How to Travel To South Korea And Not Die in Quarantine
In February 2021, I left Ohio with my wife and 2 year old daughter, and 20 suitcases to travel to South Korea, a country I've never visited, to teach abroad and to start a new life. We left Cincinnati in the middle of the night and accidentally checked one of our food bags that we were going to eat on the way. It was confiscated at customs because of a beef jerky bag, meat in general being the banned substance. They wrote down my passport number to make sure we never did it again. I was surprised that they actually took it serious enough to document the offense.
My first layover was in Dallas, but missed the connection because of an ice delay. The famous ice delay that utterly destroyed Dallas and caused massive car pileups. We went to reschedule a flight and had to argue with the airline rep for about an hour. She kept insisting that our covid tests were no longer valid because the delays pushed us out of the valid testing window. She said we would need to leave the airport in Texas during a natural disaster, to get a test and come back.
We didn't have medical insurance in Texas, nor would we be able to get a hotel without a valid test or proof of vaccination. Let alone they were having a weather crisis that made it impossible to get anywhere or do anything. We found out that she was just training and someone else came to clarify things. I could have strangled her over the desk. Her demeanor was too casual for a family with a young child, whom just left their life behind. We had to leave that day or we'd have our contract likely cancelled in Korea and then have no job and no where to live in Ohio. Sorry, good luck in the ice storm.
We arrived in Los Angeles, LAX, a couple hours later and it was a ghost town. This wasn't the middle of the night, it was during dinner time. They had no one going through any of the fifteen or so security checkpoints. Cincinatti has four. I was amused because they used to have a television show about combating all the threats of one of the busiest airports in the world.
Once we boarded, I noticed they had a flight preview video. Instead of going west, over the Pacific Ocean and Hawaii, the flight went up the coast of California, through Alaska, avoiding any part of Russia, then over Japan to land in western South Korea. I was able to have my own row on the plane. My daughter was able to sleep. I was almost able to sleep, but everytime I did drift off the stewardess would come by and wake me because my mask fell down one inch. They wanted to make sure that no one on the 13 hour flight breathed anyone else's air, even though they made a huge deal over everyone getting a covid test.
After arriving in Korea we waited for another hour or so. They had a contact tracing app installed on our phones that I needed to check twice a day for a fever and other symptoms. I was alarmed that they just grabbed my phone and found the app for me. Whenever I lost my internet connection, a warning would pop up saying I left the quarantine area and the police would be dispatched. They kept calling our contact and we kept reassuring them I didn't travel out of the zone, in a country I've never been to, in a language I didn't speak. I turn off my phone sometimes, like when I go to bed. I know it's shocking.
We arrived at an Air BNB and it was ideal for a 90 lb single Korean woman that was staying for one or two nights. The entire area was about 20 x 20 feet including the bathroom. It had one twin bed where I had to alternate sleeping on my side whenever my wife wanted to sleep on her back. It had one floor chair that was perfect for a two year old.
We weren't allowed to open the door except to get food that had to be delivered. They don't use google, so we had to download the native apps that work for calling delivery places. It was a hellish two weeks and I couldn't sleep for more than 5 hours a night because of the pain from the hard bed. We ordered a foam cushion a couple days in to make it more tolerable. We couldn't even take out the trash, which is bad in itself, until you remember that we have a toddler that goes number 1 AND 2 in her diaper. We ordered dog poop bags so we wouldn't vomit from the smell or get a weird bug infestation we've never seen in our life.
After a couple of days into my fun travel to South Korea, I had to block my mind from dwelling on certain thoughts because I would start to panic from being so enclosed, knowing that I couldn't leave. The windows were also blocked out, like they were inches away from another wall. I felt like Korea didn't understand that quarantine and imprisonment are supposed to have two different living conditions.
The apartment was a sub basement and was very damp in the bathroom. It was impossible to sit on the toilet without touching the tiles that were always wet with mold and sometimes slugs. The washer being right by the shower surprised me. I'm not sure how the water from the shower didn't electrocute everyone, so I made sure to unplug it until I needed to use it. They have a standard 220 volts, so I didn't want to risk dying instantly.
The stove top didn't work, until we found out that it needed the special pan that activated the stove from the weight and size or something. This was probably on the instructions that they wrote out on the fridge. We tried to make popcorn but the heat was too high and it burned half of it, while not popping the other half. It took me an hour or so to read the special popcorn settings to do it right. My wife still can't do it.
We've never spent so much time on our phones in our life. I came up with a lot of imagination games to entertain my daughter so she could have some non zombified entertainment. She had way more screen time than I'd like. I think she did the best out of all of us. It's been five months since we left quarantine and it already feels like years ago. I still don't know that much Korean. We also figured out real fast that every Korean dish has a bunch of spice in it and that the delivery drivers can't ever seem to find any residence without calling first.
Thank you for reading my two week quarantine story and South Korea Travel slash moving experience.
p.s. Looking at these pictures again seems to trigger some physical and mental pain in my mind.
