We've had some interesting times flying in and out of Seoul - recall our bus chase? - and all things considered, our last trip, routed through China instead of Japan, went pretty well. Still, I think we're going to add Beijing to our international Do-Not-Connect list, at least for the time being.
The problem with connecting through Beijing is that most international airports keep all international flights in the same security zone - that is, you don't have to go through Customs if you're not staying in the country. China not only doesn't keep all flights in the same area, it doesn't keep them in the same terminal. And then all of this is made more complicated by Chinese visa restrictions and bureaucracy.
Flying home (Seoul-Beijing-Newark-Pittsburgh) looked like this. Keep an eye on the number of times somebody checks our passports.
1. Get off plane and go to international transit counter. Luggage is checked through to Newark but we don't have boarding passes for Newark. Lady checks passports and handwrites us boarding passes. Techno-savvy!
2. Lady escorts us to quartantine/customs. Quarantine officer checks our passports and stamps them. You get oval stamps when you enter China, rectangular stamps when you leave, and hexagonal stamps when you're just passing through. It's this kind of hot insider knowledge that you all tune into School of ROK to acquire.
3. In spite of the fact that we haven't been outside of a secure area since we left Korea, we have to go through another security checkpoint. This means that they take away our water bottles, and the guy says (in Chinese) "Why do the Westerners never know about the water bottles?" Maybe because in the West, you don't have to go through security again unless you've gone outside security! Passports are checked again, twice.
4. Our escort picks us up again and takes us to the bus for Terminal 2. Terminal 2 bus driver checks our passports and our boarding passes. The bus rumbles through the airfield, passing intriguing barb-wire fences. It takes at least ten minutes to drive between the terminals.
5. The people at the bus station check our passports and direct us to our gate.
6. We ponder buying duty-free liquor as a Christmas present for a friend, but decide against it because we're not sure if they'll take away liquids again when we board the plane. Lo, we are correct, and our luggage is searched again before boarding. We frantically pound water in the line and wonder where, exactly, they think we got explosives between the security checkpoint in Terminal 3 and the gate in Terminal 2. Duty-free, perhaps? Oh, and they check our passports before we board.
Total passport checks: 7. Did you catch them all?
Flying back to Korea (Pittsburgh-Newark-Beijing-Seoul) was more frustrating.
1. Disembark plane, where we have been told not to fill out a yellow form. The customs line for "International Transfers" has no staffer, so we get in a normal line. Of course, you know and I know that what this means is a) of COURSE we had to fill out the yellow form and b) of COURSE there is an International Transfers line; it's just the one marked "Handicapped." In English, by the way. Maybe they're making some kind of statement about people who don't stay in China?
2. Show proof to the Customs guy that we're not trying to stay in China without a visa. This means that if you're connecting through Beijing, you MUST MUST MUST bring a physical printout of your itinerary. Otherwise, I've heard, they make you buy a ticket someplace before they let you connect. Or you go to the gulag. Or perhaps, adding insult to injury, they make you buy your own ticket TO the gulag. We don't aim to find out.
3. Reclaim our bags. I'm not sure if this was a policy thing, or if the woman who checked them in Pittsburgh just wasn't very competent, because some other people had to do this and others did not. It may depend on your origin city.
4. Catch bus to Terminal 2, which takes a lot longer because it goes outside the airport (no fences this time). Basically, when we got to Terminal 3, it was like starting our trip from scratch: schlep bags to a check-in counter, wait in line, check in, get boarding passes, and go through security (where, of course, they would have taken away our water, except we drank it. Nyah!). This has only happened to us once in the U.S., in San Francisco, necessitating frantic sprinting. This was the same trip where the airline (Asiana) pulled a nasty bait-and-switch, only informing us at the gate that for some reason, our ticket "fare class" meant that we couldn't get frequent flyer miles on the trip. We are consequently never flying Asiana again.
