The end of the road

Manila: 1 night
Will and myself arrived into Malate in Manila at 7:30am and after some Korean breakfast we met up with Gary early in the morning. We took a nap for the afternoon and went for a few roadside beers that night. 


Puerto Princesa: 2 nights
We arrived late into the capital of Palawan and decided to check out the Lying Planet's reccomendation of a Kinabuchs Bar and Grill which was empty. After spending the day realising the capital has nothing much to offer, we went to a side-of-the-road restaurant and had the nicest spring rolls I've ever had.

Sabang: 2 nights
We arrived at the home of the world's largest subterranian river only to find that two months prior, the entry permit status had been changed and we would have to go back to Puerto Princesa to get our pemits (thanks again Lying Planet!). Instead we decided to make the best of it and spent the days foraging for coconuts and relaxing on the beach.

El Nido: 5 nights
We immediately fell in love with this place with it's spanning archipelagos and amazing sunsets. We took a tour boat which took us to a few lagoons and some snorkeling hot spots for the day (we even got to see turtles!). The following day myself and Gary rented kayaks and kayaked out to the nearest island about a mile away. Of course, after relexing on it's secluded beach for a while one of my paddles broke off and sank, so I had to paddle back with only one paddle, not quite so much fun. There wasn't too much happening at night so we either just hung out on the beach or in our guesthouse.

Puerto Princesa: 1 night
Not much happened apart from torrential rain.


Manila: 4 nights
We went back to the capital to meet my friend Chris Kennedy, who was arriving in a few days. Not too much happened again. Myself and Gary watched the FA cup final and Gary got an eye infection. The only real incedent of significance was on the last night we all said goodbye to Will who had decided to not follow us on to Boracay and go back to Cambodia to relax before going home.

Boracay: 5 nights
By comparison to the last time I was here I was quite dissapointed. The last time myself and Chris were here it was low season so, while there were a few people knocking about, it still wasn't too busy. This time it was high season and the entire beach was crammed full of people (I'd guess there were at least twice as many tourists on Boracay then all of Palawan. Also the price had doubled on everything since Manila. Still we made the most of it,swimming and playing football during the day and partying most nights until the early hours.

Manila: 1 night
We had to come back so that I could extend my visa and we also found a bar showing most of the Premiership games similtaniously (as it was the final day of the season).

Tagaytay: 2 nights
We came here for one purpose and on our second day here we hired a boat to take us accross Taal lake to climb Taal volcano, an active volcano with a sulphiric lake in it's crater. We even got to knock golf balls into it for good measure!

Manila: 1 night
Myself and Chris said goodbye to Gary and took a plane to Singapore.


Singapore: 3 nights
My god was it expensive! I arrived late and crashed immediately in our hostel. The next day we booked into the only accomodation available, a five star hotel. We spend most of the day and night exploring the city. It's really nice but to get an idea at the cost, a 500ml bottle of cheap vodka costs €55! Thankfully Chris had bought a bottle in the duty free for €10 so we had a few drinks in the room and played cards (thilling stuff, I know). The next day Chris went home to London and I chanced my arm at Couchsurfing which turned out to be a great experience. I ended up hanging out with a group of locals and expats and we went out to watch the Champion's League final and I also got to stay on a couch for free!

Kuala Lumpur : now until the end.......probably......
I'm back in KL, staying in my friend John Gaughan's place. His roommates are really nice and they've said I can stay here until I go home (actually I'll have a bed from Friday onwards!). It's a nice spot and they've got a gym and a swimming pool in the complex so I'm happy to just relax, work out, and save a bit of money untill I get home via London (which I have my suspicions will not be relaxing, as I'll be staying with Chris and probably hitting the town).


It's been a great journey but after two and a half years it's time to come home for a while. I arrive back into Dublin on the night of Saturday June 2nd so I hope to be seeing you all very soon!

The second leg

Siem Reap: 1 night
We went here to take in the amazing temples complex surrounding Angkor Wat. We hired a tuk tuk driver to take us around for the day and went for a couple of quiet pints at night.

Phnom Penh: 3 nights
Myself and Will randomly bumped onto Paddy Bourke from Dunboyne in the Mekong River bar. As a result, the following 3 nights decended into drunken mayhem amid remeniscing about the good old days. During the days we visited S-21 torture prison and, particularly disturbing, The Killing Fields, the most depressing place I've ever been.

Ho Chi Minh City: 4 nights
Formerly Saigon, we arrived in the old capital of South Vietnam and almost immediately had another chance encounter. As we were walking to get food, we bumped into the two Cork lads and had a few nights out with them. I also visited the war museum to get a Vietnamese version of the events surrounding the Vietnam War. It documented the atrocities committed by US soldiers on civilians and the generations of deformities cause by Agent Orange. A little one-sided but still interesting regardless.

