1 Just arrived

It has been four days since I stepped on real grass.

Flying to Seoul was great after my wonderful upgrade to business class on not one, but both legs of my flight - what a pleasant way to travel when you are used to the total shag of cattle class.

Our plane from London to Dubai was delayed so me and this cool old barrister from Melbourne drank Moet and chatted away on the runway for two hours while the staff fannied about fixing a small light that wasnt working. Drank so much Moet actually, that I suffered from a rather nasty hangover headache all the way to the middle east... lesson - don't get too excited about business class, you sad loser!

Hardworking hubby had run out of gas on the motorway trying to drive his brand new car on the wrong side of the road from the city he doesn't yet know to the airport, so he wasn't there to meet me. I called him on his mobile as he raced along, foot on the floor. He had driven half way around South Korea trying to find a) gas and b) Incheon Airport (which is disappointingly for him nowhere near the town of Incheon - I couldn't blame him really, an easy assumption to make!). Fortunately, a nice guy helped him back onto the right road by driving through Incheon for 15 minutes leading him back to the motorway.

We cruised the 30kms back into Seoul in no time in our new, sleek, corporate mobile. Compared to our old Mitsubishi truck this car is smooth! It is also very hard to find in carparks as it is exactly the same as all the other corporate mobiles on the roads - a black executive car. Boring but free, so who cares?

We got to our serviced apartment which has a big view of Kangnam-Gu district of Seoul then headed out to find supper. Hardworking as been here for nearly 2 months so I thought he might have somewhere in mind...

We went to Apgujeoung area which he had heard was cool, and had already been there once a while ago. I think we must have come out of the subway on a funny exit because it was pretty unremarkable at first sight. We wandered around and then came across a barbecue place which looked okay and still had some residual diners in it (so we weren't breaking our rule of never eating in a restaurant with no other customers).

It was delicious. Man, Korean barbecue is good. We sat on the floor on either side of a low table which had a cool stainless steel, shiny, mini-chimney sucky thing hanging down from the ceiling above our own little grill to hoover up all the smoke from the meat cooking. Hardworking hubby managed to order some meat and the waitress brought a whole heap of condiments, salads, soups etc for us to eat together with our meat tit bits. Bloody yummy and all washed down with a small bottle of Soju ( the local tipple made with potatoes apparently, not as mad as tequila, kind of like sweet Sake) and a couple of bottles of Cash beer.

Taxi back to the apartment for one more beer, like we really needed it but having so much fun being back together after 6 weeks of almost total separation, and to sleep. So knackereed that going to bed at the equivalent of 4pm made no difference and I slept through the night. Day one in Korea complete!