I met two friends for dinner the other day. We met at a Starbucks to decide where we wanted to eat and I arrived late. My friends were sitting at a table with two chairs so I sat at the table next to them. It wasn’t until I was getting up to leave a few minutes later that I noticed a teenage girl sitting at the table. Her boyfriend was walking up at the same time, gave me a disgusted look and said “That’s my chair!”

I walked away, amused that I never even thought it strange to sit at someone else’s table. My friends laughed and told me she was “starring daggers” at my back the entire time. First of all, everyone in America needs to calm down. I was almost assaulted at a grocery store last month for suggesting to the man in front of me in the checkout that life isn’t so difficult. He had exclaimed loudly that someone should put a bullet in his head because the cashier was a bit slow and having trouble with her scanner. Of course, irritable short men have never reacted well to my advice and even less so to smiles and suggestions that they recognize the important things in life. They also don’t like being told that you feel sorry for them.

My point is, America has become an increasingly hostile place. Maybe it’s just the area I live in, but everyone seems to take themselves way too seriously. The longer I travel the more I realize how distanced we’ve become from the basics of humanity. I suppose I should have asked the girl to sit at her table, but as long as the seat wasn’t being used I didn’t see the harm. Can we no longer share even what is not ours? Maybe I’ve changed too much over the years to relate to how people live their daily lives around me. Maybe I am the only person left in America who believes in helping the less fortunate and the concept of compromise. We have become so rich and isolated that we no longer relate to strangers and always think of ourselves and our own needs first. When you don’t have money or belongings, like many people in the countries I’ve visited, you share. Strangers eat side by side at roadside stalls and neighbors and shop owners look after the children of the neighborhood. A woman on a train in China once sat down next to me, handed me a rotten egg (quite tasty for the Chinese) and insisted that I eat it with my ramen as she was doing.

Maybe I’m finally turning into my dad, a man who enjoyed talking to the workers at Sam’s Club so much that he went every Sunday. I’d like to think that the ability to talk to strangers is not a quirk or a custom held over from the last century and the Americans are still the compassionate and interested people that fought in WWII and protested in the 1960’s. I love technology but let’s not lose our basic humanity as we rush toward the future.

After much deliberation on dates, routes, visas, festival crowds and more I have booked my second flight–this one from Seoul to Ulaan Bataar, Mongolia. I will spend six days in Seoul, which is a bit more than I initially wanted. However, one extra day isn’t such a big deal and I can wander around town and explore the subway. There are also plenty of museums to entertain me. One of the only things I plan to prearrange for Seoul is a tour to the DMZ zone with North Korea run by the USO.

My ticket to UB was bought through a travel agency in Denver, called Air Bridge. They were recommended to me by the Mongolian branch of MIAT (Mongolian Airlines) since no non-specialized U.S. travel agent was completely sure they could issue me a ticket on MIAT. It was a steep $409 including tax one-way, which was cheaper than any other agent in the U.S. quoted me. Flying to Mongolia from Beijing is cheaper, but I’ve gone over my reasons for not doing that. Buying the ticket in South Korea would be cheaper still, but I’m not going to risk booking a few days in advance in the height of tourist season leading up to a monumental festival.

I have been working out a rough estimate of my route and how long I will stay in each country. This has helped me plan for my initial flights and for reserving a hostel bed in Mongolia. One of the hostels I contacted was already full during July so I felt it prudent to book as soon as possible. I have a reservation for when I arrive and Naadam. In-between I should be out exploring the country on a camel, horse or beaten up Russian Jeep.

One issue I have been struggling with is visas–mainly for Central Asia. Those countries can be expensive to enter and require up to a week to issue a visa. But I can’t get all of those visas in advance because I am required to specify the dates my visa will be valid. I can enter any time after the date I specify, but I can not stay longer than 30 days after the originally specified date. Because of this, if my schedule is thrown off I could miss out on half of my visa dates. Most people, including the Kyrgyz Republic (Kyrgyzstan) embassy in Washington, suggest I get my visa in Beijing. The problem is I’m not going to Beijing! If all goes to plan I will take some form of transport from the Mongolian border to Hohhot, China (Inner Mongolia). From there I can catch a 24+ hour train West to the Xinjiang province. Urumqi, the capital of Xinjiang, has a number of embassies and I’ve heard inconsistent reports of the possibility of obtaining a Kyrgyz visa there. At the moment I have three different people keeping an eye out for me in Urumqi to see if it’s possible, how long it will take, and what days of the week I can apply.

On the other hand, I would rather not spend 7 days in Urumqi (which is not known for being a pleasant place to spend your time) waiting for the visa to be issued. Now that I have a plan I am reconsidering applying for the Kyrgyz visa in Washington. However, I need to be mindful to get it after already receiving my Chinese visa or else they will know I am going to the Xinjiang Province, which could cause problems.