Hue: 2 nights
We took a flight up to here and walked around the citadel and the remains of the forbidden city. We also celebrated Will's birthday all night with all the staff of the Why Not bar, drinking local vodka with the locals til the crack of dawn. We then took a cramped sleeper train to....

Hanoi: 3 nights
We met up with Colm, my co-worker from Korea and his girlfriend after a night train. We sat on "beer corner" drinking local beer priced from $0.25 - $1 and shared stories from our respective trips. Hanoi's old quarter is also a really nice part of town to walk around which is essentially all we did while here.

Ha Long Bay: 1 night
We took a boat tour of the UNESCO World Heritage Site, which involved touring a cave, kayaking, swimming, and the most food I've ever eaten. The views were breathtaking but the tour was too much like a package holiday with everything being too rigoursly scheduled. We had a few people around our own age on the boat though and they ended up being nice company for the tour.

Hanoi: 2 nights
During our second leg here we did very little. On the second night a chance encounter with Vali the Romanian ended us up at a house party with a few Romanians, Belarusians, and Ukranians, enjoying Hanoi vodka and weird conversations.

Next stop is the Philippines for two weeks where I'll be meeting up with Gary Fallon. 
Hope everyone is well and and another update will follow in a couple of weeks.

The first month of my travels

It's been one hell of a month so here's the basic outline.

Kuala Lumpur: 2 nights

We show up in the city I'll never be sick of. The food is amazing but the drink is outrageously expensive. We stay in Chinatown and I meet up with a friend from secondary school on the second night who currently resides there. Good times.

Bangkok: 2 nights

Gave the city I rebuked so much a second chance. Really enjoyed my time here this time around. Took a water ferry cruise up the river. Price has doubled in five years so although food is still dirt cheap the drink isn't. Had two good night on and around Koh Sahn Road. Got the night train up to Chiang Mai and bumped into a couple of Irish brothers from Cork and had great craic with them on the disco car.

Chiang Mai: 3 nights

Love this city. Didn't really do very much here but it is a fantastic sleepy little place to take it easy for a couple of nights. When we were done relaxing here we took a bus up to a city on the Thai-Laos border with the Cork lads. We woke at 7 the next morning to sort out our visas, cross the river into Laos and jump on a slow-boat that spend two days lazily winding it's way up the Mekong before arriving in...

Luang Prabang: 5 nights

And I thought Chiang Mai was chilled out. Lovely food from curries to baguettes in the setting of an old French colonial town with temples around every corner. We were still with the Cork lads and one day we went swimming in a waterfall just out of town. At night things were sedate as most places close at 10:30pm except for the bowling alley. Needless to say, we all had a new found flare for ten-pin.

Vang Vieng: 4 nights

Beautiful surrounding, stunning scenery and tubing. To be honest, I was a bigger fan of the first two. The tubing was fun on the first day, getting drunk and going on zip-lines and rope swings but it's basically like Santa Ponsa in Laos. The following day was St. Paddy's Day so I went again out of obligation but already the novelty had worn off. Also, one of the Cork lads developed Dungue Fever so that but an added dampner on the place and we parted company with the lads.

Vientienne: 1 night

Don't ask. We left here on a night bus which broke down and had to spend the night at some podunk town on the Cambodian side of the border. This ended up being ok as we got to know a lot of the people on the bus.

Phnom Penh: 1 night

We arrived here late and literally went straight out for a few beers with the gang from the bus. We got up early the next morning and got onto the bus to Sinhoukville.

Sinhoukville: 10 nights

I met up with my friend Kari from Karma who's working in a bar there called JJ's. We've played volleyball, gone on a booze cruise, played soccer with the locals, gone to a bucket party on a boat during a thunderstorm, driven out to secluded beaches on hired motos, enjoyed fireshows, hung out with the JJ's staff, been attacked by fireworks (harmless ones), and learned a cool straw trick from Took (the bouncer in JJ's and the funniest man in the world).

Next stop is Siem Reap and then Phnom Penh for a few nights. Hope everyone is well and I'll send another update in a few weeks.

To those I've not seen since Christmas 2010, a year in review

Right, I know I've not posted on this thing for a year and what you all must be thinking "Niall, drinking alone in a playground? Really? Is this what your life has become?" Actually, no I just didn't think I had any news and then gradually continued to put the blog on the long finger. Also, Korea was no longer new and unusual to me. Well thankfully I'll have plenty of the new and the unusual soon to come as I'm about to set off on a vacation for three months around South East Asia. I'll try and keep the blog updated as often as possible but until then for those of you not on facebook, here's the gist of the past year.
January: back in Korea from my 10 day vacation back home which resulted in me never wanting to drink ever again. It lasted about a week.

