Marie and Charlie's Asian Adventure

We just got off of our first flight of 11 hours and some change and are in the Incheon airport in South Korea waiting to board our plane to Hong Kong.  I just congratulated Charlie on the thorough pat-down he just received from a cute Korean security lady.

Things got off to a nerve-wracking start when it took a good 30 minutes just to check us in, during which a lady ran off with our passports to verify something.  Turns out that my passport is so old that it doesn't scan automatically like the new ones do.  Since then everything has been fine.  The flight was only slightly annoying due to a guy behind me that wouldn't shut up and that kept bumping my seat, but otherwise my first Korean Air experience was pleasant.  I would definitely use their airline again: friendly flight attendants with big bow-ties,

a huge list of movies you can watch, and free video games (I wailed on Charlie at Tetris).  The food was average.  I thought I had ordered "Asian Vegetarian" meals for both of us, but either I didn't or an error occurred somewhere.  So I watched several people receive yummy Indian-type food, while I was offered beef or "Korean Style", which also turned out to be some kind of beef/rice/salad thing.  I just ate the white rice and Korean hot pepper sauce (which I pocketed because it was so yummy) with a little sesame oil drizzled on top.  Not bad.

Now we are in the Incheon airport outside of Seoul and it is about 2:00 AM back home.  Here is what our eyes look like:


I'll spare you the horror of the rest of our faces...

My first impression of South Korea is a positive one.  Everyone seems pretty friendly and they have a good sense of customer service.  Also, from the photos I've seen, it looks like a tropical paradise (we can't actually see anything from the airport since it's dark right now).  I'd like to come back some time and actually hang out for a while.

Later on: Hong Kong.

We are finally here and were greeted at the airport by Tony, Charlie's dad, who had just flown in from Beijing.  I could barely keep my eyes open this last flight, except for when the guy sitting next to me decided to sing along with his iPod in falsetto.  I gave him a dirty look and noticeably inserted earplugs, after which he shut up.

Anyway, it was nice to have a guide on the way home so we didn't have to figure out how to get to their house on our own.  It was hard to see much in the taxi on the way home, but Tony pointed out the building that was in the recent Batman movie.  I'll post a picture later.  Here's the only shot I got of the scenery on the way home:


It is 1:00 am here on Saturday, which means it's about 6:00 am on Friday in Seattle.  We started this journey at around 1:00 pm on Thursday in Seattle.  Therefore, time for bed.