Hello! Dan and I have been in Korea a little more than two
days, and I already feel as though I could write a novel (ok, maybe just a
novella) on our experiences so far.
This post will be dedicated to our journey. I’ll label the different sections for easier skimming. Buckle up kids, this might get long.
The Road (Or, um, Sky)
Goes Ever On And On
Our flight departed at 3:20pm Saturday afternoon, but we
left good and early to stop off and have a last meal at home. We hit the Country Squire, a diner we
frequented when Dan was living in Broomall (and sorely missed when we realized
Omaha didn’t have diners).
We arrived at the airport with plenty of time—we didn’t even
get “randomly” selected for an invasive search, as we half expected given our
rushed travel arrangements to a foreign country. As we departed Philly I snapped a few goodbye shots from the
plane window:
The flight from Philly to Houston was uneventful, aside from
the ridiculously uncomfortable seats and nonexistent personal space. We were grateful for the layover in
Texas, just to get off the blasted plane.
Our plane in Houston was over an hour delayed, so we had a
good three hours to kill. We
decided to go all out for our last meal in the US, and set about finding a
likely institution to satiate a year’s worth of American gluttony. We found
this great bar and restaurant called Pappa Deaux—if you ever have a long lay
over in Houston I highly recommend it.
It was even on it’s own separate floor, so it didn’t even feel like we
were at an airport (and given the extensive traveling we had only just begun,
this was a pleasant illusion).
As I’m sure you can tell by the bizarre silent “x,” it was a
Cajun Soul food joint, undoubtedly a chain I had never experienced having never
been in the south before. We asked
for a beer, not being asked to specify size, and received this:
I guess everything really is bigger in Texas!
My last meal: Shrimp Po Boy. Yum.
Our American pallet satiated, we went back to our terminal
and waited for our very delayed plane, and if it weren’t for the soothing
presence of two monstrous tumblers of beer, might have been anxious about what
this delay would mean for our connecting flight in L.A.
The flight from Houston to L.A. was much less uncomfortable
than the previous one, which by this time of night proved to be a
hindrance. I was determined not to
sleep—I wanted to get as close as possible to a reasonable sleep time in Korea,
to make the transition easier.
(However, as they’re 13 hours ahead this was probably not a reasonable
aim.) It was about 11pm local
time, 12am to me, and I was chockablock full Po Boy and beer in a dark lulling
plane, so the desire to sleep was fairly imposing. However, I managed to keep myself awake by focusing 100%
percent of my attentions to the inflight movie—which probably only required
about 10% of my attention, as it was Journey 2: The Mysterious Island, a film so dreadful that not even the combined
talents of Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson and Michael Caine could salvage. By the time we arrived in Los Angeles,
it was 3am in EST, midnight to the locals, and I was straining to keep my eyes
open. We were becoming worried
that the long delay meant we had a much shorter layover. We had been vaguely worried about this
portion of the journey from the start, because of the ominous print out we got
when we received our boarding passes saying that we would have to take a bus to
find the location for our next flight.
Having never flown internationally, I was not aware that these flights
depart from an entirely different part of the airport.
So, we were all the way in the back of the previous plane,
and despite the flight attendants urging to let people with connecting flights
leave first, we had to wait the twenty minutes or so for every single passenger
ahead of us to slowly collect their carry-ons and depart (God bless
America). So, by the time we were
free from the plane, we had approximately 30 minutes to figure out where the
heck in LAX (an airport we had never been to) our next flight would depart
from. Exhaustion hastily yielded
to panic. We could not miss our
flight!
Fear and Running in Los
Angeles
A lady at the terminal as we departed told us that we needed
to follow the signs for baggage claim and exit the building then look for a bus
to take us to the International terminal.
So we booked it, sprinting down people movers like madmen, until we were
out in the LA heat and overwhelmed by all of the different buses we were
seeing. Which one was it? What happens if we get on the wrong bus? We ask another employee, and she said
that the buses make a huge loop, and it would probably be faster for us to
walk. She pointed up at the sign
above us that said “7” and told us to continue down to “4” where we would find
the “Tom Bradley” terminal. The
idea of the bus made us nervous so we heeded her advice and began speed walking
/ jogging down the sidewalk. My
backpack was full of every possible thing I could fit in it, it was hot despite
being nighttime, and I was wearing flip flops, so all in all this was an
unpleasant, ungraceful, and frantic sojourn down the unappealing cement
exterior of the Los Angeles airport.
