Aloha everyone!

I saw an albino in Japan. Yup that is right. I forgot to mention that in my last email.

Tuesday – May 18th – Can I skip this day?

3am – throw up. 6am – throw up. 7am – throw up. Please no more.
I feel horrible, so I end up in bed all day, leaving once to buy some oranges and do some laundry.
My plans were to visit the Maid Cafe, the Cat Cafe, and check out some Puri Kura.
Oh well. I am in agony with stomach pains. It is a funny last day for Japan.

I need 1500 yen to get to the airport but I only have 1000 and there is no ATM. I just happen to find 5 Euros in my bag and trade it for 500 yen with a Swedish guy.

Wednesday – May 19th – You only think you are going to South Korea.

My 5:50am alarm goes off. I am all set for my one-hour train ride to the airport at 6:30am. I should arrive at 7:30 for my 9am flight to Seoul via Beijing.

Whew, I am feeling a lot better. After dodging the stampede of suits charging off the train, I notice the departure time is 6:47, not 6:30. Even though the hostel gave me bad information, if I arrive at the airport before 8 I am still ok.

Goodbye Japan.

Nope, not yet.
Train is delayed!!!!!!

Finally, I arrive at the airport. I am supposed to arrive at 7:30, and the time now is 8:42am. My flight is at 9am. Ahhh!!!!

There are two train stops to choose from: Terminal 1 and Terminal 2.
Which one?
I jump off at the closer Terminal 2 and the list of airlines on the wall says China Air. I run past everyone, running up the downstairs escalator and I am welcomed by a giant airport with a zoo of LCD screens.

I ask the neatly dressed Japanese agent, “where is Air China?”

She says, “Oh this is China Air, Air China is Terminal one”

Ahh!

After taking the free shuttle to Terminal 1, I talk with the desk agent. My non-refundable flight has left and the next flight is completely full.
She has me call their Reservation Center to change the flight. On the phone, the agent tells me, “We cannot change your flight. You need to purchase a new ticket, which would be $2,500USD.”
Yeah right.

So I decide to speak with another airline. A nice lady with ANA says they have a direct flight for $1,000.
Ugh.
She decides to help and call Air China for me.

She tells me I can fly stand-by to Beijing with my original ticket on Air China (thank god), but must stay over night in Beijing. Ok.

It is 10am and Air China tells me to come back at 11am for check-in.

In the meantime, I hang out with Chuck, an American Air force service member stationed in Okinawa. He is originally from Florida and is the front man for a “heavy metal death band” that just was signed. He shows me his cool red guitar and we hang out while I wait.

At 11am, Air China tells me to come back in 15 minutes. Ok.

15 minutes later, they inform me that they open at 12pm. Ok.

At 12:20pm, the desk agent tells me to come back at 2pm for check-in, for the 3:15pm flight.

It is now 2pm and she tells me again to, “Come back in 15 minutes”.
While at the desk, an Arab guy with a beard wearing a turban spots me from across the airport. He smiles and waves.

Its 2:15pm now and they cannot get me on the 3:15 flight. You cannot get past immigration without a boarding pass and wait stand-by at the gate, so they tell me to come back (again) at 4:30pm.
At 4:30pm, they tell me to come back at 5pm to check-in. Right now, there are only 4 seats available and they tell me that if I do make the flight, the connecting flight is the following morning, so I will have to sleep at the Beijing airport. “Don’t worry its open 24hrs”.
I surrender to this moment.

Back at 5pm and there are no seats available for the last 7pm flight. “Please come back at 6pm to check-in.” (Am I being Punk’d?)
It’s raining outside and I start thinking, “Am I going to have to sleep at the Incheon Airport?”

It would now appear that I am stranded.

Its 6pm and the agents behind the desk talk and talk.
I am wondering, “What on Earth could they possibly be saying for all this time?”

30 minutes later, I am relieved to see a boarding pass. Hooray!
They change my connecting flight to Seoul for tomorrow at 8:45am and remind me that I cannot leave the Beijing Airport because I do not have a Chinese Visa.
The agent quickly escorts me through security and immigration. I made it. Whew.

On the 7pm flight, I read the China Daily paper and am amazed how much the English language and stories about the USA dominate the news.

I land in China around 11pm and the Beijing Airport is enormous. My flight is at 8:45am and immigration sends me to a special line for a temporary visa stamp.
What to do for 9 hours?

After eating, I sleep on and off in the airport and wake up around 5:15am.

