I've got a choux cream puff, some sort of chocolate-dipped, whipped cream-filled cone, a veggie quesadilla (with too much pepper and onion for my taste)... and a bottle of organic orange juice. It was tasty and inexpensive, which are both very good things in my book.
Before I get into the shots from our current trip, I remembered a little anecdote I forgot to share with you earlier. Saturday night, we were on the subway, heading to Haeundae where we were going to dinner (I believe), just minding our own business and talking quietly among ourselves, when this Korean guy, probably in his early 40s and obviously on his way home from work, comes up to us and looks at Cinnamon and says "Are you from Canada?" She explained that no, she was from America, as we all were. The guy seemed rather shocked by this, then looked over at Liz and said something to the effect of, "She looks like she's Indian." And with that, he simply walked away. It was honestly the most puzzling, utterly random thing we experienced while we were there.
Now, back to the current story.
After getting some much needed rest, we packed up all our things and made the 20-minute subway ride to Jungang-don station, which is the closest stop to the ferry terminal. We knew they had coin lockers there, so after scrambling to put together 900 won out of nothing but 100 won coins (because the locker wouldn't take anything else.... and of course there was nowhere nearby to get change for a bill) we shoved all of our luggage in there, with the exception of our umbrellas, which were too big. With our 20lbs of extra baggage stowed away, we headed to Nampodong (one stop over) for breakfast at Paris Baguette once more.
So this Paris Baguette is a large bakery where you pick up a tray and a pair of tongs upon entering and put whatever you'd like to eat on your tray. There's a huge assortment of things to choose from--from huge chunks of plain toast and bagels to donuts, mini pizzas, and entire loaves of French bread.
They also have an assortment of pre-packaged cookies and little cakes (for gifts), salads and sandwiches, and a case full of very elaborate birthday and special occasion cakes. And it's all very reasonably priced.
We bought our food and went upstairs to the little seating area to eat, which is where I took all these picture.
And that would explain why the pictures of the treats in this case are all from really weird angles (namely the back of the case instead of the front).
We sat and chatted for a while after finishing our food, until it started getting close to the time Ashley needed to be at work. We made a quick stop at the pharmacy to get some motion sickness medicine, since we weren't about to take any chances with the ferry this time. In Korea, any kind of medicine, from aspirin to dramamine, must be purchased directly from a pharmacist. You don't need a prescription, but you can't find that stuff in a drugstore (because they don't have drugstores). You just tell the pharmacist what you need, and he or she will give it to you. For 2000 won (roughly $2), we got two chewable tablets, and we were once again on our way.
Back at Jungang-dong, we parted ways with Ashley and Liz, picked up our bags, and headed to the ferry terminal. It was extremely windy and cold, even despite the three layers of clothing I had on. Once there, we had trouble locating the ticket counter for the Beetle. We only saw ones for different ferries, so we went to the little information kiosk to ask the guy there where we were supposed to check in.
And that's where things went sour.
The man told us the Beetle check-in counter was on the second floor... but it was not running today because of high waves. However, he let us know there was one ferry, the Camellia Liner, that was running, and that we could take it instead.
Clearly, this was not the news we wanted to hear. It was about 1pm, and we were expecting to be on a ferry at 2:30 in order to get back to Fukuoka, Japan by 5:25. We had a hotel room booked for that night and I was very much looking forward to spending the night in a hotel--something we have never done in all our time in Japan. The fact that the ferry was not running threw a huge wrench in those plans.
But we took things in stride and stood in line at the Camellia counter. It was a very slow-moving line, but we finally made it to the one agent that was working. She didn't speak much English, but we showed her our Beetle tickets and tried to explain that we were told we could take this ferry. The lady just shook her head, told us where the Beetle counter was located, and told us she didn't know anything about it.
Now very aggravated, we decided to go up to the Beetle counter and ask them what our options were, since they should know better than the other people we had talked to thus far. Naturally, there was no line there, so we walked up, showed the lady our tickets and asked her what we could do. She gave us two options. We could either be re-booked on the ferry the next day or go downstairs and purchase new tickets on the Camellia Liner, and when we reached Japan, they would refund our original Beetle tickets.
Having no place to stay in Korea, we chose the second option and headed back downstairs to wait in line at the Camellia counter once again. This time, we told the ticket agent we wanted to purchase a ticket, hopefully for a twin room. But of course, since quite a bit of time had elapsed between our trips to the counter, there were no twin rooms available. Apparently they couldn't just give us a bigger room for only the two of us, so she called out to the people in line and found a Japanese girl (probably in her late 20s, early 30s) who also needed a room, so we got to room with her. For what it's worth, I think the ticket agent was much nicer to her than she was to us, probably because the girl at the counter spoke both Japanese and Korean, but only very little English. But we got our tickets (for roughly the same price as the Beetle ones, which was good) and thus finally had a way back to Japan.
