Korea impressions, the first night

The trip to Korea was quite short. I have not been spontaneous enough to actually post an entry there. Arrival at Incheon airport was very pleasant:  it is a big airport and yet it is easy to navigate your way through it.  I do not wonder why it is consistently voted as the best airport in the world.

To get out of the airport I took the Airport shuttle bus as my accommodation was in Myeong-dong and most Shuttle bus(9000 WON  –  9 USD) do stop at hotels there.  Once out of the shuttle,  I did have a hard time finding my way to my hotel.  Most people did not speak English and I think that even if I spoke Korean I probably would still had problems. To find out my way to places I usually use Google maps and Iphone’s GPS( as last resort as Internet data roaming is quite expensive), alas the hotel address was wrong in Google. I should have verified that information. I found some help by asking a receptionist from another hotel, he gave me a map of Myeong-Dong and pointed out where my hotel was. The map was useful but the receptionist tried to dissuade by telling me it takes 15(he pronounced this as 50!) minutes to go there.

 In Korea, you get to places using landmarks as often times streets would have no names and coordinates are difficult to figure out.  One of the intersections which led to my hotel had a Dunkin Donut shop, from there it was just 2 blocks away.

It was already midnight after I after I got settled in my room.  I was very hungry and was very eager to test the local food,  Myeong-Dong has a number of  food stalls at its fringes.  I did not bother to eat street foods, seeing the locals and the Japanese comfortably seated outside the stalls somehow  assured me of the quality of the food being served.  I am rather adventurous when it comes to food so I didn’t mind just pointing at the pictures of the food to order… No English translation only Japanese and Chinese! This is why I ended up with cold soup on my second day in Seoul