Landed in Dhaka!

Well, my flight didn't actually land until a few minutes before midnight. Customs wasn't a long line (there were very few foreigners on the flight so the wait was tiny). A couple of young Korean businessmen kept me company in line (we'd chatted a bit on the plane at one point) making me feel a bit like less of a strange commodity (people stared less for awhile), and I caught up with them again while we awaited our luggage. Going through cutoms, the border guard was very nice, his hair was hennaed and he reminded me of someone famous that seems old and sweet (that I can't remember now). He took as long as the next guard did to get three people through, lol, but I was *not going to be impatient, no matter how late it was.


It was no big deal to get my bag, though it did take more than 40 minutes for the conveyor to start... I dont know what took them so long to bring the bags over from the plane, but things slowwwwwwly trickled in as we waited and chatted. I hadn't made arrangements to be met at the airport since I was staying with a person and not at a hotel, but I had tried to figure out the most a taxi would cost before I tried to find one.  I was waiting with the two young businessmen (who actually turned out to be engineers) because I was going to ask their driver about the best way to get a taxi, but they got held up at Customs at the point I had been just waved through and I just didn't want to wait, so out I went!


The Dhaka airport keeps vendors out in layers so there weren't a zillion peole vying for attention/business when I finally passed the last customs station. The guards waved me past the last stand of xray machines so I was out ahead of a few people, but like I said, very few tourists were on the plane so I still had all the help I needed (and then some!) when I cleared those final security doors. Canada is well-enough loved over here, and apparently we play cricket, which also ups our standing in the eyes of many young Banglaeshisis.

In the airport there was a taxi stand (well, it's a driver service, really). Behind the counter there were about 8 young Bangladeshi men talking and laughing and shoving one another and trying to be helpful. They gave me a rate that was higher than the most my host said it would cost, I countered, and they accepted too quickly, so I know the price had been high: BUT, at 1 in the morning in a strange place I really just wanted to get there, I didn't care!
All over the airport I saw a lot of young people dressed in camouflage, I think it's the Bangladesh police, but as of yet I'm not sure. There were scades of them and they weren't military looking, but hey - what the heck do I know in this country!! :) The car (which looked to me like a gypsy cab) pulled up about 5 minutes after I'd hit the street, and the dude from the car service gave instructions to the driver. I'd paid the fare at the window before we'd left so I just had to settle in for the ride.

The first thing I noticed was that even though it was almost 1 there were scads of people standing outside the gates of the airport - scads! I was happy to have hired the car inside and not had to have made my way through them, I can tell you that much! The World Cricket Championships are here now so there are signs and things everywhere, and I couldn't help but wonder if the city had been somewhat 'cleaned up' in anticipation of the games, the way India had been for the Commonwealth games. It was very dark so it was hard to see much more than the roads, but 2 things come to mind...

1. There are some CRAZY drivers in this city, I am so glad I don't have to drive! Many of the cars look like they are duct taped together and then coloured in with markers, it's insane (pictures to come!).

2. The pollution here is worse than any other city I've been in (including Ho Chi Minh and Beijing), and I have NO idea what it's actually going to look like in the light of day!

The driver got ALL KINDS of lost on the was to the apartment, and spoke NO English. He stopped several times to ask for instructions, and finally figured it out once we stopped at a hotel and I called Kassandra for help. Funny enough, every man he stopped and asked for directions replied like he knew EXACTLY where we were headed, and NOT ONE of them did, lol.


We stopped by a hotel (The Bengal Inn) and they finally made the driver pull in (he tried to avoid it, but their security insisted and he relented) so I could call Kassandra from the front desk. They were very kind and very helpful, and at that point VERY much appreciated. From there we got the right area of the city, and then went from person to person (there were an awful LOT of people out even nearing 1:30 in the morning!) until we got to the right road, and then I kept my eyes peeled for the address because I think my poor young befuddled driver was still very much befuddled after driving round lost for nearly 45 minutes.

I got to Kassandra's (after making the driver come to a scratching halt on the dirt road - he hadn't noticed the poorly lit roadsign and I had so I yelled "There! Stop please!") just before 2am, and I was *so* happy to finally be there. She had waited up (she and her kitty Phoebe!) and was SO ready for bed, but she showed me around her apartment later (pictures later!)... this is my bedroom though, for a start!
I am going to make myself go to bed because it's late and suddenly I'm having trouble keeping my eyes open and I don't want to sleep tomorrow away, my first day in a new country!! I hope wherever you are that life is bringing you your own brand of adventure, because I am already loving mine!

