Lesson #1: Never book domestic flight tickets at the last minute even if there are flights out every 10 - 15 minutes
Reflections from my journal - 8 April (Day 1)1st day of my family trip to Korea, and how eventful it was! We arrived at Gimpo airport's domestic terminal happily, only to discover to my utter horror, that the day's tickets to Jeju Island were all sold out cos we had "no reservations" (it took me quite a while to get used to the accented English they speak). Then there was the mad rush to book tickets out to Jeju for the next day and back on Sunday, money concerns to get rooms in Seoul for the night, and the language barriers. The airport staff were generally sympathetic to our plight, and helped us as best as they could. In the end, we could only get the 1455 hour flight to Jeju on Saturday and depart from there at 0920 hour on Sunday. :( I was supremely disappointed at myself for not booking the tickets online earlier, and causing disappointment to my mum especially.
By the time we got to downtown Seoul where our hotel, Ibis Seoul Myeong-dong Hotel, was, it was already almost 8 pm local time. As the Gimpo Airport limousine bus (#6001) turtled through the peak hour traffic, I caught myself thinking, "All cities look the same now, after a while." which means that my next holiday would have to be either somewhere rustic, beachy or really cultural. The bus stopped right in front of the hotel, thankfully.
Pulling our luggage into reception, I asked to check in but got some unintelligible reply in return.
"Can you speak English?" I ventured. The receptionist looked at me strangely and repeated his instructions. I only caught "check-in" and "19". As we went into the lift, Sis looked at me and asked "Did you know that he was speaking English already? I found it so weird that you asked if he spoke English when he already was!" Oops.
Anyway. We popped out into the streets in search of dinner, after settling the room confirmations for the following night at Jeju Hiking Inn. The streets looked really enticing at first glance. Lotsa neon lights, masks and cosmetic shops, and aroma from the street food stalls beckoned.
Mum was ill on the plane and did not feel like walking much, so after our dinner of bibimbap, we deposited her back at her room to sleep it off, and hit the streets again.
Sis and I passed by a stall closing for the night, and the seller was packing giant cream puffs into huge plastic bags. Standing timidly by his side, I held out my index finger to indicate that we wanted 1. It sold for 1,500 won and was about the size of my palm!
In the midst of browsing the shops, we chanced upon Savoy Hotel, the hotel for the next leg of our journey. Didn't know Myeong-dong was so small! We took the chance to verify if we could deposit our luggage there before flying to Jeju. Luckily for us, the receptionist said it was fine. Btw, to my surprise, my 3G-enabled Sony Ericsson was not able to connect to the 3G network here, though Sis could on her Iphone. So all calls to reserve tickets for various programmes and hotels had to be done at the reception.
posted by Addy @ 11:46 PM
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