Sunday, August 30, 2009
A few gray hairs, but two new suitcases.
Bit of a rough start to my twenty-nine-and-a-half hour trip back to Pittsburgh last week. As soon as I walked out the door at 5:20 AM my suitcase broke. When I got to the counter at Incheon International Airport, with the wounded suitcase on a cart, the woman there said I would have to pay a fine of over 400,000 won because the bag was overweight. Maybe they should start doing that with heavy passengers. It was my fault, I know, because I can never keep track of the fluctuating weight restrictions, but I have no idea why the fine would be so high. She suggested that I take the suitcase to the packing center, take about half of my stuff out and pack it into a cardboard box, so that way instead of one heavy bag I'd have two underweight pieces. It just so happened that while I was over there, a family had just thrown away two of their suitcases because they repacked everything into a smaller number of bags, so the very nice man at the packing center told me to swap out the box and my broken suitcase for those two new ones. They aren't exactly new, but I'm pleased with the trade, and thankful to have such a fond memory of Korea to take home.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
3 comments:
I just bought a 14,000 won scale in advance of my trip home; however, the scale, made in South Korea of course, has been varying wildly in its readings. I guessa little accuracy was too much to ask for.
I was about 10kg over, but they never asked me to pay... simply asked me to re-pack some belongings into hand luggage that's designated as my laptop bag, in addition to my normal hand luggage.
The catch was I had to do this in front of everybody waiting to checkin, and my packing was... let's just say "throw it in, dirty washing and all" style. A little shameful to say the least.
My main luggage was still 4kg over afterwards, but the man let it slide and seemed more taken by the fact I had books on Korean grammar stored away. Maybe that's a handy diplomatic tool for future trips! Hehe.
Post a Comment