Friday 2 October 2009

Being sick on the plane

After not much sleep, we had breakfast in the morning, though I only ate a bit as I wasn't feeling hungry. I was really thirsty though, but they only gave you one cup of drink.

I tried to get a bit more sleep, then when we started getting near to Korea I started to feel a bit sick, so I went to the toilet and had a couple of paracetamol, but I didn't feel like I was going to actually be sick when I was in the toilet.

I went back and sat down, and then I was sick. I had a plastic bag that I was sick into, but the bag had a small hole in it! Luckily the Korean guy was sitting next to us managed to get the attention of one of the stewards, and she got a sick bag out that was well hidden behind the magazines and stuff in the back of one of the seats in front of us. She also got me a plastic bag and some paper towels.

I cleaned myself up as best I could, then I went into the toilet again and changed my jeans, which had got a bit of sick on them. I went and sat down again, but then I started feeling sick again. As the plane was landing shortly, I couldn't go back to the toilet, but since I now knew where the sick bags were hidden, I was sick again into a proper sick bag, which didn't have any leaks.

We had to wait for everyone else to get off the plane while I held my bag of sick, then I put it in the waste bit the stewards had put my earlier lot of sick in.

After that, we got our stuff together, and went into the airport.

In the airport, there were various antique wooden furniture items along one side of the corridors, one of which was some shelves, labelled as being a 'kitchen table'. There was also a sign up saying 'Museum of Korea', or something similar. Bit of a funny museum.

Eventually we got to a bit called 'Immigration', we weren't sure if we were meant to go through there or not, as we weren't immigrating to Korea, just visiting on holiday for a week. I went up to one of the Immigration things, and the bloke said that I needed to fill out an immigration form, even though we were only on holiday. They had given us immigration and customs forms on the plane, but we thought we wouldn't need to fill in them (and we didn't have a pen anyway).

Nearby were some desk things with the 'immigration' forms and pens on, so we filled out our immigration forms, though by the time we had done this, there was a queue for the 'immigration' check. We got through there okay now we had our forms filled out, then went to find our baggage.

However, when we got to the baggage carousel that the baggage claim information board indicated was for our flight, it was completely empty. There was an information desk near the baggage carousel at one end, and a Lost property desk at the other end, but both were unmanned, I couldn't see our baggage anywhere behind the Lost property desk.

So Moccle went upstairs to double check that we were at the correct baggage carousel, while I carried on looking around a bit longer. I went to the baggage carousel before the one that was meant to have our stuff on, and there was an airport bloke there who had our baggage on a trolley, so I told him and he let me have the trolley. Then I just had to wait for ages until Moccle got back.

After that, when we tried to leave the baggage claim area, we found that we needed to have a filled out customs declaration card, so we both filled out those at a desk that was there, then we got out into the main bit of the airport.

There was an information desk there, and one of the ladies working there gave Moccle the bus number, bus stop, and how much it cost, for the bus we needed.

So we went outside the airport, and bought a couple of bus tickets from the bus ticket place that was outside. We only had to wait a few minutes for the bus, which was a special airport 'Limousine' bus. I don't know what what 'Limousine' about it, but it did have a good sized area at the front of the bus that we could put our luggage in. It also had a bad quality TV at the front that seemed to be playing adverts, and then later a review for 'Zelda Twilight Princess', which was one of the original Wii games (so quite old now).

It was interesting looking out the window, and seeing all the buildings, and also the lakes/partially flooded bits of land. It seemed that there would always be multiple copies of the same building built next to each other.

The bus had a speaker that said when you were coming up to a stop, and what the next stop was, in Korean, Chinese, Japanese, and English. So we got off at the Myeong Gong hotel, which was a big (relatively) posh hotel, but not our hotel, which was the hotel Biz Myeong Gong.

I switched the gps on, and then we had to wait for ages for it to get a satellite lock. When it did, we set the route to go to our hotel, which I had added a waymarker for the other day, then kept walking closer to it. It was probably about 1km away from where we got off the bus at the Hotel Myeong Gong.

Eventually, we got a bit where there was a sign that said 'Motel Biz', however, there didn't seem to be any sign of a hotel. There was a plain unmarked door in the building that had the sign on it, so I thought that might be the hotel door, but we decided to look around a bit more in case it wasn't. Further up the street, we found a building with a 'Hotel Biz' sign outside it, but at first look, the building looked derelict. Then I saw that actually there was a light on inside, and some steps.

So we went in, and there was a room with some computers in it, but nobody there. We went on a bit further, and found the receptionist, and asked him if it was the Hotel Biz Myeong Gong, and he said it was, so I gave him the expedia booking sheet, and he booked us in, showed us the computer/internet room (that we had seen on the way in), the way to the 'restaurant', and then he showed us to our room, and to put the key in a thing on the wall.

We put our stuff on the floor, and had a look around. The room was pretty small, and had a bathroom, which was quite small as well. There was a water machine that said you could turn it off if the noise annoyed you, a fridge, a TV, a phone, and a hairdryer. There were also 2 pairs of slippers, and a basket with toothpaste, 2 toothbrushes, 2 single packets of coffee mix, 2 tea bags, a cloth, a comb, 2 disposable razors, and 2 bottles of moisturising or some such cream. As well as the two beds, there was a small table with two chairs, and an air conditioning unit on the wall, which we turned on as it was boiling.

In the bathroom there were 2 small bars of soap, and a bottle each of shampoo, 'body lotion', and 'rinse'. There was 4 towels, a bath with a shower in it, toilet, sink, and some plastic/rubber sandals.

There was also an information leaflet, that had information about different stuff like breakfast times, etc. in Japanese and English. There was a power adaptor giving 3 power points on top of the desk that had the TV, watercooler and phone on it. I unplugged the hair dryer, which was in the middle socket, as I wanted to plug in my (well, actually McRad's) battery recharger. But you couldn't actually plug it in the middle socket as there wasn't enough room, so I had to unplug the watercooler, and plug it in on the end where it would fit okay. We brushed our teeth, watched a bit of Korean TV (mainly channel flipping and a cartoon), then went to bed about 7pm as we totally tired.

I kept waking up, but would get to sleep again reasonably easily, then after what I thought must have been about 10 hours, I thought it would be time to get up. But actually it was only 12am, so I spent most of the night in bed, trying (and failing) to get to sleep. Eventually I did get to sleep again, probably at about 5am I guess.

Food
Breakfast: Rice with Kimchi; Mixed fruit; Sprite.

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