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I should apologise as I haven't posted in quite a while now. I'd like to say it was because I was deeply embedded in some rich cultural experience, perhaps even that I'd amassed a huge group of international friends and had been learning Hapkido and how to prepare squid Korean style while spending my evenings cross-legged on a hand carved chair meditating and practicing the Chinese for stellar constellations. In fact, I've been pissing brown water out of my arse while playing championship manager and feeling sorry for myself.

Slightly mitigating is the fact that I have now started a fairly serious attempt to learn Korea. I've realised that failure to do so severely limits my social options to hanging out with the fairly limited western community in Masan. Don't get me wrong, I have met a few really cool people out here. It is often said back home that the Americans lack a sense of humour. The quality of comedy programming coming out of that place should have been enough to dispel this myth in my mind. Any remaining doubt has been eradicated through my recent trips to Busan with a crowd of yanks.

Busan is Korea's second largest city and has a massive, perfectly clean beach. It is kind of the San Fransisco/Brighton of Korea, except that no one is openly gay. Most 'nightclubs' in Korea involve you sitting down and ordering food while a strange guy who looks like Mr Miagi except he is dressed as an 80's game show host brings suspiciously friendly girls to your table whose English is limited to 'you so handsome' and 'happy ending'.

These guys are particularly partial to whores and I have already spent a couple of nights sitting outside establishments for three hours waiting for them to finish their dirty deeds. Three hours! Apparently they wash you down, chat, feed you, give you a massage, rub some menthol oil stuff into your sack, provide you with the service with a grateful smile plastered on their overworked face and then stick half a bottle of soju down you and send you on you way. I think there's one place where you can get a photo of yourself just at the 'happy ending' moment like to log flume at Alton Towers provides.

In Busan there are some western style nightclubs and I have managed a couple of all nighters with some good dance music- electro, breaks and the like. Most music in Kore takes the form of the piano driven love ballad. There must be some kind of law stating that all accompanying music videos adhere to the same model because their uniform nature is remarkable. First and foremost the young guy absolutely must die at the end. Second, and just as important is the rule whereby the stunning Korean bird must turn up just a few seconds too late (preferably in the rain and on a pink moped) before we are treated to one last rendition of the chorus before the camera zooms in on a tear rolling down her cheek. When you drink in Korean bars you are submitted to an endless series of these things.