Our time in South Korea was too short. It's a lovely country. We were both surprised by how quiet everyone and everything is, especially after staying in the Philippines for two months.
We were planning on spending 11 days in South Korea, but on the 10th day our ship had come in. Literally. We decided to book passage on a freighter from Busan to Long Beach, California. It was way more expensive than flying, but we couldn't pass up the chance of just one more adventure before arriving home.
The Hanjin Pretoria is a huge ship! And it isn't even the biggest one around! We arrived at night and got to take some pictures among the containers and giant cranes while waiting for the gangplank to be lowered. When aboard, we met the captain in the "office" on the Upper Deck (which is the lowest deck, just above the engine room, so I don't know why it's called the Upper Deck) and handed over our passports. Then the steward came and led us to our room. Actually, he loaded us into the elevator and met us on D deck. We had one of the two Extra Rooms to ourselves. It's a good sized room with a big enough bed, banquette, table, comfy chair, TV with VCR and DVD players, a head w/shower, and a small refrigerator. We flossed and brushed our teeth, rejoicing in being able to use water right from the tap. (The ship makes its own freshwater from the sea.)
The next day began early, at 6:30am. Plenty of time for Froody to do his morning stretches and for me to do a highly modified Crossfit-esque workout. This is pretty much how each of our 15 mornings began aboard ship. The rest of the day/s was spent filling in the time between meals: 7:30am - breakfast, 10:00am- tea w/cookies, 12:00pm- lunch, 3:00pm- tea w/cookies (cake on Sundays), 5:30pm- dinner. It was very relaxing. We both did a little of nothing and a lot of hobbies. I read a ton of books; all of the used ones I bought in the Philippines and some of the English ones in the Officer's Rec Room (most of the books were in Russian). Froody did computering and we both looked through and labeled all 6000+ pictures from our amazing trip. It was neat to see a pic and go, "oh, yeah, I remember doing that cool thing!"
I was surprised by the size and make-up of the crew. This huge ship had only 21 men working on her, including the captain. The captain and chief engineer were German. The cook and half of the crew were Russian. The steward and other half of the crew were from Kiribati. Everyone spoke English, and Froody and I spent a lot of our meals talking with the captain about traveling and the life of a sailor. The captain liked to bring up how certain German things like food and beer were better than their American counterparts. (Especially sausages. I couldn't get him to even consider the tastiness of gourmet chicken apple sausage.)
We spent some part of each day outside, walking a lap around the ship. The most exciting time was being in the ports of Osaka and Tokyo when containers were being loaded right outside our window! Watching the tugboats was a reminder of the ungainliness of the huge ships. I liked watching the crew as we pulled away from the dock, wondering if they still enjoyed the harbor sights after all their time at sea.
Some more nice pictures:
**Lovely morning in Long Beach
** Steward serving up German-inspired food to the captain
** Huge flippin' ship's engine. It's 10 m tall, people! With 9 cylinders! (Here we are standing in front of the spare cylinder. Did I say it was big?)
**At long last, LAND!
In retrospect, I'd say traveling by container ship is more of a retreat than an adventure. We were the only passengers on board and didn't mix with the busy crew much, although they all seemed to be very nice. It's a very quiet way to spend 2 weeks. Much of that time you feel like you're in the middle of nowhere, not having seen land nor another ship for days.
