안녕하세요 (annyeonghaseyo): The Korean Experience

Happy Eid Mobarak everyone (who celebrates)!! Hope you have a good family time. I bet you’re all feeling a bit lazy to go back to work/study. Haha.

Well, I was in Busan, South Korea last week for a conference. But I had a great days there too. Been a really fun week. I was there with a colleague with whom I’ve been working during the past 2 years in the faculty of medicine for a joint project of social HIV research. This year, we were granted with a chance to join an international conference on HIV & AIDS in Busan, South Korea which was held from 26-30^th August 2011.

a view of Busan from a hotel room

As I said earlier, I was excited to visit South Korea, as I was a fans of South Korean movies, haha. I am also a big fans of cute Korean guys ;) so the whole week I spent there was a blast! I got the chance to have first hand experience of Korean culture (a bit of it). When we got home we wanted to stay longer, unfortunately we were way too innocent (it never occurred to us to change our flight schedule – you can do it without paying large sum of money there).

So, for this week I will post my thoughts and experience of being in Busan beginning from today’s post.

My flight departed Yogya at around 19:55, well actually it was delayed for several minute, and unfortunately when I arrived at Soekarno Hatta airport, the connecting flight to Seoul was a bit earlier than scheduled (or so it seems to be). So, when I stepped my foot on Soetta, I found out there were three men holding a paper with my name on it. Haha. Actually, they were also calling out my surname, only I didn’t notice. I happened to know they were looking for me when I accidently looked at the paper they were holding. That’s my name!! ;p Garuda did really take a good care of me – well they were responsible for my delay. A guy escorted me to Korean Air – check in desk, while the other two went on looking for my baggage. Lucky me.

So, after a little drama happening, I met my colleague who arrived earlier than me at the designated gate for our flight. Then the Korean experience began.

In the plane, there were only a few passengers with Indonesian look or Western look, most were Korean or Oriental looking. So were the flight attendants. God, they were soooo cute! We felt like we were sitting on a movie theater to watch Korean drama with all good looking and skinny girls, only we were sitting on a plane!! Haha. All of them had fair complexion, and sooo slim! And the way they talked were Korean-drama like. Hahaha. I thought I was more culture-shock during this journey, than when I went to Sydney. I sat next to a middle-aged Korean man who liked to shop duty free stuffs, or almost all people in the plane did too. The plane provided a slipper, and I guessed Korean passengers immediately changed their footwear into those white slippers. Perhaps, just some Indonesian and Western passengers didn’t.

After a 7-hour (more or less) flight, we arrived safely at Incheon International Airport, Seoul where (almost) everyone spoke English – I mean the airport’s staffs. Then we checked in (again) to our flights to Busan – the second largest city in South Korea. We met several other Indonesian people who were also going to Busan to attend the same conference.

Seoul - Incheon International Airport

Okay, I must stop here, until we meet again folks. I’ll bring more stories!