Guangzhou to Dhaka

I spent the ENTIRE day in an airport. It’s 9:07 Guangzhou time, which I think means 8:07pm Korea time. 8 hours was an awful long time to spend in the airport, but once I found the international lounge with the comfortable chairs and the plugin for the laptop it was much better. I forget when I travel that on international transfers (stopovers) it’s pretty much impossible to get out money at the airport… this left me cashless at the airport, but I did have my visa so it was fine. The only thing was that I hadn’t taken time to figure out how many Chinese RMY were equivalent to a thousand KRW, so I have no idea how much things cost me - GAH!

At the airport I watched Burlesque for the 13th time, and tried tried tried to get online but Skype for a few minutes was all I could manage - and it cost me many bux with some strange Skype Boingo option. Too bad China won’t let me connect to any social networking sites (I didn’t realize I did so much of that “networking” crap!! I couldn’t actually even get into a currency exchange website, so goodness knows what the actual restrictions were.

Other than watching the movie I walked the airport from one end to the other repeatedly (good exercise I guess), had a bite to eat (satay beef and a coke) at one of the restaurants, watched planes come and go out some of the many windows, and people watched in different spots until I tired of it and went back to the comfy chairs of the lounge. Most of the time the place was empty, and then about 2 hours before it was time to go a guy came in a played his guitar quietly while I read, it was very nice!

When it was finally time to get on the plane (I flew China Southern) I noticed that there were just about NO women on my flight - it was overwhelmingly filled with men… no families that I saw, very few women at all (I was nearly last onto the plane and I only counted 3 on the way to my seat), it was pretty much all groups of men. The second thing I noticed was that there was only me and one other white dude of the few hundred collected passengers.
Through the flight people were randomly staring at me with some kind of strange fascination, but a little differently from the way the Koreans in Daejeon used to look at me… this is more out of curiosity than horror, lol, I hate to say that it used to feel like people in Korea were scared of me (kids in particular), but when the little ones cry and adults avert their eyes to the ground after you simply smile at them or say hello (and the Bangladeshi people smile), what else are you gonna think, right?

I remember reading online about people’s comments to ignore the staring, that people are just curious, but I guess I didn’t think I’d be quite so outnumbered in the men:women part - it‘s a little unnerving!! Does nobody else find that ratio to be a little crazy?

I’ve made plans to spend the first 2 nights in Dhaka with a woman from www.couchsurfing.org and I’m feeling a little glad of that now - finding a hotel room when I don’t even land until 11 at night would be an unnerving experience in itself!! The plane will land soon so I have to shut down... more soon!

Best Laid Plans

Thursday morning plan:


5:00am - Wake up and make coffee; go have a shower

5:15am - Get dressed and toss the remaining things into my bags

5:30am - Leave the hotel and head over to catch the bus to the airport

7:00am - Arrive at airport check in for my flight

7:30am - Visit the Incheon Immigration office… my visa expired 2 weeks ago and I had to check on the possibility of whether I was going to be fined the $1,000 as they were within their rights to do, or whether they would just let me leave quietly if I was nice to them this early in the morning

8:30am - Get through security and all that and wait at the gate

9:40am - Flight leaves Incheon for a super long layover in China

9:00pm - Depart China for Dhaka
11:00pm - Arrive in Dhaka

Midnight - be at Kassandra's place

I woke this morning a little lazily - suspiciously, without the screech of my alarm clock. I knew this couldn’t be a good thing, since I had set the alarm for 5am after going to bed at 1am - there was no way I just randomly woke myself up that early, was there? I paused for a second before opening my eyes to peek at the shuttered window… no light sneaking through yet, okay, that’s a good thing… it can’t be that bad (my sleepy optimism).

My eyes crept over to my bedside table where the tiny green travel alarm clock sat when I went to bed and I saw that it wasn’t there… that’s not a good thing, as that means I shut it off and fell back to sleep… I took a deep breath with my eyes closed before reaching into the covers to find the alarm clock where I had stuffed it at 5 when it went off, my hand closing around it as I stifled a giggle. Ohh boy, okay, well, better get my feet on the floor…

I stumbled on sleepy feet over to the bathroom and tried to figure out the time in the dim light from the street.

