time it took an hour to get back to the Park and Ride and then another hour crawling through the traffic to get out of Johannesburg with us finally getting back to Rustenburg just before 7pm.

We nipped out to a local restaurant about fifteen minutes walk away where I had a steak with a snails starter. The snails were enormous, no doubt African snails and not European. They were very nice though, although I suspect that most things in garlic butter are. We had been warned before we went out not to accept a lift from anyone we met in the restaurant bar. Apparently someone had been befriended in there the week before and at the end of the evening had accepted the offer of a lift home only to be robbed at gunpoint once inside the car. We didnt make any new friends though and got safely back on foot.

The next day, Tuesday, meant it was New Zealand against Slovakia at Rustenburg.and it was a much colder day than the previous two. In fact, it seemed like an autumn day in the UK as I got up, with a cold wind blowing the leaves around the garden of the guest house. There were reports on the news of snow blocking remote roads near Cape Town and I watched highlights of Italy v Paraguay from the previous day amid torrential rain.

We got a minibus to the stadium with two New Zealand fans and a Sunderland lad who updated us on the progress of Cattermole and Zenden. He had been to the game at Rustenberg on Saturday evening between England and the USA and he remarked upon how much heavier the traffic had been. Not today though and fifteen minutes later we were at the ground and were straight in. Although the Sunderland fan did have his ambitious attempt to take four bottles of Grolsh into the stadium thwarted by security. FIFA, unlike the miserable gits at UEFA, are fine with you drinking in the ground, even at your seat, but they draw the line at you bringing in your own supplies.

Whilst the Soccer City stadium that we had been to in Johannesburg had been built specifically for the World Cup, the Rustenburg ground was about forty years old. It hadn‘t been updated much by the look of it and there were no electronic turnstiles, just people removing the stubs after you had been checked by security. We had a couple of Budweisers at thirty rand each, which whilst three times the price of the beers we had drank in the bar at The Kloof still weren‘t too bad value at less than three quid each.

There seemed to be a lot more New Zealanders at the game than Slovakians, although perhaps they were just a bit more noticable. Taking advantage of the lack of queues we had a couple more beers and went up to our seats ten minutes before kick off. We had a good position again, near the halfway line in the upper tier. It was an oval stadium with a capacity of about forty thousand, mainly open air with just the stand opposite to us having a roof. There was a running track around the pitch and a backdrop of hills in most directions.

It was only about half full though at kick off, which is disappointing in a World Cup. I’d seen transport issues blamed for empty seats at other games, but doubted that could be the case here. At half time it was still scoreless and we nipped down for a couple more beers to ward off the cold. We met the Sunderland lad again and he told us that the gates had been opened after twenty minutes to let locals in for free and this was helping to get rid of the empty spaces. They all got a food and drink voucher too. A nice gesture from whoever made the decision.

Slovakia took the lead just after the restart and looked to be well in control. The New Zealand fans kept behind their team all the way through though, singing `Super Chrissy Killen` even after he had been subbed.

In the dying moments New Zealand committed a few more people forward and snatched an equaliser causing wild celebrations amongst the fans near us. At the final whistle we came out to somehow find our van just outside of the turnstile with no other vehicle anywhere near. I felt like Sepp Blatter as we drove through the rest of the walking fans making their way back to the car parks and within fifteen minutes we were warming up in a bar watching the Ivory Coast take on Portugal.

We didn‘t have a game on the Wednesday and so had fixed up a trip to a game reserve. Or rather two game reserves. At the first one we went for a walk accompanied by a couple of guides, one of them armed with a stick. He had given us the safety talk before we went inside which pretty much consisted of do what he said and if a rhino charged towards us climb up the nearest tree as quick as we could. I dont think he needed to mention the `quickly` bit. Anyway we saw quite a few animals including impala, kutu and wildebeast. We were just on the way out when we spotted a couple of white rhinos, no more than about sixty yards away. I picked my tree just in case and we watched them for a few minutes before quietly moving on.

In the afternoon we went into the Pilanesberg Game Reserve. This one you stayed in your car and we saw just about everything but lions and leopards.

We spent about four hours being driven around by Morgan who must have thought that it was one of his better driving jobs.

In the evening we thought that we would have another trip to the Fans Park. It was much busier this time as South Africa were playing Uruguay and there must have been a couple of thousand people there. The vuvuzelas were particularly noisy as you got a double dose from the sound on the big screen match and also the people in the crowd. We had a go with them and it takes a fair effort to get a noise out of them.

