::A Geek in Korea::

Day two! Much improved!

We sorted out our hostel situation by simply paying for one more night on a credit card to keep our things in a room before my parents arrive. They could just owe us for the night, since they promised to treat.

We went out early to get into central London. This was a bit of a timing mishap, as we were riding “to work” with the other commuters. Talk about a legacy environment! The London underground, while extensive, relatively affordable, and whatnot is hell on a day with lots of communters. We were packed in nearly Tokyo tight as we rode into the center of the city. Yeah, where’s the AIR CONDITIONING in these rides?! It’s a hot, smelly subway system, but it does get you there.

We checked out the Tower of London for our first sight. The Yeoman tour was BRILLIANT. He shared the details of executions, had lots of funny jokes, and made history come alive. We saw the crown jewels of the monarchy, which were some serious bling. Diamonds as big as your fist. Gold wine bowls you could swim in. AMAZING.

Next we went to Westminster, saw Big Ben, and then Westminster Abbey. It was a literal who’s-who of dead British people. I really wish I had taken more history lessons. My wife was kicking my ass explaining the Monarchy’s convoluted history. She watched a marathon of “The Tudors” and suddenly she’s the expert. I went out of my way to see four people’s markers. Shakespeare, who isn’t buried there, Winston Churchhill, Charles Darwin (His middle name is Robert. Who knew?) and Sir Isaac Newton. Looking at Sir Isaac Newton’s elaborate marker, and the simple floor adornment for Darwin was really important for me. This is why I’m a huge geek, I know.

We hit the abbey right as it was closing up, which was great timing because afterwards we needed to go back to the hostel to meet my parents! Reunion! They were waiting outside in a garden. We showed them all the art my wife had made for gifts as we chatted about the family for a while. Really nice time to see them again.

We went out to an English pub for dinner. Parent’s treat. I had a bitter British Ale in a pub. I’ve got a few wonderful stories to share about my parent’s latest trip to Africa. After that, we settled up and got back to the hostel for the night.

 This morning we headed to get tickets at Liester’s Square. We were harassed by a homeless crazy person who was also quite possible a heroin addict. He saw us and started yelling “YANKEE 2-0-2!”, whatever that means. We walked a block, realized we needed to turn around after consulting our maps, and ran into him again as he walked up and slapped my mother’s bag. He yelled at us again with his jibberish, and we went the other direction. What’s HIS deal?

We got the tickets for Momma Mia, the ABBA musical in the nicest theater in the area. My wife’s birthday gift from the folks. WOW. I really wanted to see Spam-a-lot, a musical adaptation of Monty Python and the Holy Grail, because I’m a HUGE geek. Wife got her pick. There is always tomorrow if we must.

From there, we got VERY lost in Hyde park. We set out to see a statue of Peter Pan, and a Diana memorial fountain. We didn’t find EITHER of the things because the maps were really a bit off. We did see the outside garden of Kensington Palace, which was really nice! My parents were going around identifying plants like I remember from all our other vacations.

We got to Harrod’s. It’s a gigantic luxury store. I’ve been to huge shopping places in Canada and the US, but this was ULTRA-Luxury shopping. We saw a chair made from an airplane ejection seat for almost $40,000 dollars. My father almost knocked an $18,000 dollar Wolly Mammoth tusk of a table trying to read the price tag. The Hummer Electric (?) Golf Cart that could go 30 miles per hour and was street legal took the cake for the most excessive in my opinion.

After trying not to break anything in Harrod’s, we went back to the hostel. We had a quick snack to recharge. I drank a Czech ORIGINAL Budweiser, which I had no idea about. Seems the Czech’s had a beer called Busweiser before the Americans started using that name, and eventually that caused problems for the American brewer since they couldn’t distribute around Europe. It’s like an Irish guy trying to start a pub called “McDonald’s” in the States.

