To South Korea with Love…..

In previous posts, I’ve blogged about our fabulous four month long trip of a lifetime around South East Asia. In this post I’m chronicling the grand finale destination of our Grand Asian Trip - South Korea.

Our middle son, James, who is an English teacher, lives in the city of Daegu in South Korea with his lovely Korean wife Sujeong and our baby grandson Aaron. During this visit it would be our grandson’s first birthday – a big event in any case or place – but in South Korea it is marked by the hosting of a big formal party for friends and family.

Our middle son, James, lives in the city of Daegu in South Korea with his lovely Korean wife Sujeong and our baby grandson Aaron. 

So a function room was booked, catering was organised, a professional photographer was present, and gift bags for the guests were stacked on a welcome table that was set up as a wonderful showcase for young Aaron’s first year of life.

For Aaron's first birthday party a function room was booked...

Our son bought a new suit for the occasion. Our daughter-in-law, who looked stunning, had been to visit a hairdresser and a makeup artist to prepare for the big day. Aaron had a new outfit too. We, however, arrived from Bangkok (+32 degrees C) to Seoul (-5 degrees C) shivering in the warmest clothes in our backpacks. I’d been hauling a pair of canvas sneakers, a pair of jeans and my favourite cashmere sweater all around South East Asia for four months, as I knew it would be cold in South Korea in February. My husband wasn't so prepared and so, shivering in his t-shirt and flip flops, he garnered a few strange looks on the bullet train from Seoul to Daegu - where he bought himself a pair of socks.

My husband garnered a few strange looks in Daegu...

We arrived in Daegu in the afternoon and we were met by Sujeong and Aaron. We had seen lots of recent photos and video of him over Facebook Messenger - but I was still in awe of him walking towards us at the station wearing a warm red coat and carrying an umbrella. Last time we had visited he was only just learning to crawl!

Aaron at Daegu station wearing a warm red coat and carrying an umbrella...

We had an amazing time in South Korea, we ate fabulous Korean food and spent lots of precious time with our Korean family and cuddling Aaron.

We had an amazing time in Korea...

With Sujeong as our driver, we took Aaron to Korean Toys R Us and bought him some birthday presents. We bought him a car that he can be pushed around in that will be great for the park in the summer, a baby ‘laptop computer’ that speaks about colours and shapes and other interesting things in both English and Korean - and a ‘baby’ mock TV remote that makes interesting sounds and that might distract him from his current obsession of operating the real one.

Buying our grandson Aaron a first birthday gift at Toys R Us

The Birthday Party was of course the main event of the week and it was a great success. It was also a wonderful occasion for us to get to know Sujeong’s extended family and to meet Aaron’s Korean great-grandparents for the first time. James’s co-workers also attended the party and it was lovely to meet them too.

It was wonderful to meets Sujeong’s extended family and James's co-workers...

A movie had been put together of Aaron’s first year and when the room darkened and the images were projected onto a big screen at the front of the room, I felt incredibly proud and emotional and full of love. Then the rest of the week flew by and it was again an emotional time. Time to say goodbye. It’s hard to go away, knowing that they live on the opposite side of the world from us and it will likely be another year until we are able to hug James and Sujeong and our little grandson Aaron. But, thanks to social media, we take comfort in that we can see them every day through pictures and video clips that make us feel we are part of their everyday lives and that they are part of ours. We wept and hugged and left on the bullet train back to the airport. As we climbed aboard the fastest train in the world for our two and a half hour journey, Sujeong gave me a little paper bag, which she said was a gift from her mum. When we opened it later, I saw it was a tray of my favourite dumplings. They are so yummy and I had eaten so many of them during the week that she had kindly thought to provide them as a snack for our journey!

A snack for the train - a tray of my favourite dumplings!

We flew from South Korea to Bangkok and from Bangkok to Doha. We had two hours in Doha before we boarded our flight to Houston USA - a non-stop journey of over sixteen hours, during which I watched back to back movies, ate tray food and drank wine. When we reached Houston, after a total of over twenty-eight hours in the air and with a fourteen hour time difference, we headed straight for a steakhouse where we ate prime Texas beef and drank beer before crashing out for two days and two nights at an airport hotel – except for of course waking up at 3am a couple of times – as our body clocks were all over the place.

On the 1^st March, we flew from Houston to San Pedro Sula in Honduras and from there we took a small plane over to our Caribbean island home of Utila, where we intend to settle down for the whole of the summer and to relax back into island time.