5. Clear Customs, Immigration, and Quarantine. Again. This one is not random bureaucracy but rather the outcome of bad traffic flow. Remember, it's like starting the whole trip from scratch, and we're in the same line as people who haven't been checked at all that day. But based on the redundant security screenings, I wouldn't put it past them to check us twice anyway. In case, you know, we caught Ebola somewhere in Terminal 2. Perhaps at the same Duty-Free shop that sells exploding water bottles.
6. Terminal 3 is the largest airport terminal in the world, which means it takes a very long time to get from gate to gate. We sat upstairs from our gate (nicer chairs) and found out in the nick of time that they only actually run boarding announcements on the lower floor. Then you have to take a bus out to board the plane and line up in the cold. They checked our passports before we got on the bus but not before we boarded the plane. Imagine, all the identity-theft shenanigans that could happen on that bus! The potential for disaster is mind-boggling!
In spite of all of this, though, China knocked one thing out of the park: we arrived in Korea twenty minutes ahead of schedule, squeaking us in in time for the last airport shuttle runs of the day. We got to go home on the regular airport buses instead of on the airline charter buses, which are 0-2 in getting us home in under three and a half hours (in addition to the bus-chase incident, we also had a late-night bus take a wrong turn downtown and get stuck in the middle of last spring's anti-US Beef protests). So instead of getting home at 3:30, we got home just after eleven, and socked out.
Overall verdict on flying though Beijing: mixed. It's much more of a hassle than flying through Tokyo/Narita, but if you have a long layover, what else were you going to do with that time? I can, however, see so many potential disaster spots - if you forget your itinerary, if your bags don't come through, if you get one of the MANY employees whose English is not as good as they think it is (I had to use my Chinese at least twice on each leg). Yet the airport is huge and weather-resilient, which helps with delays, and China is very inexpensive, which can shave $20 or more off a trip through Japan if you decide to have dinner or snacks and more than that if if you like to airport shop
Bottom line: if the airfare is a lot lower, go for it. But schedule a long layover and be prepared for some wackies.
Showing posts with label air travel. Show all posts
Showing posts with label air travel. Show all posts
Sunday, January 4, 2009
Saturday, September 27, 2008
Xian: The City
(This is part of a series of posts on our trip to China last June. We'll be posting for the first several weeks of the school year.)
Finally--a chance to get back to our China backlog. We've still got one or two posts left after this one, so stay tuned!
Xian
Xian ("Western Peace") is one of the oldest cities in China. People have been living in the area since about 5000 BC (Wikipedia), and Xian, under the name Changan ("Perpetual Peace") served as the capital of the Zhou, Qin, Han, the Sui, and Tang dynasties. In the Middle Ages, Xian was best known as the eastern end of the Silk Road, which brought Middle Eastern cultural influences still prevalent in the city today.
Though modern-day Xian is frankly a bit of a dump, the long history and the rich culture earn its well-deserved billing as one of the top tourist stops in China. For history buffs, the Shaanxi Provincial History Museum is an asbolute must, if only for its incredible Silk Road collection, which features everything from Persian Zororastrian drinking horns to Byzantine jewelry to (yes) Scottish Tartan cloth.
The City Wall
Any tour of Xian begins with a tour of the City Wall, which was rebuilt by the Ming dynasty in the 14th century using the foundations of the old Tang dynasty palace, which dated from the first millenium A.D.
The wall has been completely restored in the last few years, and once again completely encircles the old city. The effect is oddly European: the low, choked, and touristy downtown flanked clusters of skyscrapers, where the real business of the city is done.
The City Wall itself, while certainly less a marvel than the Great Wall, is still worth a look--though you can probably opt for the tram tour.
Nana and I rented a tandem bicycle (for the ambiance) and nearly killed ourselves biking the whole 12km circumference of the old city in 98-degree heat. That's probably why she's tried to shoot me in the gut with a 15th-century cannon.
Kapow.
The Great Mosque
The Great Mosque of Xian dates from the Tang Dynasty and is one of China's biggest and most famous mosques. (Seriously--there was a scale model of it at the Islamic Arts Museum in Kuala Lumpur.)
