Chickety China, Part 1: On the Boat to China

September 18th: Departure Day
A beautiful, crisp, blue-skied, autumn Saturday in Korea! The weather had just changed to something I've been craving, and now I had to leave. Oh well, on the bright side, today was a travel day, so I was going to spend most of it walking to the bus and on the boat. I finished packing (yes, the day I leave and I'm still packing), and double checked the gas and hot water were off and all the electronics were unplugged, then went downstairs to do meet up with Janetta to begin our journey to Beijing.

We had a short Metro ride from Bupyeong to Dongincheon, and the plan was to catch one of the two buses that would take us to the Incheon International Port. We had a bit of difficulty tracking down which exit from the Dongincheon Underground Market (read: Dongincheon Labyrinth) would take us to the correct bus stop, but we eventually found our way and flagged down a young Korean man (most high school and uni students have some English skills and we had a tiny bit of Korean knowledge) to help us figure out if we were on the right side of the road--we weren't. It was back under the street to cross over to the correct side--Asia loves underground crosswalks, which would be awesome if the streets were in a grid and the crossings went directly across the street every time. We followed the folks with suitcases and eventually found the port.

Walking up to the main building of the port, Janetta pointed out that tons of people were moving things out of suitcases and into boxes then leaving the suitcases in stacks off to the side. It was pretty crazy. We passed a couple of older men (probably nearing 90) carrying stacks of boxes coming to three times their size on their backs secured with straps made of packing tape. Sadly, we couldn't get a good picture of this impressive looking display, but we did get some photos of the cargo swapping action.


Then it was time to queue. We stood in a "line" (read: a mob that split off at different windows) for about an hour to get our actual tickets and room assignments. After the madness of defensive queuing (pushing and line cutting aren't uncommon in Korea and are regular practice in China), we had to get Janetta a re-entry visa since South Africans are only issued single entry visas, even if it's a year-long work visa, unless multi-entry is requested; Americans are automatically granted multi-entry for work visas as far as I understand it.

So, it was more waiting. This time, we were able to sit in a hallway that wasn't crowded and munch on some Asian pear slices. The visa process didn't take much time, so that helped. At this point, Janetta hadn't eaten in quite a while (she had to take a bus for about an hour to meet me at the Metro station near my house and had only had some grapes for breakfast at 9ish--it was about 2pm by the time the visa was processed and we had our tickets), so we headed to E Mart and McDonalds.

I had heard on Alien's Day Out, a blog by a vegan in Korea, that E Mart had Purely Decadent Soy Ice Cream. It's true! Calorie counting be damned, I had me (well, I shared with Janetta) a pint of Chocolate Brownie Almond and it was delicious! We bought some snackage for the ferry and Janetta ate at McDonald's.

We got on the ferry and explored a bit, it was like having a 3 star hotel on the water, things were clean but not fancy. The ferry also had a restaurant, bar, karaoke room and duty free shop. We were rooming with two young Chinese women (we paid to get a 4 sleeper instead of the room o'bunks--First Class, baby!) there was a mini-fridge with complimentary bottled water and a nice little table in the room. It was nice to have space to walk around and the option to sleep if we wanted. I recommend the ferry to those on a budget and with a little more time (it takes 15 hours to get from Incheon to Qingdao).


Janetta and I met another South African teaching English in Korea, Albert, he was also on his way to Beijing via train from Qingdao. Albert lives on one of the Islands to the west of Incheon and is planning to move to France to live with his girlfriend. This was just the first English teacher we met on our epic journey of epicness.

We got to Qingdao intact.