February: not content with the Sunday league action alone, I joined a second soccer team, the aptly named Outkasts in the Saturday league.

March: St Patricks Day, man was this abysmal by comparison to the previous year. Instead of having a parade they jammed everyone into an abandoned car park with no beer to be found within a mile. Later this month myself and a couple of friends found a bar with a river of makgeoli (Korea rice wine). Literally. There was a river flowing around the table. All you could drink for 3,000 Won too (about €2). Also in the spirit of the month I decided to teach one of my favourite students a useful new phrase (sorry about the sound quality).

May: two gents from Loko were to be hitched in the summer (independently) so we chartered a minibus and went on the stag down in Busan, Korea's second biggest city on the south coast. Great craic!

June: a dissapointing trip to one of the supposed new natural wonders of the world, Jeju island in the south sea. It's like the Tramore of Korea, except not as nice.

July: myself and Sheena decide to go our seperate ways. I also went on a solo trip to the Perhentian Islands and Kuala Lumpur which were both amazing.

August: myself and four friends take a trip south to Daegu to take in the World Athletics Chamionships, only to see Usain Bolt false-start in the 100m final.

September: the parents, my uncle Paddy, and aunt Dorene came to visit to remind me just how weird Korea is.

November: I travel south to Ulsan with the Outkasts for a two day tournament and bump into some familiar faces from back home.

December: Christmas in the Hilton and the final countdown begins.

January: I take advantage of Lunar New Year holidays and take another solo trip, this time to Kyoto, one of the most amazing cities I've been to so far.

February 2nd 2012: only 8 days left....

One year here

Hey so I thought I'd put up a quick post for those of you I won't be seeing over Christmas. First, regarding the whole "North Korea shelling the shit out of Yeongpyeong Island" incident, don't worry. It was a little tense on the day that it actually happened and there has been god knows how much speculation as to why those crazy bastards did it in the first place but regardless. Things are fine. I haven't seen any riots. It hasn't affected day to day life at all. Everything's the same as before. So basically what I'm saying is don't worry, it wasn't as much of a big deal as the international media would have you believe, and it's by no means the worst thing the North have done. War is highly unlikely.

Next on to brighter news. A few weeks ago Sheena's friend Randi and her husband were having people over to their apartment for thanksgiving. It was basically the same food as Christmas back home except instead of spending the day watching Christmas movies, we spent it playing flip cup, kings and various other drinking games with 15 strangers who became our temporary new best friends. Afterwards we went to Hongdae to bid one of our friends farewell as he was going back to the States for a while. Very messy business altogether!

Also Lokomotiv Goyang are back to back champions! We lost our final game in rather inglorious fashion but so did the team who were in second place so we still finished top of the league by two points. Unfortunately this means no more football until March. On the plus side, it gave us a chance to do some serious celebrating. The league banquet was on last Saturday in a new micro brewery in Seoul. After a few micro brew beers (that were really good!) we went to our sponsor pub Baby Guinness for a few pints of Guinness and a whole load of general alcohol-related mischief and shenanigans (for example, this old Korean guy came into the bar selling Santa hats. Within two minutes, he had sold twenty and was chugging beer from our trophy!). I'm pretty sure everyone had a good night and I'm also pretty sure everyone had a painful Sunday.

That's it from me until next year. Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year to everyone!!

Almost over

My contract that is. I only have one more month left on my contract which means I've been here 11 whole months. Holy crap! Anyway, the last month was pretty quiet on the Eastern front. Most of my thoughts recently have related to coming home for Christmas, who I'll get to see, what I'm going to eat, what to but to bring back to Korea etc. Also, I'm currently in the process of renewing my visa and resigning my contract so fingers crossed it will prove less stressful then when I originally went through this process. Three notable things have happened this month however.

The first of which was my trip to the DMZ. Sheena's football team had a game at the DMZ (demilitarised zone between North and South Korea) to play the army guys stationed at Camp Bonifas within the DMZ. We left Seoul early in the morning and upon arrival were treated to a free tour of the DMZ (which usually cost $100). This begins with a comprehensive briefing of the Korean War, armistace, and subsequent history of the DMZ from 1953 to the present. Then we were taken to the JSA (joint security area) where we saw North Korean soldiers on the northern side and got to step into the DPRK for 5 minutes. After this we saw a North Korean propaganda village, a big North Korean flag, the bridge of no return, and the site of the infamous 1976 ax murders (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Axe_murder_incident).

