Mon Français n'est pas bon

Paris is big. And cold. And full of very small fluffy dogs. But I like it :).

I took the Thalys to Parys. Given the choice of practically being anally probed under the guise of 'security checks', squished up into a Stephen Hawking-like position in a pressurised tin can or sitting for four hours on a nice comfy train, I'll take the train, thanks.

So, after catching the train by the skin of my teeth because I spent too much time buying a toothbrush in Etos (red, no blue, no red, no blue, ooooh purple, no blue, oooooh, blue. Yes blue.... I bought a green one...), I settled into my seat and got served a meal, just like you get on a plane, although this one actually tasted pretty good. There was, bizarrely, a packet of Rolos, which are chocolate toffee sweets that we had in England when we were kids, for desert, which I found highly amusing and ate the whole packet in about five minutes flat like a piggy schoolboy in a sweetshop.

Whilst watching the countryside flick past, or trying to because the grumpy bloke behind me had shut the blind, I began to wonder if, when they have kids, people suddenly become deaf and/or their brain capacity gets significantly reduced. Do they somehow become unaware that their constant "sh sh shshhh shhh shhhshshshs" to little Jaap-Jan are even more irritating than little Jaap-Jan's random shrieks and continual "Kijk mama, kijk! Een boom/brug/koe/huis/auto/treins!" Firstly take the damn kid away from the window. AWAY.

Secondly, don't ever, EVER bring the toys that make noise with you on a train. There was a little boy sitting in front of me, who, to be fair, was behaving like any other 3 year old boy would and was quite well behaved but almost had me belting his dumbass mother over the head with my laptop when she got out his toy police car that had a siren noise on it. Give a kid a car with a siren noise and he's going to turn it on. Continuously. And then scream when the nice toy with the nice noise making device is removed from his grubby clutches. Arrgh.

Anyway, I got on with my work as best I could with that going on in front of me, and the grunting fat man grunting away behind me, and the dangerously cute mini bottles of vin rouge they kept shoving in my face. It was hard to concentrate, I tell you! I also noticed the ridiculous ring tones people have - the 65 year old french woman next to me had "Sweet Dreams" by Annie Lennox which played almost to the end of the song before she had scrabbled around in her giant bag and found the phone, and a middle aged business man had a ringtone like a frog croaking. This one prompted screams of 'Kikker, Kikker' from little Jaap-Jan.

So Holland and Belgium flew past and before I knew it I was in France, and making my way through Gare du Nord, which had this amusing sign,

and to the metro line 2, which is a bloody long walk, and then crossing the city to Passy, where I am staying in a ridiculously overpriced and mis-advertised hotel, with doors and walls as thin as paper. I think I heard the person next door breathing a moment ago. I am staying in a sort of annex thingy, away from the other rooms and up my own flight of stairs...guess the lady thought I might disturb the other guests or lower the tone of the place or something and shoved me as far away from everyone as possible.

She gave me my key and I asked if it was a non smoking room. She looked at me as if I had asked her if she just farted and would kindly refrain from doing so in my presence in the future and said "I don't know" with such a look of utter boredom that I almost didn't say anything else. But, it takes a lot to stop my mouth from working, so..
"Well. Ok. If it smells like smoke, can I come back and get another room?" I asked.
"I don't know," she said again, "Maybe. Maybe not."

Alright then. Grit les dents! The room didn't smell of smoke; more like musty carpets, dusty blankets and drains. Actually, the whole of Paris seems to smell like drains, all evening I've been getting whiffs. I even smelled Parisian sewer in the supermarket but then worked out I was standing right next to the cheese counter and deduced that this was probably why it smelled like rotting corpse a la baby's nappy avec goat shed garnish.

In the hotel here's a huge stuffed toy tiger in the lounge, just sitting there, minding its own business which I find very strange, and something only the French could get away with. There's a patisserie right next door too, selling scrumptious yummy things. So, after I'd dumped my stuff, paid ten F-ing euros for an Internet connection and thoroughly inspected and desecrated the room (opened all draws and doors, removed ubiquitous rubber sheet from bed, and then spilled contents of bag everywhere), I went next door and bought myself a croissant. And a pain au chocolat. In French. :)

I have to admit, I did not realise I had forgotten this much French. It's embarrassing. I can understand most of what is said to me but I simply cannot string a proper sentence together anymore. Whenever I need them, the French words jump out of my brain and elope, legging it off into the sunset and shouting au-revoir, perdant anglais. Dutch words come to mind, German words, even bloody Spanish words. I wouldn't be surprised if I suddenly answered in Russian or something.

And let me get this clear; when I was at school, no one pronounced "oui" as "Weh". We all said "Wee", even poor old, crazy Mme Arnold, who had hair like a bird's nest and an unfortunate skin condition that teachers should never have to suffer and who was on the verge of a nervous breakdown at the end of every lesson and who actually WAS French never said "Weh". Anyway, my French sucks and no one speaks any English, which I think is great, although makes things somewhat difficult. When I went for dinner by my lonely self and asked miserably for "One person, please", the boy stared blankly. Eh. Ok then....ummmm "Une person?". And then it was ok.

I'm staying five minutes from the Eiffel Tower, which is lit up in blue and has the EU stars on it. Every hour, on the hour, it sparkles quite beautifully. Aaah. I resisted the urge to go to the top, because the sign said "limited visibility" and the price was probably shocking. I couldn't tell the price because there were no signs and the queue bouncers wouldn't let me past to check. I bet that's the trick. Make you queue up and then, because you've spent 30 minutes in the queue, you think ach, paying 40 euros ain't so bad. Mental note: check out whether there are free viewing spots in the city.

There are boys everywhere under the Eiffel Tower and on the bridge trying to sell you mini flashing blue towers and carrying a huge amount of jangly things. I didn't get too close to see what they were but I guess they were metal mini towers, and they seemed to be put off by my perfectly executed snarly "Non! Merci!". Each one was selling EXACTLY the same two things. I took about 55 photos of myself in front of the tower but they all came out fuzzy, or with me looking like I had a severe case of constipation, or was about to be executed, or with the top of the tower cut off, or with no tower at all so I gave up. As I was walking back across the bridge, the tower began to sparkle and I saw a man setting up his tripod to take pictures. So I gave him my camera and asked him to take a picture of me - not even a professional photographer could get a decent picture and now I am convinced I must buy a new camera.



It was quite late and I noticed a shop still open and so I dived in for a nosey. It was a sort of a small department store/supermarket, where I realised that only French women can get away with wearing cropped knitted twin-sets and grey puffball skirts without looking like complete knobs. While I was in there I got the sudden and unstoppable urge to eat sushi, which is strange, because I've been off fish for a long time but it is full moon tomorrow, so these things happen I suppose. I got out the GPS thingy and it handily told me there was a sushi place a 10 minute walk away. I love technology! Off I go and wham, the bloody place is 10 meters away from the hotel. AH HA HA.

When I was in Paris about five years ago, I went to a Japanese place and they gave me and my two friends, Vicky and Kirsten, a shot of something very strong in these tiny little glasses. At the bottom of the glass was a little cloudy glass dome which, when the glass was filled with liquid, became transparent and revealed a very indecent picture of a man, with a very, ahem, intimate part of his body on display - we found it totally hilarious and ended up buying the little cups from the restaurant and taking them home with us to show everyone we knew. Imagine my total horror when, paying the bill, I get the same little glass with a very rude picture at the bottom - total horror because I had no one to howl with laughter about such a bizarre custom with. I wolfed down the shot to stifle the laughter because I was quite sure the chic Parisian women sitting next to me would think I was a total moron if I started to laugh like a mental patient at a picture of a naked man. I guess it's some sort of bizarre Japanese-French hybrid custom, because I've never seen it in a French restaurant, or when I was in Japan...

