<< rewind ; [#] `-
Wednesday, December 28, 2005
well if u read the news lately you would have realised that south korea and japan are currently in a season of snowstorms and really bad weather.
and to be stuck in the midst of it all was really a queer experience.
it was day III of my trip and i was on the southernmost city of South Korea - Jeju Island. Well as the name suggests, it is an island on its own and waters surround every inch of it.
Jeju to Seoul takes about 50 minutes, and in Seoul there are two airports - Incheon which is an international one and Gimpo which is for domestic purposes.
The day before it was already a snowstorm in jeju. The winds were howling and the snow was raining into your face. And golly it was cold. Freezing would be a better word.
You know when the inside of the bus is warmer than the external temperature outside of it, then the inside windows will have water vapour well on the windows. But then it was so cold until all the water vapour froze and the windows were covered with a layer of ice. impressive eh?
So our flight was scheduled to depart 0720 bound for Gimpo. Morning call was fixed at 0500. So we duly woke up at gathered at the lobby at 0600. Then we were told to wait. wait and wait. So sulken faced everyone was due to an obvious lack of sleep, and we practically stoned there.
Then it turned to many trips to and fro from lobby to room back to lobby to room... and it was finally 1230 when we left the hotel. Confirmed flight at 1635 for Incheon and it turned out to be quite a view at the airport.
It was crowded beyond well what you could call crowded. okay maybe that's an exaggeration. but still it was really crowded and u could see on the departure board that many flights had the word "cancelled" beside it. and many else were "processing" - very few had "boarding".
well it was really messy. no places to sit and no trolleys for you to put yer luggage on. it was worse after having checked everything in and when entering the gates. pple were running around and airport staff were rushing the late ones onto planes. Again there were no seats. So we had to contend with the floor.
So more pple rushed by and onto planes and the messiness of the situation was quite intriguing. Many many many announcements were made and then i remembered some groups of lyk 100 children coming in and sitting on one big empty space (Thus it was no longer empty) and everything became more squeezy and stuff.
Luckily i managed to find a seat and had music and a nice little book for company.
It was near four when there was an announcement for my flight. The gate was changed and obviously sum pple din hear it coz it was noisy and possibly in korean (well i din hear it myself, only told of it).
So the scent of the aircraft finally put an end to the 9 hours of misery and i slept throughout the ride.
And that was one little experience at the airport. One that you don't usually get to view at peaceful (uneventful) Changi and one that you possibly only see on the Amazing Race. One that I'll remember for some time to come.
Oh yeah. If you plan on visiting korea, visit jeju. It's beautiful.
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12/28/2005 12:49:00 AM
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