20250926 Friday, September 26, 2025 Beijing to Seoul and Seoul to Seattle

20250926 Friday, September 26, 2025 Beijing to Seoul and Seoul to Seattle

The worst part of any trip is having to travel from home to where the trip is, and then having to do the reverse to get home.  International travel is fraught with all sorts of potential disasters like ending up at the wrong airport terminal, encountering flight delays or missed connections and losing luggage

As for Viking's participation, they did a great job greeting us at all airports and ensuring a smooth and trouble free transfer between where we exit the baggage claims and end up at the hotel, and vice versa.  In this case, our tour director Jimmy had packed some light breakfast take out bags because we had to leave the hotel before the buffet opened for breakfast on our departure morning.  He had booked a private airport transfer for us in a mini-van.  This was a meticulously clean and comfortable Buick Enclave.  The driver was very professional and courteous, even though he didn't speak a word of English.  Most importantly he wasn't a smoker.  Too many Chinese have become addicted to tobacco, and the stench of cigarette and cigar smoke make many places and experiences in China less enjoyable.  

We had written instructions for which terminal to get off, what check in counter to go to, and our gate assignment.  Traffic was light so we arrived 3 hours prior to the flight departure, and were the first ones in line to check in our luggage when the counter opened up exactly 3 hours prior to departure.  The flight from Beijing Capital Airport to Seoul was exactly on time, and it was a quick and comfortable flight.  

We had a several hour layover in Seoul, so it was nice that we had business class flights and could hang out in the lounge.  This lounge had two automatic total body massage chairs.  It was hard to limit ourselves to one 30 minute session, but there were lots of fellow passengers to share the resource with.  The lounge in Seoul was large, comfortable, and well stocked with food and beverages.  They had an odd set up for draft beer.  They have cups with a valve on the bottom.  You place the cup on top of the dispenser, and it fills the glass from the bottom up.  I guess this limits the head of foam that would otherwise form at the top.  It was interesting to watch and do, but there was one huge problem- the valves on the bottom of the schooners sometimes leaked, and this causes the floors of the lounge to be sticky, like a tacky movie theater.  

As our connecting flight from Seoul to Seattle's time scrolled on the displays, a delay was displayed.  There was some problem with one of the connections that had delayed the flight, so our departure got pushed an hour later.  Then when that departure time approached and we waited at the gate, another last minute announcement said the flight was yet again delayed another hour.  Then when that time came up, another delay of 2 hours and a gate change were announced.  This caused a lot of grumbling.  The gate agents offered 20,000won ($14 USD) meal vouchers, but issued them only 30 minutes before the rescheduled flight was to start boarding.  We tried to use them to get some ice cream, but the line at the Baskin and Robbins was too long.  We would have missed the boarding window had we stayed in line for ice cream, so we gave our vouchers to children in the line with their parents and headed back to the gate.  We hope that will improve our karma rankings.  We got back to the gate just as boarding started.  

With a 4 hour delay, we missed our Seattle shuttle connection to home and emailed a message to rebook on the next shuttle.  The flight was smooth for the most part and we spent it either sleeping or eating.  We did end up watching Disney's live action Lilo and Stitch before the dinner service.  The business class pods in Asiana's 777's are comfortable enough, and we were seated right next to each other, so that was nice.  But we got spoiled on Emirates for our last flight from Egypt home.  

When we got to Seattle, we were able to breeze right through customs and immigrations because we have NEXUS memberships which include Global Entry.  All we had to do was stop and look at a kiosk camera.  We didn't even need to pull out our NEXUS cards or Passports. In about 5 seconds, we were cleared to speed right past customs and immigrations right out to the airport exit.  

It turned out that the very next airport shuttle only had one seat available, so we were officially booked on the one after that, which would have required another 2 hour delay, but one person failed to show up, and we both got to ride standby.  Our son picked us up in town at the Shuttle drop off and we celebrated our return home at Dairy Queen.

We had left home on August 18th, so we have been gone a little over 5 weeks this trip.  It was an exciting and very enjoyable one.  Our daughter's Chinese wedding and meeting her in-law's side of the family was the highlight of the trip.  Americans rarely go to Shenyang as tourists, so it felt extra adventuresome and special to have Tom's family and friends show us around the Liaoning Province.  Mongolia and the Gobi were nothing like we had preconceived, and our handlers were wonderful, making us feel like cherished family members.  Tibet likewise felt like an otherworldly adventure with the additional challenges of high altitude thrown in.  Although we had visited Beijing and Xi'an before in 2016, it is astonishing the amount of development and forward progress China has made in such a short interval.  China is now leading the first world nations, and has learned some very hard and painful lessons from it's past when arrogance and closed mindedness lead to the end of Imperial China's glory days, first with the disastrous terms it was dealt by the Opium Wars, and with it's civil war and cultural revolution, which set China firmly into a path of third world country status.  The reforms introduced by Deng Xiaoping allowed China to not only catch up to the western world, but in many ways, his pragmatic approach has allowed China to surpass many western countries, particularly in infrastructure and education.  The momentum of Chinese society forward seems unstoppable.  

Japan had a similar history in its initial encounters with the west, but instead of retreating into the past, they learned from their early defeats and embraced the technologies and strategies employed by the west during the  Meiji Restoration, which turned it into the world power that allowed it to conquer its neighbors including China and even attack the US.  They were spared the embarrassments of China's Opium Wars, civil wars and cultural revolutions, but not the atomic bombs of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

I hope we are misunderstanding China's intentions in the South China Sea and with Taiwan.  Understanding her past, and the vital importance of global shipping to China's economy, the best way to deal with China's increased projection of naval power in the region is to understand her past and work through diplomacy to assure security of all nations that rely on these vital shipping lanes, including China.  China's current economic system is a far cry from Mao's strict but failed visions of a communist utopia.  In reality, there is much more in common between today's mainland China and Taiwan than what separates them.  Our cruise up the Chinese coast visiting the major ports between China and Taiwan make this very clear. Xi Jinpeng would certainly beat Trump to the Nobel Prize if he negotiated a peaceful reintegration of Taiwan and China under a one Country two system policy, or as a Special Economic Zone like Shanghai or Hong Kong.  There's really not much difference between leading Chinese Communist Party Officials and Taiwan's capitalist oligarchs, other than in titles.  A war between China and Taiwan would unnecessarily cost tens of millions of lives and destroy priceless cultural heritage.  Under Trump's short sighted America First dogma, Trump would immediately abandon Taiwan, like he did Ukraine, and it would be a short but terrible war.

It is my most sincere wish that more people would take the time to understand the history of the civilizations of the world.  The promises of populist nativism and closed mindedness gripping the MAGA world can only lead to a downward trajectory like what ended the Roman Empire.  Arrogance and hubris should be no match for truth and science but we now live in a post truth era created by social media echo chambers.  People need to lift their heads away from their screens, get out, and see the real world as it exists around them.  Understand, empathize, cooperate and coexist.