We got talking to a couple of South African lads who were very keen for us to leave the park with them, either to see their car or to see their house, or to go to a bar. It was one reason after another and seemed a bit suspicious. They wouldn‘t sod off until a girl who seemed to have taken a fancy to me told them that I was going home with her. That did the trick. Unfortunately Paul was a bit worried that she was in on it with them and persuaded me that it was wise for us to leg it while she went for a piss. Anyway, we weren‘t missing much, the crowd was pretty subdued with South Africa getting beat and we saw the last two Uruguay goals back at the guest house.

The next day we had our final live game, Argentina versus South Korea, back at the Soccer City Stadium in Johannesburg. Without the need to drop off a wildebeast head this time we got there a bit earlier and our previous visit meant that it didn‘t take us nearly an hour to find our seats this time. So we had a few beers and watched the Korean fans taking group photos and just about half the stadium wearing the blue and white stripes of what was for many a temporarily adopted nation. I had a tub of what looked like ice cream but was actually warm mash and gravy. Brilliant. It should be the next innovation at the Riverside.

We were on the other side of the stadium this time, still in the upper tier but lower down. Great seats. I was sat next to a fella from Honduras who was telling me how wonderful the Premier League was, not because of the big four, but because of the standard of the games between the clubs at the bottom. I don‘t have the foggiest about the Honduras league. In fact I dont really know anything about Honduras, so it was a bit of a one sided conversation.

It was a good game, with South Korea showing a lot more ambition against better opponents than Denmark had done against Holland earlier in the week. There were still a lot of empty seats though, possibly up to ten thousand and I’d noticed a lot of touting outside as people struggled to offload tickets. You know the score, two early goals for Argentina, Korea pulling one back just before half time and Argentina sealing it a couple more in the second half.

Lee Dong Gook made an appearance as expected, his first at a World Cup since 1998, but he didn‘t manage to get on the scoresheet. The Park and Ride was a bit slower this time on the way out, but it still worked well enough and we were back in Rustenburg by about 7pm.

Friday brought a change of scenery. We had told Carien, who owned the guest house where we were staying, that we fancied doing a bit more hiking and so she had arranged for us to stay at her Uncle’s farm, about an hour away and on the road to Botswana. They called it a farm, but it seems more like a game reserve to me. They have it stocked with a variety of animals, giraffe, zebra, wildebeast, lots of different types of antelopes and then stuff like warthogs. They make their money through tourism with visitors paying to stay there, some of them going on viewing tours and some of them shooting the animals.

I dont think thay got many hikers as they seemed a bit surprised that we wanted to just wander off without a vehicle and they gave us a walkie talkie so that we could get in touch if a leopard or something gave us a bit of a nip. We walked for a few hours, straying off the paths and were rewarded with sightings of giraffe and wildebeast.

When we returned mid afternoon, we were soon back out again, this time in a truck. I had decided that since I was there I might as well have a try at hunting. The plan was for me to shoot an impala, which is some sort of gazelle. Or a bit like Bambi, as Paul thoughtfully pointed out. I didnt see it as a problem, they are bred or bought in to be hunted and the meat is eaten. It’s not as if I’m taking pot shots at pet pugs for a laugh. They took me to somewhere quiet and got me to take a practice shot with the rifle, just to make sure that I wasn‘t likely to pop a cap in the ass of a ranger by mistake. I got within an inch of the centre of the target from about twenty metres, which was deemed acceptable and so we set off.

I must admit, I got a bit of a kick from riding around in the back of a truck with a loaded rifle in my hand. It took a tremendous effort to resist shooting anything I saw, from small birds to the truck’s tyres. After a couple of hours we found some impalas and one was pointed out to me. It was only about twenty metres away and I was told to go for a head shot. Problem was, a moving target wasn‘t as easy as the cardboard square that I’d hit earlier and I missed. The impala’s scattered and we didnt find any more. We did see more giraffe, zebras and kutu though and quite close up this time.

It was back to the lodge for a barbecue and the second England game on the telly. I fell asleep and missed most of it, although I was later told that wasn‘t necessarily a bad thing.