Thursday – May 20th – Welcome to South Korea

A Shoalin monk spots me and sheepishly approaches me after 5 minutes and asks for a picture of me. I am thinking, “Hey I want one of you”.
We ask a lady at the convenience[googleMap name="Seoul,Korea" width="200" height="200"][/googleMap] store to take our photo and she thinks we want a photo of her.
Hahahaha yah right. Get out of here.

The next moment, another guy with a beard walks by and says, “I like your
beard”. Having this beard is a trip; I cannot really describe what it is like.

After scoring the exit row window seat, I land in Seoul and breeze through customs.

There is finally some Wi-Fi and the Incheon Airport is modern and very nice.
Most signs in South Korean are bi-lingual. I decide on a hostel, figure out the public transportation, and head into Seoul. South Korea is home to Samsung and Kia and there is a lot of construction going on.

Searching for the hostel, I end up walking around forever in this maze of a new country. An older security guard and four catholic schoolgirls help to show me that I am nowhere near the hostel. Therefore, 3 of the girls walk me to the subway, past a local politician with a megaphone giving a roadside election speech.

After one subway stop, I am still searching as Google maps have me on a wild goose chase. Just when I decide to sit down from exhaustion, I find the hostel. It is on the 4th floor and its run by kids (young adults). My check-in paperwork consists of me simply writing my name on a blank sheet of paper. That is it.

Korea is like Japan only with better food, more tacky signs, more public Wi-Fi, and more open partying. So this means it is also dirtier and cheaper. It is as if Japan is a virgin and Korea has been laid. There are more public displays of affection here and more noticeable couples walking around.

I meet Stevin (Finland) and Jed (Nebraska) and we walk the busy neon streets
in search of food. There are endless small stores, vendors, and bars.
It’s Buddha’s birthday tomorrow and it is a national holiday, so everyone is out.
The streets are filled with great music from every direction. Fireworks go off in the sky and the city is filled with energy.

Across from the hostel is a dog cafe, where you can play with puppies while you eat.
Korea is definitely more Americanized than Japan.

I am grateful to sleep in a regular bed.

Friday May 21st – Buddha’s Birthday – it’s like Christmas!

After a shower with no shower curtain, I check the metro map and see that City Hall is on the way to Gyeongbokgung (Imperial) Palace, so I head there first for the festivities.

Seoul has soul. The city is alive and a lot less expensive than Japan.
At City Hall, there is a terrific $9 site-seeing bus tour that just happens to end at Gyeongbokgung palace – nice.

There are thousands of people in the streets. I hop on the packed bus and enjoy the personal audio tour of each stop, eventually getting off at N. Seoul Tower.

Located on top of a mountain, the tower is so busy today that there’s a 15 minute wait for the elevator, so I check out this fence that has thousands of locks attached all over it. Each lock has a personal message on it.

The view from the top is amazing of course, even though it is very hazy and foggy today. I learn that Korea is 70% mountains and Japan used to occupy Korea for 30 years before WWII. When Korea was liberated at the end of WWII, Russia and the US could not decide on how it should govern itself, so the Korean War began and the country was split in two along the 38th parallel.

Back on the bus, I learn that the Palace closes in 5 minutes so I visit Yonsang Mall instead. I comb the electronics area of the 9-story mall for some needed purchases and head back to the hostel.

Korea is the only divided country in the world. The dislike of the Japanese by the Koreans of course is greatly over-shadowed by the tension between North and South Korea right now.

The entire country is on high alert after North Korea sunk a South Korean military ship. There is a lot of talk about going to war.
I am thinking about how you learn about conflicts in the news and it does not really affect you back home, but now I am ACTUALLY in Korea. War could break out any moment while I am here. I need to go somewhere safe – where there is no military.

I know!

I will travel north to the de-militarized zone (the DMZ).

Saturday May 22nd – The DMZ and North Korea

With guests sleeping everywhere (lobby floor, couch, all over the place), a group of us meet outside to take a small van to the tour office.

Ryan, Stevin, Elliot, Eddy, Helen, and I board a full tour bus and the female tour guide/host on the bus stops me. “Hey I know you”, she says.

Sure, you do, I get that often, but I am thinking she is confusing me with someone else.

“Remember? I stayed at your hostel in Hawai’i a few months ago!”
Oh yeah, now I remember her. Her name is Seungmi Choi and she is a Travel Guide in South Korea. We talked about my trip while checking her in one night.
What are the chances?

