Layover in Shanghai

Vietnam Trip ~ Day 15
(Layover on return flight from Vietnam)

July 27, 2012

We arrived in Shanghai around 8 a.m. on Friday (about an hour late from our expected arrival). After a long walk through the terminal, we finally arrived at the initial passport control area. From that line-up, people were sent in three directions, either into the international terminal, to domestic flights, or to immigration/customs. We would have been sent to the international terminal, but we told the officials that we planned to spend our 8-hour layover exploring Shanghai, so were sent to immigration and customs. The night before, while researching about our time in Shanghai, we had discovered that if visiting China for less than 48 hours no visa is needed to leave the airport, so we knew we'd have no problems with immigration. Soon our passports were stamped with Chinese stamps, and we were outside security. I (Ali) was especially excited to be able to get a new country added to my list because of this layover!

We made a quick stop at a currency exchange kiosk to get some Chinese Yuan, and also bought a few snacks at an airport convenience store to tide us over until we could find some real food. Then we headed off to find the fast train into downtown Shanghai that we had found out about while researching the night before. The train was a maglev train, which was pretty interesting to experience. The train got up to 430km/h during the 8-minute ride, which was pretty astonishing, although we decided the ride was definitely not as smooth as the KTX trains in South Korea.

Approaching Shanghai, a.k.a. high rise city

Maglev tickets!

Requisite photo op

It's a train!

The maglev train ended at a subway station where we bought day passes for the subway and navigated our way underground to the subway heading downtown. We noticed right away that the Shanghai subways were definitely not up to the standards of the Seoul and other South Korean subways. It was fine, just not as clean and not as smooth of a ride as the Korean subways. And we definitely missed the a/c aspect on such a hot day. Before too long we were exiting the downtown subway station and right where we wanted to be: in front of the Oriental Pearl Tower. We spent a bit of time walking around the walkways in front of the tower and over the highways, taking pictures of the tower, then got in line to get tickets. The line took quite a long time, but once up the tower, we enjoyed the views of Shanghai from the various lookout decks. While in line for the elevator to take us to the top deck, I started to get worried about getting back to the airport in time for our flight to BC. I really didn't want to miss it! Jonathan calmed me down, though, and I enjoyed the view from the tallest lookout. After coming back down the tower, we stopped at a Subway shop right nearby to grab some food, and then took the subway and maglev train back to the airport.

(Note: We learned about the Shanghai maglev train from an article from Time's Travel section, "Shanghai: 10 Things to Do." If you're planning to visit the city, check out the article for interesting ideas and more info on the maglev train.)

Subway tickets

Downtown Shanghai

Year of the Dragon

Mobile ice cream stand

Dragonali

Roundabout

What we came to do

#Selfie!

Towering over us

Line for the main elevator up the tower

Random carved wooden lion

Tiny little cruise ships

Bottle opener building

Huangpu River

U.F.O. - unidentified funny-looking object

You Are Here

In the traffic circle

Hi

The ceiling of the elevator was a mirror...

During our trip back, we both got a little bit worried about making it back to the airport in time for our 4 p.m. flight since it seemed like we had to wait a long time for each train to arrive. In the end, we did make it back in enough time, but we sure rushed and speed-walked through the airport back to security. Once in the line for security we knew we'd have enough time, though, so we could relax a little. The line didn't take too long and soon we were back in the international terminal.

As it turned out, we needn't have rushed at all -- our plane was delayed, and the departure time kept being pushed back further and further. Finally we heard an announcement that we would be given the supper that we were supposed to get on the plane, since it was already quite a bit past suppertime by that time. We were quite ready for the meal and ate it gladly. Once we were done, we still had to wait. Finally, after two hours of waiting, our plane had arrived and we could board. Before boarding, we quickly wrote my parents an e-mail letting them know that we would be at least two hours late into Vancouver. Once boarded we sat at the gate for another hour before moving. And then, when we thought we'd finally be taking off soon, we ended up sitting on the runway for yet another hour! The craziest occurrence was still to come, though. Just as we were gearing up for our take-off, all of a sudden it seemed like all the passengers on the plane burst into activity. They stood up, opened overhead compartments, rearranged contents, and just in general seemed to have something very important to accomplish. The flight attendants tried in vain to get everyone seated again. The passengers, who by this time were quite riled up, yelled at them and mayhem continued. Finally it seemed like the pilots had had enough of this and they just started down the runway anyway. People quickly sat back into their seats, and buckled up, but it wasn't until we were moving that they all started cooperating. It was quite something to witness! We'd never seen anything like it before.

The overnight flight was long, but uneventful. We had been scheduled to get in at 11:40 a.m. Pacific Time on Friday, but because of all the delays, we actually arrived around 4 p.m. Going through immigration and customs was a breeze and we got to the baggage claim soon after and quickly saw my parents. After hugs (and catching a few glimpses of the opening ceremony of the London Summer Olympics on the TVs in the baggage claim), we told them all about our crazy delays and they told us about getting to the airport two hours before our flight and how they kept themselves occupied until we arrived. We grabbed our backpacking backpack off the luggage carousel when it came around and then headed to the parking lot for our two-hour drive east to Hope, BC to spend the weekend at the BC Campmeeting campground with family members and friends.