It's not easy to find: you have to start at the Drum Tower (above)--which, along with the Bell Tower, represents the only useful reference point in downtown Xian--and wander back through the Muslim Quarter. Which, I might add, smells delicious.
Signs for the mosque are few and tiny, and at one point you have to walk down a dim alley no more than five feet wide.
But it's worth it: the Great Mosque encloses a stunning silent garden, with a unique architecture found almost nowhere else in the world. The style is Hui Chinese, which describes the culture of otherwise-Han-Chinese-like Chinese Muslims, and blends Middle Eastern planning and detail with Chinese architecture--for example, by substituting a pagoda for a minaret.
You can also find decorative Arabic throughout the grounds--and, of course, no representative art beyond the traditional floral arabesques.
Big Wild Goose Pagoda and Little Wild Goose Pagoda
Central Xian's two other big sites are the Wild Goose Pagodas, each located a few blocks south of the City Wall. Originally built to house Buddhist scriptures, today they're mostly used as pretty backdrops for wedding photos and viewing platforms for tourists vising town. (Locals have long since learned that you don't really want a good look at downtown Xian.)
The Big Wild Goose Pagoda is the larger, newer, and better-preserved of the two. The pagoda and its surrounding temple sit in the center of a huge, tacky tourist village, which was deserted in the blistering afternoon heat.
Thankfully, the pagoda was closed to climbers. I don't trust myself to have learned the lesson of that 12-km City Wall bike ride: when it's this hot, try your best not to move an inch.
Even without having climbed the pagoda, I felt like these candles. Ick.
We stopped by the Small Wild Goose Pagoda in the evening, when the weather was much better for a quick climb.
I'd show you the photos from the top, but they consisted mostly of smog and office blocks. I guess the whole pagoda thing was cooler when they were still the biggest show in town.
Finally--a chance to get back to our China backlog. We've still got one or two posts left after this one, so stay tuned!
Xian
Xian ("Western Peace") is one of the oldest cities in China. People have been living in the area since about 5000 BC (Wikipedia), and Xian, under the name Changan ("Perpetual Peace") served as the capital of the Zhou, Qin, Han, the Sui, and Tang dynasties. In the Middle Ages, Xian was best known as the eastern end of the Silk Road, which brought Middle Eastern cultural influences still prevalent in the city today.
Though modern-day Xian is frankly a bit of a dump, the long history and the rich culture earn its well-deserved billing as one of the top tourist stops in China. For history buffs, the Shaanxi Provincial History Museum is an asbolute must, if only for its incredible Silk Road collection, which features everything from Persian Zororastrian drinking horns to Byzantine jewelry to (yes) Scottish Tartan cloth.
The City Wall
Any tour of Xian begins with a tour of the City Wall, which was rebuilt by the Ming dynasty in the 14th century using the foundations of the old Tang dynasty palace, which dated from the first millenium A.D.
The wall has been completely restored in the last few years, and once again completely encircles the old city. The effect is oddly European: the low, choked, and touristy downtown flanked clusters of skyscrapers, where the real business of the city is done.
The City Wall itself, while certainly less a marvel than the Great Wall, is still worth a look--though you can probably opt for the tram tour.
Nana and I rented a tandem bicycle (for the ambiance) and nearly killed ourselves biking the whole 12km circumference of the old city in 98-degree heat. That's probably why she's tried to shoot me in the gut with a 15th-century cannon.
Kapow.The Great Mosque
The Great Mosque of Xian dates from the Tang Dynasty and is one of China's biggest and most famous mosques. (Seriously--there was a scale model of it at the Islamic Arts Museum in Kuala Lumpur.)
It's not easy to find: you have to start at the Drum Tower (above)--which, along with the Bell Tower, represents the only useful reference point in downtown Xian--and wander back through the Muslim Quarter. Which, I might add, smells delicious.
Signs for the mosque are few and tiny, and at one point you have to walk down a dim alley no more than five feet wide.
