South China v Tuen Mun, Saturday 10th September 2011, 5.30pm

September 25, 2011

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.

Posted in Football | 2 Comments »

LG Twins v Doosan Bears, Wednesday 7th September 2011, 6.30pm

September 22, 2011

Wednesday night and it was time for another dose of end of season fifth plays sixth baseball. I know that sounds like I’m less than enthusiastic about it all, but I’m not. The main attraction for me is just sitting outside on a warmish evening and watching a bit of sport, so I don’t need a game where the result matters or where there is a lively atmosphere to enhance the occasion. I’d be just as happy if the stadium was virtually empty, I think.

This game promised to have a decent crowd however and as it was between local rivals Doosan Bears and LG Twins, it was likely to have a competitive edge to it that their lowly respective positions in the standings wouldn’t normally bring about. For what it’s worth, Doosan had won their last four games and were closing in on LG for the fifth spot. That didn’t mean a lot though as neither team had any realistic prospect of finishing fourth and earning a play-off place.

Jen and I walked there, getting to the Jamsil stadium at twenty past seven, fifty minutes after the start. We were offered blue section seats near the action by a granny tout for less than their face value of 12,000 won but I fancied having a bit of distance between us and the fans banging their inflatable sticks so we just got a couple of 7,000 won outfield tickets from the box office instead.

Despite it being a derby, the stadium was half empty as we took our seats towards the end of the third innings. The score was level at a run each. It was a lot cooler than it had been at the previous week’s visit, hopefully a sign that Autumn had finally arrived. As you might expect Spring and Autumn are the best times to be in Korea.

Koreans often rattle on about Korea having four seasons as if it’s more than every other country has. What next? They have day and night? What they usually fail to mention though is the relative shortness of Spring and Autumn. This year I reckon that Spring lasted for a total of three days. At least that was the length of time between me having to have the heating on in my apartment and me needing to start-up the air-conditioning. Three days. I might have missed Spring altogether if I’d gone for a decent shit.

Lee Sang Yeol  was the starting pitcher for LG and he conceded again in the fourth when Kim Dong Joo hit a home run to make it two-one to the notional visitors. I’d normally post a photo of both starting pitchers, but unfortunately I’ve mistakenly deleted all my pictures from this game so you’ll just have to imagine what Mr. Lee looks like. Doosan were wearing their black away strip as they were the away team, but here’s one I’d taken at a previous game of home run scorer Kim Dong Joo.

Kim Dong Joo - Pretend he has his black away shirt on.

The lad who had started last weeks game against Nexen, Kim Seung Hoi, was pitching for the Bears. LG equalised in their fourth innings but I missed it as I was concentrating on my brie and crackers.

Kim Seung Hoi - Doosan Bears

At half time there was some game that seemed to involve trying to make your opponent move his or her feet whilst doing your best not to move your own. It was a bit confusing but apparently someone did enough to win a trip to the Philippines.

The 'Don't Move Your Feet' game

In the seventh innings Kim Hyun Soo managed to crack one to third allowing Jung Soo Bin to get around for the run and put Doosan back in front. Someone else got home in the seventh as well, extending the lead to 4-2.

Kim Hyun Soo - Doosan Bears

There had been quite a lot of small kids in the crowd, but most of them started to drift off at this point. I suppose 9pm is late enough on a school night. One of them had a gadget consisting of a plastic finger on a telescopic stick. It looked ideal for gesturing at fans and players or for poking his contemporaries in the eye. I was impressed. I could do with one of those at work.

It’s getting harder to invent things these days as most of the good stuff has already been thought of. In the past I’d came up with ideas such as a spoon with a hole in it for people who don’t like too much milk on their cornflakes and the ‘Ryanair coat’ which looked a bit like one of those puffa jackets but instead of it coming pre-filled with insulation you stuffed your socks and underpants into the lining instead to reduce your luggage weight. Sadly I was a bit slow off the mark in both cases and someone else is now hawking them around the appropriate trade fairs.

The good news about drinking at the baseball though is it allows my mind to wander as to what the world really needs and sometime in the seventh innings I had a bit of a brainwave. Baby wigs. As good as a hat for keeping the kid’s head warm but also serving the purpose of stopping baldy babies from being bullied at Mother and Toddler group.

Sadly, I was too slow again.

You can barely tell it's not natural.

I did think afterwards about adapting the idea for dogs, but someone had been there before me too.

I'm not sure about the tie though.