If this woman was correct in saying that walking was faster,
it must have been one hell of a bus ride, because we were jogging and it was
far from quick. The “7”s above us
continued on ahead for ages, then finally yielded to a quarter of a mile of
“6”s, then (I was grateful to see) “5”s, and at long last “4”. But “4” was definitely not the
international terminal. We had
about 20 minutes until our flight boarded and were beginning to wonder if we
had been given wrong information.
Do we turn back? Keep
going? The sidewalk curved here,
so we couldn’t see what lay ahead well.
We decided to continue on, we had come this far. We walked on and eventually began
seeing the names of airlines that sounded decidedly international, and began to
feel relieved. Eventually we found
the large sign that said “Tom Bradley” and knew for sure we were in the right
vicinity. As we hurried on, looking
for “Asiana,” I contemplated how decidedly un-international the name “Tom
Bradley” sounded. Asiana was a
about as far as it could be, but eventually we found it and were beginning to
feel optimistic that we might make our flight after all. We still had 15 minutes.
We entered and asked someone where our terminal was. He informed us that we needed new
Boarding Passes and pointed us in the right direction. We had our passports scanned and were
given new passes and pointed in the right direction for out terminal. But first we had to go through security
again (which was, perhaps, obvious—but we hadn’t thought of it). There was a bit of a line, and I was
internally freaking out. I went
through the scanner, along with my carry-ons, without a problem. However, Dan’s bag raised some sort of
suspicion, and a man, who was in absolutely no rush, slowly looked through his
bag, emptied its contents, and sent it through the scanner again. When it was deemed acceptable, we were
jamming his belongings back in and dashing down the long hall way to our
terminal (and noticing that we were just about the only white people around, so
we must of looked pretty crazy).
So when we arrived, thankfully in time, we were drenched in sweat, out
of breath, and (in my case) wheezing marginally. And that is how we exited the country.
Leaaaving on a Jet Plane…
The plane we took from L.A. to Incheon, South Korea was a
Boeing 777, which for those of you who don’t know (like me), is absolutely
monstrous. We boarded and found
our seats, which had a bit more legroom than on our previous flights, but was
by no means roomy or luxurious. It
was hardly a comfy place to be for 12 hours.
The next thing that I’m about to stay may sound racist, but
know that it’s not. The flight attendants
were all eerily identical. Now,
understand, that I have no problem telling Asian people apart. It’s just that these girls all had
their hair in identical buns, they all had their makeup done the exact same
way, they all had the same uniform: pencil skirt, blazer, and scarf tied around
their neck, and it fit them all exactly the same way, and they were all very
pretty (you must be this attractive to
fly?). It felt kind of like
something out of the 1960s movie meets the Stepford Wives. Dan and I kept trying to count how many
of them there were, with no success.
The flight was operating on Korean time, so as soon as we
reached altitude and leveled off we were given a beef dinner. Now, it was about 4:30pm Korean time,
but more like 4 o’clock in the morning our time, so a beef dinner sounded a bit
strange. But, it was free and I
wanted to adjust to a Korean schedule so I attempted to eat it. Let me tell you, just because you know
that you’re changing time zones, doesn’t mean your stomach does. And a beef and potato dinner at 4am is
not exactly a great idea. So,
about four bites in, I had heartburn like you wouldn’t believe, and a good
ten-hour flight ahead of me. If I
could turn back time…
The flight was pretty uneventful aside from the sheer length
of it. There were all the typical
annoyances of flying: crying babies, having to make people get up to let you
out to use the bathroom, close quarters, and turbulence. I managed to sleep for the vast
majority of the flight. Not the
kind of sleep where you lose consciousness for a long stretch of time and then
wake up feeling refreshed. The
kind of sleep where you wake up every 20 to 30 minutes because your neck / back
/ legs hurt, try unsuccessfully to reposition yourself more comfortably, and
repeat. The gentleman sitting next
to Dan proved to be very nice, he gave us his information and told us to
contact him with any questions or issues, and offered to help us when we
reached the airport.
The seats each had little televisions in front of them,
which had either in flight entertainment (which cycled continually, and I never
managed to catch one anywhere near the beginning of a movie) and a map with a
plane that showed how far we’d come.
