Safe and Sound in Seoul

We all arrived in Korea and I'm writing from my hotel room at the Kaya Hotel in Seoul. In Michigan it's 12:25 p.m.on Sept 2nd but it's 1:25 a.m. Sept 3rd here here in Korea.

Here's how things are so far.
We all piled into our touring van at about 6:30a.m. on Tuesday Sept 1st. We were all too geeked to sleep and I'm sure no one got more than a couple of hours the night before but we were all in very high spirits and didn't mind the crush of 7 people and their luggage and musical instruments all crammed into a custom van.

We arrived at Detroit Metro about 7:45a.m. and made our way to the counter to get boarding passes and check our extra baggage. The ladies at the Northwest booth were very helpful, especially when we told them it was our first tour for Armed Forces Entertainment. They got us checked in in record time. When I tried to use our baggage voucher to cover the checked bags the lady in charge said, "Oh, no you don't need that. We're owned by Delta so they are allowing 2 checked bags with no fee per person, plus two carry on bags." COOL! That shaved an hour off. With that all taken care of we had time to grab breakfast before the 10:25 flight to Chicago O'Hare. On the road "FOOD IS SLEEP." If you can't get sleep, make sure you can get a good meal to keep your energy up.

We left for O'Hare on time and made Chicago in 44 minutes. Once there we had a 2-hour layover before leaving on a 747 direct to Incheon, South Korea. Our Korean Air flight left O'Hare at 12:35 p.m. We had a 13-hour non stop flight and I've gotta say the Korean Air folks really did a good job of taking care of us. The courtesy and level of attention to our needs was excellent.

We landed in Incheon at 3:35pm on Sept 2nd. We had to pass through a health department inspection and fill out paperwork. They're very uptight about the swine flu thing that's developing in America so we all had to get a cursory look over before we could move on to customs. After more lines and more paperwork we were all finally in the country and made our way to baggage. My first (and hopefully only) major bummer on the tour awaited me there.

I'm always leery of checking my guitars but most airlines have changed their rules regarding carrying them on board with you. All our instruments arrived and as we looked over them everything seemed fine until I got to the case holding my American Standard Fender Stratocaster. The handle was ripped off on one side - I mean the metal hinge was ripped in two, not the plastic handle. The entire front quarter by the head stock was cracked and broken. This is a hard shell case and the outer shell has been compressed so hard that it popped out of the metal molding that runs all the way around the case. Something extremely heavy was dropped on my guitar!
I threw the case open and expected to find a broken neck but the molded interior held! Thank God.
I don't know if the Detroit guys did this or if the Korean Air guys did but after weighing the time and hassle of trying to file a claim and NOBODY speaking english and me not knowing Korean I sealed it up and stacked it on the dolly cart. *Sigh* I will be buying steel flight cases before we go to Europe next year.

We met our POC (Point of Contact) she was a very friendly lady named Shirley and she motioned for us with a sign saying Armed Forces Entertainment welcomes the Rusty Wright Band. We all made our way outside and began loading our gear and luggage into the back of a small travel bus. It's a 10-seater with a large bay in the back for gear. After a few "short bus" jokes we all settled into the plush seats. The air conditioning was a relief since it was 81 degrees when we arrived and they expect sun and high temps for the whole week. Shirley introduced us to Mr. Yi who will be our bus driver for our tour in Korea. We also have another driver who we meet tomorrow when we pick up the equipment truck and head to Kunsan airbase.

By the time we reached the hotel we were ALL pretty crispy. We had plans of going out to get dinner but once everyone got into their rooms they all just posted a few things on Facebook and fell down and have been sleeping since. Laurie & I managed to get cleaned up and headed out to see what was available for dinner.

Seoul is one of the largest cities in the world so it reminds me of New York City - except the streets are lined with small shops and restaurants with their wares all on display right on the sidewalk. The smells of all these places was incredible. We settled on the Korean version of a steak house and had a Singapore sling and a screwdriver with our dinner to unwind, and then headed back to get some sleep.

Tomorrow or today rather, will be our first show day so we are doing our best to revamp the body clock to be on Korean time.

Time to catch a few more Zzzz's.

Next stop: Kunsan Air Force base.

Rusty