In the ninth, someone else got around for Doosan to make it 5-2. I didn’t notice who it was as I was too busy planning my baby wig empire whilst eating fake Ferraro Rocher chocolates. That’s the way it finished with Doosan creeping slowly towards to LG’s fifth place in the standings and me wondering just how long I’d have before I’d need to put the heating on.

Posted in Baseball | 2 Comments »

World Athletics Championships, Daegu, Sunday 4th September 2011.

September 19, 2011

After Usain Bolt’s triumph the previous night Jen and I were back on the train from Gumi to Daegu the next morning for a bit more athletics. We managed to dump our backpacks in the lockers at the subway station and with the first event not starting until just after six we had plenty of time to have a wander around the town.

First stop was the zoo. I’m always happy to have a look around these places. I don’t even bother to take a small kid nowadays and pretend it’s for their pleasure rather than mine. Daegu Zoo is free to get into, which must be great for the local families who can pop along every weekend if they fancy, but it does mean that their animal buying budget isn’t quite what it could be.

They had a decent variety of animals, it’s just that most of them looked like either the runt of their litter or else not far from death’s door. None of them seemed to be prime specimens. The badger looked faker than a ten quid Louis Vuitton handbag and the tiger may very well have been dead.

The vultures were circling.

The elephant looked to be in reasonable nick, although it did have half a tusk missing which probably affected its value. It was as if the place was populated with other zoo’s cast-offs.

It didn't look too bad from its good side.

One of the benefits of zoos being a bit strapped for cash though is that they don’t mind you feeding the animals. It saves them a few quid and makes it all a bit more interesting for the people wandering around. Everybody wins really. Apart, I suppose, from the psychotic bear that was getting Cheesy Wotsits bounced off its skull.

You can see one on the floor.

After the zoo we had a walk around a market. I quite enjoy this sort of thing too, depending I suppose on the amount of animals, dead or alive. I’m not really one for shopping but if there are a few rabbits or dogs to have a gawp at then I’m happy enough. This place had plenty of livestock, with kittens, puppies, rabbits and chickens competing for space. I’m not sure which, if any, of them were intended to be pets rather than lunch but they looked in better condition than most of the inhabitants of the zoo.

You weren't allowed to feed these ones corn-based snacks.

With a couple of hours to go before the athletics started we got the subway to Daegu Grand Park. I wanted to be there early as our section was free seating and I was keen to be as close to the sandpit for the triple jump final as possible. It took about half an hour to walk from the station to the stadium and once there we were quickly inside.

Daegu Stadium

We were able to sneak across a few blocks from our section near to the start of the run up to somewhere much closer to where the jumpers would be landing. I did feel a little guilty initially but after seeing the way that so many of the Koreans behaved I soon put it out of my mind. The event was a sell-out officially. That doesn’t mean much over here where attendances are often announced in excess of the stadium capacity despite the place being no more than half-full. This time though it was probably correct. However, so many of the people coming in seemed to be saving seats for non-existent friends or using them to balance their bags or food on. The stewards were trying to get people to shift along, but were pretty much being ignored. The problem was compounded by a lot of athletes and coaches who had  ‘access all areas’ passes trying to find somewhere to sit. I was pleased that we had got there early or else we’d have been stood at the back.

There was still more than an hour to go before the first event.

The events started off with the women’s hammer throw. We were at the wrong end of the stadium for this one but quite handily placed to see some of the better throws land. Next we got the women’s 4x100m relay semi-finals where the Chinese team managed to get disqualified for a false-start. How rubbish must that have been for the runners on the later legs? If they hadn’t ran in the individual event then their Championship will have consisted of limbering up on the track and then being told to clear off without even getting to run.

The triple jump got underway and Phillip Idowu made a good start, leading through the first three rounds. There were a lot of coaches sat near us and it was amusing to watch them being ignored by their athletes when they were trying to give them a bollocking. Every now and then one of the jumpers would make the mistake of catching his coaches eye and he’d have to come over and be reminded of how to leap into a sandpit.

"Just jump further Sonny"

Next up we got Mo Farah in the 5000m. We’d watched him just miss out on gold a week earlier on the taxi driver’s sat nav coming back from the airport. This time though he went one better with a well-paced run that saw him drop to the back of the pack early on and then take it on in the last couple of laps.

