Asia Holiday 2014, August 16 (Sick In Seoul)

I had a second successive bad night trying to sleep. I was also feeling pretty dehydrated so I had to force myself to drink close to two litres of water through the night as well. The hotel bed was a bit of a disaster - not quite long enough unless I slept diagonally, but worse than that the bed and pillow were both ridiculously hard, I was getting neck pain within five minutes of lying down on either the pillow or just the mattress itself. The only solution I came up with was resting on my arm as a pillow, it sort of worked but between the awkward sleeping positions and getting more sick rather than less throughout the night I woke up about once an hour from 7:00pm all the way through to 7:00am. At about 4:00am I realised I was sweating like mad, not just because of the fever but the room was really warm for some reason, so I turned the air-conditioning up almost as far as it went.

The free breakfast was a reasonable consolation to get things back on track, it had the usual range of Asian and Western foods, plus more french fries, which were labelled as "Potato Fly" - brilliant ! There was also a tray of chocolate dessert cake slices which was a bonus for chocolate buffet fans. I went back to the room and slept for a while afterwards, I was only coherent enough and had everything in order to start the day by about 10:30am.

The return of free breakfasts.

I started off at Changdeok-gung Palace, only $3 entry was a pretty good deal. There wasn't a lot to see, but it was a relaxing walk around the palace, a few nice buildings and some garden areas. At the far end of the palace, but still within the palace grounds, there was another ticket booth to gain access to a second palace. This seemed a little odd, as I'm not sure what you'd do if you only wanted to visit the other palace. It was also possible to buy a ticket for a guided tour around a "secret garden" at the back of the palace that you otherwise cannot get access to, but that sounded like a waste of time.

The palace.

After leaving the palace I was within walking distance of Bukchon Hanok Village. The village is supposed to contain a lot of traditional old Korean houses but I seemed to miss out on wherever they were handing out these free maps of the village, so instead I was just wandering around on my own, wherever it looked like lots of people were coming or going. There were a few streets and houses that had some old architecture, but many of them looked like they had recently been cleaned up and renovated, so it didn't really feel like I had stepped back in time or anything like that. I did get to stop in at a Dunkin' Donuts though, so that was a positive.

Some old street.

After I'd covered enough of the village I found the "Seoul Fortress Wall - 1km" sign and decided to give that a try. The kilometre was all uphill and quite a challenge since I was feeling quite dizzy and low on energy. When I reached the wall I found...more signs, "Seoul Fortress Wall - 690 metres" pointing left and "Seoul Fortress Wall - 1800 metres" pointing right. My guess was that it meant you can walk along the wall that far in each direction before reaching the next checkpoint, or maybe something even more exciting. The wall wasn't quite in the same league as The Great Wall of China, it was probably tall enough to keep people out but wasn't nearly as wide. Before moving on I was able to find a good lookout point with a view down to the city.

The Great Wall of Korea.

I walked along the wall for a while, but after it didn't look it would come out anywhere useful for me to continue the day I turned around and went back the way I came from. At the bottom of the hill I reached Gyeongbok-gung where there was a wider range of better looking restaurants - it's a pity I didn't book a hotel closer to this place instead. I paid another $3 to get access to the Gyeongbok-gung Palace, this one was much larger than the previous palace, and had a few different types of buildings, lakes and ponds, which provided a bit more variety. I was slowly fading away as the afternoon rolled on so I needed yet another break before I could continue.

The other palace.

One of many buildings you can't go inside.

I walked back towards the city, passing through Gwanghwamun Square. There were a few monuments in the square but there was also a lot of temporary barriers and electrical equipment being packed up from some event that must have happened earlier in the day. That mystery was soon solved when I ran into a Korean guy who wanted to have a conversation in English - he told me that the pope had made a visit that morning. I found it funny that the guy appeared to be personally offended when I told him that I didn't follow any religion.

This guy.

And this guy.

I got on the train for the first time all day, down to Seoul Station. I checked out the Lotte Outlets, even though I was more than a little dubious there would be a good outlet store right in the middle of the city - usually these places are miles from the city and nowhere near a train station for an added degree of difficulty. There was a bunch of clothes and sports mini-stores on the top level where each advertised the discount percentage they were individually offering. Adidas and Nike were of course just 10% off, but Le Coq Sportif had 60% off items that probably had inflated prices, I found a nice Tour De France t-shirt which came in at about $30 after the discount.

Dunkin' Donuts, weird banana shaped donuts and muffins.

I started heading towards World Cup Stadium station but got off a few stops early to search for dinner. I spent a while walking around and came up empty once again, but then found a place called Monster Pizza. I didn't have a huge appetite, despite having eaten very little all day, but I still figured I could knock off a whole pizza by myself...until I saw the size of it. The pizza really was a very generous family size, so I only got three slices, but I was dying from an overload of carbs before I had finished the second. Somehow I eventually made a dent in the third as well, but I didn't feel good about it.

Half of a monster pizza.

Some energy drinks I was in no condition to try. Also Welch's Grape Soda !

I got back on to the train and this time made it to the World Cup Stadium for the night's big match between FC Seoul and Incheon United. I purchased a ticket for 14,000 won from the counter, with no sign of any scalpers this time. It looked like there was another ticket category for 20,000 won but the girl didn't seem to think there was, so I settled for the cheaper one. The nicest thing about the match was the much more relaxed atmosphere - no bag checks and no food and drink restrictions, people were even bringing in their own cans of beer and a lots of families were in attendance. They also didn't even bother with the national anthem, which was actually a bit disappointing.

The stadium was pretty big, as you might expect given it's name, so the top deck was closed off. The lower decks were quite full, easily bigger than the attendance at both Shanghai matches, with the home crowd mostly concentrated behind the goals at one end and all along one side of the pitch. I grabbed a seat behind the goals because it looked like the sun might be an issue in the other general admission areas. The matched start off quite slow and was pretty comparable to the quality of the Chinese league, until FC Seoul got it together after about 25 minutes and exploded with three quality goals before half time, both through good build up play and some excellent individual shots from outside the box.

The home end.

My fever was starting to return and I wasn't feeling so great, so I didn't make it far beyond half-time, but I had seen some good actions and goals by that time so I wasn't too upset about leaving early. The final score was a win to FC Seoul 5-1.

Game time.