Touring Here and There: Flying Home...Seoul Korea (November 6)

Flying east across the international dateline really extends the day. I can catch a plane in Saigon at 1:00 a.m. I awake in Soeul at 8:00 a.m. In the afternoon, I hop on a plane and still arrive in the City at 10:00 a.m. How? The international dateline. I am flying towards the begining of a new day...

From 8:00 a.m. until the afternoon, my layover in Seoul lasted 10 hours. Because I had planned on seeing Seoul during my layover, I bought a Lonely Planet Seoul guidebook. As with other international airports, the Seoul airport was located about 45 miles from downtown. This created a problem. How could I get to downtown Seoul, see the sights, eat some food, and get back to my plane in time? I could take the subway, but as far as I could tell, I would have to catch a bus to get to the subway station. The bus plus the subway ride might take 2 hours one-way. This would take at least four of my ten hours.

To complicate travel matters further, Seoul has a weird street numbering convention. They number the buildings sequentially based on when a given building was built. So number 17 on a street might be next to number 245. Additionally, the streets don't have their names posted on street signs. So if I were to explore Seoul myself, it seems as though I would likely get lost.

Exiting the plane, I was told that I had the option of getting a free hotel room or a free tour of Seoul. I opted for the free tour instead of trying to find my way around Seoul by myself.

As I went through customs, there were a group of 4 of us who wanted to go on the tour. Some other passengers had told me that to find the tour desk, I had to go the first floor and walk to door A. So, I tried to lead the group of us to door A. The problem was that we were all tired and not all of us were sure that we were going in the right direction. Door A happened to be at the other end of the airport, so it was a long walk. But eventually we made it and we were wisked away towards Seoul.

Ann (her anglicized name) told us about our itinerary - see the Presidential Palace (Blue House), visit a pagoda (Jogyesa), and see an ancient palace (Changdeokgung - The Palace of Illustrious Virtue). We also would be fed, but drinks were on us. Ann then ran us through some basic Korean - hello, thank you, good bye. I was too tired to pick up any words. One last thing - we also stopped to do some shopping. I didn't need to buy any more kitsch, but I did find a French bakery!

After the bakery, the group of us went to a "Korean" restaurant. Here I was, the only person not originally from Asia, eating kimchee and an assortment of other pickled items. The remainder of the group were Vietnamese. They were American, but at the restaurant, the group only spoke Vietnamese. I wished I had spent more time learning the language while in Vietnam.

The Blue House (Cheongwadae) - The Presidential Palace