Anyway, I'm going now because I feel quite sick - I've just remembered the story Camilla told me about why she never drinks from the glasses in hotel rooms...mmmm that's because they never actually leave the hotel room to get washed. AAaaaerreergh! I've just drunk seventeen toothbrush glasses of water. Aaayeyyyyuck, my tongue, my tongue... Blaaaaargh.

The rest of the week

It's now Friday and I am sitting by the pool under a big white umbrella because I spent three minutes in the sun and started to burn. Yes, I bought my laptop to the pool. The shame. THE SHAME.

After a long day's work on Tuesday, there was another dry party aboard a dhow - a traditional boat.



As our sponsors are governmental organisations, they are not allowed to sponsor anything involving alcohol. We sailed down the creek and looked at the Dubai scenery (skyscraper with flashing lights, mosque with flashing lights, skyscraper with flashing lights, mosque with flashing lights). I've not actually been able to see anything in daylight yet. It was quite a social experiment to see a large group of people (±200) who are used to drinking a lot of booze put onto a boat and given nothing but orange juice. It was a quiet, energyless few hours and as soon as the boat came to the harbour there was such a stampede for the gangplank that I thought the boat might tip over. People were muttering about finding some beer, and fast.

So, we got back to the hotel and went to the rooftop for some beers and shisha, where I discovered the one great thing about being female in this country: you never have to wait at the bar very long. The rooftop bar is obviously not used to hoards of sweaty geeks who have been alcohol-deprived for several hours turning up en masse, and there was only two people behind the bar and so getting drinks was taking quite a while. Up I waltzed to get me and Ana our plastic-pool-safe-tankards of beer and stood there for about 3 seconds and whoooomph, "How can I help you ma'am." Oh the looks I got from the blokes who had waited there for 20 minutes already. Unfortunately, they had the last laugh because, being a bit woozy from working my ass off all day, I made a big gaffe and said "Have you got any local beer?" There was a huge eruption of laughter and I went very red. AHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA.

There was a duo playing arabic music and, after getting a bit stoned on strawberry shisha, I tried to work out whether the scantily clad ladies dancing with the arab men in robes were their hookers or their wives.



I felt sorry for the shisha guy because, for every shisha that he prepared, he had to take several puffs of it to get it going. Poor guy's lungs are going to look like the inside of a coal mine after a few years. The I left the hardcore alcholistas to their fun and went to bed.

On Tuesday I had a couple of hours off and wanted to get out of the hotel. I couldn't go far, so I decided to walk to the Reef Mall which is about 400 meters away. In the intense midday heat, it took me almost half an hour to walk it. Every time I passed a building, I slumped in its shadow. I thought I was going to die. I had visions of myself crawling on my knees, my tongue hanging out and foaming at the mouth. By the time I got there, I didn't even care about what was in the mall, I just needed to be in the cold air. I wandered around in a daze for a bit, found a bookshop - the only Arabic books it sold were Qarans; everything else was in English - and tried to get my body temperature back to normal.

Charlotte's collecting dolls from around the world for her daughter, although since Liddy is only one year old, I think that it's more likely that it's actually Charlotte who is collecting the dolls, and so I popped into the toy shop to see what I could find and there I found Fullah.



There's a whole range of pink and girly Fulla items - basically a sanitised, morally correct and anatomically incorrect version of Barbie. Fulla dolls come in many ranges of covered-upness, but all wear ankle length skirts and long sleeved tops. I bought the most covered up Barbie-in-a-Burka I could find for the novelty factor. They even had a moralised version of bratz dolls too. Although I think it was meant to be 'arty', I found this window display with the mannequin's heads covered with bags rather amusing considering the country I was in.




Tuesday night was the first social with booze, and we went to a club called Jambase in the Madinat Jumeirah again. People were frothing at the mouth with the thought of getting their grubby little paws on some alcy.

Location update: I'm now cruising at a sickeningly large amount of feet and shivering in a static filled itchy blue blanket.

Although the UAE is a strict muslim country, where for example, it is illegal for a man and woman to live together unless they are married, it wants Dubai to the be the 'world's favourite holiday destination'. To maximise the profits it can make from hot sun, humungous resorts and clear blue sea, it's turned a blind eye to the fact that alcohol is something that is forbidden according to muslim rules. All bars and clubs must, however, be in or attached to resorts, hotels or sports clubs. Booze is expensive everywhere, at around 7 Euros for a beer and 50% of this is tax. Only two companies in the country are licensed to sell alcohol.

If you are an expat, you can apply for a liquor license and can consume precious booze in your own home - one license per household, and the amount you can buy is determined by how much you earn. Bars are forbidden to sell booze to muslims, but apparently no one really gives a crap about that law, as I saw lots of young men in robes quaffing, or rather knocking back, tankards of beer like the rest of us.

So, back to the social. As usual, the geeks had a great time happy snapping with their powerful picture-takers and flinging sweat around on the dance floor. There was a quiz, which Fergal won, which was amazing because he did all the answers out of his own head while most of the geeks resorted to looking up the answers on the Internet on their i-phones.

On Wednesday the meeting ended early and chaos was caused by a line of 50 sleek white jeeps outside the hotel waiting to take us into the desert.



Our driver was a nutter and I feared for my life as he weaved in and out of the dense traffic like he was on a race track. We drove into the desert and proceeded to drive up and down sand dunes and get chucked about like rag dolls. It was all good, giggly fun. For the first 15 minutes. Then everyone began to feel a bit queasy.

When we stopped to take in the desert sunset - which did not melt away like most other sunsets I have seen; the sun just sank as a giant ball and then slunk out of sight. I have to say I was a bit disappointed - everyone was quite quiet and a few people were very green.



We arrived at the desert camp and ate, drank and were queasily merry for a couple of hours. Ana and I smoked the strongest shisha I've ever smoked and I was pretty stoned for half an hour.



This is a picture of Alix just after the camel lunged at him while he was poking the poor beast in the head for some reason. I don't think I've ever seen a frenchman move so fast. I almost hoped he'd scream "SACRE BLUEEEEEEERRRRRRR" but he didn't and I must learn to believe less in stereotypes...



There was a belly dance show - I hope someone had forewarned the girls about the paparazzi that would result when they began to gyrate their half naked selves in front of the shutter-happy sweating masses...



All that being thrown about in the jeep had rendered me knackered and so I was really glad to get back to the hotel and relax for a bit.

Random interjection: Adverts on some websites are tailored according to the location you're surfing from. I laughed my ass off when an advert for a UAE 'dating site' popped up because instead of a dating site, it was called a 'marriage matching' site. Lots of websites are blocked by the 'authorities'. For example, Flikr, the photo website, is blocked. Not sure it's because there's inappropriate content on there, or because the word 'Flickr' is also the slightly misspelled Dutch slang word for homosexual. Hmmmm.

The meeting finished on Thursday and that night, and since there's nothing to do in Dubai except eat, drink, shop, eat, drink, shop, oh and eat drink and shop, we went to the Mall of the Emirates, a massively huge mall, inside of which is an indoor ski slope with real snow. When we arrived I almost died when I saw the queue for taxis at the drop off point, 200 people at least.



