Life Without Poutine: Thailand: The Trip That Almost Never Was

As my buddy Mike was on his way to Ulsan, I was not only excited to see a familiar face from back home, but I was also excited to take him on his first ever trip anywhere outside of Canada. This trip almost never happened, though.

First, as in inexperienced traveler, he was unaware of what sort of measures to take in preparation for his journey. For example, he did not know that certain countries require that your passport be valid for at least six months after your departure date. Thailand happens to be one of those countries. He only learned about this two days before his flight. I felt terrible because I should have thought to notify him of this detail, but it never occurred to me because I've always taken that as general knowledge.

Now Mike found himself less than 48 hours away from his departure time without a way to get into Thailand. He went to a passport office on a Friday, the day before his flight, and hoped for a miracle. It turned out that it was possible to get a new passport on the same day of submitting your application as long as you pay an extra fee. Mike had his new passport in hand 4 hours later. Obstacle #1 was cleared.

Our next challenge was the flight itself to Thailand. The flight was set to take off from Incheon, which is located far north of Ulsan, close to Seoul, at 5:25 pm on Thursday, December 26. That meant we had to get to Incheon at 3:25 at the latest. Normally, this wouldn't be a problem, as the KTX speed train can get to Seoul in just over two hours, and from Seoul, it's a 45 minute subway ride to the airport. That gave us plenty of time.

Unfortunately, there was some labour strife going on at the time, resulting in fewer trains running throughout the day. Being lazy and stupid, Mike and I put off purchasing our tickets online and waited until the night before our flight. Surprise, surprise, the morning trains were completely booked, and the only one left wasn't going to give us enough time to comfortably arrive at the airport without fear of missing our flight.

After some research, we found a bus route from the Ulsan Bus Terminal that would get us directly to the airport with just over two hours to spare before our flight. Unfortunately we couldn't find a way to contact the terminal itself to ask whether or not they still had tickets available, meaning we just had to arrive at the terminal in the morning and hope for the best.

That's exactly what we did.

With the train labour dispute going on, we were concerned that the buses would have already been booked up. We figured, though, that if all else failed, we could always pay a fee to change our flight to a later time, or even the next day.

Thankfully, we arrived at the station in the morning to find there were plenty of tickets available. It was cheaper and it would get us directly to the airport. The only thing keeping us from catching our flight now was an unforeseen accident or atrocious traffic.

You'll be happy to know that there were no more hiccups along the way. We arrived in Incheon five hours later.

Look what I found at the airport, Doris!

What a view!

The flight proved to be a bit longer that I had expected, but after flying from Toronto to Ulsan, it was a piece of cake. We landed around 11:30 at night, took the Sky Train to Makasan station, and then transferred to the subway line and rode it to Hua Lomphong station.

Here, again, the journey got interesting. I knew from the map that our hostel wasn't very far from the subway station, but I also knew that it would be very easy to get lost in a foreign country at that time of night with no knowledge of the street names. And so, we tried to wave down our very first taxi.

The first, second, and third cabby each gave us the same answer when they read the hostel address: No. They had no idea where the hostel was. We were frustrated and tired from the long day of traveling and just wanted to pass out. We tried using a pay phone, but they didn't seem to work, so we tried another cab.

Finally, we found a guy who knew the way. Or at least, he claimed he did after studying the address for a while. I mean he looked at it--stared at it--for a good while before agreeing to take us there. After 15 minutes of dicking us around, driving in circles, and even asking a police officer for directions, he finally let us out in Chinatown and offered an apology.

From there, we walked into a hotel and asked if they knew how to get to River View Guest House. After looking at the directions, the man at reception walked outside with us, hailed a tuk tuk, and gave the man directions. We were almost there!

Once again, though, we found ourselves lost. Thankfully, a couple happened to be walking by, and offered to help us out. It turned out the guy used to work at the hostel, so he knew exactly where to go. He pointed us down a road that curbed to the right and told us to look for a sign on the right hand side.

After finally finding the hostel, we understood why it was so hard for the cabbies to find. This place was tucked away in a corner past a bunch of small side streets. Even as we walked down the street towards the hostel, it felt like we were actually walking directly into somebody's backyard. For all we knew, the guy had just led us down a dark alley to his friends, who were waiting around the corner with shanks in hand.

In the coming days, three different tour guides would have equal trouble trying to find the hostel in order to pick us up.

The ordeal of hunting down our hostel proved to be well worth the effort, though, as we found out the following morning. This is the view from the River Vibe Restaurant on the 8th floor of our hostel. As Mike would repeatedly remind me during the course of the next week, "This place is a gem."