10 Hour Layover in South Korea

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This is Cynthia! We landed in Incheon, South Korea mad early this morning, around 7am. okay well technically that's not so early, but if you're still on Vietnamese time, it's around 5am in the morning for me. We have a 10 hour layover so instead of just lounging in this humongous airport, Jason and I decided to take the express limousine bus to Seoul, Korea. This was one of the nices buses we have ever been in, lounge type seats, foot rest, and heater at your side.

Oh yeh, u must be wondering why I thought having a heater was a good thing. It's FREEZING in South Korea!! I thought the South is always supposed to be hot and sunny?? What happened. Jason and I have been walking around in tank tops and linen pants all throughout our trip, and we didn't bring any jackets or closed toe shoes with us to Korea - so you can imagine what it feels like to walk around in 44 degrees feirenheit in a city full of wind tunnels. haha

Seoul is about an hour drive from the airport, and we had no guidebook to lead us the way. The only reference guide we carried was the map of the city that I took from one of the airport counters. The sweetest decision yet! Coming out of third world south east Asia and stepping foot into Westernized Seoul, was a bit of a shock. We were used to $1.00 meals and $5.00 linen pants, but as we came into the bargain district of Seoul, everything seemed so INFLATED!! They had New York prices for Pete's sake. Insane!!

We walked into this sheeshy department store, and the women just stared at me. They must've thought I was crazy to walk out in capris, short sleeve shirt, and flip flops. This one woman commented to me, "Cheou??" right when I walked into the store. I'm guessing she asked, "Are you stupid or something?" Oh wells, I got some shopping done, but I didn't et a good deal or anything. Prices for clothing there were as high as a Neuman Marcus store.

What have I learned about Seoul, South Korea? It's about the same as going to Pentagon City in Arlington, VA. When Jason and I arrived at the Seoul Train Station, we saw the market district about 200 meters away. We had to cross a huge, trafficky intersection and we saw no crosswalk. We saw people walking on the sidewalk, but no one was crossing the street. We thought maybe they were still at work and the city just wasn't at it's peak yet. Since we saw no other means of crossing the street, we decided to risk walking in front of the cars, and buses to get to the other side. It was quite a task, but since we've dodged so many insane motorcycles, and speeding cars in Vietnam, we thought this task was a no brainer. We got to the other side of the street just fine, maybe there were a few people looking at us funny, but hey we did it!!!

It wasn't until an hour later that we found out that there were underground tunnels that helped you cross the street. The stairways we saw on the sidewalk weren't subway entrances, they were the underpasses you could take to get to other sections of the city without risking colliding your face into a car. haha, maybe we should've bought those fake me out Lonely Planet guidebooks to South Korea when we were in Saigon.

We're off to San Francisco now! Ciao

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