With little trouble, Justin & I made it to Bharati’s apartment.  Getting on the bus to Uijeongbu was pretty easy and traffic was good so in an hour we were here.  Now, the first taxi I asked to take us to the address (written in Korean) said no because I’m guessing he didn’t want to potentially scratch his new car with our 4 bags of luggage.  The next taxi was quite willing and got us really close to the place.

Seems that I overestimated the name of the apartment to be bigger than it actually was.  I figured with a name like ‘Ji Young Village’ it was a kind of complex that would be obvious to anyone who knew the area.  Actually, it’s a short little building on a kind of backstreet.  You’d never see it unless you specifically went down this small street.

Bharati had mentioned a Baskin Robins and a middle school, both of which we were by.  So, time to start asking around to get the address.  Side note, I only realized during teh taxi ride that address number was different from what Bharati had emailed me to what her friend translated(text only, just the number was different).  I decided I’d stick with Bharati’s info as it was most likely to be correct.

So, we got some ice cream as the Baskin Robins and asked where the address might be.  They pointed us in a direction.  I was able to find a unsecured wifi and double-checked the email Bharati sent describing the ‘walk down this alley’ (which did have me mildly concerned about the wording…) but turned out that it was simply a connecting walk way between two streets.  In a few mins we found the place.

At this point I’m sure someone is wondering, how did I get in without a key?  Well, this is a very modern building (pics to follow) and they use a keypad.  One code to open front door and another to the apartment.  Simple and felt odd not having any keys on me.

I started unpacking as two of the suitcases were lent to me by Justin and were going back with him.  Actually, I sent back one of the ones I bought because it didn’t hold up so well, will be getting mom to have Canadian Tire honour the ‘lifetime warranty’ I was told it had.

Unpacking done, now to find out how to get Justin back to the airport so he can fly home.  Found all kinds of information on how to get the bus HERE but not so much the opposite.  We figured that it should be at least the main station where we were dropped off at.  I got in touch with Bharati and found the Airport Limousine bus stop was nice and close.  Justin managed to get on the 1:10pm bus to the airport.  Hopefully his direct flight to Toronto will be just that for him.

One a side note, signs for the G20 summit was every at the airport.  Oddly, their security, I felt, was not as great as it should have been.  They were x-raying people’s luggage on the way out but not everyone.  Seemed odd that it was only some people and not all.  Guess it was a kind of ‘half-step’ added to normal x-raying before you get before you board the plane.

So, now to finish my unpacking and organizing my grand worldly possessions in a room smaller than the master bedroom in the house we sold.

As for the 10,000 miles….I included the extra trip to Vancouver and back.

It’s 5:30am and I can’t sleep. So yeah, my internal clock isn’t quite adjusted to local time quite just yet.

We got on the flight to Korea with no issues, lots of room and 2hrs later we landed. Tokyo looks stunning at nighttime from the sky. I could barely keep my eyes off the city as we flew higher and away.

We were on a United Airlines Boeing 777. Now, up until this point, we’ve been flying on Air Canada’s 777s (including our side trip to vancouver). There is a fair bit of passenger experience. The seats aren’t as wide, so everytime I adjusted to sit upright in the seat, my leg would hit the button that let the back of the seat go down. Truly annoying. That and trying to get the left part of the seat belt was quite the challenge when there was little room to get your hand down beside you. The video screen was significantly smaller (about 5 inches compared to 7 inchs, may not sound like much but it’s really noticeable). Also it wasn’t touch screen as the controls are on the arm of the chair and were very simple. Speaking of which, at one point my screen went all white, I thought the LCD just up and died. After some annoyance I realize that my elbow had been resting on the brightness control and turned it all the way up. That was annoying.

We were given a snack and I was a little surprised at it. I figured maybe some crackers or peanuts but nope, it was a half sandwhich. Two slices of white bread with a middle layer of brown, ham and cheese with a layer of egg too. Very strange but more than edible. Don’t ya hate it when you bite a sandwhich and it sticks to the inside of your lower teeth that makes you look like a cow chewing cud when trying to get it unstuck?

Oh yeah, this 777 didn’t have 120AC in the back of the seat, nor a powered USB port either. So I was spoiled, sue me :P Luckily it was a short trip and my awesome Samsung Netbook will run for 6-8hrs without needing a charge ;) After finding that the video seletion was rather severely limited and the screen just a weee small, I left it on the ‘map’ setting to keep tabs on our progress than spent the time organize/editing some details of songs in my iTunes library.

That reminds me, the one pleasant surprise was that the flight included a decent set of headphones to use. I had purchased the $3 earbuds from Air Canada. Not a bad price for them really and they sounded fine. I was truly grateful for listening and editing music as there was the dreaded ‘crying baby’ 10ft away from us. I was able to drown out 90% of the noise at least :)

Oh great, now Justin is snoring.

We landed around 9pm. A slight shame as the last bus to Bharati’s town left at 8:50pm. Ah well. Bharati had arranged a hotel for us. Well, it’s not quite a regular hotel. It’s called Guest House and it’s only 10mins from the airport. The room is the same size as a typical 2 bed hotel but it is a fairly simple setup. You had to make the bed yourself, there is no internet but otherwise it’s not bad. And for about $50, can’t really complain at all. That also included a pickup and dropoff at the airport as well.

After getting settled in the room, I was hungry and needed to let people know I was here safe and sound. There was an Internet cafe downstairs. That one annoying thing about Korea that Canada finally beat, smoking is still a common thing here.So the cafe was rather ugly smelling but bearable enough for me to get online, send an email to mom and let Bharati know I was here just fine. It cost me a whopping KRW 1000(Korean Wan). That’s about $1 Canadian :)

Then I saw a restaurant and ordered some garlic chicken wings and a coke. I thought $16 was a little much but I was hungry and dind’t really care. When I got the food, $16 was a decent price for the amound of wings you got, the little bit fo coleslw, some dips and some sort of pickled ‘sometherother’. Shared the wings with Justin and then went to bed.

Yeah, Justin stopped snoring!

It’s about 6am, I think I may take a shower. I still got just over 5hrs of battery life left (58%) and I probably won’t be able to fall back asleep.

Damn….the snoring is back….

OK, I’m no Alphaville but this will have to suffice.