Backing up a bit. The Seattle airport was a zoo (July 4th weekend) when I arrived at 9:45 on Sunday. Luckily flying business class gave me some perks and I avoided the long security lines. Our Delta flight left only four minutes late with an anticipated flight time of almost 11 hours. I arrived in Seoul, South Korea on July 8 at 4:10PM( local time), a bit ahead of schedule.

I had a unique experience on the flight.  We ran into some turbulence along the way that lasted for quite awhile (several hours).  In my experience it was mild turbulence, but the captain went super cautious and told the staff to stay seated. I am sure this is because of the recent turbulence incidents where people were hurt. As a result we were never served the 2nd meal that normally occurs about 2 hours before landing. The purser apologized for the inconvenience and told us we would receive an additional 5000 miles credit on our frequent flier program- a nice touch.

The Seoul airport is new and modern and it was easy negotiating it and getting through immigration. I was through immigration, got my luggage and was on the hotel shuttle by 5:10PM. I booked us a room at the nearby supposed 5 star Grand Hyatt Incheon hotel for a modest $133 price. Try that in the USA! The hotel turned out to be huge(1024 rooms) and definitely in the 5 star category.

Scott arrived in Seoul late last night, albeit long after I went to bed. We have a leisurely morning as our flight from Seoul to Ulaanbaatar does not leave until 1:55PM. There are limited flights to Mongolia and we were supposed to be on a MIAT (  Mongolian Airlines) 787 flight for the 2.5 hour flight. However, we learned that there was a problem with the plane and they had to reschedule us to fly on two smaller 737 planes that would leave within 20 minutes of each other. I found myself on one plane and Scott was on the other. As it turned out both planes arrived safely and we reconnected at the Ulaanbaatar airport where we were met by a representative of Amicus who took us to our hotel (Grand Hill hotel) for our three  night stay while in Ulaanbaatar.

Our first surprise of the trip: Ulaanbaatar has huge traffic problems and we found ourselves right in the middle of it; people were leaving town as this was the start of the Naadam Festival week. It took three hours to make the trip from the airport to our hotel, which normally should have taken about one hour!

Ulaanbaatar, the capital of Mongolia, dates back to 1639.  Over 1.5 million people live there, about half of the total population of the country. It is a modern looking city and you could easily feel you were on a major city in the US. I noted there was little trash and no graffiti! Surprisingly about 1/3 of the cars on the road were right hand drive, yet they drive like we do in the USA. And ever other car seemed to be a Lexus SUV. I later learned that they get a lot of used cars from Japan which explains the right hand drive.

Our Mongolian expedition is about to begin!