Trip to London

Hi All,

Finally found some internet so I (probably wrongfully) thought you might be interested in an update on our trip.

I think our last entry ended the day before our flight to London. I mentioned that Al and I didn't sleep the night before our flight out of Australia, which helped get through the ten hours as we pretty much slept the whole flight. Well, we decided to try this approach again, and instead we might improve on it by going out and getting well drunk.

We had a quick look on the net and decided to head out to a pub called Gecko's in Itaewon (seems to be the main area for pubs/clubs). We grabbed a taxi which was good because it gave us another experience on Korean roads. From what I can gather the following road rules are optional;

1. Obeying the speed limit

2. Stopping at red lights

3. Committing to a single lane

4. Indicating...ever

There does seem to be a road law in Korea that we don't have in Australia, which is definitely not optional; Beeping your horn every time you blink.

We pulled into Itaewon, and headed up to Gecko's and had a few beers, then we met a lovely Japanese/Korean girl called Jung. We drank plenty of beers and even had a few of the local shots. We were making good time on our plan to get hammered. Here's a photo of the three of us:

After a billion beers we decided we'd head off and check out another pub, but Jung wanted to drop some stuff off at her room first, so we all fanged up there. In the lift back down, she must've wanted to check we didn't have bombs strapped under our shirts (Korean protocol I suppose) so she lifted both of our shirts up to check. She then went on to say "I want sex you". Brun gave me a look that could only mean "Did that sentence contain sufficient conjunctions?". I replied back with a look that said "Don't think so, man, nonsensical sentence". Unsure what Jung meant, but not wanting to embarrass her, Brun and I decided to let out an awkward laugh each. Then, finally, the lift door opened.

We headed on to find a bar where people wouldn't want sex us, and found one that was perfectly suited to Al and my taste in a bar, a hip-hop club! The club was complete with strobe lights and people wearing super massive pants. Jung tried to make out with Al, but he said no. Then she tried to make out with me, but I said no. Then she tried to make out with Al again, but he said no. Then I tried to make out with Al, but he said no. Then Al tried to make out with the bouncer, but he said no. Disappointed that none of us were able to hook up, we left and found a great jazz bar to spend the rest of the night/our money. A few hours later, Jung went home and we grabbed a taxi back to our hotel to sleep deliciously for a good 30 minutes.

Waking up super refreshed and feeling fantastic, we dragged our luggage for 1 billion km's in the sun to the closest bus stop and got a bus to the international airport. We waited for 700 years for our plan to board, and then sat inside the plane for a millennium, until it finally landed in London.

Then we grabbed a few trains to where we have been staying since; a hostel in Paddington.

We've spent the last few days with Nicole Burry, a friend from school, who has been showing us around London. Here is one of the first photos taken in London. It's Al and I looking ganster "cruising" down westbourne terrace.

Nicole took us to the Tower Bridge, and we took some photos (below). Please ignore the annoying people that keep standing in front of the bridges etc.

This last photo is Nic being cheap and looking over the hedges rather than paying to get into that castle. Speaking of paying for annoying things, Al and I had to pay 50p each to use the public toilets here! Outrageous! Between you and me though, I think Al got about 75p worth out of his visit so we were ahead.

It was Nic's birthday, so the three of us and her Irish friend, Glen, went out for beers in Piccadilly Circus. Al forgot the bring the camera so I have drawn the photos. Hope this is ok. This first one is us having beers at a pub called The Porcupine.

We had a few beers, something to eat and decided to move on. We didn't really know where we were, but figured we could find an interesting pub somewhere...and we did....we somehow found ourselves in two of the absolute gayest pubs in London/the world. But that's ok, we had a few beers there anyway. Here's the photo:

I think Nic may have had quite a good time there, all the bartenders were muscley and pretty much naked. Not my scene though.

Anyway, that's it so far. We're heading to Poland in a few days so I'll try to get another one of these things up.

Take care!

Dan and Al.

Hi all,

Thought I'd let you know what Al and I have been up to so far.

We arrived in Seoul, South Korea last night after a plane ride that took almost 10 hours, with about the same amount of time spent preparing for it and waiting around at the airport. It was boring as, and the plane had tiny little seats. Fortunately, Al and I hadn't slept the night before so we managed to sleep through most of the trip.

When we arrived in Seoul airport, we realised three things; there are a lot of Korens here, not many speak english, and we don't speak korean. We tried to organise a train to our hotel, but after looking at the train timetable (all in Korean) we decided to catch a taxi. This was one of the easiest decisions I've ever had to make. We found a taxi driver that spoke english and he took us to our hotel. It took about 45 minutes and costs us the equivalent of around $90 AUD. After dropping that much cash on the taxi, Al and I decided we needed to live cheap for the next few days.

We headed up to our room to check it out, and I noticed a sign in the bathroom saying "Please put toilet paper in the trash can". This seemed easy enough, but I don't know why they couldn't have done it themselves.

We then went for a walk to find something to eat (cheaply). Almost every menu out the front of the restaurants was in Korean, so we had some difficulty finding somewhere we'd like. Until we came across this store;

Perfect! Our waiter came over and hesitantly asked whether we spoke Koren, we didn't even need to answer. He let us know that he only spoke a little English (if he knew one word of English that's more than we know in Korean). We ordered by pointing at the menu, and soon enough he brought us some Chicken and Beer (surprising eh?). He put our food on the table and told us to "eat deliciously", so we did.

The food was good, and cheap. After finishing we left to see if we could find somewhere to drink deliciously. There didn't seem to be a lot of pub type establishments, only restaurants. The mini-marts here sell beer, so we found one to see how much it costs. The answer to that question is "barely anything", as in a beer is like 1 australian dollar. That's a saving of about 5 dollars per beer. We figured if we bought enough beer, we could easily make back the money we had spent on the taxi.

We bought our beer and walked back to the hotel, where Brun decided he wanted to go to the toilet deliciously. Things got interesting from here on, as Brun advised me that we may have mis-interpreted the "toilet paper in trash can" sign. This simple mistake caused the toilet to fill to almost overflowing everytime it was flushed.The water would slowly drain away, so we figured we could use it about every fifteen minutes without overflow. Then we started drinking our beer...which made the toilet timetable difficult to abide by. Then it was time to sleep deliciously, which we did for almost 12 hours.



The following morning I went into the bathroom to use the toilet. I figured over night the water would've drained away to about normal levels, and I was about half right. There was absolutely no water, and it seemed to have been replaced by some interesting material from the depths of Korea's sewer system. Not sure whether to let the hotel management know, we went to the foyer and didn't.

That's our adventure so far. We fly to the UK tomorrow and I'll update this blog if there are any interesting stories to tell.

Take care!

Dan and Brun