Above: Dongdaemun Design Plaza.
Flying on the Airbus A220
We have an 1145 departure from Naha airport to Incheon today. We left by monorail after 0800 and got to the airport 3h before the flight. As today’s flight on a small plane, an A220, I didn’t expect check-in to be open that early.
I did some work on the computer at the workstations until check-in opened 2h20 before departure. The staff were vigilant and asked for our onward tickets from Korea which we had handy.
Going airside, the fully-automated immigration process was a breeze. I continued working at the workstations while Kim got rid of a tonne of shrapnel in the form of Japanese coins. He brought back a couple of cans of drinks and a beautifully packaged box of eight biscuits which turned out to be about NZD1 each. It’s better than carrying those coins around the world back to New Zealand and having them sit around for another decade!
The Korean Air A220 had wide spacious seats that were rock hard. They served a delicious hot meal on the 2h30 flight. It was my first time on this aircraft type. While it seemed quiet on take-off, there was quite a bit of roar during cruise.
Arriving in Seoul
Having boarded extremely early, our flight had departed about 15 mins early and we landed at Seoul’s Incheon airport 30 mins early at 1345.
Immigration was quick and once in the public area, we missed the ATMs and descended one level. There was only the Shinhan bank and ATM down there which charged a KRW3500 fee for the withdrawal. While this is low compared to some banks/countries, I wanted to make a comparison so that we would be better prepared in case we had further withdrawals to make.
We took the lift back up where we found three ATMS. Kim was getting impatient and said “Are you going to scour the whole airport to check the fee with every ATM?” As it turned out, fees on the other ATMs were higher, as much as double that of the Shinhan Bank.
Getting to the train, I could find kiosks to recharge my transport card but couldn’t find one to buy Kim a new card. Kim encouraged me towards another set of kiosks, orange in colour. It offered tickets with the next departure in about 30 mins at 1520, which I thought was a little strange.
Wary of his impatience early, I went ahead and purchased the tickets on credit card only to realise immediately that we had just paid about double for the express trains.
The regular all-stops train are more frequent and would beat the express train to the city. I think the all-stops trains enable a more seamless transfer to the metro system as well. In the time that we waited for our train, two or three all-stops trains went past!
I was so upset at the mistake and didn’t get over it until halfway through the ride to the city. Kim tried to console me with the fact that we had nice comfy seats on the express rather than metro-style seats on the all-stops train.
At Seoul main station, I was just about to buy a transport card from a kiosk for Kim but this stranger told me no to. He dragged me up two floors by escalator to a convenience store when I got one for maybe NZD0.20 less. I’m not sure what the story was, but with that card, both of us went back through the station turnstiles and walked the long tunnel to the metro that would take us to Dongdaemun.
We arrived at the Toyoko Inn Dongdaemun II at 1700, which is about the time I had expected. We basically lost the gain in the early arrival of our flight. I was extremely pleased with our choice of hotel with regards to its location next to the metro exit and the size of the room. Little did I know that the location would also be great for eating and shopping (which I didn’t need to do).
First explorations
We headed out after a 40 min break, firstly to the Dongdaemun Design Plaza (DDP) designed by Zaha Hadid who also designed the white sweeping beauty of a building in Baku which I visited a few months ago.
It was a work of art but it’s also a perfect example of how impractical art can be. The amount of wasted space in it is just phenomenal. And with hardly a straight line, one can get lost easily. So, it’s not the kind of design you can have for an airport or a hospital!
Next, we visited the Cheong-gye-cheon river area which has been nicely landsaped for a distance of 11km through the city. In earlier times, it was covered up with an elevated highway over it.
We then explored some of the buildings in the area. Almost every single one was in the fashion industry. The scale of the industry is just beyond belief.
We took dinner at an awesome eatery in DDP before having another walk. We found a multi-storey building that opens only from 2000 to 0500 that had fashion outlets. All of them had bags and bags of purchases awaiting pick-up or courier.