It's the final count down...

Yes, the time has come. Almost. Just another 12 hours before I try to haul my bags out of the apartment and get myself to the airport to come home. It's been emotional... sometimes accident prone, and often embarrassing, but my time in Korea has been an amazing opportunity, and I have not wasted the last few days in this country (and here is just another example of pavement driving, you can even see the oncoming scooter!).

After returning to Korea from China, I unfortunately went down with a nasty case of bird flu - not the avian kind, just the female equivalent of man-flu, (which is like man-flu, but much, much worse). Still, with Gemma having left for sunny Australia there was still Kev to entertain, so on Monday morning we managed to drag ourselves our of beds in time to catch the 5.30am bus to go skiing. The ski resort was very similar to the ones on the East coast of the U.S in that it was a fairly small selection of slopes on hills rather than mountains. Interestingly, they only had blue runs or black runs, and some runs which would be half and half- not very fair on a beginner!

However, having skied even the most gnarly, double diamond, "expert only" runs a few times, we concluded that in Europe they would be nothing more than a slightly shorter than usual red, as there were no large patches of ice, grit, rocks, precipices, crevasses or long trains of out of control ski-school kids nearby as with most European black runs...now where's the fun in that?!

The resort we went to was Yongpyong which is one of the candidate resorts for the 2014 Winter Olympics as advertised absolutely everywhere... but I would be very surprised if they were successful as there were no runs long enough or steep enough for a downhill ski race, the half pipe had the side profile of a plate, and the gondala lift took 17 minutes to get to the top, and about 4 minutes to ski down (would have been much quicker if the "blue" run had been steep enough that you didn't have to walk...)

However, all in all it was great for one day of skiing, and had I not felt so ill I may have gone back for a second day.

So, what to do on the last few days in Korea?! We headed off for a tour of the war museum which was really interesting (and not just because you could climb inside lots of military planes). It seems that Korea is not only one of the few countries that never appears to have tried to take over anywhere else (largely because throughout most of it's history it was defending itself against the Chinese or Japanese) but it also seems to be a place that England has not tried to own. We did turn up in the late 19th century asking for trade, and at one point occupied a small Island for a couple of years, but then it appears we wandered off elsewhere and just opened trade routes (although the history books claim that we did much unauthorised surverying...)

We visited an aquarium today which did, as I had hoped, have a Korean twist on things... namely the displaying of fish in everyday unusual items such as drinks machines, a washing machine, and yes.... a toilet bowl.

They also had a decent tank of sharks which always grabs your attention, and a huge sea turtle which I don't think I have ever seen before in an aquarium.




So, to conclude my time in Korea, we went to a restaurant called "Mad for Garlic" which seemed to pay tribute to Dracula as you would expect of a Korean Italian restaurant (?!). All good fun though and we did manage to get a decent bottle of red, and some steak, even if the garlic may stay with me for a few weeks...

And so, it is time to leave Seoul. I have had a great time here although it has been tough at times, mostly due to being quite isolated or me doing ridiculous things to embarassas myself, and I swear I never normally fall over at all! Seoul is very modern and doing extremely well for itself with an incredibly high standard of living. At the moment though, there are very few Brits out here and I could have done with a few more young females for company, but I strongly suspect that in a decade or so, Seoul will be like many of the other up and coming Asian cities and a fantastic place to live and work. I have certainly never felt safer anywhere. I have to say though, I will not miss the view from my flat too much....

Thank you to everyone who has kept up to date with my exploits... I hope you have enjoyed reading this as much as I have amused myself in writing it (probably not I would guess) but my mum likes it so that's ok. You never know, there may just be a next chapter round the corner, who knows....

Anyong haseyo, and kamsahamnida (goodbye and thank you)...