At first glance I was preeeeetty sure the clock said 9:20... The first thing I thought as my eyes widened and my eyebrows went for the sky was, ‘Ooooo, now if that’s the right time I won’t be making my 9:40 flight this morning, will I?’ Surprisingly there was no panic or gasping, what was I going to do about it if I had slept that late? Well, rebook my ticket I guess.

My second thought was “it’s a good thing I’m travelling by myself on this first leg, because I’m preeeeetty sure Jill would be losing her mind right now!”, which was of course followed by a giggle.
I rubbed the sleep out of my eyes and turned on the light to realize that I’d been holding the clock the wrong way, and it was actually only 6:10... “Hey, that’s 3 ½ hours before my flight leaves, I can handle that, no problem!” Sure, I hadn’t showered or had coffee or anything to eat, I still had to toss a few things into my bags and walk to the bus, sure I’d meant to be halfway to the airport by now, but no big deal - there's even time for a shower, yay!!

Daypack lovin' from my kids

So I had a nice hot shower to wake up, and dragged my butt in the shower a little, seemingly no room in me for a rush this early in the morning, lol. I finally had enough steam (I’m getting a bit of a cold) so I got out, got dressed, and flicked the kettle on so I could have a cup of coffee. I surveyed the mess of my room and tossed the rest of my things into my bag. It wasn’t so bad. I hadn’t looked at the clock again but I knew I hadn’t been that long in the shower. I tied up my hair, put on a bit of makeup so I didn't look like I'd only had 4 1/2 hours of sleep, and collected the last couple things from the bathroom and the bedside table. I slipped into my shoes and my sweater (it’s been so nice lately I haven’t needed my winter coat!) and hauled my bags up onto my shoulders and my hand was on the door handle when I had a thought:

“Waaaaaait a minute dumdum… you always leave things behind… stop and look for whatever it is you’re forgetting before you head out that door.”

Before I got it all in 2 bags!

I took a slow sweep of the room and let out one of those girly “eek!” noises - my netbook was still sitting on the bedside table where I’d set it when I went to bed. Giggles escaped as I shook my head (I could hear my mom’s voice in there somewhere) and set my big bag down and went to pick up my computer… ohhhh, that wouldda made me mad if I’d have forgotten it!!

Passports? Camera? E-reader? Computer? Everything seemed present and accounted for, so coffee in hand in my most recently acquired short Starbucks mug (I have a problem, I know) I set out to the bus.

I got to the bus stop at 6:26. No big deal… it’s between an hour and 90 minutes to get to the airport, that puts me there by 8, 8:15 at the latest unless the bus doesn’t come soon, that’s plenty of time. Perhaps I’d have been more worried about it if I hadn’t been on my way to the Incheon Airport, but you ain’t seen NOTHING in airport efficiency if you ain’t seen that place - it’s my favourite airport in the world!
6:30, no bus… 6:40 no bus… 6:45 no bus… I’m pretty sure it usually comes every 10 minutes, I wonder… oh boy… 6:50 no bus… I was sitting in the bus shelter (hiding from the wind really, it was chilly this morning!) and then when it hit 6:55 and there was still no bus I was all giggles again (by the way, it‘s a good way to freak everybody out to just start giggling to yourself for what seems like no good reason).

In all the times that I’ve waited at this stop for this bus it’s never been more than 15 minutes - of course it would be today that something was up. “Oh well,” I thought, still smiling and leaning back against the shelter to enjoy the last of my hot coffee; “there’s nothing I can do but wait for the bus… there’s still plenty of time, the flight doesn‘t leave for nearly 3 hours.”
At 6:59 the bus pulled into the stop and I climbed aboard. The roads were pretty clear and I figured we would have clear sailing all the way there. One thing I love about Korean bus and taxi drivers is that they literally own the road, and they drive like they know it. Well, today’s driver decided to show me the kinder, gentler side of the transportation system - rather than roaring down the highways at 120km/hr like every other time I’d gone to the airport, this driver kept the speedometer hovering around 85, he was letting other cars in front of him, he stayed out of the express bus lane, he waved at people as he was passing... I did nothing but close my eyes for a brief second and remind myself that that universe indeed has a good sense of humour, and I got out my e-book to resume the book that’s been keeping me occupied of late.

I occasionally looked out the window and reminded myself that this was me leaving Korea, and somehow it didn’t make me cry this morning. I’m excited about my trip, I had time to say goodbye, it’s not quite real really, so I was doing okay!!