Next morning and I was back out in the truck again, this time without Paul who had got a bit bored with my previous days birdscaring efforts. We didnt find any impala, despite at one point leaving the truck and creeping through the woods. Walking with a rifle I felt like I was in the credits from Dad’s Army. As time went on it became obvious that we weren‘t going to find any impala. I was told that as there were some blessbok nearby though and it would be ok to shoot one of those instead despite a blessbok being a larger and more valuable animal. It didn‘t take us long to locate a few of them, on a hill about a hundred metres away. One of them was pointed out to me and I was told to aim for the heart, with a shot that would enter just under the front armpit. If blessboks have armpits that is.

This time it stood still and I brought it down with a shot that missed the armpit and hit it in the neck instead. Thats about a foot from where I intended, not too bad from a distance of a hundred metres away I thought. We drove towards it and then approached by foot. It wasn‘t dead when we got there but its life was quickly ebbing away as the blood flowed from the two neck wounds. By the time I posed for photos it was unconscious with an occasional twitch of its legs.

I had mixed feelings about killing it. There was still a sense of exhilaration from shooting the rifle and a sense of relief that after having driven around for six hours I hadn’t ended up with nothing more than the previous days missed shot to show for it. But it was quite sad in a way too. Despite the animals being bred for hunting and their meat, I’d still ended its life early at about five years old. Whose to say that if I hadnt turned up it wouldn‘t have had offspring, or had the benefit of another couple of years wandering about in the countryside? In hindsight I dont think I would do it again.

As we dropped it off at the butchery twenty minutes later, I gave it a pat, pretty much as you would a dog, and it was still warm. It will live on in a way though as I’ve arranged to have its head stuffed and shipped on to me so that I can hang it in the hall and use it as a hatstand.

And that was the World Cup. We’d only been there for a week but had managed to pack a fair bit into the time. It was as good an experience as Germany four years previously had been which was something that I didnt think would be possible. For those of you interested in Lee Dong Gook, he got onto the pitch again against Uruguay in the last sixteen game that saw South Korea eliminated. No doubt causing the rise in condom sales in Korea to be reversed.

Roll on Brazil in 2014.

My second weekend in Seoul meant my first K-League match. K for Korean I imagine if anyone was wondering. Or maybe not, perhaps it’s sponsored by Kwick E Mart or someone. There are a lot of convenience stores in Korea, so it’s possible. The matches here seem to be spread over the full weekend as they are pretty much everywhere these days, with a game or two on Friday night and the others split between Saturday and Sunday. My local team, Seoul F.C, had a game at 3pm on the Sunday afternoon against Lee Dong Gook’s Jeonbuk Motors. The stadium is a fair distance from the city centre, but with a subway station actually called World Cup Stadium, I wasn’t too worried about finding it.

 I’d actually passed through that subway station the previous day on the way to the hills on the Northern edge of town. I’ve always liked doing a bit of hiking and thought that being out here shouldn’t be any reason to have to miss out. I met up with a group of mainly Americans at a subway station and ten minutes later we were at the bottom of a hill in the Bukhansan National Park.

 Part of the attraction of getting out into the hills in the UK is the remoteness, the solitude, the chance to get away from the towns and the crowds. Here though, it couldn’t have been more different. The paths were not only extremely well defined, but they were generally fenced in to stop people straying from the intended route. On sections where it got a bit steep, metal cable replaced the fencing, sometimes on sheer sections iron railings were provided to haul yourself up with. Occasionally a knotted rope would be handily placed to help with steep descents. The hardest aspect to get used to though was the number of people. Even though this was apparently very early in the Korean hiking season, the paths were packed with hikers of all ages. Quite often, on a steep section or on a path where the ice hadn’t quite melted, there would be a queue of people patiently waiting their turn to move forward. On sections where the path got a bit wider, groups of hikers would attempt to overtake slower walkers in front of them and a bottleneck would form as the path narrowed again.

The solitude of the mountains

 We got up four separate peaks in the day as we walked from Dokbawi to Munsubung and each one had hundreds of people on the top of them, most of whom had brought elaborate picnics, often with chairs and blankets. I’ve been on some of the more popular Lake District routes in the summer so I know what a crowded peak can be like, but this was something completely different. One of the walkers I was with told me that as the season went on it got so much busier and at its most congested you could barely see any rock for people. I had a good day out, the views over Seoul were fantastic and it was interesting to see the type of terrain in those hills, but it wasn’t my idea of a day out hiking. Still, it’s as near as I’m going to get out here I suspect, so I’m sure I’ll be joining the queues again soon.