As we leave the city, she points out these billboards over the freeways, which are actually giant boxes full of dynamite to block North Korean tanks!

The freeway is next to a river and is lined with countless camouflaged guard towers and endless barbed wire (to stop swimming NK spies). There are no trees on the North Korean side. We learn that the DMZ is 4km wide and full of land mines. Because of this, it has become a prosperous wildlife refuge.

Our first stop is at Freedom Bridge, next to a small amusement park. An eerie rusted locomotive with 1200 bullet holes is on display next to a giant peace bell.
Colorful ribbons are tied on the heavily re-enforced barbed-wire fence. The tour guide informs us that a tourist was intentionally shot in 2008, so there are no more tours into North Korea.

Back on the bus, soldiers board the bus to check everyone’s passports at the DMZ checkpoint. No photos are allowed. Because of the tension between the North and South, the JSA (joint security area – called Panmunjom) is closed indefinitely.

On Hwy 1 towards Gyesong in North Korea, we pass over Unification (Cattle) bridge and past organic rice patty fields with a small village nearby (it used to be a USA base).

Land mines, troops, and warning signs surround the entire area. Many places are closed.

Our next stop is the third infiltration tunnel built by North Korea. Four tunnels from North Korea into South Korea have been discovered but experts say there are about twenty.
Through each tunnel, ten thousand North Korean troops can pass the boarder undetected and into Seoul in just one hour.

The tunnel is 7ft wide 6ft tall. It is a 400yrd steep walk down, 25 stories below the surface. We are given hardhats and no photos are allowed. Water is dripping from the slimy walls as tourists pack the narrow tunnel to reach a rusty steel door separating us from the North Korea side. There is more barbed wire and a camera constantly watching the tunnel door.

Back up top, our next stop is a major DMZ lookout post. Again, no photos are allowed inside. From this vantage point, we can see North Korea, the JSA, and the highest flag pole in the world (160m). The North and South keep raising their flagpoles to see who has the highest. None of the soldiers allows us to take their picture.

Our last stop is a brand new Metro / Train station. The relationship between the North and South was so good a few years ago, that the South decided to invest in public transportation into North Korea because unification seemed so close. Now, the station is a modern, empty building waiting with hope to be used someday.

The tour is over and we travel back to City Hall. At Yongsan Station, a large store called E-Mart has fresh fruit (yeah!) and I find some money on the ground. It is raining as I head back to the hostel.

Most of the guests I am hanging out with are English teachers who live south in Busan. They are drinking and joking, partying late into the night as everyone listens to Korean pop music (Rain!).

Sunday May 23rd – A preview of Greece

It is raining lightly as I travel to the National Museum of Korea. The Special Exhibition area is showcasing classic works from ancient Greece, on loan from the British Museum.

The regular wing of the museum is displaying artifacts from ancient Korean culture and daily living from over 2500 years ago.

Afterward, I notice an advertisement for a Korean Elvis Musical (called “All Shook Up”) in the subway as I head uptown to the National Palace Museum of Korea.

After looking at turn-of-the-century automobiles, palace robes, carvings, and royal artifacts, I walk next door to Gyeongbokgung (Imperial) Palace and have my photo taken with a “guard”.

The palace was mostly destroyed by the Japanese and rebuilt years later. Festive music is playing a short walk away, so I investigate only to discover the National Folk Museum.

Free admission today (yeah!) because it is a holiday weekend. I learn about traditional Korean living, social customs, and arranged marriage. In the past, you met your spouse for the first time on your wedding day, the wedding was at the bride’s house and after the ceremony, and the bride was carried in a box to the groom’s house to consummate the marriage. (Ah the good ‘ol days)

Walking around downtown, there’s lots of fashion, art, Kiwi fruit, and Christian churches After I explore an outdoor Lantern Exhibit, I discover the American embassy, where the guards wave and say, “hi”.
I begin to notice that there are guards everywhere, all over downtown.

Back to Yongsan Station and E-mart again before buying a ticket to a Korean movie theater (assigned seating) to see “Robin Hood” (ok). The theater claims to have the world’s first 4D IMAX movie, with all of the following:
motion, light, scent, wind, and water.

It is now so late at night that the subway closes halfway back to the hostel. It is 1am in downtown Seoul as I walk a long way back to Hapjeong St and the hostel.

With the threat of war, I am relieved that tomorrow I will be flying to Dubai and the safe Middle East.

Again, little do I know that the airport drama I faced in Japan is nothing like what I will face tomorrow trying to leave Korea…

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