I'm not sure that this kind of travelling is the right way of doing things. After a while it seems rather like a kind of occupation, a 24/7 job from which I'd like a break from time to time. However when you do throw in the towel and spend the whole day slothing around rarely if ever venturing outside you contend with both the puzzeled stares of hostel owners and employees wondering why you would venture so far around the globe then squander your time, and your own conscience reprimanding you for wasting opportunities to go out and see something in a place you may not visit again. Furthermore your limited financial resources are further drained by every day of accommodation and food.

Returning to my first sentence in which I said 'doing things', I also wonder what I am doing. The first month of travelling was spurred on my my aim to get back to China and revisit old friends and places. Having done that and using up the first 30 day entry of my double entry Chinese visa I suppose I am on holiday. I'm not very good at holidays. What am I supposed to be doing? I visit temples and climb hills and follow other guidebook recommendations. I meet interesting people and rack up entertaining travel stories but I'm not capable of really relaxing because at the end of this holiday there is a great looming void of nothing. No money (which is in itself what will implement the end of this holiday), worse still no jobs and rather pitiful job prospects. I spent two years in London acquiring what I already suspect to be an entirely useless masters degree while my connections and opportunities in China withered. In those frequent moments when my brain mulls over the not too distance future I seem presented with the choice between going back to my miserable cold home country or sticking with a profession I have little love for.

As it happens it seems like a lot of long-term travellers actually are 'doing something'. One of the benefits of travelling off peak means you get to meet a more interesting crowd than the normal uni students spending their load money on cheap local beer that you stumble across in summer. In Siberia I met a young Irish photographer taking pictures of a round the world journey for his first book. We spent over a month with him before parting in Ulaan Baatar. By now I gather he's in Australia. A little further along the road in Siberia I met a young Scottish woman who was winding her way on limited resources down to New Zealand to start a new life of farming or suchlike there. In Mongolia too I met an English man who was at the end of his journey which had involved driving a truck from the UK to Mongolia for charity, having enviable adventures along the way. On the boat from China to Japan we met a Canadian who had decided to spend 4 years travelling the world before returning and taking over the family business. Back in Ukraine there was a man from the US who was on his fourth year of travel. I would have life to have known what made him sell his house and hit the road but didn't feel it was my place to ask. He was a man who was good at travelling, who knew when and where to relax and when and where to get work. If a time machine is invented I'll us it to revisit my younger self and instruct her to get a useful skillset before spending her entire 20s as an aimless drifter. A few people we met were just on a few month of holiday, and I found often they invented some kind of task for themselves, e.g. do X or Y in each country. Go somewhere and do some ritual of some sort. Maybe people aren't so well adapted for a life of purposeless leisure.

I'm in South Korea now. It's been a few days and I'm still in the port town where I arrived. Pardon me for wavering between pronouns, I am actually travelling with somebody but permit me to be egotistical and talk about myself. This is the first time I've actually had a long term travel companion and it has proved a rather sharp double-edged sword. More on that will come at another time. Anyhow, S Korea is quite different from my expectations, and so far is a good antidote to Japan, which though was extremely interesting and memorable was also exhausting and involved rather acute sensory overload. I expected Korea to be much like Japan with everything clean, modern and shine. On the contrary it has the neon of Hongkong, the bemused stares of China along with exuberant hospitality rather than excruciatingly polite and modest warmth. Yesterday we walked along a rambling path by the ocean. I'd seen pictures of timber decking paths and so had rejoiced in not having to wear the scratched hiking boots I'm becoming so sick of, the slipped and scrambled on the 90% of the path that proved to be just a trail. The last 3 days have involved a lot of hiking and it's been a real joy just to make my way along any path I chose after finding the countryside to be rather difficult to access and negotiate in Japan. It's said that all roads lead to Rome, yet in the Japanese countryside they tend to lead to fences, walls and peoples' gates.

In the afternoon we went to supposedly the biggest bathouse in Asia. It was quite intense with the crowds and crowd of naked Korean women and I missed the smaller quieter spas of Japan with one boiling pool with pomelos bobbing around releasing a pleasant fragrance. Still I think these bathhouses should be introduced to England because over there most of the nudity you see in those of the same gender is on screen or in magazines thus giving the impression that toned perfectly proportioned bodies are the norm. Indeed from my vague and distant memories of gym changing rooms only those with no body fat and years of yoga would strut about without the protection of a vast towel. However going to these bathouses clearly shows that the female form comes in all shapes and proportions with many permutations of fat distribution, sagging and large moles. Even with a full range of ages present, from child to granny I've yet to see anyone with anything resembling a standard-issue Hollywood body, and as such I don't see why I should feel a lesser female for not having one either.

Yesterday ended with some raw fish. We decided to avoid the random selection that leads to inconsistent meal experiences and follow a suggestion in my most despised yet useful travel guide. We were definitely on the right floor of the right building but the restaurant we found there had a slightly different name and no English-speaking owner, which is about what you can expect from a recommendation in that brand of book. However the staff were extremely friendly and helped us through our incomprehension of the menu. As for the food, it seems that the melt-in-the-mouth quality of Japanese sushi is not sought after here and the fish was somewhat more chewy and less delicately flavoured, though the whole experience was worthwhile. The highlight was definitely manage to prise a still-thrashing small octopus tentacle off the plate and after popping it in my mouth having it promptly affix itself with its small suckers to the roof of my mouth. My shriek of surprise with probably be long remembered by the staff.

Anyhow, I should vacate this communal computer.