I should mention that Mark is not the easiest traveler. He just doesn’t like to fly. So 13.5 hours in a plane with him is well…interesting. We should have kept the original tickets where our seats weren’t together.
Due to the winter weather over the ocean (or so my brother, the meteorologist says) the flight from LAX to Seoul is not directly west across the ocean. Matter of fact, it flew directly past Seattle, past Anchorage and the whole way up to Fairbanks before that plane turned west. That’s a little frustrating, especially since you just spent the last 12 hours flying south on that same flight pattern!
Even in coach, Asiana Airlines is better than any domestic US flight. You are fed 2-3 meals with real silverware and everything. Each meal has it’s choice of western or eastern. Meaning you can get an Asian meal or a US type meal. The food was average. There are several snacks as well and drinks too. Important to remember that all water is served warm. There is no ice. So if you are hot, which the planes were very warm, and you want to cool off you are better with a soda type drink. My favorite feature of Asiana is the warm towels. Before each meal they bring you a heated hand towel, nice !
We arrived in Seoul safe and sound Friday. We had to go through the transfer station security (hmm, just came off a plane but before you’ll let us into your airport to change flights, we have to go through security again!). We made our way up to the top floor of the airport to the Airport Transit Hotel. For about 80 dollars we had a pretty nice hotel room for 12 hours. On that same floor we enjoyed the free movie lounge, very nice chairs, if you have downtime. And there is free Internet on that floor as well.
We left Seoul for Khabarovsk on Asiana Airlines on Saturday. The plane was full, we were surprised! How many people are heading to Siberia in the winter time? On the plane we filled out our immigrant card for Russia, required. We did not fill out the customs form, as we opted to green line it. You land on the tarmac at the Khabarovsk airport. We laughed when we saw the plane was still met with the jeep with a gun on it and escorted to the terminal. We deplaned down the steps and walked across the snowy tarmac to the terminal.
Once inside you join the lines for passport control. No jokes, no smiles allowed here. They do pull parents travelling with young kids and put them in front of you. That’s nice! Once you make it through passport control, there is the baggage claim. The baggage in Khabarovsk is piled onto the back of a big dump truck so it takes forever to arrive. We didn’t have any baggage so we were able to head right for the green line of customs. Of course I take off walking and my husband just stops. I walk past 2 security people, tell them I have nothing to claim and hit the door. Just as I’m about to go through, I turn around expecting my husband to be behind me and he’s not there…. Five minutes later, he comes around when the security guard tells him I’m waiting. I asked him why he didn’t follow me? He said he thought I was going the wrong way… Well don’t you think we should stick together.
Didn’t we decide that at the beginning????
To Be continued
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