Incheon

South Korea

August 2006
2 days

Oops!

Well, after leaving Matt's place in Seoul (fantastic shepherd's pie by the way, cheers dude!), Christopher and I had some last minute prep to do. Our ferry was from Incheon, which is a kind of sister city to Seoul and we figured it would take an hour and a half to get there from Seoul via the tube (that's subway to those not in the know). Of course, we allowed some time for leeway, but little did we know that it would take over 45 sodding minutes to buy some travellers cheques...grrr, bankers here take forever. So time was not on our side when we finally made it to the subway, and trying to will the train to go faster wasn't really helping. We eventually pulled into the station in Incheon we needed and grabbed a taxi. I had conveniently written the ferry terminal down in Korean to avoid taxi troubes. Ah,but there are two terminals! And had we been told that there are two terminals and we needed a specific one? Had we b*llocks! So anyway, we tried our luck and asked for Terminal 1, which the driver didn't understand but drove off anyway. Soon enough we came to a road running along the harbour and we saw a huuuuge ship with the name of the ferry company on it, and a sign nearby pointing to terminal two. The driver happened to see too, and while we were pointing he asked if we wanted Terminal 2. Ne ne ne, we kept saying (Korean for yes). So he drove to Terminal 1. Ah, but we didn't know this! The muppets that we are foolishly belived Mr Taxi Driver had taken us to the right place and went around looking for the check-in desk. It finally occured to us that yes, we were in fact in the wrong place and needed to get yet another taxi to the right terminal. Gah!

By the time we eventually got to the correct terminal,we had unfortunately missed our ferry, and there wasn't another one for two days. Oops! Still, playing the dumb foreigner worked at the ticket desk because they changed it to the Thursday boat for no extra charge. So we had to spend two days in Incheon, but not before coming across another problem - our visa!

So, we realised we were only allowed to stay in the country until that day, August 1st. We had already changed our work visa into a tourist visa, but when doing this, immigration needs to see proof of onward travel and will only allow you to stay until then. So we had a bit of a problem. Especially when upstairs in the immigration office they gravely informed us that it really was not possible to extend our visa any further as we'd had the final extension, and that we were now officially overstaying. Aah...However, they did say that they couldn't do anything at that point and that we would need to go back before we got the ferry to sort it out. Wonderful.

So pushing the thoughts of potential deportation or being thrown in jail aside, we managed to enjoy the next two days in Incheon, going on a mini cruise of the islands, and getting merry in a Karaoke bar. Was fun.

On Thursday, we made absolutley sure we got to the ferry terminal in plenty of time. Oh yes we did. And as it happens,not a lot happened about the visas except that we got a big black mark in our passports. Ah well, these things happen.

And off we sailed, on Thursday the 3rd, literally into the sunset, on the big ferry in our &Quot;Royal Clas&Quot; cabin. Lovely.

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South Korea

China

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