There's not much of a public transport system in Dubai. They are building a metro, but the only realistic way to get anywhere at the moment is to go by car. I've spent a small fortune on taxis this week. I asked about the bus to the mall but they told me it would take at least two hours and time was not something I had an abundance of. Shame, I wanted to experience having to sit in the women's section at the front of the bus. Yup, the men packed to bursting in the back and the ladies sitting cooly in the front. Aye aye aye. Anyway, I immediately devised a cunning plan to get an escape taxi at the nearest hotel - it's a throwback from being in Cuba (as soon as you arrive somewhere, organise your escape as soon as possible).

So this mall was packed, and like everything else in Dubai, it was monstrously big and unnecessary. Thursday night is the beginning of the weekend in the Middle East and so, with nothing else to do except eat and shop, the place was packed with gangs of teenage boys in robes, small groups of be-robed girls and thousands of families. I guess they have to go there to buy new clothes to go shopping for new clothes in. No wonder there are not so many fat people in Dubai: they end up walking miles and miles around malls. And buffets.

I didn't go skiiing in the desert but lots of the others did for the sheer novelty of, well, skiing in the desert.



Chris said it felt very strange to be sitting under a heater in a cafe inside a giant freezer that was chilled to -4 while it was 40 degrees outside. Imagine the kind of energy bill it takes to keep a freezer that big, er, well, freezing? I can't shop in malls like that, and the only thing I bought was a small fluffy camel. Well, when in Dubai, do as the tourists do, right?

Then we went to meet Ana's friend who lives in the city, at a very, very, very posh hotel, "the Address Hotel". What a bunch of shite that was. It was full of rich expats, rich arabs and "airhos" as the local expats refer to the massive amount of trolly dollies holed up in Dubai on layovers. Laura was starving and ordered a 15 euro salad and then almost fell off her stool backwards when she received this:



I refuse to be ripped off and so I stubbornly, and quietly, starved for a while until I could take it no more and ravenously wolfed down the spicy free nuts that had been left on the table.

The terrace of the hotel where we were sitting was directly facing the construction site that is that of the world's tallest building, the Burj Dubai, another of Dubai's obscene projects.



The construction was still going on in the dark under massive floodlights. Ana's friend told us that the newspapers never record the true temperatures because the poor construction workers are not allowed to work if it's over 40 degrees. So, it never gets over 40 degrees in Dubai. Even if it's 50 degrees, it's never officially over 40 degrees.

On Friday, when I had walked out of the hotel it felt hotter to me than any day so far. The sunscreen had melted off my face in literally three minutes and I had to walk so slowly that it took me 10 minutes to walk the 200 meters to the others' hotel. At the end of the street there's a huge digital clock with a temperature gauge on it and on that day, it simply wasn't there. I thought I was delerious with heat exhaustion because I simply couldn't find the f ing clock. I thought I was going mad, and vowed never to drink again, such was the effect of that damn tequila on my short term memory. But then I realised that, as soon as the temperature hits 40, that clock goes off. And yep, later in the evening when the temperature cooled slightly, there was the clock again, blinking in at a cool 34 degrees. Bastards. Utter bastards.

Anyway, to continue, we ended up drinking too much tequila, or rather I did, because for some reason I ended up drinking all Ana's shots too because she, somehow, very cleverly, offloaded them on to me, and going to some horrible hard house club where I realised I must be getting old because all I could do for the first fifteen minutes was to exclaim "My god, is it REALLY loud in here, or is it just me?", until my eardrums got numb and all I could say after that was "What? I CAN'T HEAR YOU."



Anyway, I generally hate all nightclubs unless they contain unwashed hippies, cheap booze and are free to get in, and so this one, which cost 50 Dirams even AFTER we had bargained that it was already 2 am and we were three lovely ladies, was particularly awful. It was full of what I guess were Dubai expats, investment b(w)ankers, airhos and footballers bouncing around pissed out of their heads and just being generally obnoxious. We took the piss for a while and then even that got boring so we left . Apparently this club was in "old town", which made me laugh and shout very loudly "What an oxymoron!"

Location Update: I'm now back in Amsterdam wondering how 30 degrees managed to disappear over six and a half hours.

On Friday, our first real day off in six days, we lounged by the pool and then went to the souk in the evening, which was by the museum. Yes, the museum. there's one museum in Dubai. It's kind of funny to get into a taxi and say "Take us to THE museum, please." Apparently, the white-robed-powers-that-be have decided that they are sick of Dubai being considered culture-less and have vowed to build the biggest museum in the world. After perusing the souks and watching Laura expertly haggling over the 45 cashmere scarves she wanted to buy for what seemed like hours, we met Chris , Fergal and Alix and had dinner at Dubai's oldest commercial building - built in 1935!



Knackeredness rapidly overtook and we went back to the hotel pretty early.

Our last day, Saturday, was spent, rather unwisely, at the Jumeirah public beach.



I say unwisely because we went to the wrong public beach where there was no shade, no changing facilities (which, when you bear in mind that being in any state of undress is illegal, is kind of crap, especially when you did not have the foresight to put your bikini on underneath your clothes.) and hoardes of men gagging for any kind of glimpse of white flesh that they could lay their worn-out eyeballs on.



We grilled dangerously in the lovely breezy air for a while and then decided to go the Atlantis Hotel - a brand new huge water-themed hotel built on the far edge of one of the palms. I'd heard they had an aquarium and was desperate to have a look at some funky underwater beasts.

Let's just say that the Atlantis Hotel was horrendous. Well, they wouldn't let us in to the actual hotel as we were non residents and so we had to wander around the shopping mall, which housed nothing but shops full of designer brands (Baby Dior!!!"). We went into the aquarium which cost us a 100 Dirhams each and disappointed me so much that I actually complained to the manager afterwards - there were not even signs on the tanks telling you what each fish was, there were huge fish in tiny tanks and some of the animals had gaping and bleeding wounds.



The manager told me that the owners wanted it to "be fun and not like a museum or a zoo." I was hoping for a refund but it was not forthcoming, so I will get my revenge by telling everyone I know that the aquarium, and the rest of the Atlantis Hotel complex, is CRAP.



After our disappointment, the only thing to do was drown our sorrows in yummy persian food as far away from the _subliminal message_ CRAP_/subliminal message_ Atlantis as possible. A few un-persian cocktails and some amazing food later, I was packing, or rather hastily shoving, stuff into every empty crevice in my bag and ready to get up two hours later to get my flight home. And there my journey ended and I am happily freezing myself to bits in Amsterdam. If I never go back to Dubai again, it will be too soon :).

Friday - Sunday
-------------

Greetings from stiflingly hot Dubai!



Oeeeff, the weather here makes me veeeeeeeery s---------l------------ow. Here's a brief round up of the last couple of days.

So I arrived at midnight on Friday night and it was still 30 degrees. Quite chilly for the Arabs apparently buaaahaaa. Apart from the five totally pissed-up 60-something Swedish women sitting in front of me, swigging copious amounts of Bailies and Corvousier (on KLM, yes, I was shocked!) and giggling like schoolgirls, the flight was totally uneventful. I almost wished the wing would fall off, or the engine fail or something, just for a bit of excitement.

When we finally got out of the airport - a mass of sleeping Indians, robe clad officials, chauffeurs, ladies' greeting areas and duty free shops - the wall of intense heat that hit me almost choked me. The area outside was chocked full of people waiting and there was traffic everywhere. We got on the bus, which was air-conditioned to "arctic" setting and shivered all the way to our hotel, which is not very far from the airport but since Dubai is one giant construction site, it takes FOREVER to get anywhere because all the roads are full of giant holes.