 There were a few polite queues at the subway on the way to the match too, which I found equally unusual. The subway all seems very modern, it’s a bit like that new line in London where the tracks are behind glass. I like that, one of the things in life that makes me twitchy is waiting for a tube train in London at those stations that don’t seem to have changed since the days when Jack the Ripper had an Oyster Card. I tend to stand with my back to the wall to try and discourage those frustrated with life in the Capital from shoving me in front of an oncoming train. I feel a lot more comfortable in the modern stations where the worst they can do when the pace of life down there becomes too much is toss random Northerners against the glass barrier rather than onto the track.

 In Seoul, there are markings on the floor in front of each of the doors in the glass barrier where the people waiting for the train queue up. I’d always thought Britain was a place that was big on queuing but this certainly beats the sort of scrum that we tend to have on our underground. It beats us for price too, a single journey worked out at about 70p. I’m sure I paid four quid for the opportunity to dice with death last time I was in London.

 As the train made its way towards the World Cup Stadium I was entertained by a bloke going from carriage to carriage selling some sort of implement for unblocking sinks. He had brought a variety of plumbing with him and was demonstrating how this device would remove the most stubborn blockage in a hundred and one different ways. I have to say I was pretty impressed. But for all that I think he had the wrong crowd. How many people on their way to the match are going to make that sort of impulse buy? If he had been selling them after the game and if you were in a generous mood after seeing your team win then I suppose it’s something that you might buy to take back home with you as a treat for the wife, but honestly, who would want to lug it around with them all afternoon at the match?

 A little further on, an old lady sat down next to me. Her husband, who looked about ninety, was stood next to her. I got up and offered him my seat. He politely declined. I insisted and he declined just as politely a second time. This was getting a bit embarrassing now, with everyone watching. Again, I was unsure of the etiquette, do people offer their seats to the elderly in Korea? Maybe it is seen as an insult. Perhaps he felt I needed the seat more than he did. I offered one more time and with another big grin he refused. I did think about grabbing him by the lapels and manhandling him into the seat, but I had a nagging thought at the back of my mind that he may have been a retired ninja or something and he might politely extract my eyeballs from my skull with the handy sink plunger and, equally politely, replace them with my testicles. One hundred and two uses for it then. Perhaps that might clinch a sale or two. I reckoned that the crowd on the train had already had enough entertainment with the kitchen sink unblocker for one day though and I didn’t want to amuse them any more than necessary by having a bloke twice my age and half my size demonstrate his plumbing prowess on me. So I sheepishly sat back down to big smiles all around. Fortunately the next stop was the football stadium so I was able to get off pretty sharpish.

 The stadium was built for the 2002 World Cup, which makes sense really, building it for the following one in Germany would have been a bit of a balls up, and it was an impressive sight. I walked quite a long way around it as I often do and passed a swimming baths and a large supermarket built into the ground level of the stadium. Near the main walkway from the car parks were a number of stalls, some selling food, others replica shirts and one at which people could sign up for season tickets. I didn’t manage to work out how much they cost for the fourteen home games in the season, but there was a decent crowd of people buying them.

 My plan whilst I’m in Korea is to get around as many of the clubs as possible rather than revisiting the same stadium, so despite the potential savings a season ticket was of no use to me and I made my way up the steps to the ticket office. It was fortunate that I’d arrived early as there was a queue that snaked along the concourse for about a hundred yards. It wasn’t quite of the proportions of when we queued for the chance to buy Wembley tickets twenty years ago and the queues seemed to encompass most of Middlesbrough, but it certainly beat anything that I’d encountered on the hills the previous day.

It didn't quite reach Linthorpe Road

 The queue moved quickly though and I was soon at one of the eight ticket windows. I had a choice of paying 20,000 won (about twelve quid) for the West stand, 12000 won for the East and South or 8000 for North. I guessed that West and East would be the stands along the sides of the pitch and handed over my 12000 won for a ticket in the East stand. Fortunately the East stand had signs up identifying it and I joined a queue for one of the entrances. A steward, noticing the ticket in my hand, re-directed me to a different queue as the one I’d joined was exclusively for season ticket holders. Ticket scanned, I was soon into the ground and having a look around. There didn’t seem to be any seating details on my ticket, or if there was, I couldn’t read them and so I just sat wherever I fancied. The free seating surprised me a bit as I’d been to the cinema the previous week and was given a ticket for a specific seat. If allocating seats was the norm at the pictures it seemed strange not to do it for a football match. Incidentally at the cinema, I was the third person to go in and my seat was right next to the only other two people in there, a young couple sat towards the back. I was tempted to tell them to behave themselves as I sat down but thought better of it. I suspect they were equally tempted to tell me to f**k off and sit somewhere else, but they must have thought better of it too.

