Picture this... a rusted, blue 1994 Kia Sephia with leopard print seat covers, new tires, but BAD shocks, riding low to the ground, with a car seat in the middle back seat, and bags stuffed around both sides of the car seat, a blonde toddler in the car seat, a blonde man driving, and a highlighted blonde woman in the passenger seat, and a bright metallic-purple soccer ball in the rear window of the car, and you have pictured us on our highway adventure driving from Kunsan to Pusan, all by ourselves, not understanding a lick of Korean, and with poorly written instructions on how to get to Pusan from Kunsan. (How do I know they were poorly written instructions, you might ask, b/c half of it was spelled incorrectly, the other half was in picture form of the exits we would see, and they were 5 years old.)
Surprisingly, we made it to the outskirts of Pusan without a hitch. We managed to figure out when not to exit when the directions said to exit and find our way without having to stop for help which was HUGE for me. I even figured out the yellow signs with the picture of a camera on them with a white sign underneath that had a number of meters below it was a warning for a highway camera that many meters ahead. Jay did not know this, and apparently instead of being pulled over by a cop for speeding, they just take pictures of your license plate when speeding on the highways, and you have to pay all the tickets in one lump sum when you go to register the vehicle. That could be pretty painful and there are stories of outgoing pilots selling their POS Kunsan Special cars to incoming pilots for $600 bucks or less and then when the new owner goes to register their new car, they're hit with hundreds of dollars of speeding tickets the previous owner incurred and failed to tell the new owner about. It's a joke to them, but I could see how it wouldn't be so funny when you're the new owner and the old one is long gone. So anyhow, Jay got busted, I'm sure, a few times along the road, and it will be interesting to see how much he has to pay in speeding fines when he has to re-register the car in a year. It doesn't help that the max speed on the highways was only 60 mph (although it does look impressive when listed as 100 km/h).
So we get to Pusan, everything is going great, we switch from the 5 year old directions to the directions given to us by the guys Jay will be working with at Gimhae International Airport, and although the instructions were a bit sparse, we seemed to be following them easily. We went through the first toll, as instructed, and our next instruction to follow was to stay straight until we got through a second toll, then to take the first right after the second toll. Easy enough. What the instructions didn't mention was the highway was going to fork and you had to make the decision ahead of time to get into a left hand lane to stay straight (where the 2nd toll was) or go right and go into the city. I was looking at the city scenery around us, not aware of this conumdrum (sp?) when all of a sudden Jay started YELLING, "LEFT OR RIGHT?!! LEFT OR RIGHT?!! WHAT DO THE DIRECTIONS SAY???! LEFT OR RIGHT??!!" Confused, I refocused on the task at hand, saw what was happening on the road, quickly looked at the directions which told us to continue straight to the 2nd toll. Stupidly, I started yelling back, "TOLL!!! TOLL!!! TOLL!!!" not quite sure which way (left or right) was straight. Mia, of course, had no idea what we were yelling about and started her frantic, panicky scream-cry which only added to the tension Jay and I were suddenly feeling, and Jay took the command decision and veered right, while I kept yelling, "NO!!! NO!!! NO!!!" Too late, we were now in the midst of a city with no English street signs, no neat street markings, too many cars, too many pedestrians, too much chaos. We both knew instantly we had made a BIG mistake.
After driving around in circles for what felt like an eternity, yelling at each other about whose fault it was we were lost in the first place, and trying to shush or placate a crying Mia, we finally found our way back onto the highway we should never have gotten off in the first place. We have both agreed in the future, we will never drive in the city after this experience, and will learn to take the subways and buses if the need ever arises to go downtown. We did manage to get back on track, and we finally found the Lotte Hotel which is to be our temporary residence for the next 3 weeks or so. Of course, we drove to the wrong side of the hotel and stood around looking like idiots waiting for someone to come take our bags and park our car (our super stylish 1994 Kunsan Special), until Jay went into the lobby, found the guy who was to help us get settled, and drove to the right side of the hotel where we were met by the hotel greeters and everything started to fall into place.
Right away, we realized we were at a hotel far nicer to what we are usually accustomed to, and we both felt out of place in our "road trip" clothes of old jeans, pullovers, and sneakers. We also both admitted how silly we felt pulling up to such a nice hotel in our beater (and got valet parking for it, too) and wondered how silly we must have looked to everyone else as the hotel greeters pulled the massive amounts of luggage out of our car that was squished into every conceiveable space we could manage to fit something into. Yeah, we were feeling pretty "Beverly Hillbilly"-ish, and that feeling hasn't quite rubbed off, yet. I'm hoping soon it will. Oh well.
So the guy who met us, Paul, a very nice gentleman from Georgia, who likes to gamble and insisted we weren't putting him out, he came to gamble anyway, helped us find our way to check in, we went directly to the 33rd floor where they had an express check in for "club members" and we were given our keys and such for our room on the 34th floor. We went to our room, and were both astounded by how posh everything was. We have an incredible view of downtown Pusan with mountains in the background, everything is high tech, up to date, very, very nice. The bathroom alone is the size of Jay's entire apartment in Kunsan. The tub is one of those extra long ones, so we don't have to bend our knees when we sink all the way in. The commode is, get this, electronic, and it has a bidet (that has a pulsing feature, too), a butt spray, and a butt dryer, and... a HEATED SEAT! We both think Mia will be quite eager to potty train once she sits on the seated heat. I even have my own vanity to put all my makeup and hair crap so it isn't in Jay's way and the counters aren't cluttered. The bed is king sized so I can sprawl out and not kick Jay, and the mattress is so comfy, I could live in this bed!!! Mia loves the bed, too, but she has to sleep in her pack n play so she can't sneak out of bed during the night or in the morning (which she has done before when we forgot the pack n play on other trips).
This hotel also has a department store, with stores not found in ordinary department stores in the U.S. There's Prada, Gucci, Chanel (a lot of Chanel stores), Missoni, etc... . You get the picture, way too expensive for me. Not that I don't fantasize about being brave enough to shop in any of those stores someday, just not yet. There's also a supermarket on the bottom floor, and a subway right next to the hotel. There's a cinema on one floor, and loads of restaraunts like TGIF, Subway, and Krispy Kremes. There's also a CoffeeBean across the street from the hotel (SWEET!) although, I don't think I'll be spotting Nicole Richie or any other celebrities there.
Yep, we're staying in a 5-star hotel, in the middle of downtown Busan, and I'm feeling a bit spoiled. I'm glad I kept my expectations low before coming out here, because now I'm pleasantly surprised at how beautiful everything is, and eager to do some exploring and learning about Koreans during these next few years. Seriously, if any of you want to visit, I don't think anyone will be disappointed visiting Korea... just don't fly over with a toddler, unless you like your pleasure with a little pain and suffering...
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