We’ll go out to the theater tonight, and have plans for tomorrow. I’m trying to work out a compromise after canceling plans with a friend outside the city. We’re having a ton of fun with the folks even with the change in plans, and I hope to run into my friends either in the city, or when they visit Korea in the future. Apologies for the cancellation!

Anyway, traveling with the folks is always wonderful, and we’re really enjoying outselves. We’ll be flying out in two days time, and they’ll be taking a house boat through a series of locks and rivers to Stratford-of-Avon.

I’m hoping for a crazy peron free trip back to Leister Square this evening for the play. Who knows what tomorrow will bring as we tour London some more?

We’ve arrived in London safe and mostly sound. Our flight from Incheon to Hong Kong was uneventful. The airport in Hong Kong seemed more like a strip mall than an airport. We were dumped into the terminal and had to go through the security screenings a second time. We got in line behind some lost Chinese tourists that were getting shouted at by their guide. We got through the line and made it to our gate with 20 minutes to spare.

The thing that sucks about flying out from Honh Kong to go to Europe is that all the time headed south to get there is doubled back into the flighting leaving. We spent 15 or more hours on the plane. This was just hellish and awful.

My seat was supposed to be on the exit aisle so I could get the most leg room. When I sat down, I had the row to myself. There was a sound of an arguement going down the aisle as I waited for takeoff. The person arguing was my neighbor in the next seat. He had bought four tickets, but only got three seats because his 2 year old daughter was supposed to be held during takeoff and landing. They wanted my seat. I didn’t budge, but I could see how this was going to be a problem already.

I had to sit next to this guy. His family was dressed in Muslim clothing. His wife and the child’s nanny had headscarves and whatnot. The man had a pungent body odor that almost made me gag. How was I going to be able to sit next to this man when he was so strongly scented? My wife was a few rows behind, scoping out the action.

When the family requested to sit all together, the stewart tried to rearrange seats on the plane to work in a seat for the child. First, he found a pair of seats further up the cabin he could split between the four of them. That way, the child could have a seat, and the nanny, with the couple sitting elsewhere. The man INSISTED his wife was unable to sit by herself. He demanded to sit next to his wife, but didn’t care about sitting near the child at all. Hmmm, I wonder why that would be?

Not soon after the man and wife left, another couple made a request for my seat. They said the woman had a leg problem that required the leg room. Would I be willing to switch with her, away from the baby? I told them I’d switch if her husband gave up his seat too, allowing me to sit next to my wife in their old space. When the man found out they’d be sitting next to a baby, they declined. Suddenly that leg was feeling better?

Eventually, the man behind me, who had two seats next to himself, gave up his seat. This let the baby and nanny have three seats, and that man moved to the end of my row. Now it was me, two spaces, a man. Behind me was the nanny, baby, a seat, and a random man. Because I had a free seat next to me, they let my wife move next to me! Yay!

When the baby awoke, she started screaming. During take off she would yell. Then, during the flight she became a true terror. The man sitting next to the nanny and girl was hit by the girl. She would yell in his ear. He quickly moved, which let the Muslim couple move back behind us. Now they were all seated together.

The family’s funk, as a whole, was really overpowering. When they would leave to use the restroom, people afterwards would come out gagging. The stewartess would run in with the air freshener as if she was about to jump on a live grenade. The nanny changed the baby in the toilet area once and made such a mess that when she opened to door, dirty tissues tumbled out all over the floor of the plane. She didn’t bother to pick them up.

For the entire fifteen hour plus flight, the girl was quiet for perhaps four hours total. She said only four words. “DA-DEEE, MOMEEE, MEE MEEE, and DEEE DEEE.” The parents of the child never, EVER reacted to what the child did. If the girl was asking for “Dadeee” he just ignored her. It was entirely the nanny’s responsibilty to do EVERYTHING. Eventually the nanny took to sitting on the girl when she tried pulling our hair and yelling in our ears. No one in a three row radius was safe from their funk, or the noise of the baby. I don’t know if the nanny knew English, but I heard the chant “Shut up, shut up, shut up!” a few times.

