Slept in on a moderately cool Hirakata autumn day, well rested and ready for my new, brief adventure to South Korea.  Having absolutely no knowledge of South Korea, the Korean language, or Korean people, I couldn’t help but feel a little un-excited at first, but excitement slowly grew as the prospect of visiting another country became more and more a reality.  But I had NO desire to go to Korea!  But I didn’t not have no desire to not not going to Korea… not… dunno, pretty sure i fucked up my double negative there, but basically I was on the fence.  I didn’t really care whether or not I visited Korea at some point of my life.  But, about 2 months earlier a Mr. Frank-san (crazy American who sat next to me in class) asked me:

“Hey wanna go to Korea?”

To which I replied:

“Ok.”

And so this new adventure was in motion.  We planned that 5 of us (Frank, Chris, Mike, Haruna and myself) would travel to Seoul, South Korea on the 27th of November to return on the 30th of November.  Sounds great.

And so the gang appeared in my bedroom at approximately 11am, maybe 11:59am, asking if I was ready.  I wasn’t, due to the fact I kinda watched an episode of Lost that morning instead of packing – my bad.  But I said I’d catch up and make sure I’d be ready and at Hirakata-shi, ready for the Airport Limousine Bus by 3:30pm.  I crammed some clothes, my DS, my camera and something else that I can’t remember into my backpack and away I went.

I met the gang in front of Starbucks at Hirakata-shi, then Haruna (who is Korean-Japanese, lives in Japan) guided us to where the Limousine bus would meet us, we paid our 3,200 yen (return ticket included for when we got back) and away we went.

I slept for most of the bus trip.  See, driving generally isn’t that exciting I find, because we always seem to be in traffic.  However the highway was kinda interesting, and the area just before, and including, the bridge that leads to Kansai International Airport is interesting too.

I love Kansai Airport.  This was my second time here (1st obviously being my initial landing in Japan), and it’s really cool.  However, we were running a little bit late, with only about 1 hour and 15 minutes before our plan departed we kinda had to get a move on.  So we ran to the desks, but Frank ran into a bit of a dilemma.

Ok so I think I mentioned in my pre-Korea post that I had to go and get a re-entry permit, which cost me 3000 yen, but also like another 3000 yen to get there and back by train.  If i didnt, well… yeah THAT happened, I swear.  Frank did the same – but DIDN’T get his re-entry permit because he holds a multiple entry Visa, and the lady at the immigration place said he didn’t need a re-entry permit, thus wasting 3000 yen + 3 hours of time travelling.  Turns out, he needed the re-entry permit.  So the lady at the desk gathered us all and hurried us through the security clearance place, only to whisk Haruna and Frank away from Chris, Mike and I.  We waited a bit and Frank and Haruna were released +1 re-entry permit.

Success!

Oh so we figured that South Korea, much like most countries, used money for trade.  So we figured that we would change some of our yen to Korean “Won”.  I think I changed 25,000 yen or something into 270,000 won.  So 1 Australian dollar was roughly 1,000 won.

We made our way to our gate, not before all Men involved on this trip stopped to take a photo of a poster of the gorgeous Emma Watson:

…Drool…

We made it to our gate and jumped onto our plane.  The plane ride was only like an 1.5 hours or something, oh and we had free beer. Free KOREAN beer!  They had 2 kinds: Hite and Cass.

Unfortunately us guys butchered these brand names into: “Shite” and “Ass”.  So much so that we decided that on some point of our trip we should ask for a “Shite” or an “Ass” and see if we actually get the beer we were after.

Frank had also given us all a list of handy Korean words.  Like Hello (anyong haseyo) and thank you (Kamsam-nida).  Oh, just scouring the interwebs for other Korean Phrases.  Just found possibly the greatest phrase ever to be constructed in any language throughout all of time:

“내 호버크라프트는 장어로 가득 차 있어요

(Nae hoebuhkeurapeuteuneun changuhro kadeuk cha isseyo)”

What does it mean? “My Hovercraft is full of Eels”

We landed at Gimpo Airport at around 7pm or so.  Frank had directions to our hostel (lovingly named: “Bong House”… … lol).  We trained for 2938712938 hours from the airport before arriving at Hyewha Station (before 10:30pm) – our stop!  Now, we’d been in Korea for a while before seeing anything other than subways.  So exiting Hyewha station was actually the first time we had seen buildings and took a breath of “fresh” Korean air. The first few steps outside were amazing.

I had immediately fallen in love with my surroundings.

Till next time…