Journey To Seoul

The reality of the distance suddenly hit me when the pilot announced that our route will take us over Ulan Bator, that’s Mongolia. Wow! I’ve never flown over that bit before.
The flight is rather pleasant. Managed to sweet talk the check-in desk clerk in Frankfurt Airport to change my seat to window. -Always did like staring into the big black void.
From London I sat next to an English guy Alistair who work as a photographer in Hong Kong. He told me a bit about Korea as he’d been there for a little while. He gave me his business card with a Peppy’s rd address. That’s five minutes walk from my house well, ex-house. Beat that! And they say the world is small… I always said it wasn’t quiet big enough. I am sitting next to a Korean guy right now heading to Seoul. He is with a group of other men. They all head a good little jeer at him, having had the ‘fortune’ to seat next to a foreign chick. I made him pay for the ‘privilege (sic), getting up twice already and climbing over him. ;o))) hihi
Mike made me a fantastic leaving present a compilation CD with some very groovy songs.All 68 of those that even got the year of my birth right…well, almost! What is incredible that he finished it ON TIME! Well Done Mikey! Way to go!

Koreans apparently don’t use deodorant. Well it seem they don’t need to go to the loo much either. My neighbourhood Koreans never visited said facilities once so far and the crew is just about to serve breakfast. This means we are going to fly over Ulan Bator already and it's finally polite to open the window shades. (Flying eastward overnight explains that) - But we never did get to see the Mongolian capital. Anyhow I was quite shocked by the view and I thought there isn’t much left that can still do that to me. It’s a flat ‘sea’ of snow on a seemingly featureless landscape as far as the eye can see and that I saying something because from up here you can see really far.
We just got to some more interesting bit it looks like small hills, no, actually…if you clawed into a snow covered sandbox with glove covered fingers you’d get this effect.
The first sign of human intervention a group of perfect circles more or less even sizes but different shades of sand yellow and brown. (Later I found out it was the Gobi desert.) Now the hills are getting higher and the scenery turned into something like a frozen Sahara. Interestingly, higher the hills less the snow cover? I guess it must be windy down there and nothing to hold the snow in place?

Koreans may not have need for a deodorant but the smell of their feet makes up for the asumed lack of odour anywhere else. 'Dear flight passangers of all nations please for goodness sake do wash your feet and wear clean socks for your journey! It would be much appreaciated. Thank you!' – I’d carry on whinging about stinky breaths too but it might be taking the subject a bit too far.

I’m amazed at the human capacity to live in the most desolate places. There are actual roads down in this inhospitable region. I wouldn’t like to think what happens out here to those whose car breaks down. I guess these rods are leading to mines and industrial land in te edge of China.

The tide was low when we entered South Korea. - The last time I saw such a long strech of wet send reaching into the sea was in Cherating Malaysia where you coul walk a good 20 minutes into the 'sea' when the water is out. - I guessed it must be Full Moon which turend out to be just about right. the huge white disk was hanging over to the South of my apartment window on my first night in South Korea.