Jason goes places!!

Ya, ya, like the whole lot of you would have already know, I am now out of Singapore and am in a trip that will be taking me to Korea and the US of A. In fact, I am typing this entry from the confines of my hotel room in San Francisco where I have just arrived some 3 - 4 hours ago while the other half of the world was in dreamland.

Ok, I did remember that I was supposed to post updates of my trip from Day 1 but since I couldn't manage to get Internet connections at my hotel in Korea on the first day due to reasons which I am going to elaborate below so I will waste no time and combine the highlights of what has happened during the past 2 days that I have been outta Singapore.

Day 1: Late Flight, Late Arrival @#$%%

The first day or rather the night before I arrived in Korea was a nightmare. The given schedule of the trip that was sent to me revealed the fact that I was actually the last of the journalists to reach Incheon International Airport. There were actually four other writers besides me and they were all there since the start of Saturday! This not only meant that they had an entire day to recover from the flight but also an entire day to get used to Korea a bit. Whereas yours truly had to (for reasons that were really beyond me) take a flight that is one day later than the rest and at a later time at that! (it was a 10.35pm flight). This meant that the moment that I touched down, it was only a matter of a few hours that I would need to get to the hotel (by a cab that they sponsors have booked for me), put down my stuff and off I go to the first stop of the press tour.

To make matters freaking worse was the fact that the immigration counter was grossly inefficient, the guy stamping those passports had to knn take his time and that resulted in a longer than normal queue with each person of the queue taking up to 2 - 3 minutes to clear the immigration. Multiply by 20+++ people and you get the drift...anyhow, needless to say, I was quite jumpy as there I was being held up indefinitely by one puny official and I was really unsure whether the cab driver will continue to wait for me. Hurriedly, I dialed the cab driver and told him to wait for me as well as calling up the person in charge of the tour and telling her that I will be pretty late...argh, so much for first impressions.

Anyway, the wait ended and I got my bags and dashed to the cab and unto the roads. One thing that I have to digress about is the fact that I really really love the temperature of these countries, it's totally like having an air-con perpetually on outdoors! I remember when I first went to San Francisco last year, I thought that the carpark was air-conditioned only to discover that the carpark is actually in open air and that the temperature was actually like this! Even my breath could condense into wispy mist whenever I breathe, and I spent a feew minutes marvelling in this. Damn bo liao but it was a totally fresh experience for me!

Ok, where was I? Oh, I was on the road already, confident that at least I could make it to the hotel on the dot. Of course, somethings have to go wrong when the cab (which was actually a minivan) stopped suddenly, jerked up from my day-dreaming, I looked up and to my horror, the whole freaking road was bloody jammed loh!! And the length of it was as far as the eye could see!!

"Siao liao loh, like that how??!!" I thought to myself...and I lifted my phone and called the person in charge (who is called Rachel Kim by the way, I really wonder how many Kims there are in Korea), and told her there was a jam and she surprisingly did not question further (which I found out later that Korean roads are famous for their horrendous jams, (it can really give you emotional scars especially when you are in a great rush, I kid you not. It was terrible!!) so much for Bangkok jams, because if you want something really hardcore, try the Korean ones...

Sexcapade in Seoul

I shan't bother and bore you readers with a point by point recount of my actual press tour unless it is something remotely interesting. What I will write here however, will be about things you never thought existed in the friggin' world. Have you ever thought about setting up a nightclub sans the working girls and yet you as a customer could actually shag one babe for free if you are lucky?? Aha, I can already hear hoots of curiosity from those ti ko ah pehs and bangalas prowling the alleys of geylang. Let me tell you old jocks that somebody in Korea has already thought of that.

The people of Hanbitsoft (who were the sponsors) brought us reporters to this club in Seoul called Mool (which means water in Korean, hence the term watering holes can also mean clubs and pubs. Nah, I am crapping. Watering Holes come from the Aussie slang, Billabong, but that's another story), anyway, to cut the story short, Mool is but one of the many clubs in Korea that do not need mamasans, whores and the entire works. You the paying customer, simply need to walk in and if you are a guy, the waiters there will actually pick up girls from the throng of people there and bring her to your cubicles or rooms (man, let me tell you, Korean babes are sweet although I didn't really do anything untoward...).

Sometimes, the girls may be not willing at all and they have every right to leave the area if it doesn't interest them but if they are suitably romanced and chatted around, they may stay and if the conversation were to get all hot and heavy, ooh boy the night is all yours mister! Of course, being downed with a gazzillion litres of force fed beer could also make one brave enough...(and they actually made me drink a concoction called Tornado which was basically beer mixed with whisky, my whole body was burning after a few sips, O__o)

Of course, faced with more than 10 men in a single room could unnerve almost any girl but I truly admire the guts of some of these Korean girls, some of them actually gamely stayed and a couple of them were truly eye candy. Of course, language expectedly was a problem and that prevented me from chatting with them about anything deeper than the weather, age, occupation and other superficial bullshit. There was even once that I had to switch to my crappy Japanese in order to converse with a Korean babe who happens to know Jap. Haha, take that Ismail, how's that for you??? :PP

You are a cute man, do you have a girlfriend?

Seriously, that's what two girls said to me!! Maybe it's my Singapore bengish copper hair...hmmm.

Well, that's all for today, more updates coming up! Gotta hit the sack now, long day tomorrow...