Towering Technology - LG Korea Trip - Day Three

Today, we are on the move back to Seoul after an eventful time in Busan. 

And, the phrase, "Let's just have one more" is still ringing in my ears.

Aptly, LG arranged some time in a nearby Buddhist temple to pack in time to contemplate what we learnt and discovered about each other in Korea's second city.

The stories that will come from this stage of the trip will probably become legends, of the type that 'what goes on tour, stays on tour'. Although, the modern reality is that more like 'what goes on tour, goes on Facebook'. Security has been pretty tight so far with some of the material.

Nonetheless, the first challenge was getting onto the bus on time. When you have had little sleep the danger of 'just taking a quick nap' before the bus leaves can mean that you fall into a deep sleep which shuts your system down. Alan fell victim to the 'deep sleep' and apologised profusely to everyone else on the bus for delaying them. Most of us were asleep on the bus already, anyway.

LG arranged a site visit to the nearby 'Zenith Tower', a massive 'high-rise' which uses LG's air conditioning kit in all of its nearly 1,800 apartments on 80 floors. You can read more about this part of the day on the ACR Journal website in a short post here.

The next stop was the Buddhist Temple.

Alan visits the Buddhist Temple

Arriving at the temple's car park, Alan, Jody and Allan decided to stay on board and catch up on some much needed kip. Allan is suffering still from his injured ankle, but remains upbeat.

The path to the temple was lined with stalls selling anything from Korean massage tools, dried seaweed and buddha statues. Sophie explained the religious background in Korea as we made our way to the temple by the sea. In the temple a priest chanted as a handful of worshippers prayed.

Back at the coach, after an arduous walk back up from the temple, Alan and Jody were awake and still looked delicate.

Korean Chicken Soup

Lunch was to be traditional Korean, namely a poussin (a young chicken) cooked in a pot. When it arrived some of just stared at it, either because they were feeling like hell. Or, because they did not know how to start eating it. Mika came to the rescue again and, in her motherly way, proceeded to chop some of our chickens up. The poussin was stuffed with rice and herbs and sat in its own soup. It was quite tasty. After the chicken came platefuls of sticky chicken, followed by watermelon for dessert.

Back on the coach, we then sped through Busan to get to the high speed train, the KTX (Korean Train Express). The vast station seemed more like a football stadium than a rail station. Once again, Mika had timed it all to perfection. After a short pause, we boarded the KTX in First Class seats. The attendant was beautifully mannered and bowed as we boarded. When aboard, she would leave the carriage by moving out backwards and bowing to us before the door opened and leaving. Wouldn't that be nice to see in the UK on our trains?

Korean Manners

All of us settled in for 2 hours and 40 minutes of sleep on the way back to Seoul. The train travels at 200 KMH through the mountainous country that is Korea. Jody had provided mobile WiFi, so most of us caught up with some emails as we hurtled through the countryside.

In Seoul, a bus picked us up and took us back to the same hotel from earlier in the week. A quick swim and sauna, before dinner at an Italian and back to the hotel for a beer.

That's where some of the more disciplined of the group (who had had big night the night before) went to bed early. Martin, Will, Sam, Alan and I stayed up and had just one more beer, which turned into four more in fact.

Mr Kim

The hotel's bar had two Filipino singers on stage with a male keyboard player, whose name was Alex. As the beer flowed, so did our enthusiasm for the singing. Mr Kim, the hotel's entertainment manager was getting fired up by the singing too.

In their breaks, the girls sat at the bar. Will went to chat to them and found that they were under the cosh of Alex. They were sweet but it highlighted what a tough regime they were under working in Korea.

It came to 1.30 am and it was time to leave.