7/10/19 - Korea = our first non-English speaking country

Day 24. The leg from Dublin to Seoul is one of the hardest we will have on the trip so we are pleased we made it through with a only a delay in Frankfort. We left the flat in Dublin at 8:30am on Tuesday and got to the hotel in Seoul at 5pm on Wednesday. Here is the cocktail napkin math for the 33 hours = 2 hrs (time in taxi transit) + 10hrs (time in Dublin, Frankfort, Seoul airports) + 12 hrs (flight time) + 9 hrs (time change).

We did log a mishap. Shortly after take-off from Frankfort for Seoul, a big commotion develops in the row behind me. There are 3 flight attendants talking frantically in Korean and throwing towels and the passengers and scrambling out of their seats and talking just as frantically. “What’s going on back there?” I’m thinking to myself. As I’m turning around the group is holding up my backpack and water bottle. Ut-oh! It seems that my super-duper, filters 99.9% of microns and bacteria, trusty water bottle apparently doesn’t hold water so well on its side and leaked out and poured down onto the passengers in the row behind me. I am totally embarrassed and apologize profusely but I am still getting the stink eye when we land in Seoul 10 hours later.

After we deplane and are walking to through the airport, I tell the story. Leanne (who was sitting in another part of the plane) says “OMG, the same exact thing happened to me!” I don’t think Leanne and I helped improve our diplomatic relationship with Korea on that flight.

The real test has come. We need to get a taxi to our hotel. I’ve received an advanced tip and Goggle Maps is useless in Korea and we need Naver Maps which I have ready to go. We find the taxi station and they have a jumbo taxi that actually fits the driver, 7 of us and all our luggage. Amazing! Score one for the jumbo taxis.

I get in the front and show the driver the name of our hotel. He just stares blankly at me and says something to me in Korean. It dawns on me that he doesn’t know English and I’ve shown him the address in a language he doesn’t know which would be like someone giving me an address written in Korean. At this point he has to move his taxi so I point to the sign for Seoul and off we go. I’m trying to use Google translator to translate the name of the hotel into Korean. I show him the Korean translation on the phone. He is rapidly pushing buttons on his huge taxi meter which doubles as the navigation system. After typing in what the Google screen showed, his nav system goes blank. No bueno.

Half and hour later, we are headed towards Seoul but I am convinced he has no idea where our hotel is. It would be like getting into a taxi in NYC and saying I’m staying at hotel in the City. As we get into the City, he has me pull up the phone number for the hotel and calls. He is talking and talking and talking. Hope this works. After an hour and half, we pull up to a small building that says Co-Op Residence. Doesn’t look right. It dawns on me that I’m am staring at Naver Maps and it shows he still has 1.5 KM to go. I hold up the phone app as he follows the directions to the hotel. I should have thought of that an hour and half ago.

John will be performing in Korea and Japan with the National Children’s Choir (NCC). They arranged the all logistics for the trip so I got a nice break from planning. We are staying at hotel which is nice after 3 1/2 weeks in someone’s else’s apartment. In addition, everyone working at the hotel speaks English so we aren’t really being tested. The dinner is a sweet Buffett in the hotel arranged by NCC.