When I was thinking of coming to Korea, a friend of mine asked me a very interesting question.
"What are you going there to do?"
He wasn't asking about the job. He wasn't asking about my social life. He was asking about where Korea would fit into my life goal. Was I coming here to save? Was I coming here to spend? Was I coming here to travel? My answer was simple enough... all of the above. I wanted to save enough money for a car. There were certain things that I wanted to buy here - a laptop and a camera being the two biggest expenses. And, since I would be in Asia, I wanted to travel.
I have travelled a lot in my twenty two years. My family is big on travelling, and I have been a bit of a jetsetter since my first trip to Zimbabwe when I was three years old. Since then, I have visited Zimbabwe once more, seen America, stopped over in London, taken in Portugal, Spain and Mallorca, eaten in Italy, toured France and that's not including the multiple stop overs in countries like Amsterdam and Dubai. But, with all the travelling that I have done, Asia has never been high on my parents list, and while I know that there may still be plenty of travelling in my future, I couldn't let this opportunity go by unnoticed. And so, when Jessica suggested travelling to Thailand, I jumped at the chance and, after a couple of hiccups involving flight complications and the difficulties that come from dealing with Orbitz.com, on 28 December our journey began.
As Jessica had the late shift at work, finishing up at 9:30pm, we decided to head to Seoul on Tuesday night to make it easier getting to the airport the next morning. We knew of a hotel near the bus terminal, and we even made sure that we had their calling card to make it easier for a taxi to take us there. Alas, we hadn't counted on the taxi drivers being morons, and none of them (even the ones with the GPS) were prepared to find the hotel, so we ended up walking there instead. Having assumed that catching a taxi would be easy, I had opted not to bring my winter jacket, instead going for a hoodie and leather jacket so as to save space and weight in my luggage. Now that we were walking to the hotel, I was absolutely frozen and by the time we got there, I couldn't feel my hands or my face. I was relieved when we got into the room to find the heat had already been turned on as it meant I had a chance to thaw out. Once I was fully thawed, however, we quickly found that the heat was getting too much and, with no way to turn it off, we resorted to opening up windows to let in the cool night air. Needless to say, the combination of hot and cold led to a rather restless night, and by the time 6:30am rolled around and the alarm was going off, both of us were slightly sleep deprived.
Once we had woken up a bit, with a little help from the Starbucks on the corner, we made our way to the subway station and boarded the train to the airport. With only one transfer, we felt that we had plenty of time on our hands. What we hadn't expected was that the train would take so long, and we ended up getting to the airport a little later than we had planned. But we managed to make our way through check in and security without any hassle, and our holiday was off to a good start. No sooner had we passed through security than Jess spotted something that would truly kick our holiday off in the right manner - a Coach store. The spending started before we even left the airport with each of us walking away with a bag a piece, feeling a little giddy about our purchases, but definitely in the holiday spirit of having some fun.
Our first flight was to Hong Kong, and we arrived on time without any problems. The first thing that we did when we got there? Convert some of our cash to HK Dollars and start checking out the shops. More than anything, Jess was relieved to see yet another Starbucks, and this time it was one with seasonal supplies unlike it's counterparts in Korea. After checking out the bookstores, we made our way there to grab some gingerbread lattes and then patiently waited for our flight to Bangkok.
Once again the flight left without any complications, and we arrived in Bangkok at 7pm as we had planned. What we hadn't planned for was the passport check. Sure, we knew there would be one, but we hadn't expected to wait in endless queues to get through it. An hour or so later, we were grabbing our luggage and heading through the arrivals doors to find a taxi.
"Taxi!"
Easy enough.
"How much?"
"One thousand, two hundred baht."
Thank God we had remembered to ask and thank God we had done our research. The number of tourists who must get ripped off every year by these 'taxi drivers' waiting outside the arrivals gate astounds me. We politely declined the lady's offer and made our way downstairs to the public taxi rank where we managed to get a taxi without any fuss for a mere 500 baht. Forty-five minutes later, we were arriving at the bus "station" in Bangkok where Westerners were piled onto an island in the middle of the busy traffic. We managed to check in for our bus and were then left to wait amongst the foreigners as we tried without any luck to find a place to sit. Thankfully, we didn't have to wait long, and within half an hour we were on our VIP night bus to Koh Samui.
