The Great Visa Caper

Whoever said I was too experienced to learn anythign from a newbie traveler would be wrong wrong wrong.

So Katelyn, Joe and Mary picked me up at the ass crack of dawn today. The ride to the airport a little neverous all around but we try and keep things light.

We park in short term so Joe an Mary can walk in with us. We head to priority checkin and my spidey senses should have been going off at this point. It seems that they can only print my boarding pass for the DTW-LAX leg.. strange but not completely unusual.

But then Katelyn is able to get her full set of boarding passes… well I just chalk it up to “we’ll figure it out”…. damn foreshadowing.

But before we find out what the future holds we enjoy some omletes a cup of coffee and some really nice cold water for our water bottles at the sky club.

Then its onto the flight. I can feel a bit of nervousness from Katelyn but I prattle on about this that and the other thing about airports and plane to try and keep things light and easy.

We get to board early with my status which is nice… its always nice to be nice to the nice… I chat up about what the gangway is like, what kind of sounds she can hear while we wait, during takeoff and then after takeoff. All goes swimingly aside from the crazy tiny seats for othe 4.5 hour flight to LA.

Then the fun starts. First, if any of you have ever heard me rant about airports, you know tha LAX is in my opinion the craphole of the universe. But supposedly they renovated everything so I’m holding out good hope. Alas.. no joy. The domestic terminal is the same pig with a different shade of lipstick.

But then we get to take a lovely busride around the concourse over to the international terminal. Of course the delta app says there is a Sky Club in this terminal.. nope. Second hint of something wrong.

But we’re 2.5 hours early to our gate and there are already 6 people in line in front of us and it is moving SLOW. Clue number three.

Finally we make it to the front, I use my usual patter with the gate agent to get us positioned for better seats when the guillitine falls. He says… she has visa, you no… WHAT!

My last call with Delta told me that I could get the visa in the airport when I got to Seoul. Aparently this was bad info. Katelyn howeverr was on top of her game and had this shiny K-ETA app downloaded and processed on her phone so she was approved for flight.

So the gate agent, whom I have to say was incredibly nice comes arond the counter to help me find the right app on my phone and says I should apply RIGHT NOW!!

I have to give kudos to Katelyn as she seemed to be handling in stride although I could tell it was bothering her. So we went back to our bags and I attempted three times to register on this stupid app and pay.. a fee of which I have no idea how much it was .. oh well, at this point we have 45 minutes to flight time when my app is submitted.

While I’m constantly refreshing my app hoping to see appvoal I find the supervisor and play the “my helpless niece has to fly alone if I can’t get on and its her first fight” card is there anyone I can call or any way to expidite. I get a very vey polite big fat no. I have to say already I’m impressed with the helpfulness of the Korean people.

Well, I’m freaking out. I admit it. I’m feeling like I completely let Katelyn down and am starting to look forr alternate flights to get there asap. And then like manna from heaven, or prayers from Joe, my approval lights up just as Katelyn gets to the front of the line.

From there things smooth out. I can tell Katelyn is a little rattled as she is very tired from not being able to sleep on the first flight and all of this chaos going on.

But onto the plane we get and as I write this right now we’re somewhere close the arctic circle over the Alutian Islands. Katelyn’s had a bit of sleep, I’ve had a bit of sleep, eaten some of grandmas cookies which unfortunately took quite a beating during the chaos and are in a bunch of pieces but stil taste as good as ever!! Thanks Mom!!

We had a little chicken and rice with a small salad and a dinner roll for our meal on the plane. I then followed it up with a glass of really lousy red wine (no cocktails I guess or they didn’t understand my request) I know they have beer and am thinking of having one whil I wirte this. So then it was a little beef jerky even though it does give me the wind something fierce.

The lights are coming up now… I guess this is a our breakfast time but we still have 5 hours to go. I have to say the masks they are making me wear are annoying as hell. I bought a fancy N95 mask on a spur of the moment at CVS and it is bulkey and hard to breath through and just exacerbates the fact that I’m always hot.

Well breakfast seems to be some sort of ham and cheese burrito looking thing.. weird but we’ll see how it tastes…..ha! its a hot pocket and quite tasty along with some pineapple juice.

So the flight goes on and on and on and on and on… you get the picture. Boredom is becoming our biggest enemy.

I’ll try and finish this off before I go to bed tonight so you’ll have tomorrow. I know we lost a day. Still to come:

• Getting money out of the ATM.. we all know how fun THAT can be,,,, yup.. proved to be a nightmare here
• Getting Katelyn a physical SIM for her phone since the esim validation process didn’t work for her…. disaster, her phone wasn’t unlocked from ATT and they wouldn’t unlock it
• Finding Katelyns ride pickup … actually a highlight!
• Finding a way for me to get to the hotel myself…. I hitched a ride with the college kids.. it was…. entertaining

All could leave us with fun an interesting stories. Stay tuned Wild willies.

They did indeed provide more stories. I also forgot to complete this Q-Code covid thing they have going on which extended my wait in passport control by at least a half an hour…. so many things, but I’m exhausted right now..

Tomoroow I got to the DMZ and Panmongeon to see if I can get anyone to agree on flag pole height.