After this stark reminder of the general insanity of the DPRK and it's close proximity to Seoul it was time for the football match. Since Sheena's team had only 11 players and it was a swelteringly hot day, myself and a husband of one of the girls on the team were asked to play in the second half. After the game we were brought to the soldiers mess hall for some awesome western food. Overall, this was definitely one of the most unique experiences I'm likely to have in Korea.

The second notable mention was our school's Halloween party. In one word, this was madness. In a few, I would describe it as a disjointed, disorganised, crazy mess of costumed children already overly excited before they all overdosed on sugar and proceeded to wear me out physically, mentally, and emotionally. Basically lessons were scratched for this day, the children arrived in their droves (many bringing along siblings and friends) in their costumes to collect candy (sorry, I know, sweets) and play games for the day. Some classes were lots of fun. Others made me want to beat my head against the wall for a some lobotomised peace. It was a mix of the best and worst day I've taught in the school so far.

The third piece of news is probably more exciting for me than anyone else. My football team Loko are in the first place of our league again. The season started poorly, as we lost our first game and drew the next two. The next few games were wins but most of them were 1 - 0 wins and not much to be proud of. We had bee trailing by two points for a long time but recently we've pulled out all the stops to coast to the top of the table by five points. There are only three games left so realistically we only need to win the next two to win the league for the second consecutive season. It's not all good news though, as we may be missing our centre back and vice captain Matt this weekend and our top striker Conor is out for the rest of the season, so with two big losses like that, it's all to play for.

If I've forgotten anything, I'll tell you all about it when I get home!

Chuseok and other notable merriments

Ok, so as promised, I have news at last. To begin with, my second natural disaster while I've been here in Korea; the typhoon. Personally, I slept through the whole thing but my friends were all woken up by rattling windows, banging doors and general destruction of property by crazy winds.

Second, the beer-fest. This was brilliant craic. Myself, Sheena and a couple of friends took the bus for an hour and a half out of Seoul to a riverside location for a day of all you can drink micro-brew beer, bands and swimming related nonsense. Just to get us in the mood for the day, at 9:30am Sheena iced myself and another friend Taylor (see definition 1 http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=icing) which wasn't the most pleasant experience. The sun was out, the beer was good and my friend Will even had the foresight to bring a frisbee. We spent the day swimming in the river, drinking nice beer (for a change!) and generally enjoying ourselves. It was one of the best days I've had in Korea so far.

The following weekend was the foreigner's football game. It was Sheena's brother-in-law Chris' birthday so we took him out for all you can eat meat (3 cuts of steak, bacon, pork , sausages and chicken) in a Brazilian BBQ restaurant. Afterwards we went to watch the game and met up with a bunch of guys from my team. Then to top things off we went to Hongdae to show Chris around a few bars that the University district has to offer.

The weekend after that, Sheena took me to Gangwon-do to go on a rail-bike. This is basically what it sounds like, a pedal powered cart that's set on some abandoned train tracks. For 7.2 km you can pedal through a valley in the middle of nowhere and enjoy the surroundings. This was a really nice getaway from the hustle and bustle of the busy city of Seoul and once again, we were blessed with the weather.

And finally; Chuseok. This is the harvest holiday that fell on my birthday. Sheena, my friend Jamey and I went to the south to get out of Seoul. We arrived in the port city of Tongyeong early on Tuesday morning and took the first ferry to a small island called Bijindo, about 30 mins away. Our two friends were nearby in the city of Busan and were supposed to come and meet us but that didn't quite pan out. Regardless we had a great time. The first day the weather was great and we spent the day swimming in the sea, playing soccer on the beach and later, having beers and Jameson by the campfire with a bunch of other foreigners.

The following day there was an announcement in Korean and some other foreigners told us there was a storm coming with high winds and torrential rain. We decided to pack up the tents and check into a Minbak (Korean pension). We then set off for a hike up the mountain before the storm set in. The hike was amazing with spectacular views of the surrounding islands from the top. When we got back it began drizzling. That was about as bad as the "storm" got and that night we were out by the campfire again. The third day was another spectacular day and we spend the morning swimming by the beach. In the afternoon we went to an area we found on the hike the previous day and went swimming again by a little cove we found. Guess what we did that night? The next day we begrudgingly left Bijindo and headed back to Seoul.

As you've probably gathered, I've had a great month. The weather's starting to get cold and summer's officially over. It's hoody weather but that's ok in my book. I'm not looking forward to the harsh winter but I do have something to look forward to this winter. My school were good enough to give me two weeks off over Christmas, so I arrive back in Dublin on the 18th of December until the 29th of December. I'm looking forward to Avemore milk, Brennans bread, local butcher sausages, real butter, Shaw's black pudding and going for a few pints of Guinness with anyone who cares to join me.