My wife actually got a severe headache and vomited because of the smell of the group behind us. She’s never been airsick before. It was really, really foul. The only close competition was the bad English sausage I had for breakfast at the end of the flight. Ewwww.

We arrived in Heathrow and took the LONG walk to Immigration. There was a short line, and an easy card to fill out. The interview process was a bit humiliating though. They split me and my wife up. The man that interviewed me asked the standard sorts of “Where you headed? When you leaving?” sorts of questions.

The man that interviewed my wife, however, was a total snob. “Where are you from? Oh, Korea? What do you do there? Oh, your an English teacher? Really? What are you in England for? Vacation? NO, you should say HOLIDAY. HOLIDAY. You are here on a HOLIDAY.” What the hell?

My wife didn’t know the address, exactly, of some friends we are planning to visit. He was giving her a hard time, but I walked over to try to clarify. The man expressed shock that I was married, but had let my wife try to answer the questions by myself. He asked me my nationality. Then he asked me why I wasn’t answering the questions for someone in my party. The immigration officers had SPLIT US UP in line, and MADE us walk to different interviewers. What? Why WOULD I be allowed to talk for her? YOU made the system man.

Anyway, after a few more grammar and personal questions, she got into the country. I think it was a little racial profiling, as ALL the Asian people took five times longer to interview compared to any European. As I was leaving, the smelly man came up to me and said I had dropped 2000 won on the ground. The interviewers were completely shocked at the man’s honesty. A woman working there actually remarked, ” You are so lucky. 1 in a 1000 chance that. I’ve NEVER seen anyone give money back to someone before.” Wow. Is that the kind of place I landed?

We got on the tube, then got to our hostel with NO PROBLEMS. However, the booking process was of course complicated. I wasn’t supposed to be paying anything. My DAD had made arrangements and set up the room. He was arriving tomorrow, so we wanted to rest the night after our 20 hour flight and sort out payment the next day. No dice. Even though we prepaid a deposit on the reservation and had everything, they wanted the money upfront. We used the deposit to pay for the room, but didn’t pay for the rest of the nights. They now want us to move things out of the room, wait for my parents to arrive, them move everything BACK into the room when they pay for the day today. No, leaving our stuff outside the room is totally okay, but keeping it a room we have reserved but haven’t paid for is impossible. So stupid.

Anyway, we got a bottle of water from the “closed” bar, then headed up to our room. I’ve slept in bigger closets. Four bunk beds stacked in a tiny room. The shower barely worked. The beds were clean, and the room was private and quiet. Other than that, it’s the most expensive hostel we’ve ever stayed. It is in London, and not far from a tube, so it’s got it’s points I suppose.

I’m using their computer. It’s stamped down with lots of restrictions, is Windows only, doesn’t let you install or do anything, and is slow. All this for triple the price of a Korean computer with Internet access! Wow! What a deal!

I slept for a total of maybe one hour in fits and spurts the entire evening. My stomach was still under the blitz from the English sausage. I took some herbal medicine my wife had brought. Lovely, it seems to be doing the work. We’re waiting for the breakfast service. Then we get to haul out our gear, leave it near an OPEN WINDOW all locked up (sigh) and do some sightseeing for the day. We hope to see the Tower of London, then meet up with the parents sometime to get dinner and exchange travel war stories.

It’s off with a bang.

It’s a few hours before I go to sleep. We are getting ready to leave for our early morning flight to London.  I’m hanging around the apartment with a freshly shaved and washed Yoshi. This morning we got up and packed our bags for the final time before our trip. Even though the flight any everything else is quickly approaching, I’m pretty calm.

After realizing I still was bringing too many pairs of pants and removing the ones that would have taken the longest to dry, I ended up with more space than I expected. I’m still packed solid, but I’m not bursting seams anymore. I made sure our electronics were packed, our cords were with us, and that we had a few copies of our important documents. Even after putting all my gear on it’s not even close to being as heavy as my last trip to Europe. I think the new bags are going to work out well.

