9000 km From Home

Rum, glorious rum
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After a hectic day running from one side of Amsterdam to the other, I made it to the airport. There was a very scary moment when the girl at the check in desk asked me if I had a visa. Visa?! What F-ing VISA? Fortunately, I didn't need one and she released me from her evil clutches and I was on my way. I had about 20 minutes before I had to get on the plane, so I went to the lounge to stock up on free rum and cokes. I poured myself a triple Bacardi from the optic (nerves, you see), whooshed in a dash of coke and started slurping it there and then as I scuttled around the bar, grabbing handfuls of whatever snack was on offer. The man-in-a-suit standing next to me looked at me like I'd just slaughtered an entire litter of cute, fluffy puppies with a sharpened paperclip. So I slunk off with my booze to a quiet corner, gulping it down as quickly as I could before running off to the plane.

Flip-flops
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The flight was long and boring, and uneventful. There wasn't even any turbulence which would have at least provoked people to look around the cabin worriedly and grip their armrests etc etc. The most exciting thing that happened was getting given KLM branded flip-flops to shuffle to the toilet in. I must have been really, really tired (or completely drunk) because, for the first time ever, I managed to sleep for a couple of hours. I filled in my "customs declaration" card and was surprised to see that it's illegal to bring diet pills into the country. Not that I have any of course, but I just thought it was a funny thing to explicitly state. And, since Koreans are, on the whole, a nation of whispy-thin people, either the whole country is shovelling down illegal diet pills on a regular basis or the pills have been made illegal to stop the already whispy-thin people from becoming even whispier and thinner and falling down the slits in the drains on the street, which would be very dangerous.

In quarantine
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We arrived at Seoul's airport and I made the fatal error of going to to the toilets as soon as I got off the plane. Fatal because I was one of the first off the plane and by the time I'd finished taking pictures of the funny signs in the toilets and marvelling at the rotating plastic covered toilet seat, the entire plane had unloaded and there were 400 people in front of me at the immigration queue. As we got off the plane, we had to walk past a desk that had two bored girls laughing at their mobile phones behind it. There was a big sign saying "Quarantine" and a video camera pointed into the crowd, which I guess they use to spot ill and sickly people. I thought that everyone looked ill and sickly when they got off a 10 hour flight, so I hope they have highly trained spotters who can tell if you have bird flu from a grainy video picture. You've no idea how hard it was to resist falling to the floor in front of the camera and start frothing at the mouth.

Spoke me fleeeunt Kroean
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By the time I got to pick up my bag, the poor thing had been getting dizzy and lonely on the carousel for almost an hour. The customs officers eyed me suspiciously but I guess that as I don't look anorexic, they decided that I probably wasn't bringing in a consignment of contraband diet pills. Out in the open, I spied the big cheese in the distance renting a Korean mobile phone. Our GSM phones don't work here. Of course, even though I knew this, I was in denial about it until I got here and saw those horrible words ("no network coverage"). So, I rented myself a phone. It is a singing, dancing, beeping, annoying thing with way too much functionality, although it does have a very satisfying sliding mechanism that is nice to click open and shut and which has been entertaining me in moments of jet-lag-weaknesses (metamorphose into coma patient). Handily, the phone's language was set to Korean. I had to ask someone from the hotel to change it into English for me.

This time next year, we'll be millionaires
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I queued up to use the scary looking, highly advanced ATM and very worredly chose to remove 100,000 Won, which I had calculated to be around 60 Euros by using the little cheat-sheet (i.e. how to convert Wons to Euros and Dollars simplified so that a three year old with a bad case of stupid-itis could make the calculation) that Vee very patiently made for me. I probably should have got more, but removing something with that many zeros on the end of it from my bank account makes me feel queasy. Anyway, so far so good. The machine spat my card out. There I stood waiting for my money. Nothing. Panic. PANIC. The screen was displaying a message in Korean and two buttons were blinking. I pressed one. The receipt came out and I deciphered that I had just removed 100,000 WON from my account. I turned round to the man behind me, who was Korean and couldn't speak English, while 25 jetlagged and impatient people behind him twitched and stared at me like I'd not only just slaughtered an entire litter of cute, fluffy puppies with a sharpened paperclip, but that, to add insult to injury, I was wearing their bloodied fur as skirt.

