Originally Posted by FLT001

Fantastic TR and gorgeous pictures.

This must be the photo of the year:

Originally Posted by CreativeBill

My trip was perhaps a bit unusual, as I started in Brisbane, and was heading to the UK.

The irrelevant bits were on Qantas, Air Calin and Cathay from Brisbane-Noumea-Sydney-Melbourne-Hobart-Melbourne-Sydney-Hong Kong-Seoul..
.
I arrived at ICN rather late at night and it was far too late to join the shenanigans in Seoul, so opted to stay at one of the dirty cheap airport hotels at Incheon with a free airport transfer.. At check-in, I was first to the desk and last to get a room as my Wotif booking could not be found.. Eventually they decided to just give me a key so they can get rid of me.

I got the top floor, my room was left, right, right, right, left, left, right, left and possibly another left upon exiting the lift.. The door to my room just wouldn't open.. In the end, I pulled the key out in frustration and the door opened.. Outwards.. Into my face.. After being half-knocked out, I was greeted to a small 2ft by 4ft porch, and two pairs of slippers and another door.. It had different room number.. Surely this porch couldn't be my room?. I put the key in, and it opened!

Although the door opened away from me, I was knocked senseless.




Those who know me know I'm a manly sort of bloke.. Flowers, especially pink ones, are just an absolute no-no.. I wouldn't even give my six-year old niece pink flowers.. I did give her an Olympic BA model plane with pink Union Jack wings once though, that was about the limit.. I drop my bags and decided to escape to the bathroom.

Oh no!



This is a Barbie-doll house-nightmareland!

I averted my eyes to the floor of the bathroom...:



Not in a million years would I wear these.

I need to escape this badly, and back in the room, this is just exactly what I needed:

Originally Posted by CreativeBill

A funny thing happened during the creation of this Trip Report... ALL of the contributors stopped at this point and said “I’m sure you have lots about this night”. Every. Single. One. of them. Nice.

Why they assume that I have the faculties to recall the happenings of that infamous eve is beyond me. Perhaps they have the wrong impression of my ladylikeness. Perhaps they did not witness the amount of shots I (insanely) agreed to.

Oh well, deep breath. Here’s what I remember...

NB: There are very few pictures included. This is not because there aren’t any, but we all have our dignity, jobs and marriages to consider. Do your best to imagine it if you weren’t lucky enough to be there.

The ‘Do’ on the December 8 was kindly organised by our fellow FT’er in Seoul, the charming nme7 and what an absolute star he was! Thank you sir, I doff my cap to you for organising such a fabulous evening.

Mr CreativeBill and I arrived rather fashionably late due to our taxi driver’s gracious attempts to understand my garbled directions. I had just awoken from an afternoon slumber and we all know how many brain cells stay begrudgingly asleep when you partake of an afternoon nap. I manage to engage the synapses enough about half way through our tour of Gangnam and fish out the printed directions that I had had the genius to place safely in the depths of my handbag.

However, by this time, he refused to acknowledge any advice I may have had and resorted to stopping at every BBQ restaurant to enquire as to whether they had seen a bunch of insane Englishmen. Or, he may have been asking if anyone had seen a crazy Canadian donning a canary yellow sleeping bag. It was definitely one or the other.

Finally we pulled up outside an establishment, who’s signage bore no relation to my printed directions, but all the staff piled out when they saw our confused pasty faces and assured us that they had our friends in the basement.

Now, I don’t know about you, but when in foreign climes I have a heightened suspicion of going into strange basements... But my fears were allayed forthwith as we followed the proprietors down to be welcomed by delicious smells and the jolly hubbub that only an FT ‘Do’ can create.

We weren’t the last of the FT’ers to arrive, mind. PETER01 swanned in almost an hour late citing an early connection from EDI that morning had wiped him out after his tour of Seoul. A 5am UK time start, 16 hours of travelling, 5 hours of sightseeing and he couldn’t make it on time for dinner. What a lightweight .

