MandyMcGregor.co.nz

28, Aug, 2009

I boarded the plane in New Plymouth 8am yesterday and headed to Auckland to meet up with the rest of the team.  On my flight up was some of my parents friends and so that was pretty cool to have a chat with them & see where they were headed for their holidays.  I wasnt looking forward to the 11 hour flight ahead of me and was feeling pretty quiet until a lady sat down beside me and urged some conversation out. Her first words were 'it is so nice to be amongst friendly people!' She'd just come from five weeks in the UK, so who was I to let her down!  Steph arrived from Gisborne & we headed to the Int'l airport to meet the others, and moseyed around until our flight at 1pm.

11 hours to Hong Kong, flight was ok, and managed maybe an hour or so sleep, a movie and chat a bit. I have no idea how I passed the rest of the time. Oh, we ate too.  With only an hour or so to go I was jumping around in my seat ready to get off, sick of sitting down. I had a window seat and we landed in Hong Kong sometime in the dark - Hong Kong time. It was neat to look out the window of the plane and see all the lights of the buildings, the moon and the stars so clearly visible, and the shipping lanes flashing red and green for port & starboard and not really knowing where the world turned the corner and the sky swept into the sea.  Over in the distance was an electrical storm, cool to watch from afar.

I think we had about 3 hours wait in Hong Kong and visited the starbucks for coffee and walked around in a daze until we boarded plane no 3 (for me & steph anyway), heading for Seoul. I was so tired by then i think I actually slept 2 of the 3 hour trip and was glad to see land once again.  As we were coming into the 'airplane park' the Cathay Pacific Hostess reminded us as they do about taking all our belongings with us and duly concluded with 'else they will be distributed between the cabin crew'. Nice to see a sense of humour at 5am!!!

Another 3 or so hour wait in Seoul for the final leg. Are you bored yet with this because believe me, I had really had enough by then! We had to take a transit bus to the Gimpo Domestic Airport to take the flight to Ulsan, so we boarded this bus which we paid $6500 won (approx $8NZ) each for what we thought would be a relatively short drive (hence not worth $8!!). Almost 30 minutes later we're at the Gimpo airport.  The funniest thing happened on the way, and maybe you needed to be here to see it but it goes like this:

We were in the bus on the motorway cruising I guess at around 100km/hour. Their wasnt heaps of traffic and we got to look at a bridge going to no-where (smog covered it) and a bit of Seoul flit past.  Up ahead in the distance was a toll stop in which you (I think..) had to stop and pay to go thru, unless you were a transit bus. There are speeding signs all over saying 30km/hour as you go past the toll booth, and we are getting closer and closer and the driver is not slowing down. He picks a lane with no traffice in it and maintains his speed. Lou, Mike and myself are sitting with a full view of the barrier arms which are DOWN, coming closer and closer, and this guy was not stopping! I was pushing my foot into the carpet in front trying to brace myself and stop the bus all at the same time, and we're going oh my god he's not stopping, there's a barrier, we are going to hit it arrrrgghhhhhhhhhhh.... and then the barrier whipped up as fast as anything and the driver cracked a huge grin and we threw out that nervous/releived laugh, unbelieving what we had just done.  Thrill seeking in Korea eh..!

40 minute flight to Ulsan, and I dozed again.

We got here. We made it. No cellphone coverage for me or steph, how will we survive?