Fuck, 730AM... Oh wait, today I'm going to Thailand!
I jump out of bed wearing 3 layers of clothes, in about 26 hours I will only be wearing 1. That's right 26 hours. Does it take that long to fly to Thailand from Korea? No, but I have the mother of all fucking layovers... 15 hours in Hong Kong... Sounds kind of like a porno or something doesn't it?... But I'm thinking that it will be cool to explore the airport and stuff... Ya right...
My flight leaves the Seoul airport at 3:15pm... So leaving myself ample time, I leave the house around 8AM... By the way, I have to take a subway, strike that, 3 subways, one bus and a train to the god damn airport...
Waiting by the bus station by my house I feel super excited, even to the point of smiling... Actually, smiling is the only way I can keep warm at this point... With the weather in Bangkok about 40 degrees warmer than that of Seoul, I dressed right in the middle, actually screwing myself in both climates... Too cold for Korea and too warm for Bangkok...
So I get off the bus and onto the train, still smiling, still strong... I get to the station where I will make the first transfer... 5... 10... 15 minutes with no train... Suddenly some Korean dude jumps on the intercom and says something in Korean... All the Koreans on the platform start to moan and a few leave... What did he say? Is the world ending???
So I had to make a split decision, either wait for this train or reroute myself on a different train that will still take me to the same destination, only with like 15 more stops in between. I chose the latter... I wonder how long those people waited on the platform? They might still be there...
Standing on a packed Korean subway dreaming about Pad Thai is when it finally hit me, I guess I just really woke up... I'm going to be in Thailand in like less than a day... Ahh the land of smiles...
One thing though... This fucking crazy ass Korean chick, maybe around the same age as me, gets on the train about 7 stops before the airport... At this point there were like 8 people in my particular car... This chick takes a seat adjacent to me and screams out, I'm serious, she screamed out... "Anyanghaseo, ordomayo?"... Now I don't speak Korean, but I know what she said, she said, "Hello, where are you going?" At least I'm like 95% sure that's what it means... "Anyanghaseo, ordomayo?", she screams it again... The whole time I'm just sitting there looking at the Korean subway map in my hands and trying to get this freak to move on to different pastures... The 6 or 7 people onthe subway car are all looking at me and the crazy chick at this point... "Anyanghaseo, ordomayo?", "Anyanghaseo, ordomayo?"...
But...
This chick was pretty hot, I mean, I would go there... So this got me thinking, would I hook up with this chick, putting aside her obvious mental problems? Is this right? Or legal??? I mean, what is crazy, really??? Can you gauge crazy, or put a number on it, and then put a limit on who can hook up with who??? Like for example, this chick on the subway is an 8 on the "crazdar" and I only rank a 3, so is she out of my sanity league? I don't know... But around this time the chick got off the subway... Weird...
Getting to the airport, I felt bad vibes coming in from all around... The crazy chick on the subway freaked me out, like finding a beetle in your underpants... But I shook it off like a dog just getting out of the water and my smile returned...
Walking through the terminal I got freaked out by the amount of ice and snow on the runways... See...
But then I got distracted by the show going on right behind me... This Chinese couple was having a HUGE fucking fight... She was screaming at this guy who I assumed was her boyfriend, and he was crying and speaking Chinese in a very apologetic tone... Then she slapped the shit out of him... Like a 3 year old getting slapped at K-Mart, she let this mother fucker have it... Even I felt sorry him... Then she got up and started walking away. He said something to her, I think she had his passport and ticket or something... So this chick takes a few steps towards a garbage can, takes his ticket and passport out of her fanny pack, and fucking throws them in the trash can! This is the greatest thing I have ever seen! So she storms off and this blubbering Chinese guy gets up and starts rifling through the trash can! Still sobbing he's like throwing trash on the floor, picking up pieces of paper, holding them up to the light and examining them... He finally finds his passport and ticket... So he goes back and sits down, still sobbing, and gets on his phone and starts screaming in Chinese! So, since I was the closest person to the trashcan and didn't want people to think it was me, AND, I had had my fill of high pitched blubbering/screaming of Chinese, I decided to go and get a coffee...
MMMM airport coffee, best $12 I've ever spent...
Boarding time! I'm really on my way! As I'm walking onto the airplane I take a Korean newspaper... Maybe I can make a little captains hat out of it, but I forget how the folds go, so I just end up looking at the pictures... On the plane they had this interactive multimedia display in each seat back, which was super epic. They had movies, games and TV shows. So I ordered a San Miguel and sat back and watched some Entourage... Lloyd!!!!!!!!!!
We arrived in Hong Kong half an hour early... What the fuck? How does this happen? Did the pilot haul ass or something? Did he kick it into overdrive? Anyway, this increased my layover time to 15 hours 30 minutes... Ok I can do this, I guess I could always just spin around and get dizzy, that used to kill time when I was a little kid, I guess it's back to basics... But about 5 minutes in a security guard came over and recommended that I stop...
Hong Kong airport is huge, and I have walked the entire length of it... From gate 1 to gate 78... Around gate 50 I saw a sign saying resting area... I took a peek and there were these reclining chairs! Sweet! So I took a seat and tried to get some sleep. They were playing music like you would hear in a baby's room, only it was Christmas songs... Bizarre, since it was the middle of January... But I found it rather soothing... So anyways I couldn't sleep, I was too cold, I took off my long sleeve shirt and used it to cover my lower half, but then my upper half got cold so I moved the shirt to my upper half, but this left my lower half cold... I tried to curl up into a cannonball fetal position and cover my entire self with the shirt, but is wasn't big enough and this wasn't comfortable at all... I tried covering myself with a book, unzipped backpack and shirt, but this just looked ridiculous and wasn't warm either... A Ha! I know what I'd do... I got the plastic bag that my crappy airport sandwich came in, went to the bathroom, filled it with hot water and came back and put it right on my stomach, with my long sleeve shirt covering my lower half... God dammit fucking shit... The bag had a little hole in it so I woke up like 20 minutes later soaking wet, making me more freezing than before...
I decided sleep wasn't going to come, so I read a book... 170 later I sat down and watched Avatar on my iPod... I looked at my clock 10:45PM, since (I thought) Hong Kong is 2 hours behind Korea, I had set my watch accordingly... However, Hong Kong is actually 1 hour behind Korea, making it only 9:45PM...
Sleep found me around 2 A.M., (which was actually 1 A.M.). I woke up around 5:45 A.M. (actual time 4:45A.M). I wondered why the hell the airport was so damn empty... Walking around I finally found a clock and became aware of the error of my ways... I was super starving at this point... I walked for literally 25 minutes and found nothing open... The noodle shop, burger king, the other noodle shop... All closed... Then I saw it, Starbucks... I ordered coffee and a crappy pastry of some kind, then I walked to my gate, and waited for 5 hours until my plane departed... Around 6 A.M. the sun began rising over the mountains of Hong Kong...
This is when I got into vacation mode and my smile was on full blast... In just 5 short hours I would be in Thailand, the land of smiles, the land of lust and the land of love... I made those last 2 up...
Next -> Part 2: Bangkok
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