I left home to catch an 11:00 am flight at the Gimpo Airport. Having given myself plenty of time to get lost on the way, I actually got there almost two hours earlier than I had planned. I killed some time in the airport lounge and then got on the plane, half excited and half nervous about traveling to China for the first time.
It was a very short 100 minute flight. When I arrived at the airport, I was slightly disappointed because the airport was very shabby and I was unable to find a telecom company where I could rent a cellphone during my stay in China. I was supposed to contact my friend, Amanda, upon arrival but having no means to contact her, I decided to just grab a taxi and get myself to the hotel.
Because I had told the taxi driver my destination in Chinese, he first thought I was Chinese. The taxi driver was a very friendly man who, even after discovering that I wasn't fluent at all in Chinese, wanted to strike a conversation with me over the next hour: the distance from the airport to the hotel is about a 20 minute ride but it took us an hour in the awful Shanghai traffic that day. His questions ranged from "where did you learn Chinese?" to "What is the population of Seoul?" He also wanted to know how much the plane ticket from Seoul to Shanghai cost, as well as my dad's occupation! Whilst this was going on, I was trying to absorb the scenes in urban Shanghai, with its long-stretched bridges and high-rise buildings that clearly indicate that the city had gone through a lot of modernization. After an hour of intense listening and multiple "tingbudong(I don't understand)s," we finally arrived at the hotel at around 2:15pm, when I was scheduled to meet Amanda in front of the South Korean Pavilion at 2:30pm.
Pressed for time, I hurriedly entered the hotel to check-in. After 10 minutes of explaining in English and subsequent repetition of the whole lot of what I had said already, the ladies at the front desk finally comprehended what I had to say and gave me the key to my room. After dropping off my belongings in the room, I darted outside the hotel to quickly grab a cab to the Expo. After some delay, I managed to find the ticket booths, lined up to purchase a ticket. I stood behind a group of Chinese people, who seemed like a family. However as time passed, the family group seemed to be growing. It was about another 10 minutes of standing and patiently waiting in line that I realized that those people were not traveling together. They were just piling on top of/pushing in between each other, fighting to get to the ticket booth first. It dawned on me that this was an important survival skill in China, so I quickly picked up the same behavior from the natives. The next moment, I was pushing and shoving in a great jumble of people, yelling out to the person inside the booth, "CAN I PLEASE GET A SINGLE DAY PASS TO THE EXPO??????????!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!" I purchased the ticket and walked away from the ticket booth triumphantly.
Because I didn't have a watch or a cellphone, there was no way for me to figure out time. All I knew was that it was already way past 2:30pm by then, so I ran toward where I thought the S.Korean Pavilion might be. The Pavilion was nowhere to be found, and I was duly frustrated with my lack of orientation skill. I then spotted an Expo volunteer and asked him in English, "Excuse me, where is the S.Korean Pavilion?" He gave me a blank look, an indication that he does not understand English. I asked him the same question in Chinese, only to receive a very complicated direction in Chinese. Confused and frustrated, I went into an information center, asked another volunteer who could speak English and managed to find my way to the Pavilion.
Amanda and I were to meet in front of the Pavilion. When I arrived at the Pavilion, I almost broke out in tears because there was a very very long line of people trying to enter the Pavilion, surrounding the Pavilion structure, and there was no 'front' to it as such. So I walked around the gigantic structure for the next few minutes. Half moaning and half weeping, and at the same time, trying to plan my next move, if I were to never find Amanda.
It was exactly at 3:30pm, an hour later, that Amanda and I were finally united. Both of us were exhausted and dehydrated after wandering around the Expo ground frantically for almost an hour. Once we each got a bottle of water and energized ourselves, we realized that we didn't have much time to explore the Expo because they start closing the Pavilions at 9:00 pm. We quickly headed over to the Vietnam, Mongolia, Iran and North Korea Pavilions and checked out the wealth of cultural displays, as well as some ridiculous Chinglish signs: there was one that read "Polite Language and No Noising." In the North Korean pavilion, we were more focused on pointing out the propaganda on display and marveling at the North Korean presenters on site. We saw real, live North Koreans!!!!! How cool is that.
We then followed a crowd of people into the China Pavilion. The pavilion was divided into the Chinese provinces and each section had different culture and atmosphere. We took a quick zoom through the pavilion, slightly unimpressed to be honest, until we later found out that we were supposed to first wait in line to receive a fast pass to the pavilion, and then wait in line again, with the pass, to enter the pavilion. It turned out that China Pavilion was one of the most popular exhibitions at the Expo and that other people had waited for hours and hours to get in!
After grabbing dinner at the Chinese food court, where they offered a wide range of Chinese cuisine from various regions, we headed over to the New Zealand Pavilion, and then Cambodia. I thought New Zealand put on a great display of the daily life of the Kiwis and the technology used in the exhibition was impressive. However, when we entered the Australia Pavilion and saw the huge rising, rotating screens and the exaggerated caricature displays, I was absolutely blown away by it. I would hate to admit, but Australia did definitely beat New Zealand big time in Shanghai....
We walked over to the C section (FYI: A = Asia, B = Asia/Pacific, C = Europe) to see Denmark and France. Both Pavilions had neat, modern architecture and displays. However, there was nothing characteristically Danish or French in both pavilions - other than the Little Mermaid at the entrance of the Denmark Pavilion and a wall painted with Louis Vuitton logos in France Pavilion.
By the time we finished the tour of France, our feet were in great pain. All we wanted to do was to quickly get back to the hotel and have a nice shower, after having been exposed to sweltering Shanghai heat for seven hours.
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