Boots were whipped off, we were quickly seated on comfy floor cushions and before we knew it our in-table BBQ was glowing and various bowls of beef and delicious Korean side dishes were placed before us. The beer and Soju flowed and the conversation followed suit as we finally got to chat properly to the others, without the angst of bothering those around us.



The FT Korean BBQ ‘Do’ by BotB



The FT Korean BBQ ‘Do’ by nh1980



I thought the label said “Lite”. It wasn’t. by BotB



The rehearsals get started by CreativeBill

I know it’s been said before, but what a fabulous, diverse, funny, intelligent and friendly lot FT’ers are. If you have never done a ‘Do’, please do do a ‘Do’, because ‘Do’s’ really do turn out to be an awful lot of fun.

After a splendid dinner, we sorted the bill (30k KRW ~ £16 GBP each) for all the food and beer we could consume (so far), what a bargain.

If you have been paying attention, you will know that we had accepted a challenge to create a Gangnam FT Style video and now was the time to take the plunge (in some cases, quite literally thanks to the icy streets). If you want to see the results (and think very carefully about your mental wellbeing before you do that), you can skip down to SCENE 8: ACT1 for the link. Good luck.



Gangnam FT Style by PETER01

Now, clearly when we agreed to make such fools of ourselves, we neglected to recognise that we would, in fact, be executing our (very) recently acquired dance (if you can call it that) moves in the middle of one of the most densely populated cities in the world...

Our audience included a more than mature lady who stopped to join in (before being shooed back into decorum by her husband) and the local police - who wanted to join in, but had duties to tend to and made do with stopping briefly to laugh. Hard.

The staff and patrons of the fast food restaurant, that we chose to be outside for the subtle lighting quality, all stopped what they were doing and watched in wonder. They then whipped out their smartphones and snapped pictures of us whilst also laughing. A lot. Happy people the Koreans, always laughing.

There was then a unanimous decision to carry the party on and find a bar in which to nestle our behinds and further lubricate the confidence and film some more footage for our cinematic dance debut.


nme7 and his friend (and our new FT recruit... Yes, she joined even after meeting us) janesworld shepherded us into the nearest drinking establishment and more beer was ordered. nme7 also thought it was a good idea to order a round of a frighteningly neon-coloured liquid called Aqua Bombs. Ladies and Gentlemen, we agreed because he is a local and we were confident that he would attend to us with a care for the jet-lagged lambs that we were, but I can assure you that this elixir of liver damage had very little of the ‘Aqua’ and an awful, awful lot of the ‘Bomb’.



Cpl Arnhem and friend sampling the local beverages by papabear

Things are about to get a lot more hazy...

I remember janesworld kindly escorting me to the Ladies, which were actually upstairs, out of the bar, along the road, into a darkened office block and down some (dark) stairs. That’s right, the bar did not have a ladies, but for the gents the facilities were but a short step from the end of the bar. Go figure.

I remember when we (finally) decided to head back to our hotels that nme7 and janesworld did a superb job of coaxing us into taxis and coaxing the taxi drivers to take the rather inebriated passengers back to our various locations around the city.

I remember offering to host the ‘after party’ for the unsubmissive few in our suite.

On our way, we dropped the gorgeous justjack1 vaguely in the proximity of his hotel. My last recollection of him was viewed through the back window of our taxi as he wandered about looking like a lost kitten. Thankfully, he survived and has since told me that he gave up looking for his accommodation and spent the night in a Jjimjilbang to sweat out all the booze and fall asleep with some snoring Koreans... Give that boy a FlyerTalk medal!

I remember getting back to our hotel to be greeted by nme7, passy777 and papabear, who informed us that all the hotel bars were closed. Not to be subdued in our duty, we made our way up to our suite to sample (hammer) our mini-bar offering.

I remember nothing after that. The video footage divulges some activity that amused me no end but may have dismayed the overnight security staff of our hotel somewhat. It’s just as well the staff were far too polite to mention our antics, but I hope they enjoyed the entertainment as much as we did whilst providing it.

So, all in all, a pretty tame night. I’m exhausted just typing about it.

Originally Posted by thundercat

Brilliant report, well done ^^^