South Korea: Chapter 1: Arrival
It's a bit exhausting getting to South Korea but it's going to be worth it.
My in-laws wished to once again visit their and their children’s country of origin. Their last visit was 15 years ago. My wife Jeannie and I wouldn’t pass up the opportunity to go to Korea so we went with them. We did little in the way of planning, just rented AirBnb units for the first week. I would have thought my Father-In-Law would want the entire trip planned about but much to my surprise, he said, “We can just figure it out when we get there.” That’s the way Jeannie and I like to travel so that was fine with us.
The plane was a Boeing 787. Rather than have window shades, the windows can be dimmed by the passenger or the crew. To test this, I dimmed our window as far as it would go. This is it dimmed when it was otherwise the middle of the day outside.
Because the flight is going to Korea, as you can imagine, one of the meal options is a Korean dish. Economy class food on any airline is on the short list of the least edible food I have ever eaten. It’s essentially sustenance and nothing more. Still, Bibimbap (a Korean dish of rice, vegetables and more mixed together) was something I could at least imagine might be better than usual. Unfortunately, due to bad planning on both the airline’s part and ours (for sitting near the back of the plane), by the time they go to us, they were out of Bibimbap. You’d think on a plan that must have been 80% Koreans, they airline would have planned better. Option B was typical airline fare. Oh well. About half way through the flight the screen for my seat suddenly had double-vision making it unusable. I had been counting on it keeping me entertained for the full 15 hours but for the second half, I was on my own.
Tired and anxious to get off the plane, we arrived in Incheon, South Korea. Incheon is a suburb of Seoul, the largest city by far in South Korea. Seoul is uncomfortably close to the border with North Korea, a country with which it is technically still at war despite having signing an armistice in July of 1953. My brother-in-law John and his wife Gwen were also traveling to Seoul though not with us. They met us at the airport when we arrived.
The first thing we needed to do is get to our AirBnB. The initial plan was to take the metro. South Korea is a very modern country which is why I find it odd that not only do they not support paying for the metro with your smartphone, you can’t even pay for the metro with a credit card. You buy a transportation card ( called a Tmoney card) and load it up but this is all done with cash. Perhaps there’s an app that allows more modern financial transactions for transportation but if there is, I have yet to find it.
This became too problematic so we took a taxi. There is no Uber in South Korea and there really should be because without the incentives created by drivers and passengers rating each other, the quality of personality and service you get from the average taxi driver here can vary considerably. This is surprising given that being polite and respectful is built-in to the Korean (and generally Asian) culture.
One thing I always notice when we visit Korea is how fond they are of very tall buildings. I suppose this is due to the cost of land in and around Seoul but it nevertheless surprises me.
They also seem to follow the first rule of government spending: why build one when you can build two for twice the price. Korean cities are littered with high rise apartment complexes that often are made up of the same building built many times. These unusually tall high rise apartment buildings are popping up in places that previously had little in the way of housing at all which feels like a leap rather than incremental steps making me wonder if South Korea is going to experience what China has: overbuilding.
The AirBnB we rented is in one of these very tall buildings like the ones above though we are only on the 5th floor of 33 floors total. I suspect that a good portion of the units were purchased as investments for to rent out to visitors as we have done.
Korea is very concerned about energy conservation. That or electricity is expensive here. Consequently, despite how humid it can be this time of year, air conditioning is not as ubiquitous as it is in the United States. Hallways and lobbies tend to not be air-conditioned. Central air conditioning is not a thing here. Instead, homes have multiple AC units, some of which are free-standing (imagine something that looks like a refrigerator in the corner of your living room) and some are built-in to the ceiling as is the case where we are staying. Like a ceiling fan, they have a remote control you use to turn them on and off. The unit is also quite small but this is also common in South Korea. Home toilets also nearly always have a bidet built-in which has so many controls that, having mastered them, you might feel you’re ready for commercial flight training. Imagine a drive through car wash, with all the bells and whistles, but for your backside.
Once we dropped off our luggage and relaxed a bit, it was time to head out and have a meal. In the part of Incheon in which we are staying, there’s a surprising lack of competition when it comes to restaurants and thus the quality was just OK. They also only took cash which again was surprising for a place like South Korea.
After lunch we went for a long walk around the area. We had been up for 24 hours (with a little sleep on the plane) and a long walk while interesting added to the exhaustion so we decided to take a taxi back to where we are staying. Unfortunately, hailing a cab is not simple or easy in this part of South Korea. It’s not as populated as Seoul itself and thus there aren't many cabs to begin with. If there’s a way to hail one from an app, I had not yet figured that out and hailing one on the street is an exercise in frustration. The one cab we found had windows so dark we weren’t sure if there was a driver inside. As it turned out, he was sleeping in the back and had no interest in any fare that wasn’t going into Seoul.
We ended up walking back and were pretty wiped out by the time we arrived. That made sleep easy. This was just our arrival day of course. Far more interesting adventures to come as we will be here for the next 24 days. Stay tuned.
It's almost like being there Geoff especially the Bidet car wash options. Please keep writing because it's so entertaining!