Christmas and New Year

I spent Christmas in Mid Wales with my family - we even had a touch of snow! NYE was spent in Cardiff with Lisa, David and Rhysian who cooked an amazing meal of melba toast with pate and rocket to start followed by venison steaks with roasted veg and mash and then pavlova with cinnamon sauce for pudding. My taste buds are tingling with the memory! We drank lots of sparkling wine and let off some fireworks in David's back garden at midnight. A lovely evening.

I flew back to Korea with Robyn. All was well until we landed in a blizzard at Beijing Airport where we were supposed to transfer for the final leg of our journey. Unfortunately, all flights were grounded and we spent many many hours queueing up for new tickets. We finally got new tickets which were for 3 days time...we then queued up in another line for a hotel and about 12 hours after landing, got on a bus to take us to a hotel.

The hotel was probably the worst one I have ever stayed in (and I've stayed in a few dodgy hotels). Our room was filthy and there was no drinking water available. My bed was broken, so I could only sleep perched on the edge of the bed otherwise my bum would be touching the floor! At breakfast, the only drink available was some sort of sour milk, not nice.

We were severely jetlagged, sleep deprived and dehydrated, so we made the decision to get a taxi to the airport where we could at least get some decent food and drink and possibly go on standby for a flight to Seoul. After a crazy taxi ride through the snowy streets of Beijing (swerving, overtaking, undertaking, cases jammed in every available space - all at 70mph) we arrived at the airport. Asiana had a flight definitely taking off within the next hour we were assured, so we handed over visa cards, dashed through security and landed at Incheon a few hours later. Unfortunately (yup, the last part of our journey wasnt going to go smoothly either...), the worst snow storm for 50 years had now hit Korea (we could only land thanks to Incheon's heated runways!) and we were advised not to take the bus back to Bucheon, so we decided to get as far as we could via subway (it was about 11.30pm) and cab it for the last few miles.

We reached Bupyeong without incident, apart from having to drag our cases up a few flights of stairs (helped by a Korean man who called us "babo" - stupid!). The snow was pretty deep, it was freezing cold and the streets around the subway station were strangely deserted. I waited with the cases while Abby and Robyn went to find a taxi. I had dressed for mild British winter weather rather than deep freeze and my feet and hands were blocks of ice by the time the others returned with a taxi. We eventually made it to Bucheon, I have literally never been so glad to see the familiar streets of Jungdong.

We had one more final hiccup. Robyn's door keypad decided not to work as the battery had drained due to the cold. We got hold of Janice (I'm sure she was happy being woken up so late!) who said she thought Keith had a key. Luckily he did as I think that by this point Robyn was on the verge of heading back to Incheon and the first flight back to the UK!

View from Hyundai Dept Store