It was an exceptionally slow race, the winning time of 13:23 being forty-six seconds off the world record of 12:37. Not that it matters in a championship race. I was amazed when I saw that world record time, by the way. One of the best athletic events that I’ve been to was the Bislett Games in Olso in 1985. We travelled up on the train from somewhere in Italy mainly to watch Steve Cram try to break the world mile record. He did, making the forty-eight hour journey and the subsequent night sleeping rough more than worthwhile. As a bit of a bonus we also saw Said Aouita lower the 5,000m mark to a fraction over thirteen minutes. The current record of 12:37 shows just how much athletes have improved at that distance over the last quarter of a century.

Even better, he did his lap of honour with our MFC union jack.

In round four of the triple jump, Idowu’s luck ran out as a lifetime best from the American, Christian Taylor, relegated him to second place. He improved upon his own mark with another consistent leap but it wasn’t enough and he had to settle for silver.

We needed to get away to catch our train and so would have to miss the closing relays. That meant that our final event was the women’s 800m. There has been a fair bit of controversy over some of the South African athletes competing at these games, specifically Oscar Pistorius and Caster Semenya. Whilst Pistorius would on the face of it seem to be disadvantaged in the 400m by being short of a couple of  legs, the fact that his carbon fibre replacements don’t get tired like legs do and uniquely allow him to accelerate in the closing stages when everyone else is slowing down makes me a little uneasy.

Likewise, Semenya running in the women’s races also seems a bit unfair. I appreciate that she’s grown her hair to try to look more feminine, but she’d have been better off  getting rid of the biceps and the bulge in the front of her shorts. If she is going to compete in the women’s races I think the IAAF should insist that she runs with her arms by her sides, palm facing downwards. It’s the only way to dispel the doubts.

Anyway, it looked like her mind wandered as she hit the home straight, perhaps because she was thinking ahead as to what she was going to cook her fella for his tea and she was overtaken by the Russian girl

Savinova takes the gold.

That was it for us and we headed out to find the area around the stadium crowded by people waiting for the closing fireworks. After the chaos of the previous evening we were able to hop into a taxi straightaway and were at Dongdaegu station in sufficient time to watch the relays on the telly before catching our train back to Seoul.

In a country that often gets a bit of flak for its organisation of sporting events, I thought the Championships went very well on the days that we were there. The place was full, the beer was free and we had minimal hassle. Just like it should be.

Posted in Athletics | 4 Comments »

World Athletics Championships, Daegu, Saturday 3rd September 2011.

September 18, 2011

I like watching athletics meetings as there always seems to be something going on. It’s usually organised so that the races have very little time between them and the field events tend to fill in any gaps that do occur. When my son was small we would often nip up to Gateshead Stadium, usually to watch one of his heroes, Linford Christie. We tend not to bother these days, partly because I’m not in the UK very often, but mainly because Linford must be about sixty these days and is probably supplementing his diet with Werthers Originals rather than anabolic steroids.

When I saw that the World Athletics Championships were coming to Daegu I thought that it might be difficult to get to see it. Fortunately they didn’t follow the shambolic approach opted by London for the Olympic tickets where the system encouraged people to apply for thousands of pounds worth of tickets in a lottery, resulting in some people getting, well, thousands of pounds worth of tickets whilst the majority failed to get any.

Seb Coe is the figurehead for London 2012 and so I’ll blame him for it. I used to like him as a runner. Not as much as Ovett obviously, but he did have a burst of acceleration similar to that of Ekbalco or Dancing Brave and a running style where his feet barely seemed to touch the track. I remember listening to his 800m Moscow defeat on a radio whilst sat at the top of some hill in the Lake District and then making sure that a few days later we got down to Keswick town centre in time to watch him take the 1500m gold on the tellies in the Rediffusion shop window.

Cheer up Seb, if you roll about enough on a judo mat with Billy Hague you might get a peerage.

Afterwards in his new role as a Tory politician, I never really had any time for him. I love the story about him being refused entry to a hospitality lounge at a Chelsea game though. I suspect it might be made up but I’ll tell it anyway. Apparently he was told that although his name appeared on the guest list he would have to walk around to the ticket office on the other side of the ground to collect a pass. When he kicked up a fuss and pointed out “But I’m Seb Coe, surely you must recognise me?“ the bloke that he was dealing with replied “Well, it shouldn’t take you long to get there then, should it?”

Luckily Lord Coe and his team weren’t heading up the Daegu ticketing operation and so a few months earlier I’d simply logged on to the World Athletics website and bought tickets for each of the last two days. The Saturday tickets were fifty quid each and I chose seats on the bend of the 200m so that we would hopefully get a decent view of Usain Bolt pulling away from the field. For the Sunday we got twenty-odd quid tickets next to the sand pit in the hope of seeing Philip Idowu take triple-jump gold. It couldn’t have been easier, select your seats, pay by credit card and collect the tickets from a box office near the main entrance. Hopefully without being then directed to the other side of the stadium as it would take me considerably longer than a former Olympic athlete.