I think our hotel is made out of nothing but marble and glass and a bit of carpet dabbed here and there. My room is facing the hotel's giant atrium, which is apparently the largest glass dome in the Middle East.


Yikes. I hope the architect wasn't dyslexic. It's pretty impressive I have to say, and the atrium practically has an entire tropical forrest growing inside it.


I am on the 2nd floor and there is a stream and fountain tinkling outside my window. At least I guess it's tinkling. I can't hear anything through the super double glazed bulletproof, bombproof, sunproof, soundproof, immoralityproof glass. There is a prayer mat in my closet and a sticker on my desk pointing me in the direction of Makkah and telling me I can dial '0' for a copy of the Holy Qoran.

So saturday was spent familiarising myself with the labrynth that is that is our hotel, finishing off some last minute meeting stuff and an hour on the roof by the pool, which was like taking a hot bath, only most baths don't have planes flying 20 meters above them. Or several other people in them. Unless you're into that sort of thing... Ah I do enjoy the smell of kerosine whilst sipping a mint and lime juice.


It was ROASTING up there. When I arrived the attendant asked me if I wanted to sit in the sun or the shade. "Look at me!" I shrieked, pulling up my sensible non-arab offending long sleeved top and blinding him with my milk-bottle white flesh. "If I sit in the sun I.WILL.ROAST.ALIVE." He shuffled away and I took my place with all the other un-roasted piggies on the shaded side of the pool and glowered at the bronzed and roasting piggies on the OTHER SIDE. Someone sitting near me asked if I thought it was hot. When I said I did, he laughed and said "This not hot! You come in August. It's 50 degrees. THAT is hot." I meekly sipped my drink and nodded and made a mental note never to come here in August.

We had lunch in one of the hotel's restaurants. It was a buffet with all sorts of yummy food from all over the world. I was happily wandering around, my plate piled high with all sorts of Arabic delights, going on my merry way back to my seat. And then I spotted THE CHEESE. Oh. My. GOD. There was a whole WHEEL of parmesan, so heavy I could not have even lifted it.


I didn't have to lift it though, because someone had handily left a big spoon in the middle of it so you could just scrape out as much as you wanted. Oh how I scraped! There was also some cheese that looked like a ball of string. That tasted a bit like rubber though and it took me ages to work out a clever system of how to cut it and get some on my plate (yeah, ok ok, the elaborate system actually involved me just yanking a handful of it and dumping on my plate...)

Because I am cooped up in serious air conditioning all day, I forget that I am actually in a hot counry. It's completely the opposite of Amsterdam: you put your clothes on to come inside, and take them off when you go outside. Outside during the day is like being in a sauna; hot and dry. At night, it seems to get a bit humid but the temperature is pretty constant morning and night. Also, there's no real dusk here either. All of sudden it's a bit less light, and then WHOOMPH, darkness. No sunsets in the city though, as there's too much smog. The air is dusty, and thick with the smell of petrol. It's 25 cents a liter here. I could fill up Alfie-the-scooter for a Euro! Most people drive giant white pick up trucks. There are also lots of limos and hummers too.

There are building sites everywhere and Dubai is on a serious mission where building is concerned.


Unfortunately, the building work is done by Indians and Pakistanis, for little more than slave labour. Around the bus stop (for no Arab would ever take a bus) and phone booths there are signs saying "bed space for bachelor", "bed space for Indian", "bed space for man - must be muslim". I read that the workers sleep 20 to a room. I wonder how many people think about who built that giant marble walk-in shower as they wash their hair in the morning.

On Saturday night, we went to another hotel for a dinner. They have a real buffet culture here and we went for an all you can eat buffet. I have never seen such a huge amount of food in.my.life. Then we went to a bar for a beers, and to marvel at the Arab men in their robes smoking and drinking along with the rest of us. On Sunday our meeting began and I got up at the crack of dawn. I still haven't recovered from this shock to the system. My body is still on Amsterdam time (3 hours behind) so going to bed really late here does not feel really late. It only hits me when I wake up and feel like someone shoved a few bricks down my ear canal while I was sleeping and they are knocking around in my skull where my brain should be.

So, after a non-alcohol social on Sunday night, where I had this totally Chenobyl looking fruity minty drink (which was nice until I got to the green part by the way),


Fergal, Alix and I took a taxi over to the Madinat Jumeirah, which is near that obscene 7 star hotel which apparently, you have to book an appointment to even go in to look around in the lobby and has a dress code. Hmmm. I think if I was paying 500 Euros a night for a room, I'd walk around in my bloody jogging bottoms and woolly socks and challenge someone to stop me. We thought it was a traditional souk or something but when we arrived, we found that it was a sort of brand new shopping centery-souk thing attached to a monstrosity of a hotel called Al Qasr. As soon as we walked in, Alix said "Oh I am sorry, I did not know it was a shopping centre." Closely followed by Fergal who said "Cool they have an Early Learning Centre. Early Learning Centre is fcking excellent." Um. Ok.



The place was full of nik-nak shops - the kind of stuff you think absolutely must buy, like now because all your life you've wanted to own a tiger skin rug/giant arabic chest of drawers/camel leg umbrella stand etc, until you get it home and realise that that 4 foot high bronze statue of a five headed horse or giant jug like the one below that you paid 200 euros in excess luggage for doesn't really fit in with the decor in your tiny Amsterdam apartment.



I also saw the funniest mannequin I've ever seen in my life in a suit shop -a man with the head of dog.


Oh how I wanted to take it home and stick it in the hallway by my front door. Imagine, the spectre of dog-man looming over you as you try to find the keys to the front door.

Anyway, the place was full of exceedingly rich Russians and English people, all freshly roasted and painted up for the evening and dragging around miserable kids with red faces. We three looked like we'd been sleeping under a palm tree for a few days compared to how scrubbed and polished these people were. No matter, we thought, because we were here to visit "Kouba", the Arab version of Cuba, a bar that the Rough Guide told me was one of the most unforgettable and spectacular veranda bars in Dubai. You'll find it hard to leave, the Rough Guide told me. Yet again, Mr or Mrs Rough Guide, you let me down. Not only was it quite forgettable, but I wanted to leave right away.

So, we asked someone in a random restaurant the way, and he told us "oh! Go outside and get a taxi, or, you can take the little boat there but you have to be a hotel guest or have reservations in one of the restaurants to get on the boat or they will charge you 50 for the ride." I was all for testing my skills at blagging my way on to a boat until we realised that the souk thing we were in was actually attached to the damn hotel that the bar was in. Bad feeling number one. This bar was in a hotel. Then we saw the little boats which were some sort of electric thing that ferried the piggies staying at the Al Qasr across the fake lagoon to the souk thing and back. Think vegas. We walked there and of course, it took 3 minutes or something, and we managed to battle our way past the security guard with a bit of name dropping. Then I saw a sign saying "Sinbad's Kid's Club this way". Bad feeling number two.

Anyway to cut a long story, as well as a bloody long journey though countless winding marble corridors, we finally came to Kouba, had a very expensive cocktail (I had a ginger beer mojito which was very nice), took some pictures, cringed at the god awful flamenco dancing and singing going on at another bar across the way, and left. The best thing about Kouba was this picture of a burka-ed lady on the toilet doors. Magic.


