Hello and welcome to today's independent travel podcast with me, Simon Corder.

It's Tuesday the 21st of May and I have the great pleasure to be in the fine city of Seoul.

Well, actually, I'm about 20 miles south-west, but I'm still on the sole nature.

I'm just about to take the price of about £1, a journey which is going to take me

effectively, really, around, if you can imagine Gatwick Airport around to Heathrow.

Well, that's what I'm going to be doing.

On a tube train, yes, just stepping onto it now.

It's very very crowded.

Yeah, no see.

Back.

Let's see if I managed to get a seat because it's going to be a journey of at least an hour. The way that

Seoul does public transport is really compelling. The network is far vaster than the network

in London and indeed any other great cities with big metro systems such as Paris and the big Russian cities of St Petersburg and Moscow.

It's extremely efficient from what I can tell in that the trains do tend to run or even on this slightly odd line, about every 12 minutes or so.

And there don't seem to be any great pauses for no apparent reasons, as you sometimes find in London.

There are, though, some really odd features. The fairs are almost nothing if you were coming in probably the longest journey you might

pay a couple of pounds for but almost everything is about 80 pence.

However, trying to buy your ticket is quite a challenge.

Let me explain. The big problem is that you have to have cash.

This is in a society where contact list is absolutely routine.

But you need to buy your ticket with cash only.

Assuming you're getting a single right ticket,

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