3/1 Seoul to Hong Kong

3/1/2013: On Friday morning I packed up my bags and made my way to the airport for my flight to Hong Kong. On the way to the airport, a Korean guy around my age chatted me up for the whole trip. His name is Jiwon Chu and admitted that he always approaches white people so he can practice his English. He was a nice guy, but was definitely a close-talker (as his culture encourages) but I struggled to not let it bother me and rather thought about what I had eaten since brushing my teeth. He also wouldn't face me straight on, he would just talk to me super close from the side - I was later told that that is normal in Korea. I think we were just slowly spinning while talking to each other, though, as I kept trying to face him and he kept trying to stay to my side.

I had to race to catch my flight out of Seoul because I'd forgotten to print out my itinerary for my flight leaving Hong Kong and the Air China lady told me they might want to see documentation proving that I have plans to leave the region, so I had to go find a printer really quick. I got through the gate as they were closing, and then we sat on the runway for an hour and I missed my connecting flight in Beijing. I caught another flight to HK 2 hours later out of Beijing, and as usual everything took twice as long as initially planned and I arrived at my hostel around 11pm. I met a nice couple on the flight to HK - they were heading to HK for vacation, and had also flown from Seoul and missed the connecting flight in Beijing. Anna, a Canadian, is teaching English in Seoul, and Hector, her husband, a Mexican, is trying to teach Spanish but apparently Koreans want Spanish teachers from Spain - not Mexico - and he's having a harder time finding a teaching job. They were fun to talk to and they let me borrow their HK guide book so I could read up and have a general idea of what to do during my time in HK.

The hostel seems to be more of a loose grouping of apartments in an apartment building, with the front desk on the third floor and rooms throughout the building from the 2nd floor to the 10th floor. After the girl working at the hostel showed me to my room, I heard a knock at my door. When I answered it, it was an Asian lady who had been milling around at the front desk of the hostel. She said "you took my room! You took my room!" Before I had a chance to answer, the girl from the hostel came up from behind and slammed the door shut and dragged the other lady off. I had forgotten the passkey for the WiFi, so I went back upstairs to get it and was approached by the same Asian lady from before. Again, she said I'd taken her room. I said that it wasn't her room and that I'd already paid for it. During this conversation, there was a tall blonde guy hovering behind her obviously interested in the conversation. The lady continued, "We just decided to get a room, you took the last one. I'll buy it from you!" I was pretty sketched out at this point. The blonde guy laughed and said to the lady "ha nice try." I told her I wasn't going to sell it to her, and the blonde guy was like "aw that's too bad, guess you'll have to go home." That was weird. That guy was staying at the hostel (I saw him the next morning). So my guess was that he had picked her up (even though she looked 40 and he looked 25) and they were going to get a room together (and that he was staying in a dorm-style room with no privacy), or else my hostel was frequently used by hookers to pull tricks. I slept uncomfortably that night.