I flapped my hands about in a 'why/help/what' sort of way. He said something, which of course I couldn't understand, but which could have been 'HA! Now you know how I feel when I try to read your stupid language'. Then, just as I was about to run off (to do what, I really don't know), a little compartment on top of the machine opened and there was a huge pile of notes, ready and waiting to be stuffed into my wallet. I'd mastered the Korean ATM. I was FREEEEEEE!

Zeeee Chermans!
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We took a bus from the airport to the hotel. It took well over an hour. There are mountains in the background and everything is very green. The atmosphere is slightly hazy but it is not smoggy. There are lots of SUVs on the roads, which are 8 lanes wide, and most of them have these funky little 'help-you-to -reverse' mirrors on the back window. In my part of town, the skyscrapers are interspersed with what look like traditional buildings and there is a temple right opposite the hotel (which, for some reason has a very big gong, that someone took great delight in smacking continuously for 20 minutes at five o'clock this morning. GRRR). There was a very annoying German man at the back of the bus who was talking very loudly. About five minutes into the journey he fell asleep and promptly started snoring like a wild boar with a blocked nose, which, together with sleep-deprivation-hysteria prompted me to start cackling like a crow on a bad hair day.

I. Have. Arrived
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The hotel is truly huge, full of marble, and rich people. Koreans are very well dressed. I have yet to see a scruffy local, which makes me look and feel like a complete slob, even in my posh, best, trying-to-look-like-a-corporate-whore clothes. I am on the 27th floor with a great view over the city. As per usual, I entered my room and my bag exploded. Not literally you understand, although it would be cool to have some sort of explosive baggage. Unpacking would be revolutionised! Within five minutes the place was covered in stuff, I'd made coffee which I had promptly spilled coffee all over the bathroom and I'd blocked the toilet. Er, yes. Korean toilets are not designed to take large amounts of toilet paper. Or small amounts of toilet paper. Mental note: two sheets at most. There I was, marvelling at the difference in design of toilets around the world (yes, it's a bit of an obsession of mine) and thinking how low to the ground this one was, and how small the actual hole in the seat is, and had a very funny vision of a very, very fat person trying to sit on it and suddenly, I realised that the water was almost overflowing. CRAP. The toilet paper (which, incase you are interested, contained nothing more than the coffee that I had spilt) was totally stuck. SHIT. I looked around for a poking device and the only thing I could think to use was a coat hanger. That's right. I unblocked the toilet with a coat hanger. Just call me the queen of solutions. Mental note: don't use that coat hanger.

By about 16:00 on Sunday, I was pretty much ready to sink into bed, or fall asleep in the chair/bath/on the floor but knew I had to stay awake as I had a meeting at 18:00. I amused myself for two minutes by trying to take a picture of myself in the floor to ceiling window with the cityscape behind me, but only succeeded in taking pictures of the sky and making myself look like I a) had 16 chins and b) was about to be attacked by a rabid dog. So I gave up and took a shower. The bathrooms are made for midgets. I am pretty small but I could almost see over the walls and door of the shower. The bathroom is huge, and there's plenty of room for what we would call a full size bath but here, there is a piddly little thing that you can just about sit in. I did battle with the Internet connection for a while and then went to meet with all the other stooges. We then went off to eat sushi...

...Right, that's enough for now. I have to go to a press conference now and schmooze with the other paps! The jetlag has hit us all like a brick wall at high speed and no amount of the crappy stuff they call coffee is helping, so I will also go on the hunt for something that actually contains caffeine. Wait excitedly for the next installment. Or, er, don't...