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And that ends our travel series on our Vietnam trip! It was a wonderful trip, but after nine months of living, working, and traveling in Asia, we were pretty happy to be back in North America again, and excited to move into the next chapter of our lives.

Back in Hanoi & Ho Chi Minh City

Vietnam Trip ~ Day 14

July 26, 2012

After our couple-day stay in Halong City and finally getting to go out on the bay, we took the shuttle bus back to Hanoi with the group of tourists from our tour boat on Wednesday evening and settled back into the same hostel that we stayed in on Sunday night. Thursday morning we got up early, were in a taxi on the way to the airport a bit before 7, and got there a bit before 8 (the airport was a little ways out of town). It didn't take us long at all to get our boarding passes and check Jonathan's large backpacking backpack, so we were able to have a bit of breakfast and then went through security and only had a little time to wait before we boarded the bus that took us to our plane. Our airline was Jetstar Pacific, which serves the southeastern Asian countries and Australia. There were many Vietnamese people on the flight (and only about five other white people aboard). It seemed like most had never flown before. They were all gasping and cheering subdued-ly when we took off. Whenever we had a bit of a bump of turbulence, they'd gasp, too. It was fun to watch their excitement. :)

The flight was just two hours long, and we arrived a little before noon. It was such a breeze compared to all of the other traveling we'd done in the country so far. It was definitely worth the ~$100 each to fly back to Ho Chi Minh City (Saigon) rather than take a 24-hour+ train back down! When we arrived in HCMC, we got a bus to the terminal, and just a few minutes later we collected Jonathan's backpacking backpack from baggage claim, and walked outside to catch a taxi to the hotel we had booked (the one we had wanted to get the first night we were in Vietnam, but couldn't because it was overbooked and we had to stay at the one across the road).

After checking in, we put our luggage in our room and rested for a bit, but soon headed back out to enjoy our last few hours in Vietnam. We spent the afternoon wandering the surrounding streets and looking into local souvenir and tourist shops. (We had only had about an hour or two in HCMC when we first arrived two weeks earlier, so we hadn't seen much of anything then.)

Peppers

Local delicacy - scorpions and snakes in some kind of alcoholic beverage

Souvenirs

More souvenirs

In the mid-afternoon, once our feet were sore and we'd bought all the souvenirs and presents we wanted and could pack along with us, we stopped by the nearby Subway restaurant and got some Western food for supper. By this time we were pretty ready to eat some Western food again, and Subway was the perfect meal! After our early supper, we walked back to our hotel, and used the computers in the lobby to write some last e-mails before leaving the country. Then we headed up to our room to made sure our new purchases were all packed up and ready to go, and that we were all prepared to head to the airport later that night, and then took a nap that turned into a pretty decent sleep.

We had both our phone alarms set so that we'd be sure to wake up in time to catch a taxi to the airport so we'd be there in plenty of time for our flight. All this went according to plan, except for one tiny detail: when we woke up around 11 p.m., I (Ali) was feeling a bit off. I took some charcoal, and we managed to wash up, change into our traveling clothes, get ready to leave, and catch a taxi by 11:30 p.m. On the drive to the airport I felt more and more sick, and between getting into the ticketing line and boarding our plane, I ended up having to use plastic bags twice... Ick! Once on the plane I started to feel better, which was such a relief. Feeling sick while traveling is no fun at all! Especially when you just want to be home and don't want to be detained anywhere.

Our flight was scheduled to leave at 1:55 a.m., but left a little late (as per usual for all four of our China Eastern Airlines flights on this trip to and from Vietnam), although much less late than our other three flights. Our flight to Shanghai took about four hours, and we took advantage of the night and darkness and tried to sleep as well as possible.

When we were finally settled on the plane and it was taxiing, we had some time to think about the past two weeks since we had arrived in Ho Chi Minh City and then quickly taken a train up north to Mui Ne. Time sure did fly by, and we thoroughly loved the opportunity to travel up the Vietnam coast. We so enjoyed seeing a new country and learning more about it and the people who lived there. The scenery was absolutely amazing and the weather was, too, for almost the whole trip. All in all, our two weeks in Vietnam was a perfect end to our stint abroad!

Next up: Layover in Shanghai

Suwon to Seoul to Incheon

Second-to-Last Day in South Korea
Wednesday, July 11

The morning after our walk around the Hwaseong Fortress, Jonathan and I woke up, packed our backpacks, left them at the front desk of the hostel for safe-keeping, and headed out into the mist. We found a different trail leading back up the mountain that had started our whole adventure the evening before and followed it. Along the way we stopped in at some interesting sites.

Flowers on the side of the road by our hostel

Brick flower art on the street

Cobblestone art on a wall

Impressive turtle painting (Who can spot the missing brick?)

Hole in the building? Nope, just some more neat art featuring the fortress wall.