For more about our trip to Koh Samui, click here.
"What are you going there to do?"
He wasn't asking about the job. He wasn't asking about my social life. He was asking about where Korea would fit into my life goal. Was I coming here to save? Was I coming here to spend? Was I coming here to travel? My answer was simple enough... all of the above. I wanted to save enough money for a car. There were certain things that I wanted to buy here - a laptop and a camera being the two biggest expenses. And, since I would be in Asia, I wanted to travel.
I have travelled a lot in my twenty two years. My family is big on travelling, and I have been a bit of a jetsetter since my first trip to Zimbabwe when I was three years old. Since then, I have visited Zimbabwe once more, seen America, stopped over in London, taken in Portugal, Spain and Mallorca, eaten in Italy, toured France and that's not including the multiple stop overs in countries like Amsterdam and Dubai. But, with all the travelling that I have done, Asia has never been high on my parents list, and while I know that there may still be plenty of travelling in my future, I couldn't let this opportunity go by unnoticed. And so, when Jessica suggested travelling to Thailand, I jumped at the chance and, after a couple of hiccups involving flight complications and the difficulties that come from dealing with Orbitz.com, on 28 December our journey began.
As Jessica had the late shift at work, finishing up at 9:30pm, we decided to head to Seoul on Tuesday night to make it easier getting to the airport the next morning. We knew of a hotel near the bus terminal, and we even made sure that we had their calling card to make it easier for a taxi to take us there. Alas, we hadn't counted on the taxi drivers being morons, and none of them (even the ones with the GPS) were prepared to find the hotel, so we ended up walking there instead. Having assumed that catching a taxi would be easy, I had opted not to bring my winter jacket, instead going for a hoodie and leather jacket so as to save space and weight in my luggage. Now that we were walking to the hotel, I was absolutely frozen and by the time we got there, I couldn't feel my hands or my face. I was relieved when we got into the room to find the heat had already been turned on as it meant I had a chance to thaw out. Once I was fully thawed, however, we quickly found that the heat was getting too much and, with no way to turn it off, we resorted to opening up windows to let in the cool night air. Needless to say, the combination of hot and cold led to a rather restless night, and by the time 6:30am rolled around and the alarm was going off, both of us were slightly sleep deprived.
Once we had woken up a bit, with a little help from the Starbucks on the corner, we made our way to the subway station and boarded the train to the airport. With only one transfer, we felt that we had plenty of time on our hands. What we hadn't expected was that the train would take so long, and we ended up getting to the airport a little later than we had planned. But we managed to make our way through check in and security without any hassle, and our holiday was off to a good start. No sooner had we passed through security than Jess spotted something that would truly kick our holiday off in the right manner - a Coach store. The spending started before we even left the airport with each of us walking away with a bag a piece, feeling a little giddy about our purchases, but definitely in the holiday spirit of having some fun.
Our first flight was to Hong Kong, and we arrived on time without any problems. The first thing that we did when we got there? Convert some of our cash to HK Dollars and start checking out the shops. More than anything, Jess was relieved to see yet another Starbucks, and this time it was one with seasonal supplies unlike it's counterparts in Korea. After checking out the bookstores, we made our way there to grab some gingerbread lattes and then patiently waited for our flight to Bangkok.
Once again the flight left without any complications, and we arrived in Bangkok at 7pm as we had planned. What we hadn't planned for was the passport check. Sure, we knew there would be one, but we hadn't expected to wait in endless queues to get through it. An hour or so later, we were grabbing our luggage and heading through the arrivals doors to find a taxi.
"Taxi!"
Easy enough.
"How much?"
"One thousand, two hundred baht."
Thank God we had remembered to ask and thank God we had done our research. The number of tourists who must get ripped off every year by these 'taxi drivers' waiting outside the arrivals gate astounds me. We politely declined the lady's offer and made our way downstairs to the public taxi rank where we managed to get a taxi without any fuss for a mere 500 baht. Forty-five minutes later, we were arriving at the bus "station" in Bangkok where Westerners were piled onto an island in the middle of the busy traffic. We managed to check in for our bus and were then left to wait amongst the foreigners as we tried without any luck to find a place to sit. Thankfully, we didn't have to wait long, and within half an hour we were on our VIP night bus to Koh Samui.
For more about our trip to Koh Samui, click here.
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