My wife was trying to get all the laundry done today. She wanted to do a wardrobe “reset”, washing all our summer clothes one last time before putting them away for the rest of the year. That way when we got back we wouldn’t have had to do more laundry. I applaud her effort, but in typical Korean fashion this all came down to the wire. The weather, up until yesterday, had not been participating in her little plan. We had two loads of laundry and only a few hours of sun to work with. Everything is “mostly dry”.

While the laundry dried, we got everything else ready. She’s been working on hand made gifts for my family. Right now she’s off trying to get some art done for my brother before the bead store closes.

My brother in law is supposed to arrive soon. He’s going to be hanging out in our apartment for the month we are away. He is looking for work, and is going to use our apartment as a place to study for raising his English skills for his resume. I set up a login account for him on my machine, so he can get used to using Linux, or keep using Windows XP that I set up virtualized. Either way, when he’s done with the computer, there will be no mess to clean up, just an account to delete. He won’t go messing up anything I can’t undo I hope.

He’s also going to be watching Yoshi for us while we are away. We’ve got all his food and everything ready. Yoshi’s a pretty low maintenance sort of dog anyway. The occasional walk and some attention is all he needs.

The rough plan, as of now, is that we will go to Incheon airport and catch a flight to Hong Kong. From Hong Kong, we go to London, arrive in the evening, and head to our booked hostel. My parents arrive the next day. We will do touristy things, then meet up with them no later than dinner. We’ll spend September 12th with some friends in Southampton, England.

After that reunion, we’ll take a quick jet to the Czech Republic. From there, we return to Prague. After showing my wife where I had fun on the trip last time, we’ll then head to Vienna, Austria. This is basically a travel hub for our Eurorail passes, so we’ll need to visit there no matter what. From there, we go to Italy. We hope to see, at the minimum, Venice, Florence, Rome, and possibly Pompeii. Then, we head north, and, time allowing, go to Switzerland. If not, we’ll head to Paris, France. We have lots of days on our Eurorail pass, so covering ground won’t be a problem at all. No matter what we do, we still have to end up in Paris, as we have a flight leaving there. From Paris, it’s back to Hong Kong with a nice long layover, then Korea again.

My wife and I usually do alright traveling. Our longest trip together so far was last year’s trip to the United States to meet my family. We did fine with tours in China, and our backpacking trip to Cambodia too. I just want to get going already!

So, as Korean Beat translated, and the Korean media have reported this week, foreign teachers like myself in Korea are pot smoking, woman seducing, diploma forgers that will stop at NOTHING to teach kindergarten students while high. This is PRIME TIME NEWS, swiping forum blog posts and using “ex-girlfriends” confessions as “journalism”. Extra kudos for trying to link Foreigners higher salaries compared to an average Korean office worker as somehow explaining our “bad behavior”. Wow, it’s almost like they are trying to find reasons to be jealous or to bring about discrimination from people that would otherwise not care! Incredible.

We’ve got such an awful reputation! Boo hoo!

Anyway, with the recent set of high profile busts of Korean doctors with fake degrees in major Korean universities and other high prominent careers, it was inevitable that there would be a round of diploma stings on academies. Right now in Daejeon, there is a paper from the Ministry of Education being sent around to schools to prove demanding that foreigners can provide their documentation. Yeah, the Immigration Office should already HAVE all this information since they let us into the country, but the Ministry of Education wants it again.

I’m not technically required to show my diploma to teach anymore. I don’t have the E-2 visa, where this paper is a requirement to get into the country. My director needed to collect several other pieces of information from me to make the “Diploma people” happy. My foreigner card, my passport, and any other things that show I’m who I say I am, and that I got my education from where I actually claimed. She had to send them a spare copy of my diploma just in case, as well as the rest of the information so that I could continue to teach.My foreign coworker had to provide the same information. I don’t know if the Koreans I worked with were pressed to provide any proof that they studied English, or anything at all actually.