We trotted off to find some food. I saw a place that looked ok and was about to open the door when I saw that it had a dress code. Erm not thanks. So we found what we thought was a low key lebanese place, which turned out to be ver expensive. "Do you want to sit outside," the girl asked me. "Bit hot innit?" I replied. "Oh we have air conditioning out there." Jaw on da floor! Ok. This I have never seen or even heard of but it was true. There were airconditioning units cranked up to the max cooling the outside air.


Everyone points the finger at the yanks for global warming... I don't think they are entirely to blame. And, it only worked enough to stop you sweating enough to drip into your food. RANDOM PHOTO ALERT: Here's a bonus shot of me and my notebook.



As usual I ordered way too much cheese (mmmmm grilled haloumi, mmm creamy cheese and mint ooh I'm going to have nightmares tonight) and Alix ordered lamb's testicles. Yes, I am not joking.



Those french people really will eat anything! We wanted some lebanese wine, but at 100 Euro for the cheapest bottle, we declined and I had a mint tea which I would not have had if I realised that it was going to cost me NINE F-ING EUROS. I tell you, selling tea must have the most ridiculously high profit margins. I am going to start Susie's tea emporium when I get back to amsterdam, charge people one euro for a top notch cup of tea and make millions. And! I didn't even get a tea bag! just a tiny pot of hot water and a few leaves of mint. The food tasted absolutely great, although I wish I'd done a Fergal and said "Ah feck it" and paid the 18 Euros for a glass of wine.

A bit of Moscow...

So, it's now Tuesday and I have been busy and so I've not managed to do anything fun. I had time for a trip to the "маркет" across the street, which was fun because there were many UEOs (Unidentifiable Edible Objects) to conduct research upon. I'll bring some back... the dried fish looks particularly attractive. Of course, it could also be cat food, a bit like that stuff I bought back from Japan and Hong Kong and swore that it was for humans. Sorry about that folks.

The маркет is located in a department store, which smells fusty and is very quiet. It has a huge menacing security guard at the entrance, and is a total throwback from the 70s. The staff all seem to whisper and there was some cheesy lift music playing. As I was nonchalantly perusing the, ahum, denim section, an instrumental version of 'Vive Espana' started to play. There was an entire floor devoted to ladies' winter coats!

I was looking through the Moscow Times for a restaurant to eat in on Sunday night and was horrified to see that many of them had dress codes ranging from "Jacket and Tie" to "Pretend you are at the Oscars." The best dress code I saw was for a fish restaurant: "Something that doesn't hinder your ability to eat fish." HAHAHA, Muscovites get really dressed up and it seems that giving a lady a single red rose is not cheesy as I've seen loads of women looking doe-eyed at a huge hulking bloke and clutching a rose. It also seems that the down escalator on the metro is prime snogging territory. Seriously, the escalators, which are long and slow, are full of couples canoodling as if they are never going to see each other again.

We almost decided on a restaurant called "Cheese Hole" simply because the name was so funny but in the end we went into the centre instead where I saw a poor siberian wild cat squished into a fish tank, presumably so it wouldn't run away or scratch you to bits. Alongside the fish-tank-kitty were three rabbits sitting, bored, on top of a cardboard box. It turns out that people make money by charging people to take a photo holding one of the animals.

I must admit, I was a bit delirious by the time I went to dinner, and after a really long day, my brain could not handle any new information, so I do not have too many observations to recall. We got a taxi home, well sort of, because it seems that the way to get a taxi here is to stand at the side of the road until someone stops. You then gesticulate wildly at him until you agree on a price and then voila, off you go in your illegal taxi. On Sunday, we actually saw a legal taxi parked on the side of the road, and were about to approach it, when an eagle-eyed Rusky zoomed up in front of it and started yelling "TAXI TAXI TAXI" at us.

On Monday night we went to a huge Georgian restaurant. I caused mayhem and widespread panic by ordering starters for my main course because the menu was meat, meat, meat or meat oh and meat. There was a sturgeon shashlik which I really did not fancy...sturgeon is the fish they make the caviar out of. Basically, after they scrape out the eggs from the poor fishies' pregnant belly, the waste, which is the fish, is chopped into chunks and shoved on a bbq. It was the most expensive thing on the menu, at around E30. So I ordered hachipuri which is bread smothered with feta-like cheese and covered with egg and butter. Whoo hooo! Look at that! My three favourite food stuffs in one handy mouthful. Andrei tried to explain to the waiter that I wanted this yummy delight for main course. And even I understood the waiter saying "But it is just bread. Bread. Bread? Just Bread?" I also had Georgian red wine that tasted distinctly like bubble gum. And of course an obligatory shot of vodka. Highlight of the night was watching the train wreck on the table opposite. One man was so drunk that he fell asleep on the table. Every so often his head would loll backwards, and he'd open up his eyes, and look like he was about to throw up and then fall asleep again.

Today, I also found out that, those Russians who do not live in Moscow have to get a travel visa to be in the city. The people who come from outside the city to our meeting have to get their piece of paper stamped with the company stamp to prove that they travelled to Moscow for a specific reason. Wow. Reminds me of Cuba. But, I suppose it is in place to control urban migration.

Right, that's all for now. I've been typing all day. My ears hurt from the crappy interpretation headphones. I'm off to consume vodka...

Airport Adventures

Greetings from Moscow, loyal readers. I'm currently holed up in a hotel in the Petrovsky district, about 4km north of the city centre. I've been here less than 24 hours and I already have many tales to recount, including Dutch incompetence (no surprise there then), corrupt taxi drivers, cheese holes (squeal!), unsafe-safes, a Siberian wildcat in a plastic fish tank and Russian fashion. Unfortunately, I am supposed to be working so most of it will all have to wait until later.

It's a miracle I actually got here at all, what with the ridiculous system KLM have got going on at the airport these days. So basically, you now do all the work yourself on the 'we've-put-these-self-service-machines-here-so-you-think-
you're-in-control-of-your-own-travel-details-but-really-
they-are-only-there-so-we-can-employ-even-less-
incompetent-staff' machines. They employ a couple of blue-clad donkey-brained assistants who know less about the machine than anyone who has used it twice before. "It doesn't find my reservation," I say. "Put in your booking number/e-ticket number/passport," one of them says, helpfully. Already done that lady, now what? So, she takes my paper, and types in the number, hitting the screen as hard as she can, as if the extra force is going to penetrate the system and miraculously come up with my reservation.

She suddenly realises that I am flying with Aeroflot, although the flight is operated by KLM, and tells me that I must go to the Aeroflot desk in the other terminal. Hmmm. "But the screen says I must check in at 14. You should change that then," I protest. "Oh," she says, "The screen is managed by the airport and not KLM. It's not my fault it is wrong." It's pretty late, and I am worried I won't make the flight, so I resist arguing with her some more, which, I might add, was difficult, and leg it off to Departures 3 to find the Aeroflot desk, which doesn't actually exist, although of course I did not know that at this point, and almost get executed by the machine-gun toting guards at the El-Al check in when I run across the cordoned-off bit, looking wild eyed and sweaty and muttering "Aeroflot? Aeroflot? AER-O-FLOT?" at anyone who will listen.