Jen and I were staying in nearby Gumi and we’d hiked up a big hill in the Geumosan Provincial Park that morning. It’s only half an hour away by train though and despite me falling asleep, waking up in a panic and getting us off the train at Daegu rather than Dongdaegu, our taxi still got to the stadium in plenty of time.

It was fairly busy, but with half a dozen ticket offices we had our tickets in a few minutes. We were also given wristbands because it turned out that the fifty quid tickets we had for that day also entitled us to free food and drink. Nice. After a cursory search, we were inside and soon into the hospitality tent. I couldn’t fault it at all, plenty of food and a couple of fridges full of free beer. My sort of event really.

That's very kind of you.

The stadium itself was pretty impressive too. A lot of the third tier seats had been blanked off to allow the installation of a third big screen and to give the media more camera positions. We were in the bottom tier, but the slope was good enough to give us a decent view. We were at the end where the women’s high jump final was taking place and with all due respect to the male javelin throwers at the other end, we were at the right end of the arena.

Most of the high jumpers could have been catwalk models, although because of the nature of the event they tend not to wear much in the way of  haute couture. Gradually most of them were eliminated until we were down to a battle for the gold between Anna Chicherova and Blanka Vlašić. I usually just root for the best looking one, but in this event I was spoilt for choice. Eventually they both failed to clear 2.05m and the Russian took the gold on the countback.

Blanka Vlašić

After watching the Kenyans dominate the men’s 1500m it was time for the women’s 100m hurdles where Tiffany Porter came fourth for Great Britain. She used to run for America but competition for places is a bit stronger over there so now she runs for us. She demonstrated how quickly she has adapted to the ways of her new country though by clipping the final hurdle and graciously allowing someone else to take home a medal instead.

In between all that we had a couple of exhibition wheelchair races, included I suspect so that South Korea could have some athletes taking part on a finals day. It backfired in the first race though, the women’s 800m. The Korean competitor was so far behind the rest of the field, you’d think she was weighed down with her shopping. She managed to avoid being lapped but by the time she had completed her race to sympathetic applause the rest of the competitors were showered, changed and down the pub.

With two Koreans in the men’s 400m race I hoped that the shorter distance would provide less opportunity for embarrassment. I needn’t have worried though as Yung Byung Hoon and Jung Dong Ho took silver and bronze respectively.

After the Men's 400m wheelchair race.

The highlight of the evening was kept back as the final event. Usain Bolt had ballsed up the 100m final a week earlier by jumping the gun and tonight was his chance to make up for it in the 200m final. I couldn’t really see another mishap as he’s that much better than the opposition in the longer sprint that he has time to wait for the gun, have a look around, re-tie his shoelaces and still get to the finishing line first.

And after putting on a bit of a pre-race show for the crowd, that’s what he did. Possibly even with a double knot in the laces to play it safe. By the time he reached us at the bend the race was won and he accelerated away up the home straight.

It's all over now.

His lap of honour must have taken ten minutes to complete, a bit of a contrast to the 19.4 seconds that he’d needed in the 200m. He seemed a popular fella and I don’t think the crowd could have enjoyed it any more had he actually been Korean.

I think he enjoyed himself.

One downside was getting away afterwards. As we’d arrived by taxi we weren’t familiar with the way to the subway and the shuttle buses seemed badly organised. The police were preventing taxis from picking people up so we had a long walk before we could eventually get one to stop. Fortunately he was as good at his job as Usain Bolt is at his and after some manic driving we were at the station in time to catch the train back to Gumi.

Posted in Athletics | 7 Comments »

Hiking at Geumosan, Sat 3rd September 2011.

September 14, 2011

The World Athletics Championships have been going on in Daegu for the past week and Jen and I had tickets for the final two days. There’s a handy Provincial Park with some decent hiking just outside of Daegu at Palgongsan, but we had already been there a few months back. There’s another Provincial Park, Geumosan, about half an hour away on the train though and as the athletics took place in the evenings we decided that we might as well stay near to Geumosan and do some hiking there during the day.