Anyone forging a degree to work at an academy is just…really lame. Seriously. This kind of job isn’t that good… no matter what the Korean media might tell you about our elaborate drug use, sex parties, and whatever mischief we might be causing in the country. I’m sure we’re the root of evil.

Of course, this set of “busts” has to happen right as I’m leaving of the country for the next few weeks. I can only imagine what the customs and immigration people will think when I return to the country after my vacation.

“Hmm, you were teaching in a school, but disappear with your Korean wife (Who you probably seduced and forced to take DRUGS!) right as we start checking for fake diplomas. You run off to England, though you claim to be American? Could it be that you went there to avoid detection, and to score another fake diploma! CHECK HIS BAG! He surely has THE MARIJUANA and THE ILLEGAL DRUGS! ” (Cue the dramatic music). Before my coworkers form any conspiracy theories, my degree is legitimate, I’ve planned the vacation for months, and I’m planning to return with the same visa with no drugs whatsoever… Really. I’m not even going anywhere NEAR Amsterdam this time on my trip.

My new students were quick to accuse me of being a shady foreigner anyway. I made a spelling mistake when writing something on the board. The students all asked me, “You are American right? You aren’t from Germany or something trying to teach us English when you don’t really know it, right?”

Somehow I had avoided detection for a year, but had revealed myself with a slip of my hand on the board in front of my students. Apparently I’m teaching Sherlock freaking Holmes, and he cracked the code of my elaborate deception! Quickly! I must flee the country!

And I would have gotten away with it too, if it wasn’t for those pesky kids!

This is the first series of classes where I’ve finished teaching them for the week and will not have a class until after my vacation. I started telling students when I gave them homework, “I won’t see you until next month.”

Of course, they were surprised. Korean children’s worlds are built on a routine, and announcing they’d have to interact with someone new sent several of them into a tizzy. I assured them I would be returning from vacation in a month.

“Why so long? Why a WHOLE MONTH? It’s too long!”

Most of my students have no concept of how far away things are from each other. When they tell me they went somewhere far away, it’s usually accessible by car in a few hours. I had several childhood road trips that imparted on me a deep sense of how “huge” the United States was.

Koreans aren’t usually that lucky. Most of my students hope to go abroad, but the younger students probably have never been on a plane. I personally didn’t go on a plane until I was in third grade. The farthest Korean territory is only an hour or so away by plane. Grown adults on honeymoons were cheering as the plane took off when I went there. Unless you go abroad for business, the “roadtrip” option isn’t going to get you far due to the neighbors up “North” so to speak.

I told them I would be seeing several countries on my trip, so I needed time in each place to see everything. They seemed to think I could squeeze in the “Country of Europe” in a weekend.Did I mention they don’t study geography until High School, if ever?

After class, I told my coworker that the students were annoyed I was leaving for an entire month to “just see Europe”. He told me I had gone about explaining it in the wrong terms. Vacations? They don’t even understand the concept of traveling for pleasure. If they go on a “vacation”, it’s squeezed in the two days our school lets them have free time when their parents aren’t both working.

“Next time you tell them, just explain you’ll be studying. Tell them you have to go study in Europe during your vacation. They’ll completely understand that.”

I mean, I will be studying. I “get my culture on” when traveling. Art museums, historical sites, tours, lots of cultural learning going on. All of it makes me a better teacher, and a better person too. The amount of stuff I can teach from personal experience from simply having gone somewhere greatly enhances my classes. “Well, when I was there…” is a way to spark some interest in a topic.

The last time I went to Europe, I wasn’t extremely well prepared for the trip. I had left Korea in the middle of a heat wave, and arrived in Europe to an unseasonably cold stretch of weather. I brought a bag, while perfect for the airport and mass transit travel of Korea, was bad for backpacking from site to site. I brought things to entertain me, like dominoes, video games with charges, and an mp3 player, that were much too heavy.  I didn’t have a bad time in Europe because of these mistakes, but this time around I’m trying to be much better prepared and want to share my experience with my wife.