The only problem was it was an overnight ferry, which left Busan at 10:30pm and arrived in Fukuoka at 7:00am. That, of course, meant we had no need for our hotel in Fukuoka. And, as it was currently about 2:30pm, we had a good five hours to wait before we could even board the boat. This one, seeing as it has actual rooms on board, is a much bigger boat than the Beetle ferry. It's sort of like a mini cruise ship. It has a restaurant, karaoke rooms, and a public bath on board. So we figured that since it was a bigger ship, we wouldn't be able to feel the waves nearly as much as we did on the smaller ferry, and we were counting on it to be a much smoother ride than our trip over, especially since we had to spend 9 hours on the boat.
We spent a little time stealing the terminal's wifi, trying to see what was near the terminal so we could get something to eat. Obviously, we were going to be hungry before 7pm rolled around. However, as luck would have it (and you know luck was not on our side today), there was absolutely nothing within walking distance but a Starbucks. Not even a McDonald's. There was a convenience store between the port and the subway station, so we gathered all our belongings once more and made the trek back out in the cold and the wind to pick up something to eat from there. It was a very small place and didn't have a whole lot of options, but we made do with a sandwich and some snacks for later.
Then we played the waiting game.
There were a lot of people downstairs (most of them were old Korean ladies in a tour group), so we decided to wait upstairs where there were fewer people. The only problem was the place did not have heat. It was a big, round room with vaulted ceilings, and all they had to heat it was a group of little heaters in the very center. Let me tell you, the heat did not stray far from the area immediately in front of them. We were freezing. Cinnamon even put on another scarf, and we were still cold. We figured that if the employees working at the little gift/food kiosks in the upstairs area were wearing winter jackets, it was much, much too cold. It didn't help that as our departure time grew nearer (and there was another ferry going to Shimonoseki, Japan that boarded about an hour ahead of ours) and the room filled with people, a lot of them decided to go outside to the terrace to smoke. Unfortunately, we were sitting next to the door to the outside, so every time someone went out or came in--despite there being another door on the other side of the row of seats where we were sitting--it sent a cold blast of wind over us. Cinnamon was most displeased, as was I.
Finally, it came time for us to board. We hung back a while to let more people go ahead of us (the line was very long), then finally went through the gates. Once through, we had to go through airport-like security where they screen your bags and make you go through a metal detector. After that, you get one last chance to purchase duty-free goods before you head on board the boat. Since there was nothing we had to buy, we boarded the boat and found our room on the third floor. Of course, just as in a hotel, you need a key for your room, so I went down to information to get ours. There were quite a few other people there getting their keys, so I showed the lady at the desk my ticket, expecting her to give me the room key. However, she simply said something to me in Korean (which I obviously didn't understand), then basically mimed how to open a door like I was the stupidest person in the world. Aggravated, I stomped back upstairs only to find out our Japanese roommate had already gotten the key. At least I wouldn't have to go back down there and deal with the information desk again.
So now, let's take you on a tour of our room!
Here we are right inside the door, in the tiny genkan area (where you put your shoes). Apparently this was a Japanese style room, which wasn't what we were expecting. That meant tatami mat floors and futons.
To the left of the door is the tiny vanity/sink area, with slippers to use in the room and around the ship (just not outside on the deck). The bathroom itself was down the hall.
In this picture, I'm standing just inside, by the sink, looking into the room. We've got all three of our futons laid out on the floor already.
This is along the left wall, where the TV is. We didn't get many channels or very good reception. And when our roommate tried to use it, the batteries in the remote died. Just one more thing on our long list of things that didn't go right for us that day.
Lastly, once you look past the huge pods with lifeboats and the rain-splattered windowpane, you get an only mostly obstructed view of Busan.
Around 9pm, once we were all settled in to our room, Cinnamon decided to head to bed, and our roommate was doing the same. There was still an hour before the boat actually departed, we had taken our motion sickness medicine, and we could hardly feel the boat moving at all, so we figured we'd be fine.
Not so much.
Just as soon as the boat started pulling out of the port and heading out to open water, we could instantly feel it roll from side to side. It wasn't the same kind of motion as the Beetle, it was more of a slow rock back and forth, though it was rather pronounced. It made just walking down the hall to the bathroom pretty tricky. Thanks to that, it made it a little hard for me to get to sleep. That, coupled with the fact that the futon I was lying on wasn't very cushy, and I didn't get much in the way of sleep that night. However, that ends our story for today. I'm sure you're dying to find out what happened once we got back to Japan. Well you're going to have to wait until next time!
(In case you're wondering why this post is titled "Japan Doesn't Want To Let Us Go" rather than "Korea Doesn't Want to Let Us Go", that's because we wouldn't have had these problems leaving Korea if we had never left Japan. Therefore, this was clearly a sign from Japan that we shouldn't try to leave. ...Or something like that).
1 comment:
Hahaha! I totally forgot about the guy that asked if I was from Canada! So strange.
Post a Comment