Lost Seouls

A word of warning for the naive traveller: Inchoen the Korean suburb isn’t remotely close to Incheon the Korean airport.

Catching a train to Incheon station, hopping in a cab and asking the driver to take you to the Incheon Regency Hyatt is a bit like arriving at the Christmas Islands and asking for a lift to Santa’s place.

Bwahhahaahahaha.

We finally managed to hail a cab driver – Incheon the suburb isn’t really jumping on a Sunday night – who gaped at us and announced in broken English that the Hyatt was “a very long way”. He wasn’t wrong – a $50 fare later and we were finally deposited at our hotel. He felt so sorry for the stupid Westerners he refused a tip.

And to think I’d been planning on walking there from the station.

How we got to be at Incheon train station in the first place is a very long story involving a 45-minute express train to Seoul from the airport and a 90-minute all-stops local train from Seoul to Incheon.

The wrong Incheon.

Let me start at the beginning. We got off our plane at Seoul Airport – for a brief overnight stopover enroute to New York – and thought, bugger it, let’s be wild and crazy and catch a train to the city for a few hours. Who knows when we’ll be back in Seoul again? Never, if my father has any say in it, as he’s convinced we’re going to be blown apart by a North Korean missile at any moment.

But the fares were really cheap. So suck it up, Dad. (Mum has already asked if she gets the Sprogs in the will because she wants to send them to Newcastle Grammar.)

Anyways, so we caught the express train to the city and were feeling pretty damn pleased with ourselves until we arrived at the Seoul equivalent of Central Station without maps, wi-fi or any other idea of where touristy parts of Seoul might be. And it was bloody cold, especially for someone in a t-shirt and light cardie. Brrrrr. We wandered through the frigid grot for a while, vainly searching for nightlife then gave up and returned to the train station.

Oooh, I said, there’s a train to Incheon! We’re staying at the Incheon Hyatt, let’s skip the airport express and just go straight to the hotel. I’m sure I remember reading somewhere that it’s near the station.

Famous last words.

We finally got to the hotel (that’s our gorgeous view, above) just after 10pm, starving. When we asked if there was somewhere to eat nearby the receptionist started telling us about a strip a few minutes away.

But there was no way we were getting lost again. So we ordered extravagantly expensive room service – $10 beers and $20 plates of Korean fried rice – and went to bed on our $230 a night sheets that don’t include breakfast.

I’ll leave it to you to add up how much a night touring the train stations of Seoul cost us.

Although I have off-set our expenses minimally by availing myself of as many of the excellent toiletries as possible – massage soap bars, combs, loofahs, emery boards …