travel diary — day 215

In australia, korea, movies, travel on 24 October 2009 tagged aaron, airport, beer, brisbane, bus, canada, christina, cinema, co-workers, coffee, colleagues, craig, customs, family, flight, immigration, incheon, ipswich, kepco, kimchi jiggae, korea, lunch, motorbike, movie, one week, packing, photography, pizza, plane, quarantine, restaurant, seoul, seoul photo club, sleep, sydney, tom, transfer, travel, wedding, wine with no comments

day 211 — after a sleep-in, i went out to a korean res­taur­ant for lunch. i just can’t get enough kim­chi jig­gae dur­ing my stay in korea. after that, christina and i went to see the movie ‘one week’ at the cinema. it’s a really good movie actu­ally. it was a bit weird at the start, but turned into a good film. the basic plot is about a guy who dis­cov­ers he has can­cer. he decides to buy a motor­bike and ride across canada.

din­ner was pizza and wine … and a nice buzz … and sleep.

day 212 — today i spent the morn­ing at home and then vis­ited my kepco col­leagues for lunch. i arrived just on lunch­time and we all went out to a chinese res­taur­ant. it was good to sit and chat with every­one again. we had a nice time. after the lunch we all went back and had cof­fee in the office. i stayed for about an hour and then went home. i spent the after­noon online and doing some packing.

day 213 — i spent a lazy day at home, doing work online and pack­ing. in the even­ing i met tom and aaron again. it was my last chance to see them for a very long time, so we had some beers and a few laughs. at the bar there was a really drunk amer­ican guy who kept get­ting thrown out but kept com­ing back. the guy was an arse and even­tu­ally the police came to sort things out.

day 214 — i fin­ished pack­ing my bags and waited for christina. she planned to fin­ish early and go with me to the air­port. we got the bus to incheon, had a cof­fee together in the air­port, said our good­byes, and i boarded the plane for my flight home to australia.

it was an overnight flight and i didn’t get much sleep. i watched ‘night at the museum 2′ to pass the time and dozed a little.

day 215 — today was a moment­ous day. my plane touched down in sydney air­port, mark­ing my first time on aus­tralian soil in eight years. i was actu­ally a little nervous about return­ing to aus­tralia … i don’t know why though.

i arrived in sydney and went through the immig­ra­tion routines. actu­ally, the arrival card men­tioned that i had to declare dried fruits (as well as numer­ous other things). i did have dried fruit, so rather than risk get­ting into trouble … aus­tralian quar­ant­ine are ridicu­lously strict … i declared it and after a brief check i was through the door and on my way to domestic transfers.

i had to rush to get my flight to bris­bane, but made it on time. craig was sup­posed to be at the air­port to pick me up, but i couldn’t find him. i only had large notes and didn’t even have enough change to call. so i waited around for over half an hour. i con­sidered buy­ing a cof­fee so that i could get change, but i saw craig (finally) and we headed off.

we drove to craig’s house and then to his par­ents’ house in ipswich. i dumped my gear and had a short nap. that even­ing was a spe­cial din­ner lead­ing up to the wed­ding. craig’s par­ents were meet­ing inyoung’s fam­ily for the first time. so we all went out to a nice thai res­taur­ant (i came for moral sup­port). the din­ner went well and we all returned home to crash.

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