Hello Korea!

After twelve hours, four movies, some sleep and several rounds of plane food, we arrived in Korea. This time, I got to leave the airport, so have another stamp in my passport – exciting. By the time we landed, got thought customs, we really only had time to get to the hotel, get dinner, and sleep. The hotel had a free shuttle, all we had to do was call it. Or have the lady at the information booth call it…since I didn’t have any money for the pay phone. Haha….luckily, it was easy to communicate with the hotel and the shuttle got there pretty quickly. We got to the hotel at the same time as a bus tour, making the check in process interesting. But, the guy working at the desk quickly helped us and we were on our way.

First task was finding some dinner. We found a little mom and pop restaurant that took credit cards and spoke minimal English. They cooked the beef right in front of us on a grill in the middle of the table. Pretty cool, authentic food. And, the owners were nice enough to show us how to cook some of the stuff. Grilled garlic was interesting…and since I’m still tasting it today, I’m not sure I’d try that again. The beef was delicious and there were plenty of other things to dip it in and try it with. The highlight so far, trying soju…which is to Korea as sake is to japan.

Hotel was nice, bed was a little hard, but if you’re tired enough, it doesn’t matter. Of course I woke up at one point and panicked that we’d overslept and my phone was in the wrong time zone and who knows what else. So, I got up, stumbled across the room, unplugged the phone and checked the time. Just after midnight, but of course I didn’t trust that my phone was in the right time zone, so I stumbled into the bathroom and googled ‘what time is it in Seoul’, to confirm it was correct. And somehow made sure to miss falling over the random step going in and out of the bathroom. Of course, when I had to get up to pee, I couldn’t find the light….awesome. Well, practice for the 14 hour blackouts in Kathmandu. Why I didn’t go grab the phone, I don’t know. After what was probably my last warm, pressurized shower for three weeks, it was time to jump the shuttle back to the airport.

And, then I found Dunkin Donuts at the airport. Yay dunkin donuts….boo coffee tastes nothing like dunkin donuts. Oh well…had to try it. No donuts though, and nothing else was open, so we ended up with McDonalds. Always fun to try in different countries.  I had a chicken sandwich with cheese, similar to the one I had in Raleigh with June. Not terrible, but much better as hangover food than normal breakfast. Haha. And the police with the assault rifles were a nice touch…

Clearing customs was easy, we pretty much had our own security line and customs line. Of course my passport case set off the metal detector….why wouldn’t it. Now, we wait for the plane to Kathmandu…7 more hours on a plane…I think that makes this the longest trip I’ve ever taken. But, I’m so excited to get there and see the city…and trek…and everything else.

220 feet….up we go. Over and out, until next time.