By the time I purchased the ticket, Andy had already returned to China and was working and living in Shanghai but his girlfriend was still attending Portland State University. This gave us an opportunity to share a few meals with her and get to know her. When she returned to China in June, we arranged to both take her to the airport and to use my own checked luggage allowance to get two 50 pound bags of her belongings to China (I knew I would only have a carry-on back pack).
The months flew by as I devoted a little time to preparing (getting the required tourist visa that, with processing by an "authorized" agent (because the closest Chinese consulate staff is in San Francisco) ends up costing more than $200 ($140 for the visa, $60 for processing plus FedEx charges). In addition, I purchased the most recent Lonely Planet Guide. In my prior blog I noted that when traveling solo in China, I treasured and protected my Lonely Planet Guide as much as I do my passport. I still have vivid recall of having to tear out pages from my 2010 edition so that I could show a train ticket sales person the Chinese characters for the ticket I needed.
Well, today, departure day October 8, arrived and got started early so I could drop Deb at the airport at 4am for her own flight to visit our son/daughter-in-law/granddaughter in Williamsburg, Virginia and her dad and sisters near Charleston, West Virginia. My plan was to also check in for my 9:25am flight and get Andy's girlfriend's large/heavy bags checked but that plan had to be changed when Alaska Airlines said they couldn't check any bags more than 4 hours before flight time. In spite of my best "puppy dog" eyes trying for a policy modification, I was left to take the bags back with me to our house and take them on the bus/light rail (Max) ride to the airport. Thank goodness one of the bags was a roller. I'm certain I looked like a more typical American tourist as I schlepped these two large bags, in addition to my back pack, to the airport.
The routing was Portland to Vancouver, BC on Alaska and then Korean Air to Seoul, South Korea with connecting flight to Shanghai. I'm writing this entry as I fly along at 38000 feet in a Boeing Triple 7 aircraft with about an hour and half left 'til touchdown in Seoul.
The service has been amazing -- just like I remembered from my 2010 trip on Korean Airlines. What's not to like getting two meals, plenty of leg room, complimentary wine, slippers, toothbrush/toothpaste and other nice amenities and attentive service.
It's also been an interesting day of interactions. First, while waiting in Vancouver, a young Korean woman asked me to watch her bags as she visited the toilet a couple of times. After the second time, she engaged me in conversation. Now that's a reversal -- usually it's me that starts the talking. With little encouragement, I quickly learned that she was 20 years old, returning to Korea for the first time since she was 12 when her family moved to Vancouver. She was going to be in Korea for 2 months to get reacquainted with some of her family and friends that remain there. It was a delightful conversation that easily burned off the couple of hours 'til flight time.
Similarly, on the flight I was seated next to two Korean women -- who also just met on the flight. The woman farthest from me spoke in English to me and translated the usual "hello, where are you headed, where have you been" type pre-flight conversation for the woman between us as she spoke only Korean. I could easily tell from their smiles that the flight would be comfortable -- but little did I know that the meal service would jump-start the woman next to me into wanting to attempt to communicate.
When the flight attendant offered the meal choices, I picked the "Korean" specialty ("Bibimbap") just for the adventure of it. Well, this led the flight attendant to ask if I had ever had it -- and when I responded no, she gave me a printed card with an explanation of how to mix the rice, vegetables and hot sauce ("gochulang") and eat it. Well, whatever was said between the flight attendant and the two women, prompted my seatmate, who spoke no English, to show me how to prepare the meal -- she even squeezed more hot sauce on the mixture and picked up my bowl and mixed it more thoroughly than I had. She then proceeded to try to help me understand some of the Korean characters -- and just generally started to engage, limited though it was by our language barrier. Before long I was showing her photos of my family on my Google Nexus pad and she was showing me photos of her holiday trip to Vancouver and her daughter -- and we were bridging the language challenges best we could by pointing and typing. I was disappointed that I had only put Chinese/English translators on my pad -- and the ones that did other languages required the internet (which the flight didn't have). In addition, I use an excellent free, off-line map program ("Maps With Me" made for both iPhone and Android) but had not anticipated the need to download the street-level detail for Korea, only China. I'll definitely remedy that before my return flight.
All in all, the first two flights have been great. The seat monitor tells me that we have 1 hour 5 minutes 'til our arrival in Seoul -- and completing our 11 hour 35 minute flight from Vancouver to Seoul. I still have another layover and plane change and hour flight to Shanghai.
It's worth noting that I crossed the international date line -- so while I left Portland on a 9:25am flight on October 8, I'm arriving in Shanghai at 8:20pm on October 9.
Excuse me... tearing pages out of YOUR 2010 Lonely Planet? haha.
ReplyDeleteGlad you had an enjoyable flight. Maybe we should all go to South Korea next?
Love and miss you,
M/S/Z
That's right. It was your and Staci's Lonely Planet book that I destroyed in 2010! Oh well, it was for a good cause -- and it's not like you've needed it since!
ReplyDelete