Today, we did round two of our trial run pack for the trip. This time around, we had our stuff packed up well enough to see that we were going to be able almost everything a reasonable person would take with them. But this time, instead of trying to throw everything and the kitchen sink into our bag, we got a little more practical with what things we needed, and the amounts we would take with us.

For example, my wife packed a bottle of shampoo for me. She had saved an old shampoo bottle for this purpose, and filled it to the top for me. This was probably three months worth of shampoo. We’ll be traveling for one month. I told her that even if I wash my hair more than normal every time I get the opportunity, I couldn’t use the amount of shampoo she wanted to bring. A night in a sleeping cabin of a train means we’re going to miss a shower too. Even if she helped me try to use the shampoo, it was too much. She went back and found another disposable sort of bottle she usually used for contact solution that was one fifth the size to fill. We saved space, weight, and still can wash our hair.

Today was full of compromises like this. It was hard remember all those things that you only think about after you get back from a long trip and discover, “Man, I really didn’t need to lug that around did I?” I followed some advice I learned from my parents this time around and lightened up my travel book. I got rid of extra pages from countries I know we don’t have the opportunity to visit. The travel book is the single heaviest item I will carry daily, and I reduced it’s size by 50% percent! That frees up space for other things, spares my back, and keeps us travel light.

Checking our flight for Hong Kong to London, it turns out that there is only one Korean subtitled movie. Everything else is English, Chinese, or Japanese. We went to the bookstore to pick up a book to fight off boredom on the flight. I got a diary style book for a travel journal, and new ear plugs. We also got another LED flashlight, and some other odds and ends.

Other than some stuff we’re bringing for a Korean friend now in England, there isn’t much more we need to pick up before we go. We’ve set aside the clothes we’re bringing, and we’ve got a few more items in the process of getting washed that we need to add to the pile before we are truly ready to go. Of course, I only say that now. I’m sure by the end of the week when it’s time to go I’ll frantically discover I’m completely forgotten something I desperately need for the trip.

The “New” Seven Wonders of the World have been chosen by people all over the world. Since I haven’t been to all of them (yet), I’ll pick my own “Seven Wonders of the World”. This list will only count places I’ve been. One of the reasons for this is to get things down on paper so I can revisit this AFTER I’ve toured Western Europe. I will then likely update the list to reflect the things I’ve seen that change my mind.

Without further ado, I present MY personal list of the Seven Wonders of the World that I’ve visited:

1. The Great Wall of China- (Visited in 2006) Okay, so I’m cheating a little bit. This is already ON the “Wonders of the World” lists. It’s still awe inspiring and mind boggling. I saw one tiny sliver of this HUGE monument to xenophobia, but it’s just too incredible to leave off the list, even if it’s hardly a new thing to rave about.

2. Angkor Wat (Visited in 2007) The ONLY reason this isn’t on everyone’s list like other entries is because Cambodia hasn’t been free and independent long enough for tourists to discover this beautiful, wonderful place. It’s still an undiscovered treasure to most of the world. Really spectacular.

3. The Forbidden City (Visited in 2006) China, again. This palace complex is ginormous. Even if we didn’t have much time to explore, and everything was being explained by a Korean tour guide, the sheer scope and enormity of this enclosed city was impressive.

4. The Glaciers and Mountains of Alaska (Distant Childhood memory) This isn’t the first vacation I’ve been on, but it’s one of the most memorable. 6 weeks in a RV with my family, touring numerous sites in the distant wilderness. Being able to listen to a single radio station between cities was a treat! This is some of the most beautiful scenery in America, and it won’t last long before it’s exploited and ruined. See it while you can!

5. Bulguksa (Visited in 2003, 2005) This is a place I went with my parents to show them the beautiful architecture of Korean temples. It is my favorite temple in Korea to visit, especially in the winter when there are no crowds. It can’t hold a candle to The Forbidden City in scale, but it’s still very impressive.

