I have set aside a portion of my time today for emailing and trying to reply to people because I know that soon I will be having trouble getting to internet. In two days Andrea and I will be leaving my hometown of Collie to travel northwards on a roadtrip into the outback, and I might not be able to do anything about emailing or the internet very much.
I'll backtrack a little... start at the start, you know. Forgive me for repeating myself if you have heard some of this before.
So we finished working at Summer English camp at Gyeongsang University in South Korea. We left a few days later, but only after a painful experience at the airport. The wrong airport. Yes, we went to the wrong airport. We went to Incheon Airport near Seoul instead of Busan airport which was on the other side of the country and on the front side of our e-tickets. My luggage started to burst open on the (long; 5-6 hours) way to Incheon airport and so I had to repack it and then get it secured before going to the check-in counter where we found out that we had come to the wrong airport. Wacky hijinx then ensued. Much running around with multiple Cathay Pacific staff trying to help us get to Australia. Here is a quick summary:
Secure my luggage W5000 (AU$ 6.25)
Travel agents downstairs all just closed for the day.
Bought new tickets - W900,000 each. (AU$1,128.63)
Paid excess luggage fee - W600,000 ($AU752.42)
Andrea's credit cards wouldn't work.
Time running out to catch only relevant plane to Hong Kong.
Andrea uses Australian spending money to get ticket. I contribute difference - have to withdraw cash from Australian bank account - transferred all money from Korean account to Aust account that morning - AU$ 20.00 in ATM charges.
Rushed through checkpoints and finally get on plane feeling quite stressed only to realise that the ticket they just sold us from Hong Kong to Perth is on the same flight as our original tickets, on same flight at same time, so we spent lots of money on something we already had.
Get to Australia, go straight to hometown of Collie, rain everyday for one week.
Organise refund for plane tickets we never used.
Korean travel agent charges us refund processing fee - AU$ 76.00
ANZ bank charges me transfer fee to pay for refund fee - AU$ 26.00
Refund will take about one month. Still waiting to find out how much we will get back.
Since we got to Australia we have spent time in Perth, Collie, Busselton, Bunbury, this general area.
My mum recently bought a house in another town so besides travelling around and being a tourist (Andrea has never been to Australia before) I have been packing up my stuff and been trying to be useful and moving some of it to the new place.
We also got our picture in the local newspaper. I'll try to attach the article.
So anyway, I'm sorry again if you've been waiting for a reply from me or wondering how I can be so busy that I don't have time to write you a few lines. We're in and out of home so our internet access has been sporadic as well. If you have written to me then I will reply when I can. Please be patient. If it is something urgent or important to you then let me know and I will make it a priority.
Bye for now
Adrian
PS - Andrea says hello to all.
PPS - I have to and clean out some lockers now so that we can move them to the shed at mum's new place in Donnybrook later today (if the weather is good).
Click on the image below to get a high-resolution version of the article that appeared in the local newspaper.