But it's worth it: the Great Mosque encloses a stunning silent garden, with a unique architecture found almost nowhere else in the world. The style is Hui Chinese, which describes the culture of otherwise-Han-Chinese-like Chinese Muslims, and blends Middle Eastern planning and detail with Chinese architecture--for example, by substituting a pagoda for a minaret.
You can also find decorative Arabic throughout the grounds--and, of course, no representative art beyond the traditional floral arabesques.
Big Wild Goose Pagoda and Little Wild Goose PagodaCentral Xian's two other big sites are the Wild Goose Pagodas, each located a few blocks south of the City Wall. Originally built to house Buddhist scriptures, today they're mostly used as pretty backdrops for wedding photos and viewing platforms for tourists vising town. (Locals have long since learned that you don't really want a good look at downtown Xian.)
The Big Wild Goose Pagoda is the larger, newer, and better-preserved of the two. The pagoda and its surrounding temple sit in the center of a huge, tacky tourist village, which was deserted in the blistering afternoon heat.
Thankfully, the pagoda was closed to climbers. I don't trust myself to have learned the lesson of that 12-km City Wall bike ride: when it's this hot, try your best not to move an inch.
Even without having climbed the pagoda, I felt like these candles. Ick.We stopped by the Small Wild Goose Pagoda in the evening, when the weather was much better for a quick climb.
I'd show you the photos from the top, but they consisted mostly of smog and office blocks. I guess the whole pagoda thing was cooler when they were still the biggest show in town.
Friday, August 29, 2008
Beijing: Lama Temple and Dongyue Temple
(This is part of a series of posts on our trip to China last June. We'll be posting for the first several weeks of the school year.)
During our time in Beijing, we visited two major temples, in addition to the Temple of Heaven (previous post): Dongyue Temple, a vaguely Taoist shrine in one of Beijing's biggest business districts, and Lama Tempe, a Tibetan Buddhist lamasery on the northeastern edge of Beijing.
Dongyue Temple
Dongyue Temple, founded during the Yuan Dynasty (1271-1368), is the largest temple of the Zhengyi Dao school of Taoism. In the early part of the Zhengyi Dao movement, practitioners were best known for peddling talismans and prayer tablets like those shown below.
Zhengyi Dao is a very old sect, and Dongyue an old temple, which is easy to tell from a quick stroll around the grounds. The place is littered with steles (inscribed stone tablets) from the Yuan Dynasty and later.
Eventually, though, like most Taoist sects, Zhengyi Dao was absorbed into the religion of the imperial court, and that's where the fun begins. The imperial religion of China is CRAZY. (See previous post on the Temple of Heaven.) Basically, the emperor and his cronies decided that they loved their overbearing earthly bureaucracy so much, they wanted to take it with them into the afterlife. So they carved heaven into a bunch of departments, each tasked with regulating some aspect of heavenly business.
And Dongyue Temple includes a statuary shrine to each and every one of them.
Some of the departments are not terribly surprising, merely the predictable marriage of a bureaucratic world view to the standard polytheistic fare. For example, the Department of Forest Deities, depicted below:
The departmental shrines, however, quickly veer off into the goofy, the gory, the terrifying, and the downright arcane.
Behold, the Retribution Department, a paean to poetic justice, featuring . . .
. . . a liar having his tongue cut out . . .
. . . a thief with his hands lopped off . . . a (surprisingly thin) glutton with his guts spilling out . . .
. . . and, of course, an unspecified ne'er-do-well being hanged.
Other gruesome departments include the Department of Suffering, represented by a sick young man and a starving bum . . .
. . . and the Department for Implementing 15 Kinds of Violent Death, which appear to include beheading and drowning (below).
Many of the statues in the temple are surprisingly expressive, despite being covered with dust. Take, for example, this wily fellow, from the Department for the Suppression of Schemes.
My overall favorite display, though, was probably the Department for the Prevention of Obscene Acts. Not only does it feature an apparent prostitute trying to entice a potential customer with a flash of skin . . .
. . . it also has a creepy, toothless old man leering at her from several feet away.
Clearly, someone put considerable time and effort into these displays, and for that I can only thank them, whoever they are. Especially considering that the departments shown here only scratch the surface of the dozens of displays on the Dongyue Temple grounds. Just a sampling of the deliciously bizarre corners of heaven not depicted here:
The Death and Life Department
The Department of Resurrection
The Insect Birth Department
The Mammal Birth Department
The Evidence Department for Issuing Warrants
The Department of Controlling Bullying and Cheating
The Door God Department
The Jaundice Department
The Department of Pity and Sympathy
The Department of Signing Documents
The Signature Department (by this point, even the Taoists were beginning to lose track)
The Department for Three-Month-Long Meditation
The Toxicant Department (which had, by far, the most donation of any shrine in the place)
Lama Temple
In addition to Dongyue Temple, we also visited Lama Temple, the main site for the practice of Tibetan Buddhism in Beijing.
The story of exactly how Tibetan Buddhism got to Beijing is an interesting one. During its early, missionary period, Tibetan Buddhism spread among the peoples along China's Western and Northern edges, while more traditionally Chinese strains of Buddhism, such as Chan ("Zen"), dominated within China's borders. One of the places Tibetan Buddhism took hold was Mongolia, so that when the Mongolian Yuan Dynasty (see above) conquered China, it brought Tibetan Buddhism with it. The same happened again several centuries later with the Manchu (Manchurian) Qing Dynasty, and it is this later invasion we can thank for Lama Temple as it stands today.
Lama Temple was built in 1694, during the early years of the Qing Dynasty, and originally served as a residence for court eunuchs. It was converted to a lamasery shortly thereafter, and granted permission to use the signature yellow roofing of the imperial house after an emperor was buried there in 1735.
The temple is a blend of Han Chinese and Tibetan architecture, providing for some stunning little nooks and crannies utterly unlike anything else found in Beijing.
Unfortunately, photographs are prohibited in the worship spaces, which house enormous statues of the Buddha and look like something straight out of a classic kung fu film. These exterior shots should give some idea of the structure.
And yes, if you couldn't tell already, our visit was blessed by some afternoon rain. Not only did it take the edge off the day's heat, it also lent some welcome atmosphere to the scene.
Stay tuned for more shenanigans!
During our time in Beijing, we visited two major temples, in addition to the Temple of Heaven (previous post): Dongyue Temple, a vaguely Taoist shrine in one of Beijing's biggest business districts, and Lama Tempe, a Tibetan Buddhist lamasery on the northeastern edge of Beijing.
Dongyue Temple
Dongyue Temple, founded during the Yuan Dynasty (1271-1368), is the largest temple of the Zhengyi Dao school of Taoism. In the early part of the Zhengyi Dao movement, practitioners were best known for peddling talismans and prayer tablets like those shown below.
Zhengyi Dao is a very old sect, and Dongyue an old temple, which is easy to tell from a quick stroll around the grounds. The place is littered with steles (inscribed stone tablets) from the Yuan Dynasty and later.
Eventually, though, like most Taoist sects, Zhengyi Dao was absorbed into the religion of the imperial court, and that's where the fun begins. The imperial religion of China is CRAZY. (See previous post on the Temple of Heaven.) Basically, the emperor and his cronies decided that they loved their overbearing earthly bureaucracy so much, they wanted to take it with them into the afterlife. So they carved heaven into a bunch of departments, each tasked with regulating some aspect of heavenly business.And Dongyue Temple includes a statuary shrine to each and every one of them.
Some of the departments are not terribly surprising, merely the predictable marriage of a bureaucratic world view to the standard polytheistic fare. For example, the Department of Forest Deities, depicted below:
The departmental shrines, however, quickly veer off into the goofy, the gory, the terrifying, and the downright arcane.
Behold, the Retribution Department, a paean to poetic justice, featuring . . .
. . . a liar having his tongue cut out . . .
. . . a thief with his hands lopped off . . . a (surprisingly thin) glutton with his guts spilling out . . .
. . . and, of course, an unspecified ne'er-do-well being hanged.Other gruesome departments include the Department of Suffering, represented by a sick young man and a starving bum . . .
. . . and the Department for Implementing 15 Kinds of Violent Death, which appear to include beheading and drowning (below).
Many of the statues in the temple are surprisingly expressive, despite being covered with dust. Take, for example, this wily fellow, from the Department for the Suppression of Schemes.
My overall favorite display, though, was probably the Department for the Prevention of Obscene Acts. Not only does it feature an apparent prostitute trying to entice a potential customer with a flash of skin . . .
. . . it also has a creepy, toothless old man leering at her from several feet away.
Clearly, someone put considerable time and effort into these displays, and for that I can only thank them, whoever they are. Especially considering that the departments shown here only scratch the surface of the dozens of displays on the Dongyue Temple grounds. Just a sampling of the deliciously bizarre corners of heaven not depicted here:The Death and Life Department
The Department of Resurrection
The Insect Birth Department
The Mammal Birth Department
The Evidence Department for Issuing Warrants
The Department of Controlling Bullying and Cheating
The Door God Department
The Jaundice Department
The Department of Pity and Sympathy
The Department of Signing Documents
The Signature Department (by this point, even the Taoists were beginning to lose track)
The Department for Three-Month-Long Meditation
The Toxicant Department (which had, by far, the most donation of any shrine in the place)
Lama Temple
In addition to Dongyue Temple, we also visited Lama Temple, the main site for the practice of Tibetan Buddhism in Beijing.
The story of exactly how Tibetan Buddhism got to Beijing is an interesting one. During its early, missionary period, Tibetan Buddhism spread among the peoples along China's Western and Northern edges, while more traditionally Chinese strains of Buddhism, such as Chan ("Zen"), dominated within China's borders. One of the places Tibetan Buddhism took hold was Mongolia, so that when the Mongolian Yuan Dynasty (see above) conquered China, it brought Tibetan Buddhism with it. The same happened again several centuries later with the Manchu (Manchurian) Qing Dynasty, and it is this later invasion we can thank for Lama Temple as it stands today.
Lama Temple was built in 1694, during the early years of the Qing Dynasty, and originally served as a residence for court eunuchs. It was converted to a lamasery shortly thereafter, and granted permission to use the signature yellow roofing of the imperial house after an emperor was buried there in 1735.
The temple is a blend of Han Chinese and Tibetan architecture, providing for some stunning little nooks and crannies utterly unlike anything else found in Beijing.
Unfortunately, photographs are prohibited in the worship spaces, which house enormous statues of the Buddha and look like something straight out of a classic kung fu film. These exterior shots should give some idea of the structure.
And yes, if you couldn't tell already, our visit was blessed by some afternoon rain. Not only did it take the edge off the day's heat, it also lent some welcome atmosphere to the scene.
Stay tuned for more shenanigans!
Sunday, August 10, 2008
Back in Seoul: The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly
Nana and I made it back to Seoul last night, at which point we promptly collapsed from exhaustion. The trip in a nutshell . . .
The Good: This was our shortest transpacific trip yet. Two legs (Pittsburgh-San Francisco, San Francisco-Seoul), a big flight of only ten hours, no pesky little connection at the end. As an added bonus, we actually left the airport (with all our luggage, somehow) around 6 PM, in plenty of time to catch the airport shuttle. All in all, it'd be hard to ask for more.
The Bad: We found out in San Francisco that we couldn't earn miles on our flight to Seoul. Of course, none of this was advertised in any of the fare or booking information. Watch out for this from Asiana Airlines. The number of miles involved meant it would have been worth it for use to pay a little more per ticket to be eligible for miles. This is the first time it's ever happened to us, so as you might imagine, we were quite unpleasantly surprised.
The Ugly: First, a tip for folks making an international connection through San Francisco: schedule at least a two-hour layover, possibly more, if you want good odds of making your second flight. There's no way to switch terminals at San Francisco without going back through security, which is annoying enough. Add to that the fact that check-in desks at your point of departure can no longer print boarding passes for international connections and you've got some pretty long waits. Even though our flight from Pittsburgh arrived four minutes early, we had to run about 1km to the international terminal, wait 20-25 minutes in the check-in line, produce baggage claim tickets for our luggage (which had been checked through from Pittsburgh), run to the security checkpoint, wait wait wait, then run to the gate. We made it with about 5-10 minutes to spare. And we wouldn't have, if Nana hadn't done some quick thinking in Pittsburgh: when we got new boarding passes at the gate for seats closer to the front of the plane, we turned in our old passes, which had the baggage claim tickets on the back. She actually left the jetway to get the old stubs from the gate attendant. If she hadn't, who knows where our luggage could be.
Second, I was in the country for all of 30 minutes before my first serious ajumma attack--though this time it came from a twenty-something woman just a bit too eager to get through international arrivals. We were right at the doors too the arrivals hall when, coming up from behind me, she ran over my foot with her baggage cart. Seriously: she hit me so hard my left foot was lodged under the front wheels of her cart. The rest of me, however, was not, and I fell sprawling to the floor in front of a good eight dozen onlookers. To her credit, the young woman did stop to apologize--give her ten years, though, and even that formality will be out the window. For a while there the foot looked pretty bad--a bit swollen, a bit discolored--but I'm happy to report it's doing better this morning. No real harm done, except to my hopes for a warm welcome back to Seoul!
The Good: This was our shortest transpacific trip yet. Two legs (Pittsburgh-San Francisco, San Francisco-Seoul), a big flight of only ten hours, no pesky little connection at the end. As an added bonus, we actually left the airport (with all our luggage, somehow) around 6 PM, in plenty of time to catch the airport shuttle. All in all, it'd be hard to ask for more.
The Bad: We found out in San Francisco that we couldn't earn miles on our flight to Seoul. Of course, none of this was advertised in any of the fare or booking information. Watch out for this from Asiana Airlines. The number of miles involved meant it would have been worth it for use to pay a little more per ticket to be eligible for miles. This is the first time it's ever happened to us, so as you might imagine, we were quite unpleasantly surprised.
The Ugly: First, a tip for folks making an international connection through San Francisco: schedule at least a two-hour layover, possibly more, if you want good odds of making your second flight. There's no way to switch terminals at San Francisco without going back through security, which is annoying enough. Add to that the fact that check-in desks at your point of departure can no longer print boarding passes for international connections and you've got some pretty long waits. Even though our flight from Pittsburgh arrived four minutes early, we had to run about 1km to the international terminal, wait 20-25 minutes in the check-in line, produce baggage claim tickets for our luggage (which had been checked through from Pittsburgh), run to the security checkpoint, wait wait wait, then run to the gate. We made it with about 5-10 minutes to spare. And we wouldn't have, if Nana hadn't done some quick thinking in Pittsburgh: when we got new boarding passes at the gate for seats closer to the front of the plane, we turned in our old passes, which had the baggage claim tickets on the back. She actually left the jetway to get the old stubs from the gate attendant. If she hadn't, who knows where our luggage could be.
Second, I was in the country for all of 30 minutes before my first serious ajumma attack--though this time it came from a twenty-something woman just a bit too eager to get through international arrivals. We were right at the doors too the arrivals hall when, coming up from behind me, she ran over my foot with her baggage cart. Seriously: she hit me so hard my left foot was lodged under the front wheels of her cart. The rest of me, however, was not, and I fell sprawling to the floor in front of a good eight dozen onlookers. To her credit, the young woman did stop to apologize--give her ten years, though, and even that formality will be out the window. For a while there the foot looked pretty bad--a bit swollen, a bit discolored--but I'm happy to report it's doing better this morning. No real harm done, except to my hopes for a warm welcome back to Seoul!
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