After our Grand Asian Adventure we intend to settle down in the Caribbean and relax back into island time....

Although, to comply with our visa entries, we will need to do a couple of visa runs, which means there is sure to be a couple of (yet unplanned) exciting mini trips off island to look forward to during the summer!

On the 1^st April, we are looking forward to our eldest son Ben and our youngest son Iain coming out to join us here on the island with their girlfriends for a couple of weeks. Both our sons are certified scuba divers and so my husband is looking forward to taking them diving in the warm clear waters of the Meso-American Barrier Reef - which is just off the island – the second largest barrier reef in the world.

As my next post is sure to be all about Caribbean island life – do please join me again here next time - and if you'd like to be notified of future posts via email you can sign up for that on the side bar!

Janice xx

The planes kept getting smaller!

We flew to the island of Utila, the smaller of the Bay Islands just off the coast of Honduras, from London via Miami and via San Pedro Sula in Honduras with American Airlines. We started off on a huge long range triple seven aircraft and then we connected to a slightly smaller one to San Pedro Sula. From there we flew along the coastline in a twelve-seater airplane to a place called La Ceiba - and on this flight I sat right at the front and found I had no choice but to put my feet in the cockpit between the two pilots!

Our twelve-seater airplane to La Ceiba Honduras

We landed in La Ceiba and had to wait for half an hour for our connecting flight for the final leg of our long journey. We saw a couple of planes land and take off again - going to the Cayman Islands and other exotic sounding places - then a tiny little Cessna airplane approached. We thought it looked rather old and battered. In fact, Trav quipped that he ‘pitied the poor buggers who had to get in that plane’.

As it turned out, we were those poor buggers. I’ve been in a small plane once before, a sea plane flying over the Maldives, but never anything like this - as it didn’t even have seat belts. However, you can see by our smiling faces as we were boarding that we were feeling rather excited by the adventure of it all. We landed at the airstrip on Utila safely, having experienced an exhilarating flight and having seen the outstanding beauty of the island by air. It was all simply breathtaking!

My next post is coming soon and I have a lot to tell you about what happened once we arrived on the island!

Trains, planes, taxis - and rapid machine gun fire!

Scotland to London Heathrow

Our long journey to Honduras began at our local village of Sanquhar train station where we caught a train to Glasgow. From Glasgow we flew with British Airways on the hottest day Scotland had seen so far this year. It was lovely to see Scotland from the air, bathed in sunshine, as we left for our three month long venture to the small Caribbean island of Utila.

Waiting for the train to Glasgow at our local train station

BA flights are always good in my opinion mainly because the flight attendants are attentive and the in-flight bar service is complimentary. Trav and I celebrated the start of our much anticipated trip with a Jack and Coke and a Gin and Tonic while on our way down to London Heathrow.

We stayed overnight at an airport hotel at Heathrow and the next morning took a bus to terminal three to catch our flight to Miami with American Airlines. I had read on travel review forums that some say AA stands for Awful Airlines, with old aircraft, surly inattentive flight attendants, expensive drinks and inedible food. Well, I have to tell you that Trav and I had open minds and a hopeful hearts as we boarded our AA flight - but I have to report that it was in fact as awful as we feared except on one count – the aircraft was fairly new!

At London Heathrow

Heathrow to Miami

Trav and I have been to Florida on a few occasions, flying into either Orlando or to Sanford, so transferring through Miami, the biggest and busiest airport in the world, seemed very exciting to us. As it turned out, it was a bit of an ordeal, with long queues at passport control and incredibly strict security procedures. It was the third of July, the day before American Independence Day, so we had expected it to be busy. What we hadn’t expected was having to collect and lug our luggage through the airport and re-check it through security again and then once again for our departure - even through our tickets clearly stated we were simply transferring to another flight. We were then subjected to a rigorous interview by a US Customs official (as was everyone else). We were asked the most probing of questions and by the time we reached the departure lounge where we could wait a couple of hours for our flight to Honduras, we needed a stiff drink. I told Trav to make it a double!

