Work trip to Seoul, South Korea - 5th to 7th August 2008

The final stop on the Asia tour was Seoul in South Korea, a city and country that I'd never been to before. The visit got off to a bad start when it transpired that George W Bush would be in town at the same time - and that the Koreans were expecting full protests, road closures and riot police on the streets. As it turned out, it didn't affect me too much, although apparently there were 20,000 people protesting somewhere in Seoul on one day, and the police had their water cannon out to deal with things. Always great to have Mr Bush in town when you are seeing a place for the first time!

I landed at Incheon airport fairly late in the evening, and was not very impressed by the airport that claims to have won the "world's best" award on more than one occasion. It took ages and ages to wait for a train to the main terminal (an annoying feature at an increasing number of new airports, and an utter waste of time), and that put me right at the back of the immigration queue. Once through that, customs seemed to be highly officious, reminding me of Australia and New Zealand. They made you walk on mats soaked with disinfectant, were on high alert for anything made of wood, and forced everybody to x-ray their bags on the way out of the airport. Very paranoid.

By the time I got into town and to my hotel, it was late. But, we did go past the 1988 Olympic Stadium on the way, which was fully lit up - presumably because Olympics are at the forefront of people's minds around here at the moment. There were also lots of neon crucifixes visible on the tops of churches - a reminder that Korea has a huge Christian population. After the journey, it was a relief when I got to my hotel - the Park Hyatt, which is apparently one of the 2 or 3 best in Seoul. A huge floor to ceiling window, a massive walk in wet room, and some fantastic design and decor in the room made it a memorably good one.

Korea struck me as a strange cross between Japan and China in many ways - which I guess shouldn't be too big a surprise, given its location between Japan and China. The economy is very technologically advanced, and normal people use lots of technology in their everyday lives. My Blackberry also failed to work on the super advanced mobile phone networks there, and it was pretty impenetrable in a number of ways - especially in the fact that you don't see much English around (or many foreigners), and the average person you encounter does not speak much English at all. So far, so much like Japan.

But the Chinese influence is there too - lots of spitting and shouting and shoving suggest that the Koreans take their manners more from the Chinese than Japanese! As a foreigner, I found that I was stared at quite a bit when walking along the street between the office and hotel - in fact, in some instances, people looked at me as if I was from outer space.

One great thing about the place was the food - lots of meat, even more garlic, and kimchee - pickled vegetables with chilli, which was fantastic. I was taken to one place where they lit a stove in the middle of your table, then gave you a huge plate of beef to cook on it - excellent! I certainly ate well in Korea - the combination of lots of meat, plus very spicy stuff reminded me of what I like about Mexican food.

I was in Korea for less than 48 hours, so as soon as I had got a feel for the place, it was time to leave. I enjoyed being taken out by my colleagues, but found Seoul quite strange when left on my own. Seoul (and to some extent the Korean people) also struck me as quite boring - all geared towards "work", without much room for "play". On the way back to the airport in daylight, I got the feel for how big the city was, going past the Olympic Stadium again, and back into the annoying airport (great if you want to buy Prada or Gucci, not so great when it takes 40 minutes to get from security to gate). 24 hours after leaving the office in Seoul, and after a flight via Hong Kong, I walked through my front door. A long trip, but a good one.