We took the KTX from Seoul to Daejeon on the Friday night and then switched to a Saemaul train for the remainder of the journey to Gumi. Saemaul is the first step down from the high-speed KTX. They are a bit slower but still quite posh with velvet seats and plenty of room. I was quite impressed, although I had been drinking and stuff often seems better then.

I have a suspicion that a reasonable proportion of the readers of this blog who visit here intentionally rather than those who stumble across it after a search for ‘Penis fish’, ‘Gorilla autopsy’, ‘The Olsen Twins’ or the occasional combination of all three, may very well be the sort of people who have an interest in things like trains. With that in mind, I took a photo of the inside of the carriage.

One for the rolling stock enthusiasts.

We got to Gumi at about half past ten and checked into the Metro Motel which was pretty much the first place that we found. It was either the poshest place in Gumi or the most delusional as it had Won to Yen exchange rates displayed in its foyer to cater for Japanese tourists. I couldn’t help but wonder why on Earth someone would travel from Japan to holiday in Gumi. The most noteworthy thing I could find out about the town was that a fair bit of public money had been ploughed into the local industry at around the same time that a local boy became President.

For the benefit of any Japanese tourists, that's it. Behind the shops.

Mind you, I was back in Stockton recently and there were loads of people on holiday there which baffled me. Not many Japanese I suspect though. Not unless they were international Pound Shop aficionados.

Next morning we took a five minute taxi ride to Geumosan and walked along a trail which followed the road for a while. The path slowly gained height until we reached a sign that pointed out that the 976m summit was 3.3km away and from then on it became much steeper. It was a steady slog up stone steps for over a kilometre until we reached a temple with an odd looking Buddha.

Nice looking temple though.

Another hundred or so yards up some more steps and we reached a waterfall. It would have been a lot more spectacular in the rainy season, but at twenty seven metres high it was still worth pausing for a closer look.

It was worth pausing for a rest as well.

At this point there were still over two kilometres to go to the top and we resumed with a few flights of stairs. Whilst this was easier than the less uniform stone steps, it did, at times,  just feel like a trip to the gym rather than a walk in the hills. Not that I’m overly familiar with gyms. The steps soon gave way again to a more natural trail, but it was still a relentless grind uphill. We had one stretch of flat walking that lasted about twenty yards and that was it.

The views were magnificent though. Normally the trees obscure just about everything until you reach the top of the hill. Sometimes they still block your view even then. We got a good look outwards towards and beyond Gumi from a couple of points two-thirds of the way up.

Gumi - It looks better from a distance.

With less than a kilometre to go we finally got a flattish stretch of a couple of hundred metres. It was soon back to the slog though for the final section where we were rewarded with a summit littered with mobile phone masts, tin huts and assorted military equipment. The views were crap too.

Time for another sit down.

A slight detour down a different route took us to a temple where the scenery was a lot better and gave us the opportunity to use the monk’s toilets. Oddly, there weren’t any wash basins which leads me to conclude that monks probably don’t wash their hands afterwards. That won’t get them into heaven even if they do get out of bed early to say their prayers. We went back down via the route that we had come up and it wasn’t much easier on the legs descending. Five and a half hours and eight kilometres after setting off we were at the bottom looking for a taxi to take us back into Gumi. My calves still ached four days later.

Posted in Hiking | 2 Comments »

Doosan Bears v Nexen Heroes, Wednesday 31st August 2011, 6.30pm

September 8, 2011

If it looks like I’m slacking a bit with these posts, that’s probably because I have been. I’ve just got back from a fortnight in the UK where amongst other things, Jen and I walked forty odd miles along Hadrian’s Wall and embarked on a culture frenzy that included Macbeth at Stratford, British Sea Power at the Galtres Festival and, in what was a bit of an unexpected bonus, Paul Daniels pulling a rabbit from a hat in a lecture hall at Edinburgh.

If I tell you that what seemed like the only low points in the entire fortnight were The Wedding Present choosing not to play Kennedy in what was an otherwise excellent Town Hall gig and the majority of the nesting birds on the Farne Islands sodding off to The Congo or somewhere the day before our boat trip to see them, then you’ll get the idea of how good it all was. The Boro had even read the script and came from behind to beat Birmingham and maintain our unbeaten record.

This pair seem to have it too good at home to want to fly South

Still, I’m sure too much excitement can’t be good for you and so once we got back to Korea I thought that I’d restore the balance a little by taking a walk along to the Jamsil Stadium to see Doosan Bears battle it out with Nexen Heroes in a sixth plays eighth encounter in the Korean Baseball League. It’s the arse end of the regular season now and with five weeks to go, the play-off positions are just about settled. The closest that any of the players in this game will get to them will be if they happen to stumble across a game on the telly whilst on their holidays. Still, even when the result matters as little to the players as it usually does to me, it’s a pleasant way to spend an evening with a few cans and a bit of a picnic.