I see some more KLM staff at the 'ground service' desk and ask them if they know where I can find the Aeroflot desk. No one answers. I've lost all patience. "Hello?" I wave my hand in front of a girl's face. She raises her eyebrows and says, "What?". Blood is beginning to boil. "One of your colleagues told me to find the Aeroflot desk in this terminal to check in for my KLM flight, where is it please?'. She shrugs and says, 'Can I see your boarding pass?'. I grit my teeth and mutter, 'The point is, I don't have one yet. She told me to come to this terminal to get it.' Her colleague starts saying something about me in Dutch and, I smile sweetly and tell him, in Dutch, that I understand Dutch. He turns round and gets very busy all of a sudden.

"You have to go to check in 14, which is what it says on the screen," she says. Explosion. I tell her that I am not stupid or blind and I know what is says on the screen. She just shrugs. I decide I need to go back to the other terminal and get in the queue-to-talk-to-a-human-being-with-a-slightly-more-
well-trained-donkey-brain-and-who-has -climbed-high-enough-up-the-ladder-to-be-able-to-sit-at-a-desk with all the other people whose bookings were spat out by the self help machines. Self help. You need a session of self help after trying to get on a flight these days.

I stand in a queue for 45 minutes with all the other people who had been told to go and find a desk that didn't exist and, by the time I get to the desk, it's 10 minutes before my flight takes off. "Right," says the woman, "You're bag won't make the flight." Goody, I think, because that means I will and the bag will join me later. I can live without my secret stash of cheese blocks for a few hours. "And neither will you," She adds. WTF? Not even a translation error could mean that someone comes up with a sentence order so illogically stupid! "The flight is overbooked and you're on standby that's why the machine rejected your reservation. And now the flight has closed. Sorry. There's nothing I can do." Explosion number two.

"Listen. here.matey.I.tried.to.check.in.over.an.hour.and.a.half.ago...," I said, my teeth clenched together so hard I could hardly formulate the words. "It is not MY FAULT that your INCOMPETENT colleague told me to go to another terminal, where I spent 45 minutes searching for something that is harder to find than a matching pair of socks in my sock drawer, which is very hard thank you very much, and then I spent almost an hour queuing up here to talk to one of the three people that KLM thinks can adequately deal with the thousands of people checking in this morning, and you tell me that the flight is closed?" She looks a bit startled. I must say, I probably look a like I should be sedated and strapped down. After all the running about, I do look a bit wild, coupled with the 2 hours sleep and slight hangover. "We can put you on the Aeroflot flight tonight at 23:00, is that ok?" she says, smiling. It's 09:30. Explosion number three. "No. I want to go on my flight, the one that YOUR INCOMPETENT colleague, which is that donkey standing right over there by the way, caused me to ALMOST miss." She purses her lips and then picks up the phone. "Alright," she says after negotiating with someone, "If you can take that bag on as hand luggage, you can fly, but you have to run to the gate." DONE.

So, off I ran, all the way to the other side of the airport. When I got to the plane there was still a massive queue and so I had not needed to half kill myself getting there. There was a Russian man behind me who I though was about to have a heart attack. "Did they tell you to run too?" I asked. He nodded, clutching onto his trolley for moral support. I had to throw away half of my toiletries but in the end I got a business class seat, which was nice, even though I had to sit next to an enormously large man on one side who leaked over into my seat, and a chemical engineer from Durham on the other side. I am not quite sure which one was worse.

Ok, I've got to go and do some setting-up now...so more later...

Er, not funny
------------------

There is a very, very friendly old man at the reception desk in my hotel who speaks very good Engrish, sorry, sorry, I mean English. He gave me some directions to get somewhere on the subway and then as I was leaving, he shouted after me that he'd given me the wrong information. "You're fired!" I exclaimed. He just stared at me open-mouthed until I said, "Sorry, just a joke." He nodded and then carried on writing down the new directions. The Tokyo subway system is pretty easy to navigate once you've worked out that there's two different systems run by two different companies, and consequently you have to buy two different sets of tickets. Clever that. It's outrageously cheap too, about 160 yen for each ride which is about 95 cents. Bargain-alicious. However, sometimes you have to walk kilometers to get to the next line. I did not brave the subway at rush hour, and so my experience was quite pleasant.

Miaow
---------

On Sunday I went to Asakusa to see Senso-ji, the Buddhist temple. The pathway to the temple is lined with thousands of tiny shops, who all obviously give their money to Buddha after they rip off stupid tourists. The temple was probably very nice, but the rain was hurtling down and I kept getting stabbed in the head by those pointy bits on the end of umbrellas so I got out of there as quickly as I could. I've been meaning to start a campaign to get these evil and dangerous implements (umbrellas) banned. Grrr! Talking of umbrellas, I noticed that the more up-market establishments have lockable umbrella slots in-front of them. You stick your umbrella in a hole and then turn the key, rendering it unthievable! I bought a lucky cat and then drank coffee in a little coffee house off the beaten track and then did one of my favourite things, which is getting myself into the thick of things in the back streets. I mentioned 'Love Hotels' before, and in Asakusa there seems to be one on every corner. These hotels are instantly recognisable because of their gaudy facets (ridiculously elaborate faux Grecian carvings, bright lights, fountains) and because they display several tariffs depending on when you stay and how long you stay. Bizarre.

SUMO-SAN!
----------

I went in search of food. It may seem that my life involves walking to some tourist spot and then foraging for food, interspersed with checking out local toilets and buying shoes. You'd be right. That is basically what I do on a day to day basis. As I was waiting to cross the road a taxi drove by and turned into the hotel I was standing next to. I was struck by the two ENORMOUS bulks in the back seat. Japanese people are tiny and it was an instant surprise. Then another taxi passed with one huge bulk in the back, and then a THIRD bulky taxi. Of course, I was gawping so much that the green man on the zebra crossing had already gone red, so I stayed to watch. FOUR men got out, wearing grey kimonos. They had their hair tied in knots on the top of their head and so I had to assume that I had seen real-life SUMOs! They were truly MASSIVE. The taxi drivers seemed to be doing extra kow-tow to them too! After I'd finally crossed the road and found the subway, I stopped off at Ginza on the way back to Shinjuku and stayed for about three minutes. It's the city's most exclusive shopping district and I quickly realised that, when I almost got judo-chopped by the door-gimp at the Armani store for sheltering from the rain underneath the store's awning to check my map, that there was nothing there for me.

Wax on, wax off
----------------------

It's pretty rare to find a menu outside any restaurant in English. Not eating meat, I tend to like to ensure that the place I choose will have something that doesn't involve dead bird/cow/pig etc. No problemo here though, because outside almost every restaurant are wax models of every dish they serve in the window. These things are works of art. I wonder how the wax doesn't melt in the heat though. Eating in most places consists of going inside, and then, if they don't have a sheet with all the pictures of the dishes on, going outside with the waiter to show them what you want. And it's not just for tourists either! I saw locals pointing out what they wanted. And I read that it was introduced to show the Japanese new kinds of western food. A boy who was standing outside a restaurant with a menu asked me where I was from. "Ingrand!" he said, "David Beckham!" Aha. The great football conversation. I told him I lived in Holland and he said "Ruud van Nistlerooy". And there our conversation ended.

Toilette Etiquette
-------------

I took the airport limo to Shinjuku station. It might sound glamorous but over here limos are actually busses. It took an hour and a half! My hotel is located west of the station and my room is about as big as a shoe box. I'm not complaining, it's really cheap. The bathroom is a sort of built-in, moulded plastic affair with a bath that's tiny and a shower that's attached to the taps in the sink.


I was hoping for one of those Japanese toilets that have a seat warmer, but alas, mine only has a built in water spray, operated with a button, to clean your bits with. HAAHAH.

