::A Geek in Korea::

Proving that even the flight home could even be an adventure, as soon as entered the Siem Reap International Airport, we were greeted with a bizarre sight.

A Korean man was passed out on a bench face down surrounded by four Cambodian security guards and a mildly concerned wife. The man wasn’t simply “sleeping it off”. He wasn’t being roused by all the attention they were giving him, and there were a lot of people with stern faces having to deal with the situation.

The woman didn’t seem as worried as I would have been if someone in my party was in that condition, but perhaps this isn’t the first time something like this had happened. She certainly seemed apathetic about the scene her travel companion was causing. Eventually a wheelchair was brought around for the man, and they got him sober awake enough to wheel him through security.

After witnessing this scene, we were treated with the survivors of all of all the other tours trying to converge on three check-in booths at once. In front of us were some men that were bundling orange bags together with security tape. They kept wrapping and wrapping the bags far past the point of reason. It approached the point where the parcel was equal parts tape and contents within.

The man stepped back, arms akimbo with a deep sense of satisfaction about whatever he had just accomplished as he peered down on his orange tape ball.

“What’s that?” we asked somewhat jokingly. We already knew the answer, as half the people on the tour seemed to be trudging around the same orange bags with their luggage.

“La-tex-su. LATEX,” the man said slowly, as if we needed help for not knowing the best reason to travel to Cambodia was it’s fine factory made products. He had a look of annoyance and condescension, as if we should have already learned everything about the contents of the glorious tape-ball on the tour we took of the factory already. Perhaps he judged us too poor, as we didn’t have our own orange package. We did not go to a factory to be shilled on our vacation, since we hadn’t gone on a tour like this individual.

This particular man was incredibly smug about his purchases. He went back to the front of the line where he chatted with another man that happened to be holding the a large number of passports. We followed the smug man and the passport holding man to the second step of the check-in process.

At the Siem Reap airport there is a $25 dollar flat tax on everyone leaving the airport. Since we were leaving on a red-eye flight, there was only one person at this window. He alone had to process everyone on the flight, which took some time. This required a lot of cash and some stamping of some passports while the rest of the people checked in their luggage.

The smug man commented to the passport holder that everyone in Cambodia was so slow and inefficient. He used a very derogatory tone in Korean to address the people as a race as “lower” than his own. I didn’t say anything because I didn’t think the man behind the counter understood Korean, but I did give a nice “Look of Death” to both of them as they walked away.

The flight was uneventful. The woman seated behind my wife fought off her airsickness by resting her head on my wife’s chair while clutching the air sickness bag to her face. When my wife went to lean her chair back to sleep, the woman actually punched the chair. “No one’s getting sleep if I’m puking back here!” her eyes seemed to say when I looked back to see what was going on. Instead of a quick recline, she just slowly eased the chair back until the woman stopped resting her head on the chair.

We had to fill out quarantine cards once again, this time for Cholera. The cards stated the different symptoms we might be suffering from, and asked us to check the different boxes. I didn’t have a single symptom this time! Unfortunately, a young boy in front of us wasn’t so lucky.

He had stomach cramps, a headache, and a few other problems that got the attention of the quarantine officer. The mother of the boy was arguing with the quarantine officer, stating, “Oh, he had some bad food and had to go to the bathroom this morning in the hotel a few times! I promise he doesn’t really have cholera.” Riiiight, you’re the doctor. Arguing with authority when the personal safety of others is at risk is a hallmark of the Korean attitude at times.

Truth be told, I didn’t really feel like I was back in Korea until I went to the restroom after the quarantine station. A man entered the stall next to mine and began to produce a sound of inhuman proportions. It sounded as if he was about to expel every contaminant he had had inhaled from his trip simultaneously in one gigantic wad of phlegm into the toilet. If it wasn’t so disgusting, it would have been somewhat impressive, simply because it was so monstrously loud. This is the moment when I finally accepted I was back in Korea. That saddens me, but still makes me chuckle.

During our flight, there was only one other non-Asian person on the entire plane. There weren’t any foreigners going to Cambodia because Korean tour companies purchase all the tickets for tours. We only got tickets by reserving two months in advance and getting lucky when someone canceled their travel plans.

Since there weren’t many flights so early in the morning, and there weren’t many foreigners on the plane, the line for immigration was exceptionally short for Non-Koreans. There were about ten lines open for Koreans, and only three for Non-Koreans at the time. Our line was shorter, for once. This, of course, didn’t go unnoticed by the Korean people at the end of the line.

I actually overheard someone rather loudly complain,”It’s so unfair that foreigners get into our country before we do. We have ten lines, but our lines are longer. We should be allowed to line up in their lines so we can get back into our country faster!”(Sigh.) Ah, the victimization! I doubt that courtesy would be extended to us foreigners if the situation was reversed.

There is actually a new processing system for Koreans that speeds things up considerably. They no longer need to show departure and arrival cards. I, being a foreigner with a marriage visa, got a little scolding for presenting all the documentation I was given on the plane. It seems all I need to show is my alien registration card and my passport. They already know the rest. I’ll hold onto the other stuff the next time I travel just in case I misunderstood what the immigration officer was saying, but I think I need to show less things too. Better safe than sorry when it comes to immigration paperwork in my experience.

We got back to Daejeon with little incident. We actually ran into someone that performed at our wedding who was getting back from a honeymoon in Bali. We chatted a while we waited for the bus to go back home. We had missed their wedding.

The surly Korean, “welcome home” party just wouldn’t end. We got off the bus. Since we were about six blocks away from home, we wanted to take a taxi. We were too tired to go to the nearest subway entrance. Getting a taxi at the express bus stop is easy. They all queue up and wait for the buses to arrive. We got into the first taxi and told him the destination. It wasn’t going to take him more than five minutes to take us back to our apartment.

The taxi driver actually started grumbling like a small child. “People on buses shouldn’t take taxis if they don’t need to go far! Don’t you realize I was waiting 30 minutes for this fare!? How can you take a taxi in queue when there were other taxis you can wave down that weren’t waiting a long time! How inconsiderate of you?”

I wanted to counter, “Hey, we only traveled nine hours on a red-eye flight to get back to Daejeon. We haven’t slept and were too tired to carry our luggage back to our apartment. Sorry we didn’t think about how long the taxi might have been waiting for a fare.”

To complete his little rude drive, the driver actually tried to steal 100 won from us on top of the fare. We were going to tip him keep the change of our fare, something you don’t need to do for taxi in Korea. However, he pressed his meter early, then tried to get more money by claiming the fare had just gone up the second he had pushed the button. Once you end the fare there is no way to check the amount owed. This is a common trick by greedy drivers. This would have only given him 100 won, while the tip he missed out on was more than that. His loss.

Walking back to the apartment after our trip, I stated, “Man, wouldn’t it be nice to live in a country full of friendly people?”

She just sighed in agreement.