I got there forty minutes after the start and bought a ticket for the outfield. It was definitely the smallest crowd that I’d seen at a baseball fixture, if you exclude the games on a Sunday morning played between mates down by the river. The stadium was no more than a quarter full, with the turnout from the visitors being particularly poor. I’d estimate that only around a hundred fans had made made the short trip from nearby Mokdong. Perhaps Heroes fans all fly south at this time of year too.

Nexen fans - rarer than Farne Islands cormorants.

The third innings was just drawing to a close when I took my seat and it was still scoreless. I’ve no idea who the starting pitcher for Doosan was, but he did pretty well. By the time he got the nod to sit down early in the seventh he hadn’t conceded a run and had only given up four hits.

Kim Soo Kyung was pitching for Nexen and he had a good game too. The former Rookie of the Year and veteran of four Korean Series wins back when Nexen were Hyundai Unicorns didn’t even get hit until the fourth innings, although that might be more a reflection on the Doosan batting. It was the sixth innings before he conceded the opening run of the match.

Kim Soo Kyung - Nexen Heroes

 Doosan’s Jung Soo Bin cracked one far enough to get to second and then made it to third when the next bloke in did that tippy tappy sacrificial thing. The next two fellas both got walked meaning the Bears had batters on bases one, two and three. It was all set for Kim Dong Joo to be the hero but he got caught in the deep. Choi Joon Seok had the next opportunity and Kim Soo Kyung sent him down an atrocious delivery that bounced before it got to him, deceiving the catcher behind the plate who fumbled it and allowed Jung Soo Bin to scramble home in a play that didn’t reflect at all well on the fielding side.

Jung Soo Bin gets ready to make a dash for it.

Nexen bounced back in the seventh though as one of the Doosan relief pitchers had to watch what was only his second ball being hit high into the seats near to me for two home runs. The away fans celebrated as best they could, although in the absence of any cheerleaders they struggled a bit. Mind you, Doosan weren’t much better off, their usual complement of four girls had been reduced to just the two.

Still two more than Nexen had.

The visitors held their lead until the ninth innings when Doosan somehow managed to equalise and send the game into overtime at 2-2. I must admit, it took me a bit by surprise as I don’t imagine that anyone, apart from Choi Joon Seok who scored the home run, will have been too happy about staying late in a meaningless game.

Choi Joon Seok - Doosan Bears

Still, I’m sure the additional exercise will do the Bears some good as a few of their players looked somewhat out of condition to me. Have you ever seen the Tom and Jerry cartoon where one of them, probably Tom, gets into a bit of trouble whilst ten pin bowling and gets moulded into the shape of a skittle? Well, without naming individuals, there are a couple of Bears players that look like that.

I didn’t have to hang about for long though as Nexen notched another couple of runs in the tenth to seal a 4-2 away win and send their handful of fans away happy. A rare feat when you are bottom of the league.

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Hiking at Gwanaksan, Saturday 6th August 2011.

August 25, 2011

I had big plans for this weekend, well big plans if you like watching lower level football I suppose. In addition to the National League game at Chungju on the Saturday, Jen and I had been planning on going to the Challengers League Cup tournament on Sunday. It’s a competition for the third tier teams played over the space of a week in the one town, Jecheon on this occasion. There were seven games scheduled for the Sunday, spread over two stadiums. The winners of each match staying on until mid-week for the next round whilst the losers presumably clear off back to their holidays.

My job doesn’t usually interfere too much with my hobbies, not outside of normal office hours anyway, but unfortunately I had to go to a meeting in Oman and my flight departed just before midnight on the Saturday evening. That meant if we were going to do anything on the Saturday then it had to be Seoul-based and there wasn’t any football going on.

There are plenty of hills within the city though and so we decided to have a walk up Gwanaksan. There are a few different trails and a highest peak of 629m. Best of all, it’s only five subway stops from our apartment. If you are going for a walk though, you might as well just go for a walk and so to get there we followed the route of Line Two of the subway above ground from Yeoksam to Sadang. It took us about an hour and forty minutes to walk the subway line and then another twenty minutes or so to find the start of the trail once we’d got to Exit 6 of Sadang station.