When you sit down on the seat, water immediately starts flowing, as if you flushed it already. This is to cover the sounds of any kinds of bodily emissions. In some toilets, there are what are known as 'etiquette bells' and these play the sound of the toilet flushing. I guess these are the environmentally friendly establishments.


This means you can take a dump safe in the knowledge that everyone knows you're taking a dump because they can hear the flushing sounds of the etiquette bell which you only press when you take a dump . Bizarre. In one bar I went to, the damn thing was on a remote sensor and went off when I moved. This is where my understanding of the Japanese culture began and then ended. They're into women dressed as school girls and there are love hotels on every corner (i.e. hotels where you rent rooms for a couple of hours at a time), yet the mere thought of someone hearing them having a pee makes them shudder in shame. What a paradox!

I wAnder how, I wAnder why
--------------------------------------

On Saturday, I spent the day wandering around, bought crap, saw the sights of Shinjuku, which are a temple, department stores as big as the Amsterdam arena, a billion restaurants and various salubrious bars. Tokyo is really like nothing I have ever seen or experienced before. Girls really do wear long over-the-knee socks and tiny pleated skirts. Boys really do wear the skinniest jeans you can imagine and have the wildest hairstyles. People really do kow-tow to you when you enter or leave somewhere. Shoes come off at every available opportunity...now I know why everyone wears slip-on shoes. Laces are a pain. I saw a boy washing something on a stall outside a glasses shop; he was cleaning his specs on a specially-made machine.



I ate sushi from a conveyor belt where there were little taps by every seat so you could fill up on as much green tea as you liked and where I, as a seasoned sushi-eater, could not identify almost anything in front of my face.

And then it started to rain...
------------------------

Apparently Jesus, or was it the Lord, I never know the difference, said "I will cause it to rain upon the earth forty days and forty nights; and every living substance that I have made will I destroy from off the face of the earth." Well, he was talking about Japan and the living substances in this case were my socks and shoes and poor little trotters. I had to blow dry my trainers with the hairdryer this morning so I could wear them again. It has not stopped raining for almost 48 hours. In that time, I have purchased three umbrellas (one I destroyed, but I guess that's what happens when you pay 20 cents for a Chinese import, one I left on the subway and the other is still in my possession, in its um-dom* by the door), and I have learned that flip flops and shorts are the most appropriate attire for such weather (after getting lead-heavy legs from my sodden jeans and shoes).



*There are more umbrellas in Tokyo than people. Every shop/restaurant you go into has a system whereby you either put it in an umbrella stand or, more commonly, you stick it into a long plastic bag that looks like, ahum, a condom. Therefore, I have coined the term um-dom. Patent pending.

Don Quixote
-----------

There's a shop I came across called Don Quixote. My god. Its five floors are stacked floor to ceiling with the most amazing amount of crap you can imagine. Of course, I loved it and spent a rainy hour in there. There were tiny aisles only big enough for one person to pass through at a time and the organisation was so haphazard that, if you were actually looking for anything, you'd never find it. There was food and cosmetics, tools and clothes, DVDs and rice cookers, and even a floor full of designer brands. Bizarre. As I was queuing up to buy an umbrella, squished up against some toothpaste on one side and noodles on another, I looked up and saw the funniest thing I have ever seen: "Sod lotion". Yes, ladies and gentlemen, Sod lotion. And do you know what sod lotion is? It's, ahem, lubricant. AHAHAHAH. Oh how I cackled to myself.



NOOOOO!
---------------

I tried on some shoes. Not like me to try on shoes but you know, when in Japan do as the Japanese do, which is buy shoes, obviously. The shop assistant was a little old man, who could speak a very small amount of English (like 'small', 'medium' or 'large'...yes, the shoes in the shop had only those three sizes and me, with tiny size 36 , had to squeeze my piggy totters into an L. The shame. THE SHAME). I couldn't decide whether I wanted them. So I pointed out that the buckle was a bit tight and he immediately dropped to his knees, saying what I think must have been 'sorry, sorry' and began pawing the buckle and trying to take them off. I was MORT-I-FIED. I ended up buying the shoes because I felt guilty that this poor, old man thought he had to get on his old arthritic knees and get close to my soggy and sweaty trotters. Never matter, they were only the equivalent of EUR 6. Yes, that's right. Japan is not as expensive as you might think. Accommodation ain't the cheapest, but I've not yet eaten a meal, including beer, that has cost me more than JPY 1,200, which is about EUR 7.

Tokyo-san

So, I'm lying in my box-room in Shinjuko, Tokyo and listening to the rain pour down. It's been raining all day. I had to come home and dry off for a bit as my shoes were getting squelchy. I read that a typhoon has hit the Philippines and I think that part of it stopped off here on it's way there. Now I understand why rubber boots are so popular. I think I have trenchfoot. So, back to Korea....

Later on Thursday
--------------

Next on my list was food. I'd woken up late but hadn't eaten anything and the coffee I had gulped on my way to the subway had worn off. I had sat in the sun with my "Coffee bean and tea leaf" coffee and an old man had shuffled up to me and said something. "English?" I replied and he tried to give me a magazine called "hell fire ". Er, no thanks matey, none of your devil burning christian literature for me. So, I wandered the tiny streets of Insadong. There are thousands of tiny restaurants and I found one with a sign in the window that said "Menu for a vegetarian own sake" so I went there and sat on the floor with all the other Seoul-ians.



I read that Koreans do not like to eat alone, and mealtimes are to be enjoyed with friends and family. No wonder I was getting pitying looks! I ordered some sort of omelette with spring onion, garlic and cabbage. They chopped it all up with scissors! I supped an entire bottle of whatever-something-alcoholic it was that I ordered and felt a bit light headed. I headed off to the Dongdaemun market, which seemed to be filled with huge 'department stores', which were basically 8 floors of tiny shops selling any crap you could imagine. Outside these 'department stores' there seemed to be talent competitions going on, which involved a small stage and crowd of people and some very bad singing.




Me choke you long time
------------------

On friday, I'd planned to get up early but of course I couldn't get my ass out of bed, so I didn't do much. I sat in the sun for a while, on the roof garden of the pool, much to the amusement of the staff (it was cloudy and for them, I suppose it was cold). Then I almost choked to death on a horrible death-trap drink called bubble tea. WTF! I ordered my 'tea', pomegranate flavour, thinking it would be like iced tea and saw that it had the biggest straw in it I had ever seen, about a cm in diameter. So, I slurped some up and kaaaaaaaaching a big ball of jelly stuck in my throat. I was choking and spluttering everywhere.



Later that night, I went out for dinner with German and ended up in a Vietnamese restaurant. Oh. My. GOD. I have never eaten anything so spicy in MY LIFE. I literally ate two mouthfuls before I had to stop. My eyes were watering! Then we went off to another bar and drank lots of beer. Of course, I did what any self respecting person does when out drinking with a Mexican, and that's try to order tequila. Fortunately for me, because I had to get up at the arse-crack of dawn, there was no tequila in that bar and I went home thinking that I had a lucky escape.

Off to Japanito
--------------------

My bag weighed in at a hefty 28 kilos but they didn't care. I even got in the verboten queue at the airport but they didn't mind. Korean Air has FOUR classes. I queued up in 'morning calm' whatever that means. The only difference between that and economy seemed to be a big rug saying 'welcome' in front of the check-in desk. Nice. I'd definitely consider paying twice the price for a ticket for that sort of perk. The flight took two hours, most of which was bone-shakingly turbulent. I almost threw up. The plane was jerking from side to side, up and down. Everytime the plane took a dip, the gaggle of little, old Korean ladies next to me shrieked in shock. I was gripping the hand rest good and proper. Talk about white knuckles. When the pilot tells the trolly dollies to strap themselves in, I get scared.