No line! No line! No line!



Despite his snail’s pace, we pulled into the airport at 8:03am, and I hustled my butt in to the kiosks to find my check-in counter. The immigration officer last week said “check in for your flight and then go to immigration to deal with your visa problem.” Easy peasy! I made my way to my gate and practically hopped/skipped the last few steps because there was no line - Ha, no worries! An hour and 40 and no line - woohoo!

When I went to check-in the attendant told me (after taking 5 minutes to look me up in the computer, deal with my bag and all that) that I would need to go to immigration FIRST, before checking in for my flight, because my visa had expired. No argument here, ‘do what the nice man says so you can catch your plane’ was my only thought as I sped to the other end of the airport to find immigration.

Card now gone!

4 people in front of me, 90 minutes ‘til my flight and I’d just had a bit of cardio to get my heart going. "Pleeeeeeease don’t charge me for being a dumbass and not renewing my visa for the last 2 weeks, please, please, please, please…" is all I kept thinking.  After about 5 minutes my number popped up and the little customs girl (seriously, she looked like a little girl in mommy’s custom’s uniform) typed my details into the computer. I apologized for not taking care to extend my visa before it ran out and she said “Yes, even one day past is a problem.” I said sorrysorrysorry (reminds me of a K-pop song) and she smiled at me and said ‘it’s no problem, really’ and made me sign some paper in Korean (probably saying they’d whip me if I ever did it again) and sent me on my way - NO FINE!!!! Man I was a happy camper, happy happy happy!

I ripped back to the check-in counter with my shiny new stamp excusing me from my visa woes (stopping at the pharmacy on the way to buy a box of vitamin C - I had time, right?!) and then had to wait 10 minutes for them to confirm with immigration that I hadn’t drawn the stamp in my passport myself.

Once they were satisfied they sent me through to security with big smiles (which I met with one of my own!), and I got through with not trouble - I even had time to stop at duty free (finally found my Korean totems!) and the internet café before I had to board. No stress, no problems!

I zipped up to the gate about 10 minutes after boarding had started (I listened for the final boarding call but hadn’t heard a peep!) to find no line and scooted my butt onto the plane. Sooo many empty seats, and it was another 20 minutes before the rest of the passengers actually boarded: see? I had heaps of time! I spent the flight next to 2 businessmen (one of whom was the loudest person I’d ever sat next to in a closed space) and put in my earphones (drowning out the drama) and sat back to enjoy my book.

Noooooo problems!

Headed Home for Christmas

Beijing Airport

Originally, I had planned to spend Christmas in Thailand (yes, I have an addiction to Thailand!).  I was about to buy my tickets when a friend suggested I visit Toronto and see what the city was like.  I had been talking about whether to move to Vancouver or Toronto when my contract was up, and it made sense that I could maybe head over and check it out, see if might like to live there!



Beijing Airport

At first I thought it was a dumb idea, but when the ticket became a Christmas present I kinda stopped arguing, haha... me and my big mouth!

So, I went to Toronto.  I am always in awe of Incheon Airport (Korea's airport) when I go there - there is NO other airport in the world that runs as well, I swear!!  My flight took forever.  I flew out on Christmas Eve (boss was nice enough to give us the extra day off so nobody would be flying on Christmas day - How nice was THAT?!). 



Beijing Sunset, Christmas Eve



By mid-afternoon I was in the Beijing airport wandering around aimlessly (beautiful airport, but NO convenience stores so it was a pain in the ass to be there for 3 hours).  When it was approaching sunset I wandered over to a huge bank of windows and camped out on the floor to watch the sun sink below the horizon, it was beautiful. 

When I boarded the plane it was half empty, so the flight attendants moved the person who was to have shared the row with me and I had ALL 3 SEATS to myself!!!!  The flight attendants were great, the food was good, I had pillows and blankets enough to feel like I was in a hotel AND there were good movies - the FIRST time Air Canada scored a perfect 10 from me - wow! 

When we got over Ontario, about a half hour from landing I opened my window shade and the sun was setting.  It occurred to me that it was Christmas Eve, and I was seeing the sun set on BOTH sides of the world because of my lucky timing... for real? 2 Christmas Eve sunsets in one day??  That's magical.

This coming year, something tells me it's going to be a good one... Merry Christmas, everyone!