Korea loves honey.

Wow. I'll be able to update this more once I'm actually IN the USA and can bug Maddie until she lets me set up my phone with her computer so I can upload all the photos (and possibly the amazingly odd video) I took in Korea. But Korea was a damn adventure, and I'll never look at people who can't speak English in Australia in the same way again.

Going through Customs here was really, really, really easy once I found the card in English saying what to fill in where. Finding the card was a little hard, because I had to dig through a pile of Russian ones, but I found it. (Don't tell anyone that I totally missed the box that said [ENGLISH] at the top until after I'd found a misplaced English card)

So I went to the hotel information desk and gave them my details, the girl who I talked to told me to go and wait over in a seating area for fifteen minutes. I went and sat there for 20, then looked over and she had disappeared. As she was the only one at the hotel desk who knew English and there was no people from my flight staying in the hotel I was, I triple checked the stuff I wrote down. "Go to Level 3, exit door 8, the bus goes there." Level 1 wasn't going to help me OR SO I THOUGHT.

Went up to level 3, walked to the exit and four buses came, the fourth driver understood just enough English to say "No go port 1, hotel desk" when I told him where I wanted to be. I went back inside and heard an announcement in Korean just finish, then it changed to English and said "Could the red tracksuit boy with the girl's haircut come to the hotel information desk."

Who else but Whalley could that be!

I made my way down there and the girl I'd spoken to came over to me and apologised for taking so long, I said I panicked and got lost (entirely the truth) and she introduced me to a man who said "English!" and waved for me to follow, then took off on a run. What could I do but follow?

The hotel sent a limousine and he was the driver, who I found out didn't speak English at all. Two other passengers were in the car, and that made things fun. See, one of them spoke Korean and a bit of Japanese and the other was a Japanese girl who spoke English better than I did but from her own admission, could only say about 10% of things in Korean. So the driver asked the first passenger who asked the second who asked me, "are you from England?" I told her no, Australia, and that got relayed back to the driver who spoke all the Australian he knew. "Ah, Australia! Sydney! O-per-ah-house-air-rock?" I just nodded and smiled, and he seemed happy with himself. I knew the driver and the Korean passenger were talking about me, as they'd frequently say "Australian" and laugh, but so what, people talk about me all the time. I'm great. The Japanese girl and me chatted on our way to the hotel.

Now that I'm back at the airport I can see I wrote it down wrong, but the hotel didn't have my booking number, so I had to pay out the nose. 90,000 korean... things! I tell you, it was a good thing that equalled about US$70 or I woulda been freaking out.

The hotel room had a vending machine for food, drink, beer, chocolate, stockings and honey condoms. I didn't get any honey condoms although I'm regretting it now. Korea is obsessed with honey, I have to say. Snacks on the plane? Honey related or coated. Beer? I know the taste of honey beer quite well thank you very much. Chocolate? Think Mars bars with honey instead of caramel. Moisturiser and shampoo? You best believe we talkin' honey, y'all.

The bathroom was great. I forgot what it's like to be able to have a shower without water restriction woes, and the entire bathroom is your shower. The wall unit blasted water in any direction I wanted it aimed, and the drain was directly in the center of the room. Needless to say, I spent a little bit of time singing into the showerhead in front of the full length mirror in the shower. I am so great.

I found a channel on TV that was playing Bruce Willis things back to back, so I watched that and hung out in the hotel room - we were too far away from anywhere to go out, and I didn't really want to go down the weird staircase in the middle of the hotel parking lot that was neon lit; from the looks of it, it was one of those bars where all the girls wear no shirts and they fondle you while you drink. I wasn't in the mood for being fondled while I drink.

Oh god, Korea is beautiful though. The whole drive from the airport to the hotel, I was just noticing all the hills and forests and greenery and such, and it was amaaaaaaazing. I've never seen forests so dense and green and vibrant. I couldn't get a photo on the way but I tried to take one out my hotel window; my phone says it's pretty neat but that may not be the case in the end.

In the morning, I was the only one who was going to be taking the bus so the bus driver said fuck it and stuck me in the limo, driving me back to the airport. Conversation was really really limited, what with his knowledge of English already having being outlined and the total amount of Korean I can speak being "Kim Jong Il" and "Aachi and Ssipak" - the second being an animated movie about a woman whose butt sensor makes it seem like she poos 100x as much as she does so when she goes to the toilet she is rewarded with 100x the normal amount of highly addictive lollipops, so a green troll is out to get her with his smurf henchmen only a government android and two thugs don't want that to happen, also the android is a former porn director. I opted for silence.

And basically, here we are. I considered writing about how I got lost coming into the airport, but I really didn't. I just walked forwards until I almost bumped into a sign saying "INTERNATIONAL BOARDING ->" and decided to walk -> until I found where I had to go through. Customs were even easier this time around as my main bag is being shot straight to Washington, so now all I need to do is continue my trend of not breaking the law and I should be set.



Oh and Mum, the window seat I got? Nobody was sitting in between my window seat and the aisle. How radical.