 The back row of the lower tier of the stadium was designed to accommodate pushchairs and quite a few people had taken advantage of this, turning up with sleeping toddlers. Some of the pushchairs were even loaded up with shopping from the in-stadium supermarket. Coming from a country that rarely seems to make adequate provision for disabled supporters, never mind people with babies and shopping, the arrangements were very impressive.

 I was right about the East Stand being down the side and it gave me the same view for 12,000 won that the West would have given me for 20,000. Jeonbuk had a few hundred supporters behind the goal in the South Stand, whilst the Seoul fans that looked likely to be making the noise were in the North Stand.

 We had a few fireworks in the build up to the game and a girl band called T-ara mimed a couple of numbers as well. They seemed quite popular, a Korean version of Girl’s Aloud or something by the sound of them. I thought I’d occupy myself by trying to work out which one was meant to be modeled upon which Girl’s Aloud band member, but as I’m not actually much more familiar with Girl’s Aloud than I am with their Korean counterparts T-ara, I got stuck after ‘Geordie Racist’ so had to give it up. Never mind though, it was time for the teams to come out. At my club, Middlesbrough, we have Pigbag as the run out song; or rather the run off after the handshaking thing song, as everyone gets the same tune to enter the pitch to in England these days. For those fans at Middlesbrough whose heart has ever sunk at the “Der Der Der Der” of Pigbag, count yourself lucky. The tune that Seoul has somehow appropriated is “If You’re Happy And You Know It, Clap Your Hands”. And they must be, because they did, bless them.

 The game kicked off to another volley of fireworks, which took me a bit by surprise. Seoul were wearing red and black stripes, Jeonbuk a sort of luminous green. Both teams were well supported by the fans behind each goal who stood and chanted all game. They had plenty of banners, even a flare, which I suspect, given the care with which the Koreans were disposing of their rubbish, was carefully extinguished and dropped into a bin labeled as being especially for incendiary devices.

 There were a couple of non Korean players, Dejan Damjanovich and Adilson for Seoul, who stood out pretty much because they weren’t Koreans. Lee Dong Gook was recognizable to me putting himself about up front for Jeonbuk. Halfway through the first half it started to rain and a lot of people in the lower tiers migrated to the upper tiers which, whilst still not totally dry, offered a little bit more protection than those seats closer to the pitch.

 At half time it was goalless and most people around me were eating from little cardboard boxes of sushi or bags of dried squid. I don’t know what Roy Keane would have to say about that. Into the second half and the attendance in the 65,000 capacity stadium was announced as 38,641. I would never have estimated that many people being there. It only looked about a third full at most to me. Perhaps a lot of those pushchairs held twins.

 With three minutes remaining Lee Dong Gook, who had had a pretty good game leading the line for Jeonbuk despite never looking like scoring, won a header which led to a Jeonbuk goal. The home crowd took it pretty stoically, although a fair few carefully collected their sushi packaging and made their way out. Jeonbuk had a player sent off for something off the ball in injury time but held on for a 1-0 victory and with seven points from three games moved to the top of the league. Before leaving the pitch the players all lined up for that organized handshaking thing that they do before kickoff and then the Seoul players made a point of walking to each touchline, lining up and bowing together to the fans. I can’t see that catching on in Middlesbrough after a defeat. The standard of football didn’t seem a whole lot different from what I’d been watching in the Championship with the Boro this season, no real outstanding players, plenty of mistakes, but with no-one seeming capable of punishing them.

 I decided to avoid the crowd at the subway on the way out and had a look around a market near to the ground. In addition to the stalls selling vegetables and filleted fish, there were a lot of live fish in tanks. It looked as if a few of the Koreans were just killing time too, some with kids treating it a bit like a trip at the zoo. I remember doing a similar thing with my Dad on a Saturday morning at Stockton market as a kid. Whilst my Mam did the shopping, we would always go and have a look at the pet stall and then call into the indoor market under the town Hall to see the dead rabbits hanging from the hooks. Whilst it might not have been Flamingo Land, it was better than trailing around the other stalls with my Mam whilst she looked in vain for one selling something that could unlock a sink in a hundred and one different ways.

 Next week it’s a trip down south on the Korean version of the ‘bullet train’ to see a bullfighting festival, yes really, and then bottom of the table Daegu taking on Ulsan.