Blogs from Incheon, South Korea, Asia - page 2

So our original plan for this fluke four day weekend (Children's Day falling on the Monday and Buddha's Birthday falling on the Tuesday) was to go to Hong Kong. However flights were stupidly expensive, with crap times, so we had to come up with another plan. Yeri mentioned Baeknyeong-do ages ago to me, and I stored it away in my mind. With our Hong Kong planned scuppered, this seemed like a good opportunity, as we needed longer than a regular weekend to do it justice. However it was not smooth sailing, when Yeri got in tough with the travel agent, ferry tickets were already sold out for the Saturday, so we had to book for Sunday to Tuesday. The trip was cheap, due to the travel agent ballsing up we got our ferry tickets cheaper, and ... read more

Back to South Korea again. This time I opted for a tamer, rejuvenating trip instead of singing until the early hours at karaoke. Got to hotel early morning again about 8am and headed to bed for a little siesta. Forced myself up about 2ish and hit the gym! Quite proud if myself. Not really a gym fan, don't really get it but I managed about half an hour which isn't too bad. Met the crew for dinner and just went locally to a Thai restaurant called St Augustines. Had my fave - green curry. Was delish. Couple of the crew had watery eyes from the spicyness of the food but the more chillies the better! Headed back and got to bed. Met couple of the girls the next morning and we headed out exploring. One of ... read more

When I ask what's missing in my life, the answer is almost always dol sot bibimbap with a side of spicy kimchi, so other than missing my partner and cats, I am, at the moment, complete. Those of us not going to Thailand flew out last night on an 11:50 from Siem Reap. REP may need the award for Most Improved Airport--compared to my first flight out, there are actually places to sit that aren't molded plastic chairs, and there are things to eat or read. A much nicer wait than it used to be. We arrived at 7:00ish AM at ICN, called Seoul but actually Incheon (I used to teach groups of university students from Incheon, so this is an important distinction). Like Hong Kong and Bangkok (BKK), this is a huge, modern airport that ... read more

10th Aug: A nice start today, not too early. We met up at Incheon airport at 11. We were meant to get the 11:20 bus but due to illness and waiting to get a doctor's appointment we had to get the 12:20 bus. It worked out better though because there was a big storm brewing and we missed getting caught up in the torrential rain. The bus is easy to find, it's number 222, and it leaves from the departures part of the airport by gate (door) number 7. The bus took about twenty minutes to get to the port. It's easy to know where to get off as it is a) the last stop, b) you can see the big ship, and c) everybody else gets off there, too. We went into the office to ... read more

We seem to manage to hit the hot spots wherever we travel. Like the morning we cruised into Inchon, Korea. Dennis Rodman’s friend, Kim Jong Un, mentioned that he was going to attack South Korea and for good measure maybe the United States also. Our tour guide told us that we were very brave to be visiting at this time of heightened tensions between the two Koreas. It all seemed pretty calm to me as we went about our business of touring. There is a huge statue of General MacArthur towering over Inchon to commemorate his successful landing there during the Korean War. He probably wouldn’t mind another go at it. Korea calls its wind-chill factor the “feeling temperature.” Today it was feeling pretty cold at -4C but we trudged on and fortunately the predicted rain/sleet ... read more