If you’re curious, I am posting my rough route below. It’s nicely color-coded since I’m a very visual person. After India I would like to go to Africa, but I haven’t worked out how I can go there at the time I want and avoid the torrential rains.
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As you know, I’ve been planning my air travel and routing for a while now. Through all of my years of experience doing this sort of thing I’ve realized that the most logical route might not be the best. As I discussed in this post, I narrowed my options for getting to Mongolia to transit through China or South Korea. After some deliberation I decided that it would be best to travel through Seoul and fly to Mongolia on Korean Airlines–a dependable airline. With this option I could book both of my flights through STA–my usual travel agent. All together I talked to at least four different agents at STA and they all had different suggestions for me. Some suggested that it would be okay to fly through Beijing and that I shouldn’t worry about the connections to MIAT (Mongolian Airlines). Another said that it was to iffy to try to connect to MIAT and I should wait the night in China for a morning flight to Ulaan Baatar (UB) on Korean. One told me to look into booking the ticket to UB myself through MIAT directly.

Ultimately I decided to book through STA and take Korean Airlines through Seoul to UB. The cost was about $250 more than flying through Beijing, but with the security that I would have a confirmation number and the added benefit of seeing Seoul for a few days. So last Friday I called STA to book the ticket , having resigned myself to the extra cost. In my research I saw that Korean has a noon flight to UB which no one has told me about. You see, one of my reservations about flying Korean was arriving around midnight. This time I got a hostile agent who told me I couldn’t book the morning flight because it was a code share with MIAT. I was back to square one! She insisted that she could not book that ticket no matter what, even though two other agents had told me they could. And now that it was a code share with Korean I was sure they could issue me a ticket for that flight. At this point I was a little upset (I don’t like making snap decisions) and asked about Beijing. Well, Beijing is sold out! It hasn’t been too long since I last inquired, but all of the $650 student fares are now sold out and a one way ticket to Beijing was now up to $1,400–even though we’re still more than three months out.

The hostile agent told me she could still sell me a one way ticket to Seoul which had plenty of openings at the $650 price. Not sure what to do I hung up to start over again. The last time I contacted the MIAT agent in NYC was to inquire about tickets from Beijing. So, I called the agent back and asked for a quote from Seoul. I was shocked to hear $409, but with the cheap Seoul fare from STA it would be hundreds of dollars less than flying to UB on Korean. Sometimes it’s funny how things work out. It’s hard to know when the best time to buy a ticket because the prices change every day.

With that quote I decided to call on Monday to book my tickets. Even though that was only a few days ago I’m not sure why I waited until Monday, probably to let it sink in a bit. Yesterday I called STA and told the agent to book me one way from Chicago to Seoul. Done. I think it was the same hostile agent from last week, but she was in a much better mood this time. Don’t take my talk of the hostile agent the wrong way, I love STA Travel. I’ve booked flights from or to Copenhagen, London, Istanbul, Athens, Lima, Cusco, Seattle, Tokyo and Beijing with them in the past. If you have student status they are always the cheapest agent to book with for international flights from the U.S. Every trip I take I get quotes from at least three companies. This time I talked to STA, Air Treks, Air Brokers, the MIAT representative in NYC and a few Korean and Chinese agencies I found in the paper. I like to cover all my bases.

In only five minutes I was booked on a June 8th flight from O’Hare to Seoul with a change of planes in Tokyo. We had a long discussion about window vs aisle (I like the window, but on a long flight it’s best to have the aisle) and the fact that it’s a 777 and has a 2-5-2 seat configuration. I am not a vegetarian and don’t have any dietary restrictions but I did request that I not be served Japanese food! She assured me that, because it is a United Airlines flight to Tokyo, I should be fine. My flight to Tokyo last year was on All Nippon, which is a gorgeous airline, but I’m not a fan of Japanese food in it’s airline form or otherwise. Once I leave Chicago it will take me 18 hours to arrive in Seoul, with about 16 hours of that actually in-flight. If you want to do math involving time zones in the future I recommend Timeanddate.com.

You’re curious about costs, aren’t you? That’s okay, everyone is. Here’s how it breaks down (keep in mind this is a student fare):

• Fare: $562.50

• Tax: 21.50
• STA service fee: $6
• ISIC student card: $22
• Total: $612

I am waiting to hear back on some details about Mongolia before I decide which day to book my flight to Ulaan Baatar. There are pressing issues at stake like “What does National Costume Day entail exactly?” and do I need to arrange my schedule so I’m in town for it? After a serious meltdown when I heard that guesthouses were already filling up for June and July I rashly emailed just about every guesthouse in UB and am reassured that if I book soon I will have a place to sleep that is not a tent. In any case, I should be booking the flight to UB and accommodation soon!

Pay attention, America. You’re breaking my heart.

“There is no doubt that constitutional freedoms will never be abolished in one fell swoop, for the American people cherish their freedoms, and would not tolerate such a loss if they could perceive it. But the erosion of freedom rarely comes as an all-out frontal assault but rather as a gradual, noxious creeping, cloaked in secrecy, and glossed over by reassurances of greater security.”

–Senator Robert Byrd, West Virgina