Entrance to a small Buddhist temple on the side of the mountain

Temple grounds

Two-storey-tall golden Buddha statue

Lily in the morning dew along our hike up the mountain

Once we reached the top of the mountain, we quickly found the Bell of Hyowon (Bell of Filial Piety). We went over to a lady who was sitting in the booth near the bell and paid for our bell rings (2,000 won - about $2 - for 3 rings). No one else was around, so we had plenty of time to take pictures and videos of the experience. Yep, such a touristy move, but what else are you to do when confronted with a gigantic bell that is just begging to be rung??

Bell ready to be rung

Jonathan ready to ring the Bell of Filial Piety (I missed getting his first ring in the video below...)

Ali ready for her turn to the ring the bell (the wooden ringer was pretty heavy to wield...)

Close-up of one of the pictures on the bell. This is the Hwahongmun Gate over the Suwoncheon (Suwon Stream).

More pictures of the Hwaseong Fortress along the bottom of the bell

Signpost back on the streets of Suwon

Message in the sidewalk

After we each rang the bell, we hurried back down the mountain, collected our backpacks, and stopped at the nearby bakery again for some take-along breakfast. Then we caught the bus back to the train station and bought KTX tickets back to Seoul, our last KTX ride in South Korea. We so much enjoyed the privilege of using the Korea Express Train system while in Korea and knew we would definitely miss the convenience of getting to destinations so quickly and comfortably. Although we could have taken a slower (and cheaper) train back to Seoul, we wanted to ride the KTX just once more!

Once we arrived in Seoul, we easily maneuvered our way underground and through the Seoul subway system, which once had posed quite a hardship for us. As we rode the subway to Hwegi station I thought about how much we'd learned in the past eight months of living in Korea. Amazing how things that used to seem so difficult (finding our way around Seoul, traveling throughout the country, reading Korean) had become quite simple for us! At Hwegi station, we got off the subway and walked back to the Seoul Main Campus, which we hadn't seen for the past nine days. It was nice to be back there and we made our way to our guest room where we'd be sleeping that night (we had already vacated our apartment to make room for new teachers coming to teach at the SDA Language Institute for the new term). It felt good to drop our bags off in the guest room and relax for a little bit before heading back out. We made a quick stop to the teacher's lounge to use the computers there and it was nice to see some of the teachers, who were rushing in and out of the lounge between classes, again before we left Korea for good. After checking our e-mail and looking up a few outdoor stores in the area, we walked back to Hwegi station and took the subway to a shopping district not too far away where we spent some time looking for the last few things we wanted to get before our trip to Vietnam (cool clothing, pack covers in case we encountered any torrential rain, tiny towels, and some large water bottles). Thankfully we found what we needed and then headed back to our guest room to repack our bags with our new acquisitions and do any other last-minute things we needed to do before leaving South Korea. All in all, we had a pretty relaxing evening.

A slow train leaving the station as we wait for our KTX train to arrive

Korean-style toilet in our guest room

Since our apartments had western toilets, we never did figure out what all these buttons did...

Last Day in South Korea
Thursday, July 12

The next morning we grabbed our backpacks and went to the language building to say goodbye to as many of our fellow teachers as we could find. Then we went next-door to the ad building to say goodbye to a few of the people we knew who worked over there. It was sad to say goodbye to them, but we were also excited for our trip. After the goodbyes, we took a city bus a few stops to a large shopping mall. We waited at another bus stop for the shuttle that would take us to the Incheon International Airport, about an hour out of Seoul. The shuttle arrived soon and we had a pleasant drive to the airport, passing by familiar sights of Seoul and then out of the city to places we didn't recognize, since we'd arrived in South Korea at night and hadn't been able to see the sights coming from the airport eight months before. I was a little bit nervous that we wouldn't have enough time to get our tickets, get rid of our luggage, and get through security and to our gate before our flight, but there was no need to worry. Incheon airport is not like your average North American airport where long lines and lengthy waits are normal. There were no long lines to be seen and within minutes of arriving at the airport we had our tickets, had one less backpack to carry around, and were through security and on our way to our gate.

When we reached our terminal, we found a place to eat a relaxing lunch near our gate. Then, once we'd finished lunch, I looked at our boarding passes again and realized we were in the wrong terminal! Yikes, all that relaxing and we hadn't even been in the right place. We hurried to the next terminal over and found our actual gate as quickly as we could. We still did have a bit of time to wait, and then our flight was delayed another hour, so that gave us even more time. We spent the time reading and getting a few snacks with the last of our Korean won (after I saved a couple coins of each denomination), and ended up just leaving the last few small coins in a donation box near our gate. Finally our flight was called and the boarding process went pretty quickly. Then, after all that waiting, we were taxiing to the runway and lifting off the ground, actually leaving South Korea and heading off for our next adventure. It's always strange to be leaving a place where you've lived for a long time. Often it's a sad experience, but for us, while we enjoyed our time in Korea, we were pretty excited about exploring Vietnam and then getting back to North America.

The view as we got closer to the Incheon Int'l Airport, which is on an island

Our China Eastern Airways plane that would take us the first half of our trip, from Seoul to Shanghai

Goodbye South Korea. It was such a privilege to live in Cheonan and Seoul and explore your beautiful and mountainous country, to learn about your history and about the customs and traditions of Korean society. We will forever treasure our time and experiences in this fascinating country!

Next up: Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam