Troublesome Travel

It all started with a change in flight times. Instead of leaving at 5:30am, we were now due to leave sometime before 10am. All good, despite only finding out about it the night before.

So we turn up at the airport, and they can't find any record of us for the day. "Are you sure it's the 25th?," asked the check-in assistant when we're at the airport, ready to go. Turns out we were actually suppose to depart on the 26th. My mate (K) immediately offers to let us punch him in the face for the trouble and mistakes.

 Flash forward 12hrs, and we get an extra confirmation of our tickets to make sure there won't be anymore problems. Unfortunately there is a very big problem - my name is spelled incorrectly. Shaye Antony Holmes, ready for departure! Without a correct name on the ticket, it's impossible for me to get on board a plane, and it's proving impossible for expedia to contact each airline to get it changed. We had to cancel the flights before midnight in order to still get a refund, and rebook them again the next day. However, it'd take 3 business days for the refund to through.

We scrounge up another $5k between us to rebook more tickets, while the refund money is still in the air, scheduled to depart on the 27th.

We're at the airport again, and K loses his passport immediately after using the self-check-in kiosks. We spend the next two hours looking for it without success. K heads of to internal affairs to get an expensive new passport minted, but we quickly encounter a new problem - he's not even scheduled to fly that day. Somehow, his ticket has been cancelled, and he's not feeling too good about the whole situation anymore.

Flash forward a few days, and the original refund money has now gone through, and he's set to join us in Seoul a full week after we all intended to leave initially. In the mean time, J and myself have found the hostel (after a $15 40MB data pack to aide us), ventured into the subway system to find one of the big department stores (540 shops contained therein), gone out for dinner a couple times, and explored the university district in preparation for the big nights to come.

Most importantly though, is relaxing with one of these nearby.