Arriving in darkness

Korea Air was my first taste of Korea, literally. The airhostesses wore a pastel coloured uniform, their khaki, white and teal was in stark contrast to the navy blue of the SAA staff. Most wore some shade of pale pink on their nails. I became very aware of my bright red nails as I slid them under the food tray. Their skin was smooth and paler than I expected, not a strand of their silky hair was misplaced, tucked behind a stiff ribbon-shaped teal hairpiece.



I unashamedly stared at the people around me as the airhostesses came around with the food. I strained my ears to hear what was on offer. I couldn’t tell, too many loud clubs meant my hearing wasn’t capable of deciphering their soft spoken voices, or was it that they weren’t speaking a language I recognised. As the two Koreans seated next to me received their food I peered over at the choices. Airline meal number three and I was already queasy, I needed to know whether this was worth stomaching.

I watched as the one begun putting food from various containers into the empty bowl in front of her before squeezing a bright red sauce out of a tube and mixing it all together. The other meal looked more like something I’d recognise, rice and what looked like it was probably, hopefully chicken. The, by now all too familiar, sound of the trolley coming my way drew my attention to the airhostess on my right hand side. Chicken and rice or *insert strange sounds here*. No hesitation, chicken and rice I say. She gives me a, how unsurprising, look as she hands over the food, smiles and nods her head.

I tuck in, not too bad, better than SAA actually but still I need to get a real meal, something that hasn’t been prepared at 40 000 feet. The food is soon cleared away, and then comes a nice surprise, strawberry Haagen Dazs. I haven’t had that since I lived in the UK. What I didn’t know then was that Koreans love ice-cream. It’s everywhere over here. In fact if it’s sweet it’s on the shelves, it’s the salty snacks that are hard to come by. I’m yet to find salt and vinegar crisps.

It’s dark outside, nighttime in Korea. I can’t see my surroundings as we come in to land. Not like when we arrived in Hong Kong. The plane came in on an airstrip that jutted out into the ocean, you couldn’t see the ground and it felt as though we were landing on the water. As the plane turned toward its designated location the beautiful backdrop of mountains came into sight and I became filled with the excitement of my new surroundings, my new adventure. This time my arrival was shrouded in mystery.