It was a pity it was dark out, I would have loved to have looked out the
window and know we were passing Japan below, etc. In a way this was neat, but in another way it made the
flight seem even longer. Every
time I jerked awake I would check it and find that we had only moved marginally
across the pacific.
Eventually, after a painfully long 12 hours, we landed in
Incheon. It was too dark to catch
a first glimpse of Korea, as I had hoped.
When I finally stood my legs felt incredibly sore and my back
stiff. It’s one of those strange
moments where you long desperately to move around, but doing so is very
uncomfortable. We exited the plane
and made our way to immigration where we had to wait in a very long line to
have our passports scanned, our fingerprints taken (so much for my life of crime),
and our photographs taken. The worst part of this is that the picture showed up
on the screen very largely, and this may be the most unflattering picture of me
ever taken. Ever. A day and a half
of travel, restlessness, and fatigue is definitely not beautifying.
After claiming our bags without difficulty, we exchanged
some of our US money for Korean Won and exited the airport. We found a gentleman with a sign that
said “Dan Keisling” (I guess I was an after thought), who was in charge of
making sure we got on our bus to Gwangju without a problem. He didn’t speak English, so we
communicated with a lot of pointing.
Soon enough we had tickets in hand, and just had to wait the hour for the
bus to arrive. Being the only
white people around and having a huge pile of luggage that was inevitably in everyone’s
way no matter where we put it led to a lot of staring. However, there was a very nice man who
spoke English and helped us at the Bus stop, he too gave us his card and told
us to email if we had any problems.
This man is something of an iconic person for us, as (aside from people
at our school) he is the last person we’ve met who speaks English.
Korean Buses don’t have
Bathrooms
The final leg of our journey was a four-hour bus ride from
Incheon to Gwangju. Despite being
utterly exhausted, I was looking forward to seeing some of the Korean countryside. Now, if you’ve actually read this whole
absurdly long post, you will know that Dan and I arrived at the LAX
international terminal having just run a good half a mile (I think it was more,
but Dan says otherwise) with burdensome bags. We got a bottle of water each and downed that in a few
minutes, then had nothing to drink but the tiny thimble sized airplane cups of
water that were provided twice during the flight. So, by the time we were waiting for the bus, we were well
aware that we were dehydrated. I
was feeling pretty lousy as a result.
So Dan bought us two absolutely monstrous bottles of water (seriously,
Korean bottles of water are ridiculously big), and we proceeded to down half of
them while we waited. We then
boarded the bus, which was rather nice, and set out. About five minutes in, I realized that there was no
bathroom. And I hadn’t used a
restroom since an hour before the plane landed. And I just downed a ridiculous amount of water. And the bus ride was 4-5 hours.
Whence began one of the most uncomfortable rides of my
life. Within ten minutes I had to
go. By 45 minutes it was getting
uncomfortable. By an hour and a
half this was becoming a desperate situation. I was in classic cross-legged, I-have-to-pee posture. Dan and I kept exchanging looks that
said, “I don’t think I can make it.”
And no one spoke English, nor do we know enough Korean to ask if there
is a stop. Every bump in the road
made the situation worse.
Fortunately, after two hours, the bus pulled over at a rest
stop and we were able to empty our tanks and enjoy the second half of the
journey much more comfortably. The
strange thing about Korea is just how not strange it is. It doesn’t feel that foreign.
The people look like people anywhere (they’re all Asian, obviously, but
their hair and dress are no different than back home), the architecture is
similar to any other place I’ve been, and the landscape is full of greenery and
rolling hills, not unlike central Pennsylvania (if central Pennsylvania had
tons of rice paddies)
By the time we reached Gwangju we were sore and tired, but
excited to finally be in Korea and to see some of the City. We’d been traveling for what felt like
an age, but it was about 10:45am Korean time, so we had a lot of day ahead of
us.
Recap
45 minute drive to Philly airport
+
2 hours of waiting in Philly
+
3 hour and 20
minute flight to Houston
+
3 hour layover in Houston
+
3 hour flight from Houston to L.A.
+
30 minutes running around LAX
+
12 hours from LA to Incheon
+
20 minutes waiting at immigration
+
1 hour waiting for bus
+
4 hour bus ride to Gwangju
+
15
minute drive from bus station to apartment
30 hours and 10
minutes of travel
As this has already reached an unreasonable length, I will
save our first impressions of Gwangju, pictures of our apartment, and an
account of our first Korean meal for a later post.
Remember: safety first. then teamwork,
-Meg
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