Korea Diary - 1

The worst thing about night flights is the dinner – they serve it at a time when you should be sleeping. Of course, you can choose not to have it and go to sleep. They wouldn’t disturb you for a paltry dinner. I never refuse, but still crib about how late they serve it. Singapore Airlines was awesome – ample leg space and personal TV monitors with a host of movies running. Yet, after dinner I decided to sleep.

In an hour and a half, the lights of Singapore were visible. The lights of a hundred ships shone in the water, lined up like cars on a traffic congested highway. We had about two hours of transit at Changi and thankfully, there was no change of terminal. Vijay was asked to take out all the eatables that he had stuffed into his bag. But it was not as bad as the two Korean ladies who decided to carry a bottle of jam or pickle or whatever. The Indian security lady refused to let them through.

“You can’t carry that,” she said in an accent that was far from Indian.

“They didn’t have a problem in Melbourne”, the Koreans.

“This is not Melbourne, this is Singapore. Here there is problem”, the security guard. “You have two options – check it in or ‘poosh’ it”

“’Push’ it?” a bewildered look from the Koreans

“Yes, poosh it” – a symbol of nonchalance, that lady was.

“Er…telegram”, interjected her hunky colleague helpfully.

Post it.

Nobody moved when the Inchon flight was announced (Of course, a Jackie Chan look-alike, with flowing hair, and wearing a vest – only a vest, had come running an hour before. It was politely pointed out to him that the flight had not yet departed). The English announcement was followed by one in Korean and suddenly, all the hell broke loose. Nobody understands English.

Breakfast was served immediately after we took off and soared over the sea. A few hours later came a heavy lunch. I refused neither. It was too much of food. I fell asleep out of exhaustion.

The flight was smooth – six hours to Inchon. We even had a stopover at Ho Chi Minh City, where the aircraft was towed through the busy streets by a truck.

OK…that didn’t really happen. I dreamt it.