Landing at Inchon is Harder Than It Looks, or How Justin and Nana Got Into a Medium-Speed Korean Highway Bus Chase

I have never been a big fan of General Douglas MacArthur. Too much of a glory hound, too willing to use nukes, and, according to my grandfather, nicknamed Dugout Doug by some of the Pacific WWII vets for ditching his men in the Philippines while getting himself the proverbial hell out of Dodge (or is it "the hell out of the proverbial Dodge?" Unclear). But I do have to concede that, having tried it without school support for the first time, landing at Inchon is much, much harder than it looks, and he deserves all sorts of credit for that one.

The root of yesterday's problem was California, as the roots of problems so often are. Although we flew through Chicago (miraculously, without any trouble at all, landing in Tokyo twelve minutes early), the plane we used for our Tokyo-Seoul connection originated in San Francisco and had been delayed for about three hours. Instead of arriving in Tokyo at five and landing in Korea a little after nine, we ended up arriving in Tokyo at 4:45 and landing in Korea at 12:05. We had to change the customs form because we'd filled the stupid thing out for January 5.

This is not the biggest problem in the world, except for the fact that Korea seems to shut down at night. Even on a Saturday no trains and no buses were running after 11:30. Our cunning plan to take the same shuttle bus we came to the airport on - a $13 ride that drops us off four blocks from the apartment - was suddenly and thoroughly thwarted.

Fortunately, the airline stepped up big-time, organizing three charter buses to run routes to the northern, central, and southern parts of the city respectively. I've never heard of an airline doing this before, and I thought it was quite nice. We live way in the Northeast, but the northern route was going to drop us off a $30 or so cab ride away, and we could deal with that. Not too much worse than our original bus fare, if more complicated.

But please remember that this is Korea, home of the 90% solution. Everything here is so close to perfect, but missing just one key feature (witness the toilets with four bidet functions that don't actually flush toilet paper). So it stands to reason that something really glaringly obvious was going to go wrong.

Let's recap: Three buses. Three routes. Three different parts of town. You already know where this is going.

You got it. In spite of asking three different people (we're big on three) including the actual bus driver, we ended up on the wrong bus, which we only found out as the bus pulled away from the airport and the driver announced that we were on our way to Gimpo Airport and Gangnam. Gangnam literally translates to "south of the river." We live on the north side of town. Not going to work.

Of course we panic. The driver pulls over to figure out what's going on, and our correct bus shoots by us and out the airport gate. Everybody on the bus is Korean, which means that everybody speaks some English, and they all rally to the cause, going up to the driver and translating for us.

And the driver rallies, too. In a literal, Rallycross kind of way, taking off after the red tail lights of the northern bus as it blazes away from us down the Inchon airport causeway. Switching lanes vigorously and speeding with enthusiasm, he gradually draws us closer to that precious north bus. As we get close, he lays on the horn, and all the Koreans on the right side of the bus start waving out the window at the other driver. We careen around a few Korean cars and pass the bus. Our driver pulls over in the striped space next to an exit ramp and the north bus draws up behind us. Victory!

It is nearly 1 AM as we make the luggage transfer. The north bus is out of under-bus room so we have to heave stuff up the stairs into the passenger area. Miraculously, we don't leave anything on the highway shoulder or on the first bus. We make the first two stops on the route. Things are looking good.

And then Justin turns to me and says, "Why are we going south?"

You might be tempted to guess that it's because we got on the wrong bus, again, and the highway chase was for naught. But no. Justin and my travel karma would never stoop to using the same error twice in one night. That would be amateurish. No, the reason the north bus is going south is because the driver is completely lost.

It is 2:15 as Justin goes up to the front of the bus to talk to another passenger who speaks English. He is a German, traveling with his French girlfriend and a Korean colleague. He has just completed a six-month education exchange in choreography. I am not making any of this up.

The Korean, arduously, manages to talk the driver back on track. At this point, Justin and I suddenly realize that our luggage isn't going to fit in one taxi. The Korean guy, whose English is excellent and who really was our saviour, nevertheless balks at asking the driver if he could take us all the way to Nowon. Finally the bus driver pulls over and says that the cab fare to Nowon from that spot is about the same as the cab fare from his final location, and we might as well catch a cab here. We think he is just trying to get rid of us.

It is 3:00 as our hero helps us offload the bags and explain to the cabbies where we're going. Nobody ever recognizes our apartment building, so we go with the subway station nearby. To my terror, Justin and I have to split up, and my cab driver doesn't even seem confident that he can find the subway station. We spend some time fiddling with his GPS device to see if we can find the apartment (fail!) and then fall back on mapping to the station. We have a nice pantomime conversation in which I explain to him the travails of the day and he keeps saying "Yaaah," in a sympathetic tone of voice. Honestly, we met some very nice people.

And finally, at 3:25, we pull up outside Brownstone where Justin has just offloaded the luggage and paid his cabbie. Amusingly enough, the fares add up to less than our bus ticket, but frankly, I would have paid six dollars to shave two hours off the trip. I pay my cabbie (and, to my everlasting mortification, snag his upholstry a bit as I pull the bag out of the car) and then Justin and I commence the amusing process of having two hands to carry four bags each. Fortunately, our suitcases have backpack straps. This is our shout-out to Grandma and Ampa Eck, wedding-gift purveyors par excellance.

3:30, and we're back in the apartment for one last weird surprise: our modem is gone. Nothing else is missing, including the flat-screen monitor and cash we left out on a bookshelf. And yet we have internet running through the wireless router. ???? Our best guess is that the cable company sent somebody to pick up the modem and the building guys let him in. From now on, I'm flipping the deadbolt at night.

The moral of this story: getting two Americans with eight bags through Inchon nearly destroyed me. Getting the US Army ashore? You go, Dugout Doug.

And after last night, I think I'm also a little more sympathetic about the wanting to use nukes thing. San Francisco, watch out.