It was worth avoiding the subway, mainly because we walked past some baseball cages where if you put a couple of five hundred won coins into a slot a machine fired baseballs at you at speeds varying from 100km/hr to 140km/hr. As I’d never played baseball before I naturally selected the fastest cage. Well, you would, wouldn’t you? After all, my first ever curry as a teenager was a Phal and whilst my mates cried with laughter, my eyes streamed with tears as the heat of the spices prevented me eating more than a quarter of it. For those of you who don’t know, a Phal is a like a Vindaloo, but with two tablespoons of extra gunpowder.

Another one flies past.

I’m not really one for learning lessons though and the first 140km/hr ball passed me before I’d even started my swing. As did the next few. I adjusted a little and eventually hit some of them, the best of which would probably have been caught somewhere near first base whilst the rest varied between being knocked into the ground near my feet or glancing off my bat into the fence behind. Fortunately none of them smacked me in the chops as I don’t think I’d have fancied arriving in Muscat the next day minus a few teeth. Whenever I’ve seen people in these cages they are usually half-pissed after a post-work drink with their colleagues, so maybe it’s one of those sports like pool and darts where a few beers improves your skills.

At Sadang station there was a line of old blokes awaiting the arrival of free food organised by a charity. As I stood around I was twice asked by locals if I’d like to join the queue. Perhaps it’s my age, maybe the way I dress, but I obviously looked a bit like a worthy recipient. We’d packed a bit of a picnic though, so I left them to it.

When we got to Gwanaksan, we followed the signs for Yeonjudae. It was a bit of a slog at first with very few sections were you could walk on the level. There’s an area about half an hour into the hike where you can replenish your water bottles, lift a few weights or hang upside down from a bar like a bat. It was a warm day so we settled for a drink of water.

There's plenty to do for those not tired enough by the hiking

We continued upwards for another hour and a half or so, stopping to look down on Seoul every time there was a decent view. It’s amazing how close we were to the heart of the city. The trail was very crowded, probably I suspect, more with people just happy to get out in the hills on a day when it wasn’t raining rather than with those who were prevented by work commitments from going to obscure football games in even more obscure towns.

My office is out there somewhere.

We didn’t get to the top. It’s one of those where the actual peak is fenced off because it sites some sort of communication tower and there didn’t seem a lot of fun in hauling ourselves up ropes and chain ladders in the final stages just to be able to reach a fence. We took a different route down, slightly longer at about four kilometres and one that mainly follows a river. There were plenty of people taking advantage of the cold water to cool down and I did the same.

I could have done with this during the Phal all those years ago.

We didn’t see much in the way of wildlife, a couple of cats and a dog with bright pink feet. I suppose for all it’s a hill, it’s still in the city. As we approached the end of the trail it got even busier with lots of families picnicking by the water. One couple were actually sat in the river whilst playing some sort of board game.

It's your birthday. Collect £10 from each player.

We emerged near to Gwacheon subway station and after initially hopping on a bus going in the wrong direction ended up taking a taxi back to Yeoksam. Overall we probably did about thirteen kilometres in six and a half hours. That doesn’t seem like much of a pace, but when you stop to play baseball or dangle your feet into a river that’s how long it takes.

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LG Twins v Hanwha Eagles, Friday 5th August 2011, 6.30pm

August 20, 2011

Friday night and it was time for a bit more baseball with Hanwha Eagles visiting Jamsil for the first of their three games with LG Twins. As usual Hanwha are having a pretty poor season with them currently sitting seventh of the eight teams in the rankings. LG are doing a little better in fifth, two wins behind local rivals Doosan Bears in the fight for the fourth play-off place.

As far as recent form goes, both teams were on the wrong end of a 9-1 stuffing the previous evening, LG away to SK Wyverns and Hanwha at home to Lotte Giants. That’s not really the standard of performance that will have the fans flocking to the ground and so Jen and I thought that we’d just take our time and walk there.

We got in at about twenty past seven with three innings gone and LG Twins already ahead by four runs to nil. The stadium was a lot busier than I’d imagined, with far more Hanwha fans than I’d have thought their position and current form would have warranted. Perhaps LG’s 9-1 defeat the previous evening had given them a bit of hope that they might pick up a win. It still took me ten minutes to get the beer in though due to a combination of queueing at the wrong level and then being stuck behind people paying for a packet of dried octopus with a debit card.

Ahn Seung Min was the starting pitcher for Hanwha and by the time he disappeared at the end of the fifth LG had increased their lead to 5-0.

