Seoul Stealers

As we depart China we leave the hospitable Nine Super Happy Dragons of the Golden Universe Hostel and some of the best nights I have yet experienced on this trip.  That being said, our layover in South Korea may be one of the best adventure stories I have had to date on this trip.  I take you to Incheon International Airport at 15:30 on Monday, September 3, 2012.

At 15:30 we land in Incheon and Adam decides we have just enough time to go explore the area for a while before catching our connecting flight to Hanoi.  He assembles those who want to go and we all speed walk out of the airport as we need to be back and boarding at 17:00.  That leaves us with 1.5 hours to goo explore at the beach that Adam says we should go check out.

After filing out of the airport, we come to the cash exchange ATM where we are recommended to get about USD 10 for dinner or anything else we could spend it on in this short amount of time.  I walk up to the ATM where Adam is struggling to get it to work.  I am the first student on the scene and when he goes to figure his card out, I decide to jump on the opportunity to use the ATM to get USD 20 out for Trent and myself so as to be quick and not hold up the line for others.  I begin my transaction when the taxi driver that Adam has already hired walks up and tells me I am doing it wrong.

“No, no, no!” he says as he begins cancelling out of my transaction for me.  He restarts it himself going so far as to insert my debit card back into the machine for me.  He hits a few buttons as I look on dumbfounded by what is happening in front of me.  I am in my adrenaline-filled go mode so I do not give the whole thing much thought, simply telling him “20 US.”  “Okay, okay,” he says as he hits another button before I get to see what it says.  He leaves me to enter my PIN.

After finishing up the transaction, I think that the machine is broken as it does not dispense my money right away.  I turn to Adam asking what happened during his transaction, wondering if the same might be occurring to me but before I can finish my question, the machine spits out the cash.

The look on Adam’s face when I turn around with my wad of cash is one of shock and amazement mixed with a hint of horror.  “You have about USD 300 right there Wes!” he says to me as I fan out thirty 10,000 won bills, “Looks like you are treating!” 

I flip through the money wondering how this could be.  Adam figures it out later.  The taxi driver assumed I was paying for the taxis and wanted me to get out the money to cover all of them.  I had fallen into the dumb tourist role and trusted the random Korean man who had told me I was doing it wrong.  Luckily I had enough to cover it in my account and Adam told me he would figure out paying me back and getting money from the rest of the group. 

I move past the money deal, trusting that Adam will come through with his promise.  We are herded over to the taxis and we are told to put all of our bags in one van as we file into the three other vans that are waiting alongside the luggage van.  Some also get to ride along with the bags and I trust that they will care for our precious cargo.

After all of us students have piled into the vans, Adam walks up to the head cab driver, a husky Korean man with a cigarette hanging from his lips.  Adam begins angrily speaking Korean at the driver, violently gesturing toward our vans.  I gather from the nonverbal cues and comments I had heard earlier that we were all supposed to fit into three cabs rather than four, thereby reducing the cost significantly.  Whatever Adam said did the trick and we sped off in four vans.

We engage in small talk with the driver of our van for a bit as we head to who knows where, running red lights down the empty road the entire way.  We finally arrive at a beach that I later find out from Adam is the Yellow Sea.  We putter along the beach for a bit when Howard, Bagheera and I exchange a knowing look.  We need to get in the water.  We begin to strip down and without towels, swimsuits, or anything holding us back, we sprint into the Yellow Sea and dive in.  The water is warm and extremely salty.  The salt stings our eyes as we swim out a ways into the water to meet Ellie Jo and Amanda who have already beaten us to the water. 

After this, a majority of the group jumps in after us and we swim around for a while.  Howard rescues a miscellaneous boot from the gentle waves and we decide that it is time to get food.  We walk up the place Adam suggests and meet Zach O and Katryna who have already started cooking their barbecue.  We order the same and begin frying our thick, short slabs of bacon on the foil-wrapped grill as we examine the various toppings that come with our meal.  Adam comes up and suggests we try soju and another traditional Korean drink.

We finish our food and drink, pay, and begin sprinting back to our vans, barefoot and wet.  We cram into our van, trusting that the others will grab our bags out of their van when we arrive at the airport.  When we get out near our terminal, Trent hands him the money that Adam gave him for the taxi.  The driver says that it is 20,000 won more and not thinking, Trent and I split the excess and pay the man.  Later we discover that we paid more than the deal Adam had worked out before.  Once again, we were conned by the Korean cabbies.

We dash back into the airport and search for Adam’s van, the one that has all of the baggage in it, the one that did not stop where the rest of the vans let out.  We search almost frantically before we find that they have already gotten off and they have our bags guarded by the terminal we need to be at.  We work our way back through security as quickly as possible and make it to our gate with plenty of time to spare.

While it may have been the most expensive hour and a half adventure I have ever had, it was well worth it. As I sit on the plane in salt-encrusted shorts, I realize a few things.  I have now learned not to trust Korean taxi drivers with my ATM transactions and to always know the deal that Adam has made before paying anyone.  The price of an adventure cannot always be measured in a form of currency, but in the memories it leaves with you and the people you experience them with.