First Stop - Korea Part 1

I thought I'd write a little bit of a travellogue while I remembered things, after all, LJ is a journal :)...

Arrived in Hong Kong in the early afternoon, a huge beast of an airport which we eventually managed to navigate. We'd been booked Business Class for the "short" hop to Korea - which meant we could shower and eat at the noodle bar in the lounge. Sadly, something was not going well and I spent most of my time in the loo talking to g_d. I recovered in time to be pampered by Cathy Pacific air crew who filled me with Champagne and a wonderful piece of Sea Bass in Bulgobi sauce. Qudos to Cathy, still they don't have flat beds like BA so I'll stick with the old favourite.

Like most western visitors to Korea the first thing I had to do was rent a phone. Korea is one of the largest mobile phone markets in the world, but unlike the US which seems to have woken up and smelt coffee, they are stuck on the gloriusly incompatable CDMA networks. Sadly, none of the options for my O2 mobile seemed to work, so I was phone-less for the few days we were in town. As I may have mentioned, it transpired later the next day I was also going to be laptop less.

I'll skip over the business, after all there are probably more NDAs covering it than I can imagine. However, getting into the client meeting was extraordinary. We were visiting a rather well known Korean electronics and manufacturing emporium at their consumer electronics centre about an hour from Seoul. First they take off you anything which could take pictures or store data and seal it in plastic bags. They record the serial numbers of any computers you might be needing. Then they x-ray your bags to ensure that you're not hiding anything. Oh, and you walk through a metal detector. This after a passport check, photo's and a badge issue gets you through the main gate.

Then you cross the campus to the building where you are going to meet. In our case the Mobile tech building has another security stage where more badges are issued to get you through the barriers and into the building. On the way out you are escorted to a security office who seal your PCs from any presentations and then x-ray your stuff again before letting you head to the main gate, where, guess what? They x-ray everything again... wow. Funny thing is, I'm not sure what they were trying to protect themsevlves from.

We were then taken for a Korean lunch...

I've eaten Korea before and enjoyed it, but I'd heard all sorts of stories from co-workers who had had all sorts of food out there. I was actually pleasantly surprised. I'll probably skip the citrus leaves and potato jelly in future, but pretty much everything else rocked. I especially like wrapping the meat in letauce leaves with a bit of Chim-Che (pickled cabbage in chillis) and adding a mixture of miso and chilli paste. Very nice indeed and highly recommended.

That evening we were taken for Korean BBQ, marrinated meat cooked at the table with a range of mostly hot sauces and pickles - washed down with Korean rice wine. The rice wine is heavy going being something like 20% and tasting not unlike Vodka. Our hosts then insisted we went for some beers, and more food. The Koreans like food with everything. Although the flattened dried squid to eat with beer is probably an aquired taste.

I'll skip over what happened next, but essentially a very laddish episode involving talking toot until dawn happened which meant I got to see sunrise in Seoul and spent the next day mostly lying in bed.

The day after that, Sunday, we were up at 7am to head to the airport and Taiwan...

Part 2: Taiwan

I'm not a huge Taiwan fan. Not sure what it is but there is something edgy and uncomfortable about the place. It is also quite a difficult place to do business in as the Taiwanese attitude towards professional services and 3rd party IPR makes any negotiation resemble a cold war disarmament round.

My boss was also starting to suffer, having not slept properly on the trip, he was into full sleep deprivation mode and the first day's meetings didn't help.

We did go out for what was, I hope fervantly, the most authentically Chinese meal I will ever have. To be fair, Hilda did warn us first. She did ask if I was ok with Animal "insides" - and, priding myself on a pretty strong stomach for these things I did say yes...

The meal itself wasn't actually bad. It was a Shabu-Shabu style hot pot soup with a spicy soup and a plain one, with lots of veges. A plate of rolled beef was brought out so you could cook it. That much was fine. It was only when the waiter stired the soup that I realised that there was more to it than Pok-Choi and Beef. There were... things...

The tripe I recognised, not a huge fan, I did eat some. I also ate the clams which weren't bad. The spongey stuff that had to be boiled for a good 10 minutes I wasn't so sure about. The sqaures of strange and unplesanant tasting "something" weren't all that good. The dim sum balls were not all dim sum.

I am reliably informed that I now know what chicken *balls* really do taste like.

All in all a strange experience, which, true international traveller that I am had me ordering a steak sandwich for dinner the next night...

Last Stop: Hong Kong

I like Hong Kong. There's something exciting about the place, it really is like a bastard cross between New York and London, amazing buildings but little winding roads. We had a day layover there on the route home. Firstly it gave my boss a chance to sleep, which left me checking out the hotel bar by myself. I didn't stay long, it was a little like the scene in Find Nemo where the crab is thrown onto the Quayside. A single white male entering a hotel bar attracts a lot of attention and I decided to head to bed.

The next day I took The Magician's advice and headed up the Funicular tram to the peak. Sadly the weather was dreaful and we couldn't see much, but it was fun. We also walked around the escalators for a while and generally had fun taking pictures - which I'll get around to posting as soon as I download them from the camera.

That evening we met with another friend of M's who also did the MBA - Helen also took us for some local food, an excellent Catoneese resturant on the waterfront at Kowloon, overlooking the main Island. As we ate, the lights came on, it was stunning.

As was the meal, I'm not convinced I like Sea Cucumber, but I did like the Jelly Fish and everything else. We bade our goodbyes and took ourselves off to Hong Kong airport.

There we tried for upgrades - no chance. But they could get us bulkhead seats on the flight leaving earlier - we took that. Apart from a slight sense of humour failure as we elbowed each other to sleep my boss and I coped with 13 hours next to each other.

I've been asked to head out to Korea and Taiwan again in May/June and, if possible, take in a trip to Japan.

I really used to think this stuff was fun...