6. The Subways of Tokyo- (Visited in 2003) It’s the only modern location on the list. This is one of the few places in the world so utterly bewildering that you feel like an ant trapped in a cruel maze. I rarely get so hopelessly lost that I have no clue how to get out of a structure, but I literally had no idea how to “escape” from the masses of tunnels, stairs, and gates that required tickets. Some kind Japanese person finally rescued me and pointed me in the right direction. If it wasn’t for that, I might STILL be wandering around in there.

7. Fjords of Norway- (Visited in 2004) Talk about an impressive geologic feature? These HUGE features carved by glacial ice, and these tiny, isolated houses in the middle of nowhere only accessible by ferry.

Despite our back packer ways, we haven’t actually bought any bags for our trip to Europe. Now, we’re looking for new gear to bring with us specifically for this trip.

Our last vacation in Cambodia, we brought my old bag and shared space.  I had brought it to Europe before, but it’s more of a suitcase that happens to have back pack straps than an actual bag practically speaking. The old bag had rollers for airports, but the heavy supports for an extending handle caused it to be cumbersome for extended trips. It tried to be two things, yet failed at both, because the handle was long enough to be tugged around, but short enough to cause me to smack the back of my foot when I walked. It much too heavy to carry comfortably on my back for long too.

We need new bags. We went to an outdoors store I had found earlier in the week. I had done my best to try to explain the requirements of our trip to the owner on a previous trip. The gentleman at the store pointed me to some quality bags. Excellent, and very expensive, as they are all foreign made European bags shipped into Korea.

We looked around the store. The owner recommended some shoes, but nothing was in my size. I don’t have excessively large feet for someone my height. I’m just outside the Korean bell curve. Clerks usually gasp when I tell them my shoe size and shake their heads. Oh well, I’ll find something eventually if we go to Seoul.

We also need rain jackets and other “supplies” for our trip. The jacket prices were incredibly high! I had no idea a good jacket would cost that much. In total, if we went “top end” and bought everything we were looking at, we would have spent as much on gear as the plane tickets to get to Europe in the first place!

Eventually we’ll end up going to Seoul to see the mountaineering and travel gear neighborhood’s prices. I’ll probably be able to find the right shoes too. Then we can haul everything back to Daejeon as our first test of readiness for the trip. I’m terribly excited to buy all our gear. It’s only when the bags are sitting ready to be packed that I get serious about traveling.

I was awakened this morning by a call from my parents. They Skype’d me and I got their call forwarded to my phone (that’s so awesome). Anyway, I was awakened and then forced to decipher dates and make decisions about our European vacation coming up in a few months. This is not my idea of a good wake up call.

It turns out my parents will have an excuse to see me for some time while we are in Europe. We’ll check out London together if things work out. The call was about what when we would meet. They are working out their reservations, so now we know when we have to make it there.

We’ve had our tour book planners for months, but we haven’t seriously cracked them open more than a few times to play with Google Earth for some research. Having a concrete day to meet my parents broke down all the “maybe” and “what about this” ideas we were having about planning the vacation. We sat down and worked out an actual route we could both agree on. We made compromises and set time frames. We had everything set. We knew where we were going. All we needed were the tickets to get on the plane to go.

Problem.

We’ve been in contact with travel agents today and trying to reserve tickets to fit our new plan. We’ve run into problems trying to find a flight that’s going where we need but isn’t insanely priced. It seems that between when we called in the morning for information about tickets, and when we called back to make reservations, all the “cheap” tickets they told us about somehow disappeared. Hmm. That’s an awfully strange coincidence.

It seems our normal booking agent doesn’t really handle “backpacking” tours well. We’ll have more research to do to find a cheap flight. Once the tickets get bought, we’ll move onto the details of planning what we’ll bring, what we need, and where we’ll go in more detail. That’s my favorite part.

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.