I knew when I planned this trip to visit my friend Lisa in Vietnam that the worst part about it would be getting there. My Orbitz itinerary kindly pointed out that the total duration of my travel would be 29 hrs and 32 min. This included a 4 hour late night layover at JFK and a 5 hour early morning layover in Seoul. The thing that sucks about both of these scenarios is that nothing is open in airports really late and really early.
For my first layover at JFK, awesome Dave came to the rescue by supplying me with snooty chocolates and wine money, so I was fortunate to find a sport at JFK that was selling half bottles of wine (all of the actual bars were closed by then). I can't tell you how the pairing of the airport Cabernet Sauvignon really worked, but it didn't much matter. It was a lovely way to spend time in a fairly crappy airport.
We started boarding the 747 bound for Seoul at about 12:30am. It's no picnic spending 14 hours on a place through the night and across multiple timezones, but the Korean Air flight attendants made it as nice as they could. I was extremely psyched about the dinner (I guess? At 2am, it didn't really fit into a "meal framework.") which arrived complete with an instructional sheet (in English and two other southeast Asia languages) with "Directions on How to Make Bibimbap." This includes adding the steamed rice, as much hot pepper paste as you'd like, and sesame oil. Then you mix it all together.It was probably the best damn in-flight meal I have ever had. Way to go Korean Air!
I arrived at Seoul airport at 5am, and had to basically kill time until anything opened. I'm still waiting to be able to get my boarding pass (I am told that this will happen in about 15 minutes), and I still have about 2 hours til my flight leaves. But the airport is excruciatingly clean, lots of comfortable seating and lounge areas, a free internet cafe, and...there's a Dunkin Donuts right across the hallway. The airport experience doesn't get any better. Seoul is now my new favorite airport. :-)
I'm looking forward to getting on the ground in Hanoi though. I need a shower pretty badly at this point.
Then the real adventures will begin.
4 comments:
Hi Amy, fun reading your blog again. If you stop at that airport on the way home you MUST take a photos of the Dunkin' Donuts (hopefully with you in it) for my wall of photos of D&D around the world!!! I don't have any from Asia yet, so that would just take the cake! HAVE FUN!!!!
- Veronica
I did actually take a picture of my donut in the cute little Dukin Donuts bag, but when I go back I'll take a picture of the full place if I end up in the same terminal! What an awesome photo collection!
Thanks for the excruciating details, Amy. It makes it that much easier for me to imagine doing that flight with a 2-year old. Trying to focus on the nice flight attendants and great in-flight food :) I love Bibimbap and would drag Tim to our local Korean restaurant in Wheaton every weekend if he would let me.
-Sarah
Cool, thanks! Lookin' forward to catching up, I see you've made some new posts!
-Veronica
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