Another Adventure pulled from the “I never finished writing about this trip” archives!
Guam is the largest island in the Marianas Islands in Micronesia, but it still not very large. Puerto Rico is 5 times the size of Guam. It is an 8 hour plane ride from Hawaii and 4-6 hour plane ride from Seoul. Basically in the middle of nowhere in the Pacific!
For us, our journey took 48 hours from door to door. We drove to Atlanta and spent the afternoon with grandparents, then made our way to the airport only to face a 6 hour delay. We got to camp in the international terminal to catch as much sleep as we possibly could.
From Atlanta we made our way to Detroit. We had an excellent and of course “airport expensive” breakfast at a Japanese restaurant in the terminal. Our long layover gave us more nap time, then we spent 15 hours on an airplane to Seoul.
We were squished in the back and fought to sleep in between meal and snack services. Delta’s vegetarian dishes and Korean dishes were much better than their chicken we had on our way to Scotland. Because our plane in Detroit was delayed due to customs and border patrol issues, we were late getting in to Seoul. We had to run to our security screening and then run to our gate. We barely made it on the flight to Guam.
Our flight from Seoul to Guam was with T’Way Air, a Korean budget based airline. Korean budget flights are very different. Everyone gets up and moves around. It kind of felt like being on a Greyhound bus if I’m being honest. We felt very much out of place and little brave to be flying on a local airline, rather than our normal routine of booking through an American airline and their partners. We were barely acknowledged by the flight attendants, but thankful to have made it on the plane and know how to say thank you in Korean!
Upon arrival early in the morning in Guam, we instantly felt the humid tropical island air. Customs was pretty easy and the agent even stamped our passports after some friendly conversation about Chick-fil-A. Typically they don’t stamp US passports. Thanks to the guy for engaging us and asking us where we worked!
Our friends picked us up in their minivan and off we were to the campus of PIU to further our Guam Adventure.
Small World, Big Adventures 