Double rum and coke at Miami International

Miami to San Pedro Sula, Honduras

To be honest with you, our arrival at San Pedro Sula Honduras was always the most concerning part of the trip to me, but I’m a level-headed person and so had prepared well. San Pedro Sula is reputedly ‘the most dangerous place in the world’ (outside a war zone) and is associated with drug wars, gang warfare and murder. The British Government advises visitors to exercise extreme caution. So, you may wonder why on earth we would travel to such a place or decide to spend the night there? Firstly, I don’t think I would have actually chosen to go there if we hadn’t needed to in order to reach our destination of Utila. You see, our AA flight landed after dark and flights don’t leave for Utila at night - as there are no lights on the airstrip on the island. Secondly, we could have traveled via Mexico or Belize or the larger Bay Island of Roatan, but this route turned out to be the most cost effective when we looked at a combination of flight schedules and journey plans. Thirdly, Trav and I do want to travel and meet people from different countries, cultures and backgrounds, and we believe that the danger has to be kept in perspective. After all, there are good people and bad people everywhere.

That said, the notoriety of San Pedro Sula could not be ignored or underestimated and so I did pre-book a hotel that I’d fully researched and I had emailed them in advance of our arrival asking for them to send a taxi to meet with us at the airport. This worked perfectly and a lovely smiling and enthusiastic driver was there holding up a sign with our name on it when we emerged from baggage collection. I had also made sure Trav and I had our cash and plastic safely tucked away in our ‘traveler's companion underwear’ – knickers and boxer briefs with cleverly hidden pockets in them!

Our AA flight to San Pedro Sula Honduras

As it was completely dark, we didn’t really see much of San Pedro Sula as we sped in our taxi towards our hotel for the night. Although, from our blacked out windows, it looked to me just like any other inner city. Our hotel was comfortable and secure and we were grateful for a refreshing shower after all our travelling. As we’d eaten on the plane, we just went straight off to sleep and planned to have a good breakfast in the morning, before starting what would be the final leg of the journey.

I woke after a good night's sleep and before I could properly come to full consciousness, I thought I heard the sound of woodpeckers being competitive in the trees outside our window. I mentioned this to Trav and he pointed out that there were no trees outside and probably no woodpeckers as after all we were in San Pedro Sula. It was, we heard, the sound of rapid machine gun fire coming from down the street. Gulp! After a good breakfast of orange juice, coffee, cereal and toast, we headed back to the airport in a taxi while rubber-necking every street corner that we passed!

In my next post, we fly from the mainland of Honduras to the Bay Island of Utila and I’ll have some fab photos to show you as the excitement really hots up…!

All packed and ready to go…!

Last week, when I started to think about what to pack for our three month long trip to Utila, I was thinking minimal and feeling smug. Today, I will admit it was a bit of a struggle to come in under the 23Kg luggage allowance for American Airlines. And, despite my best intentions, by the time I had stuffed in all the last minute ‘essentials’ my suitcase was overweight and I had to start unpacking and making decisions about what I really needed to take and what I should leave behind.

 

All the scuba diving gear is essential of course and I decided that I could not part with any of my toiletries, as it was going to be impossible to get three months supply of shampoo, creams, sun lotions, potions etc, except perhaps at really steep prices - so they all had to stay. Ditto the bug sprays, the torches, the tea bags. I soon realised had to start economising on clothes. Booooo-hoooo…!

Oh well, now that we are teetering just under our luggage allowance, our lovely neighbour is taking us to the village station. From there we will travel to Glasgow by train and then onto the airport by bus. From Glasgow we will fly to London – where we are staying overnight before flying to Miami. From Miami we will connect to a flight to mainland Honduras. We are staying overnight in the notorious town of San Pedro Sula and then catching a small plane over to the island of Utila the next day.

Where is Utila you may ask…? Well, Utila is the smaller of what is known as The Bay Islands off the coast of Honduras. It is located on the mesoamerica coral reef – reputedly the second best coral reef in the world after the Great Barrier Reef off Australia. It is a truly unique island destination and a scuba divers paradise. It is also a hub for whale shark viewing, which as a diver, is what most appeals to Trav. It appeals to me because it is said to be ‘the Caribbean as it used to be’. It has a quaint central town that is said to be ‘the Key West of twenty years ago’ and I like the sound of all that laid back unspoilt charm. You can find out more about Utila at: http://utilaguide.com/

Trav and I have rented a beach apartment and from there he will go out diving each day while I write. The first of my works-in-progress ‘Castaway in the Caribbean’ is planned for release in November this year and is a romantic adventure novel. Where better to be inspired than on a tiny and remote Caribbean island..?

So that’s all for now my lovely peeps.

My next update will be from the Caribbean island of Utila!