Finally, a new country to visit!!! After an hour and 40 minutes flight from Shanghai, we are in Seoul. Pretty close huh? Even closer than flying to Beijing! Or to Sichuan! The airport is big and nice. One doesn't fly into Seoul; the International airport is at Inchon, about 55.7Km away from our hotel. The immigration was the most pleasant I have met. Friendly and fast. Exiting the airport is a bit funny; despite all the big signs posted, still had a hard time locating things. Three things I have noticed after collecting my luggage. (1) The US$ is Sh!T to use for exchange local currency. I tried exchanging US$400.00; the teller only accepted three 100 notes; the last one, "dirty, no change". I thought paper money fade after a while. Recall, there was a range of serial numbers on the US notes not accepted as well, (2) People solicitate you as soon as you are out the Custom Hall. Since I have been around before, get to the Taxi queue, (3) taxi drivers trying to flag you down for a fare as soon as I was approaching the queue. And (4) not much English. I actually printed out the Korean version of our hotel and map so any taxi driver could have driven us to the hotel. O yeah, hotel is in COEX mall complex. I can go explore today or tomorrow.
The room we got was an upgrade; actually it is a service apartment unit. We have a one-bedroom unit. Very nice and fancy. About 700 sq ft. Actually I think it is bigger than the Vancouver Wall Center condo units. :-P Got everything in it just like in Hawaii at the Palms on Wailea.
The air was fresh outside. We were quite amaze. Maybe we were so used to the polluted brown stuff back in Asia, the South East side.
What is this at the bottom of my blog writer? "초안이 오후 2:59에 자동 저장되었습니다." O right, it is the Korean Google blogger site. Hee hee... As if I know what that means.
A little info about Korea, street signs are virtually non existence; maybe the North is only about 2 hours drive from Seoul. And the address is not the traditional Western type structure. Address starts with the building number, the sub-district (dong) name and then the District (gu) name. As to the building number, it is not on a sequential sense as we know it. The number is based on the order a building is being built. So, building number 8 could be next to building number 3. I have seen that labeled as such when driving into town. Weird. People use landmarks to navigate or tell you how to get to a place.
Taxi fare, it is based on time in intervals of seconds with a base amount. The currency is Won. The exchange rate right now is: US$1 = 1,004.3Won. And I had just spent 97,800 for taxi fare from the airport to the hotel. Good thing I am not paying for this. If I were to come for a tour, I would have take the airport shuttle limo; the cost is 14,000 one way with the airport bus terminal just next to the hotel at the COEX Mall.
That's about it for now. Reporting live from Seoul. Have to check out the DMZ tour.
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