Gimme my biometrics back!
----------------------

At the airport the bastards took my photo (although I am sure it was actually an iris scan) and fingerprinted me. GRRRR. They also monitored everyone's temperature with a heat seeking camera to see if we had some sort of horrible disease. On my immigration and customs card, I had to declare how much money I was bringing into the country. As I was waiting in the queue, a man made everyone show him their amounts. At the immigration desk the woman asked me how much money I had AND so did the bloke who searched my bag when I tried to leave the airport. Of course, I am the only person that got stopped, The customs officer soon regretted picking me out. I always get stopped. I must look like a drug smuggler or something. He soon regretted picking on me though because I have a bag that opens like a clam shell and has four zipped pockets inside it.



It was packed full to bursting and, I don't know what he was looking for, but he didn't take anything out, just stuck his hands in and out, which, in a bag that full is hard bloody work. By the time he got to the third pocket he was sweating profously and then said ok, enough. HAHAAH.

Off to get myself a light snack (about 234234235435 pieces of sushi) in the rain now. More later...

Wednesday
==========

...The forums started on Monday morning and all went smoothly. The venue is huge. Our 'office' is located near the press room which is at least a 10 minute walk and 3 floors away from the rooms were the sessions take place. Consequently, I have walked miles and miles. In fact, on Tuesday, I woke up feeling like I had run a marathon. Monday went well. We made some films, got the press releases out and did general meeting-y things.

The place where the meeting is being held is built above what is reported to be the biggest underground mall in Asia. Once the day was over, we decided to hit the mall to buy a microphone for the camera because the one that I bought for it did not fit. arrgrh. Of course, in a mall that big, finding anything is a nightmare and we didn't manage to get one. We realised that the 'welcome dinner' had started and we hurried back. I was expecting the dinner to be some sort of buffet affair but no, it was a three course sit-down dinner for 500 people. Wow. I have never seen so many tables in my life. Amazingly, the entire thing took only just over an hour and the food was great. They tried to split us up stick us randomly on a table somewhere but we found an empty table right at the end of the hall and commandeered it.

Wot no hangover?
----------------

The organisers had nicely placed about 10 bottles of traditional Korean booze, mainly rice wine, on our table, with little cards explaining what they were and where they come from etc. One of them guaranteed no hangover. Unfortunately, although it tasted pretty good, it smelled so bad that it was rather unpleasant to drink (the reason why you don't get a hangover is because drinking it isn't much fun)! There was some pretty cool entertainment in the way of loads of girls playing traditional harps while a DJ played together with a beat box boy and the breakdance world champion team performed.

All of a sudden, I realised the hall was empty and the only people left guzzling the free booze were of course, me and my colleagues. Surprise, surprise. None of us were really sure whether we should take the bottles home...so we did anyway. We sat and had some more drinks in the hotel and then Philip decided to finish one of the bottles of the stolen-booze. Unfortunately for him, as he realised the next morning, it wasn't the anti-hangover version.

Tuesday
=======

The actual ministerial meeting started today. Protesters lined the hotel. There seemed to be two protests going on and the protesters were intermingled and shouting about the president of S. Korea being a dictator and about stopping beef imports from the US. Koreans eat a lot of beef. The police lined up three people deep around them so they were pretty much hidden from view. After a hard days work I decided to venture over the road to the visit buddha in the Bonguensa temple I can see from my window. I thought it would be nice to get some fresh air too, but I soon changed my mind when I tried to breathe in the thick, wet air. The temple was really nice, and felt like it was a million miles away from the noise and mayhem on the street only a few meters away. I wandered around a bit and then headed into the city.

My dinner is moving!
=================

So, I randomly picked a place to go, which turned out to be Itaewon and was full of hookers and expats, KFCs and Pizza-sluts, and got us there on the subway, only taking the train in the wrong direction once. Hurrah! The subway system is HUGE. The trains are LOOOOONG. It's really CHEAP! But the last trains go around midnight, which is not very handy.

Random fact: the subway stations have a cabinet containing torches and smoke hoods incase of EARTHQUAKE!

We tried to find some Korean food and a young boy and his girlfriend stopped to help us when they saw us with a map and pointed us in the direction of some Japanese restaurants (after telling us he'd leave his girlfriend here and drive us to a good barbeque restaurant...er, no thanks). We ate at a tiny Japanese place and the food was amazing, except the raw abalone which is the most bizarre and disgusting thing I have ever tasted and should be banned, or at least force fed to evil people. Talking of bizarre, take a look at this video...



Yes, I ate it, and no it wasn't alive. It was wafer thin makerel shavings that were curling up in the heat.

Wednesday
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Pishy!
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At the "closing lunch" today, the Minister for Communications for Russia sat next to me and we had a random conversation about Cuba and not understanding the language of the "youth of today". Very bizarre. Blaise told me he'd seen him on TV a few times. I had a sign on the table that said "fish" so that the waiters would know not to serve me any meat. A plate full of shrimp was placed in front of me. Yummy, I thought, until a boy whisked it away from me, gave it to Blaise (after I'd half poked around at it and squeezed lemon on it) and then gave me two huge crab legs instead (squeal, GET THOSE LEGGIES AWAY FROM ME!), pointing to the sign and saying "Pishy!". He did the same thing with the next course, after I had eaten half the bowl of brocolli soup! The wine I consumed made the rest of the day hard bloody work and I was really glad when it was over and went to have a nap. Later that evening we realised that Koreans are not really night-owls when we tried to get some dinner at 21:00 and found it pretty hard to find anywhere open. Went to the sky bar for a few more drinks and found that someone had flown in my little guppie fish as a surprise.


Thursday
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For the first time ever, I slept through an alarm and didn't get out of bed until almost 2pm, screwing up my body clock good and proper. I had had a vague idea to go and visit the DMZ between S. Korea and N. Korea, which is 50km away, but realised that my concept of distance and my estimation of the time it takes to travel distances is way to warped to consider anything so foolish! I decided to make my way to Insadong. I spent about 10 hours out and about and I saw less than five other westerners, which surprised me because I thought there were lots of Americans here. I am not sure whether Koreans are friendly or not...they just seem indifferent to me. A tiny old man wanted to help me when he saw me looking at my map on the subway, asking where I was from, but the lady in the cafe I went to for dinner did not seem very pleased that was there at all.

Tea for one please, I'm so Rooooonery
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I wandered around Insadong and bought useless crap as I do (handmade paper...yes, like that's really useful) and then found myself a tiny traditional tea house, where the lady barked "TEA HOUSE TEA HOUSE" at me when I walked in, and where I sat for about 45 minutes and drank jasmine tea. It was lovely, and quiet and very, very relaxing. I ate funny tubes of rice with sesame seeds and a distinct bubble gum flavour.

I am obsessed by smells (and toilets, but not smelly toilets) and I'd been wondering what the ever-so-slighty floral smell with an underlying hint of disinfectant was every time I was near a Korean person and realised, when I went to the toilet in the tea house, that everyone must use exactly the same soap. Seoul does not have the same intensity of smells as Hong Kong. Restaurants generally smell spicy and there is the odd waft of stinky drain, but other than that, the smells are quite pleasant.