After 3 weeks of winter camps and icy, windy Korea, I could not wait for my vacation in the sun. Friday night I headed to Daegu to meet the guy that watched Switch and take her to him. I was a bit nervous as I had not met him before and only had a few conversations with him on facebook, but I was pleasantly surprised as we had coffee and talked before handing over Switch. After squaring away all the details and getting everything settled, I passed Switch off and headed out into Daegu for a night out before vacation. Everyone in Daegu was out of town on their vacations already so I had some dinner and called it an early night and found my way to the only jimjilbang I knew how to get to in Daegu. Unfortunately, this is the jimjilbang where I lost my jewelry a week prior. Yeap, both rings(this includes my high school class ring, the loss I am most upset about) and my necklace. Luckily, I wasn't wearing my irreplaceable pendant and while the it was all sentimental and expensive jewelry, it is all (theoretically) replaceable. But, it was the only place I knew of to stay so off I went. After a nice shower and some serious quiet time in the saunas, I tried to catch a few hours of sleep as I knew Saturday and Sunday would be long days full of travel.
Saturday I caught up with a friend to kill time until Lucy got to town and then met up with her after lunch. By the way, Lucy was my traveling companion and friend that lives about an hour north of me in Andong. We went to the same orientation but didn't really start hanging out until we found out we were taking the same vacation and decided to pair up to make things safer and easier. She's from England and is 24 and it was nice to have someone to travel with. Anyway, we bought our tickets for the KTX train and I got to experience my first train ride. It wasn't too exciting, though I think it may be different if I was on a standard rail train as the KTX is something akin to a bullet train. Anyway, we made it to Seoul in record time, only 3 or 4 hours, it seems so long ago I can't remember, and then switched to the airport train. Upon arriving at Incheon Airport, I was thoroughly impressed. When I came through this airport six months ago, it was after 24 hours of travel and no sleep, dazed and reeling from the travel and the sheer fact that I was in South Korea. I was clearly not observant or aware of much around me because I would have remembered how awesome the airport is. I did not feel like I was in an airport. No one was rushing, it was quiet and there were no harsh lights. There was an ice rink, a movie theater, of course lots of restaurants, and a jimjilbang. Not to mention all the stores for duty free shopping. Lucy and I got some dinner at a restaurant offering Thai, Italian, Korean, and Japanese food, and then made our way to the jimjilbang for a bit of de-stressing and some sleep. The de-stressing was great, the sleep, hard to come by in jimjilbangs but at least this one had a sleep room. The one in Daegu never shut up. I swear Koreans don't sleep. But regardless, we were up bright and early for our 8:15 flight out of Korea and into the not-so-beautiful-butmuchclosertowherewewanttobe-Manila.
It was a short 4 hour flight to Manila, losing one hour, the Philippines are one hour ahead of Korea, and then we joined the throngs of other confused tourists as we attempted to figure out where to go and how to get there. We had to take a shuttle from the arrivals terminal to a separate terminal for domestic flights with Philippine Airlines. After a 30 minute wait and a 15 minute shuttle ride, we made our way through the airport and started the 5 hour wait for our next flight. By the time we finally boarded and then made it to Puerto Princesa, we were exhausted and ready to crash for the night.
First Lucy had to wait to get her checked bag as we were only allowed one piece of carry on, which was a bit of a hassle, as there is one small baggage carousel and everyone crowds around it and then tries to push out the one door simultaneously. Everyone who checked baggage (almost everyone on the plane) had to then go through the same line to make sure your ticket matches the tag on your luggage. Which I appreciate, but it’s time-consuming. Unfortunately, Lucy had lost her baggage claim slip and they kept asking me for one for my backpack, but I didn't have one as it was my carryon, and they almost wouldn't let us out of the airport. Basically it came down to, we didn't have what they wanted and there was no other way to check so they waited until we were the last people and then when no one came up demanding that we had their bags, they decided we weren't lying and let us go. Then we had to take a trike, the local form of transportation, which is basically a motorbike with a glorified side car, to our hostel, House of Rose. Easy to remember. :] Upon arriving I was disappointed to discover I accidentally booked the wrong night, I booked for January 23 and we needed January 22, but the girls were super great about it and worked it out by letting us stay in an extra room in the house that some guys had used the night before for a similar reason. They even gave us a beer on the house for the mixup, even though it was my fault, turning what could have been a frustrating and disastrous start to our vacation into a pleasant one. So after dumping our bags in the room we found the bar and enjoyed some pleasant conversation and a few more beers before turning in for the night. However, instead of calling it an early night, an Australian guy from the bar, he lived right next to the hostel, insisted on taking us out for a few drinks since it was our first night of vacation and we would only be in Puerto Princesa for the night. We acquiesced and our plans for a quiet early night changed to a night on the town. Some craziness ensued and after getting split up, I headed back to the hostel in hopes Lucy would be there when I woke up. Luckily she was, though it was a late night for both of us, and with little sleep, again, we caught the van to El Nido. The trip took about 5 hours with one stop for a quick lunch and another stop to fix something on the van, which I'm pretty sure was just an excuse for the driver to pee. It would have taken longer if our driver cared about silly things like speed limits. I cannot tell you how many dogs, chickens, and people we almost hit. It was a long, bumpy ride, with no attention paid to speed limits and rough roads for at least half the trip. But, it was air conditioned, and there was good conversation to be had so while not the most pleasant trip of the vacation, it could have been much worse.
Well, this post is long enough so I'll write about El Nido in the next installment. :]
No comments:
Post a Comment