Ahn Seung Min - Hanwha Eagles

The American Ben Jukich started for LG and was pretty impressive rattling through eight innings with barely a hit and no runs against him. The game was as good as over when with just the one innings remaining his boss gave him a ‘job and knock’ and he was allowed to nip off home early.

Ben Jukich - LG Twins

Other foreign interest came in the form of Karim Garcia, who seems to be the Robbie Savage of baseball. He picked up a seven game ban whilst playing with Lotte Giants last season for giving an umpire a bit more slaver than is apparently acceptable and despite scoring sixty six runs in Major League Baseball his main claim to fame in America seems to be a fight that he had with eight time All-Star Pedro Martinez.

"Karim Garcia, who's Karim Garcia?"

Garcia behaved himself on this occasion though and in the eighth he looked as if he had managed to belt one into next door’s garden. Unfortunately for the stroppy Mexican it was caught a foot or so from the top of the boundary wall, just in front of a couple of hundred office workers all sat together on some team-building bonding exercise.

"Stand up if you'd rather be at home with the family"

Hanwha’s fans kept up their support all evening despite their team dropping too many catches and missing more run outs than they would have been happy with. The game ended at about half past nine with LG eventually knocking up eight runs without reply, giving Hanwha their second eight run loss in twenty four hours and allowing LG to move a little closer to a play-off spot.

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LG Twins v Samsung Lions, Friday 29th July 2011, 6.30pm

August 10, 2011

I don’t feel as if I’ve seen anything like as much baseball this season compared to last year, mainly because of the weather. We had intended to go along to Jamsil three days earlier but the worst rain in Seoul for years started falling an hour or two before the start and that was that.

We’d even got tickets in advance for a change as Jen had worked out how to buy them from the cash machine at the local GS25 convenience store. It seems a little insensitive though to complain about not being able to watch a baseball game when dozens of people died in the floods. So I won’t.

Luckily, we live at the top of a hill.

By Friday afternoon the rain had stopped and so we caught the subway at Yeoksam for the three stop journey to Sports Complex. It was rush-hour so the carriages were packed and we had to fight our way on and off. At the stadium we skipped the queue and picked up three tickets from a tout for the main stand at ten thousand won a go. That’s a thousand won over face value, but it saved us a few minutes waiting at the ticket office.

We’d missed the first half an hour or so and with two innings completed  the game was still scoreless. Radhames Liz, the Dominican who had started over twenty times for the Baltimore Orioles earlier in his career, was pitching for LG. He looked very good early on but faded a bit towards the end. He conceded two runs in the fifth and another in each of the sixth and seventh innings before getting the hook before the start of the eighth.

Radhames Liz - LG Twins

Cha Woo Chan was the starting pitcher for Samsung Lions, who have been making one or two changes lately, notably with their foreign players. First baseman Ryan Garko was sent back to America after scoring just a single home run all season and their Japanese pitcher Ken Kadokura has apparently been dropped to their minor league team. I’d actually no idea that there was a minor league in Korea, I’ve not seen anything between the top level KBO games and the blokes who play with their mates down by the river. Perhaps I’ll bump into Kenny Kadokura next time I go for a stroll alongside the Han.

Cha Woo Chan had a fairly ropey start with the ball and it looked at one point like he might get withdrawn as early as the third innings as he gave up a few hits.

Cha Woo Chan - Samsung Lions

It got even worse for him in the fourth when Park Yong Taik and Cho In Sung  smacked home runs off successive balls.

Cho In Sung - LG Twins

Cha picked up a bit after that though and didn’t concede another run for the rest of the evening, finally stepping aside in the eighth with his team 4-2 ahead. Both sets of relief pitchers did their jobs and there were no more runs.

My son Tom, who was watching his first ever game of baseball, was impressed with the whole experience. The crowd was far more enthusiastic than at any of the football games he had been to over here and he liked the way that the gaps in play were filled by cheerleaders or competitions where girls competed for a prize of a few cases of beer by seeing which of them could down a pitcher of the stuff the quickest.

It's almost as good as half time penalties.

We had a few beers ourselves afterwards in a bar called Beer Mart. The quirk being that you just select your own bottles of beer from the glass fronted fridges and then when it’s time to go, collect up the empties from your table in a shopping basket and take them to the till to pay. I know that sounds like we spent that part of the evening drinking in the beer section of Tesco, but it was a bar, honest.

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Jeonbuk Motors v Seongnam Ilhlwa Chunma, Sunday 24th July 2011, 7pm.

August 4, 2011

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.

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