Korea 2014: Flying with Delta
Back in the spring, I scored some awesomely cheap tickets to go to Korea. Since I wasn’t sure of my plans, I opted to book the ticket for a week. People were like, “That’s such a waste!” until they realized that I paid $450 taxes in.
Now, I was terribly worried up til that point. Would they retract the flight? Would it be a crappy flight? I’m going to regret this aren’t I??
But nope. I didn’t.
I actually had a great time, aside from the fact that one of the individuals on the plane (employee) was rather…borderline rude, one of the other individuals (passenger), was a total space hog and kept kicking me awake. Finally, Delta broke a wheel on my way to Korea, and then severely dented the luggage on my way back, DESPITE having a fragile sticker. I did email them, and never heard back. Which is fine, since the reimbursement probably wouldn’t have been much. Was just a tad annoying to have to deal with the issue when I got to Korea, as it wouldn’t roll.
In any case, let’s get back to the trip.
Check in was super quick. There were a few people in front of me, but nothing serious. I haven’t flown since my 2010 Korea trip, so I found out that the US entry process was different. I quite liked the new system, since it seemed faster. I ended up getting through everything so quick, that I had to kill like 45 minutes before my flight.
My flight included a small just under 2 hour layover in Detroit. Fine by me.
The little bus plane wasn’t anything cool, so I didn’t take pictures. Actually I was trying to focus on not getting up to go to the washroom, as I had just finished a venti frappachino lol.
It wasn’t THAT long, and yet there was an indoor train! I had fun taking it a few times. I mean I had to kill time anyway
There was a Sanrio store, but I didn’t need anything, and my bag was big.
I LOVED that I had absolutely no problems finding a place to charge my stuff. I actually didn’t realize that I would have USB access on flight (despite the fact that BrutalTurtle had said that it was no common for planes to have), so I was desperate to ensure that everything was charged. My section for boarding was packed, but I just moved to the next gate, which was luckily empty.
When we boarded, we were greeted with a lovely hello and personal address. Nice touch. On board, we also got a sleeping mask with earplugs, and headphones thanks to Billabong.
Heck yah I was going to get a beer.
(On that note, I was ID’ed for the VIP movie at Cineplex Odeon. I don’t get carded when I buy liquor anymore…so I was pretty annoyed I got ID’ed there. Thankfully I had my ID, for other reasons though…however, the Cineplex Odeon girl was SUPER rude, we ended up leaving for another theatre. I mean if you suck your teeth at me, when it is YOUR mistake, yes I will make it known to you see what I did there lol)
Little while later we got food. I was actually surprised. It was pretty good. I had been having food sensitivity issues that week, so I wasn’t sure if I could stomach it. Basically certain smells set me off. If I were married, I would have thought I was preggo, haha. The breakfast egg was yummy, but yes…that didn’t agree with me.
So here is the feet of the annoying Ahjumah. Basically, I occupied one end seat, she occupied the other end. So with two seats in between, you would think that she would take one and I would take one. It started off that way, then she decided to stretch into my territory, and sleep. I fell asleep at one point, but she kept kicking me! I didn’t get any more than 20 minutes blocks of sleep because of her. Eventually I was so sick and tired, I stretched out my legs, which woke her up. When she went to the bathroom, I placed my bag on the seat so she couldn’t cross over, and rested my feet on my bag. Still felt kicking, but at least she wasn’t touching me directly. Oh, she also couldn’t stop coughing -___- (The red bit is my leg)
Luckily, despite that annoyance, I was able to turn my attention to things to watch and listen to. My flight had individual screens. This way, you could watch whatever you want. It also had a USB outlet, so you can charge or whatever.
Breakfast. Buns come cold, so place it over your meal to warm it up. Same with the butter!
The bathroom was a mess by the end of the flight. Water on the floor, tissues all over the place. I mean people, not hard to be clean :T
I also thought I would be dehydrated, so I bought bottled water before boarding. But they gave out bottles of water before sleeping, and checked in if you needed water again a little while later.
To me, these little details were important. I didn’t want to dehydrate, so it was good to have them. The employees also were willing to help certain people change spots, since there was a number of places that were empty. This one really tall guy had 4 seats to himself. Was good cause otherwise he would have been stuck with the window seat.
Oh, and just my luck, there were 4 babies in my vicinity!! HAHA…
I felt really bad for the parents, as they were doing all they could to keep their infants quiet…but one just cried pretty much the entire time. Thank goodness for the movie and earplugs.
Stuff to listen to. I was so surprised that there was TLC! Waterfalls baby :D
Landed in Incheon South Korea! You have to walk a bunch, then take all these stairs/escalators down, down…down. Then take a small shuttle train.
Once you get off, you head off to get checked, fingerprinted…this actually took a long time. I was all sweaty by then, as it was really REALLY warm.
I got my luggage, and ran off to find G25 for my EG Sim card. Which I will get into in tomorrow’s post.
Once I had the lovely gentlemen install the sim card, I wandered back and forth, confused as to where I needed to go for the trains. FINALLY made my way downstairs…and
This is where you go to be led towards the all stop trains, or express train to Seoul Station. I opted for the cheaper all stop, as it was only a 7 minute-ish difference from the Express Train. Plus, the express train was more expensive. I could have taken the Airport Bus, which was about $10, but…I didn’t.
An hourish after landing, I got to the place I was staying at. That review will be up next week. A review I didn’t want to write since I am still PISSED about it. But, what can you do. It was just my luck to get screwed over.
This was on my return at Incheon ICN airport. I needed to take one shot before I boarded :P
Okay…
So that was my process of arrival into ICN.
I’m going to do my best to share the rest on the last few weekends that we have left of this year. I’ll be scheduling those posts asap.
Tagged: Airplane, delta, Detroit, DTW, EG Sim, ICN, Incheon, korea, Korea 2014, Seoul
