Yet another lazy start following a lovely, cosy, snuggly nights sleep in our luxury executive suite. Having delighted in a hot shower we made our way to breakfast again for the last time in Hong Kong before packing and retrieving our walking boots in recognition of our future change in climate. Since Bangkok we have dropped over ten degrees and we expect Seoul to be a further five degrees cooler than Hong Kong, where we felt slightly cool yesterday.
Having admired the view over Victoria Harbour for the last time I made a telephone call to Tokyo to try to arrange accommodation for our Japan stint. The YHAs in Japan don't accommodate for two people of the opposite sex so we are without accommodation at the moment. We checked out of the Newton Hotel and within minutes were on the hotel shuttle bus on our way to the airport. We had the bus with luxury leather reclining seats and amazing amount of leg room to ourselves. It took about an hour to get to the airport via a tunnel to Kowloon.
As we arrived at the check in desks I noticed that several flights had been cancelled, particularly those to Bangkok. The airport was empty. We were the second and third passengers to check in to our flight which made me jump to the conclusion that the plane would be quite empty also. We weren't there that early so had expected plenty of passengers to have already checked in. We busied ourselves in the bookshops browsing, and wandered way out of our way in search of a cyber cafe. The area was completely void of passengers. It was eerie. We didn't have any currency left so placed ourselves by our boarding gate for an hour playing bao. There were half a dozen passengers waiting by the gate, including Ian and myself. When it was time to board we had a personal invitation to board the plane, like first class passengers. There were more airport staff at our gate than passengers. I saw a funny sight 'though while we were waiting. Four mothers were stood behind pushchairs on the travelator, each with a small child. It was like mothers' club, there were more young mothers in the airport than passengers too!
Our flight departed at 15:35 and 3 hours 1 minute later arrived at Incheon International Airport at 19:36 local time, 11:36 BST. We had a reasonable amount of turbulence during the flight but watching 'The Tuxedo' distracted me from that. I had hoped that the severe lack of passengers onboard the Boeing 777 might result in everyone in economy being upgraded, if only to the seats and not the service, but no such joy was had. It might be quite tricky landing a Boeing 777 without passengers and luggage onboard. We bounced around a lot at first contact with the runway... When we arrived at Seoul I counted the passengers. There were less than two dozen on an aircraft that has the capacity to seat nearly three hundred. Amazing. The few bags making the luggage conveyor belt circuit reminds you of the emptiness of the plane, if you had forgotten. The passport control queues were non existent.
Having arranged a nights accommodation at the New Oriental Hotel in Downtown Seoul at the airport information desk we took a bus to the area and donned our backpacks an hour later to make the 500 metre walk to the hotel. This involved a descent to an underpass and an ascent the other side of the road but it was remarkably easy as our backpacks are so much lighter now. Mine is 3 kilograms lighter as I have extracted my walking boots and fleece, the latter was immediately donned when I stepped out of Incheon International Airport and the colder air hit me! I haven't worn my fleece since we were in New Zealand! Now my arms, legs and toes are covered up, a thought that horrified us four days ago in Bangkok!
We passed by the Myoung Dong festival stage which had acquired quite an audience, checked into the New Oriental Hotel and went out for some dinner. It was now 22:30. After lots of wandering and one rejection from a bar because they didn't serve food on Sundays, we settled for a local joint and had a plate of chicken, fried and soaked in sweet chilli sauce, which was served with 2 litres of beer and a plate of popcorn.
All of the Korean people we have encountered so far smoke. Our hotel room reeks of cigarette smoke. I only saw half a dozen people smoking in Hong Kong, which was lovely.
We had checked out the price of two other hotels in the area with a view to change tomorrow. Our current hotel smells funny in the lobby, the lift and our room.
Copyright 2003 Helen Fuller. All rights reserved.