Day 4

Day Four.

It's children's day – a national holiday for adults. With that knowledge kicking around in our increasingly relaxed state of consciousness, everything is in place for a day of leisure. The banks are shut, the post offices are too and we can conveniently forget about all the research we should be doing to make our entry into China a little smoother.

Following an extensive travellers' chat and a brief, unsuccessful attempt to pin down where we'll be entering the sprawling red state, we take to the streets, enjoying the hustle, the bustle and the blazing sun. First stop, lunch. Perhaps our final dolsot bibimbap, or stone pot mixed rice. A rice-based dish, mixed in a stone pot, you may be surprised to learn. Throw in the ubiquitous spice, courtesy of the chill pepper paste, gochujang, a load of vegetables and an egg and you have a hearty, carbohydrate rich meal on your hands.

Back on the streets, the vibe seems almost festive, with the fashionable youth celebrating the day off in the way they know best – shopping. Not particularly inclined to join them, we stop off at a takeaway cocktail shop and, armed with impressively sizeable margaritas, served in what appear to be enormous, new rave-styled conical flasks, we make for the park.

A unusually youthful soju warrior with just a hint of punk, swigging his poison straight from the bottle proceeds to join us for some broken conversation, assisted in his efforts to befriend us by any passers by who will help. Having repeatedly and extensively complimented us, the lengthy interaction ends with a hug. Despite the stench of neat liquor and permanent marker pen, emanating from the rather disturbing marker doodles all over one of his arms, I reciprocate and share the love. The day's off to a good start. I celebrate the spring this drunken maverick has put into my step in the only way I can think of. By purchasing some enormous, pink rimmed sunglasses and wearing them with reckless, anarchic abandon. The hoards approve.

Abandoning Hongdae in search of new pleasures, we make for Myeong-dong. For those unfamiliar with the place, I consider it the Shibuya of Seoul. And for those unfamiliar with Shibuya, consider the crowds of Picadilly Circus, jazz up and stir in the shopping of Oxford Street, inject the whole thing with some serious steroids, give it a mighty makeover and you are halfway there. Finally, find a few hundred thousand young, lithe, asian women, dress them in shirts so short they barely scrape over the edge of their gluteals, heals so high it would take a talented circus performer a lengthy stint in training to master them, douse them in make up, dye their hair, surround them with uber attentive boyfriends, faffing around them like a bunch of funky styled court jesters, desperate to entertain, remove any space to walk... and you'll have a clearer picture. We spend about 10 minutes attempting to move among, before abandoning the idea in pursuit of a greater semblance of personal space. Our target, North Seoul Tower. It's big enough to see, so we set off in its direction.

A hour or so later and we are in Namsan Park, attempting to find a way up. This proves tougher than you might think and my map reading skills are horribly exposed as I plump for the wrong direction and end up walking around practically the entire park before finding the route to the top. It's a pleasant park, but it's not my favourite Namsan... and everyone should have one. That, my friends, is in Gyeong-ju, a mountain of the same name that is home to a litany of Buddhist relics and sites of religious / historical interest. It was also home to some vibrant, purple azaleas and the most sociable, multi-lingual hermit I've ever met. Go there...

Eventually we make it to the tower. It's buzzing with people from across the globe and offers not-particularly-surprisingly-good panoramic views of the city. These we imbibe, along with the odd beer, as a effulgent orange sun sinks slowly into the smog and a glorious sunset is lost to air pollution. I don't expect to see another for a while.

The day ends on a pleasant note as Mr. Choi finds out we are a couple and, after taking mild amusement from our differing skin tones, kindly offers us a vacant double room for the night, removing us from the sty. Peace, tranquillity, cuddles...

Day 3

It's early and I wake with the realisation that sleeping in closed quarters with so many travellers, can prove akin to bedding down in an ape enclosure for the night, if marginally less hygienic and significantly less comfortable. Still, the good news is the sun has broken through the thick layer of smog that normally engulfs Seoul and there is lots to do. A couple of sickly sweet instant coffees later and we are bound for the subway on a mission to get to the Mongolian Embassy and secure the final visa necessary for the major leg of the trip. As Embassies go, this one, located in what appears to be an apartment block or amidst the kind of offices where David Brent plies his trade, is perhaps the most unassuming I've ever visited. There is no security, minimal signage and just the one, beaming employee.

In interests of stress relief, I opt for the most expensive, urgent visa option, slapping down KRW 86,000 and a hastily scribbled application form with a smile. The thing is delivered before I've taken a sip of the day's third instant coffee. I know Carlsberg don't do Embassies, but if they did... An emotional goodbye to the world's most friendly and efficient consulate – who even saved us a trip to the bank, by taking our cash and wiring some of his own money to the official Embassy account to pay for the visa – and we were off to Itaewon to find some English speaking bank staff. I should note in all of this that Meka, as an American citizen, doesn't require a Mongolian visa, yet the sum total of her two, Russian and Chinese tickets to cultural enlightenment, still cost significantly more than my three. The cold war of hard currency continues.

While there is nothing exciting about the process of banking, it can prove a nerve racking experience. An hour later and a year of our earnings were floating around in cyberspace and here they will remain, until about Wednesday, when they will either show up in our UK accounts or be lost for ever. I'd usually be more confident, but given the lady tasked with the transfer, also supplied me a receipt for about 2900 Chinese Ruan and only 2400 in currency, I'm not so sure. Not all women can multi-task, it would seem.

With the dull stuff out of the way, we pored over the streets looking for some local cuisine, which is harder to come across than you might think in Itaewon, a corner of Seoul that's all done up like an American dog's dinner. If you want leather products, plus sized clothes or the fast food that landed you in them, this is the place to come. For Korean eats, you need to take to the back streets. Fortunately we found some, in a dirty little dive, populated by some aging local builders and some of the dirtiest walls I've seen in a while. Fortunately the Daktoritang was on the nail, a delicious, bubbling, succulent and spicy chicken and potato stew, capable of feeding far more than just the two of us, served on a table top stove with the usual array of side dishes.

The rest of the day was spent leisurely accomplishing more tasks and attempting to soak up as much of the sun as possible, fearful of the fact we might not see it again in a while. And the evening was whiled away, over at the Seoul World Cup Stadium as part of a surprisingly raucous crowd, cheering on FC Seoul to a comfortable, yet impressive 3-0 victory over a team from the UAE in the Asian Champions League. The most noteworthy observation here is that you appear to require at least two children to qualify for a ticket. Unlike the boozy, testosterone laden terraces of Layer Road's Barside, where anything that was not purely man (or an earlier evolutionary incarnation thereof) struggled to survive, here going to the football is a family event and a great excuse to sit outside quaffing a mighty picnic. Ours, as usual, comprised ddeokbokki, a host of chewy cakes of pulped rice, served in a thick, sweet, spicy sauce that glows orange with wrongness yet tastes so right. We'll probably eat more tomorrow...