Lee Ju-young (fashion designer), yours truly and Kim Bada (from the Ratios and Ju-young's husband)Hey everyone.I'm still around and take this blog post as proof ;-)I went out to the Incheon Pentaport Rock Festival today and really enjoyed myself.I'd not planned on going. The monsoon rains have been pouring pretty consistently since early July and they're showing no signs of stopping. Between f
I still found a lot of Korean boyfriends carrying their girlfriend's purses. I'm amazed at her balance in her high heels.Curt (hubby) happened to get into Incheon Airport a few hours ahead of my sister. I took the airport bus to meet him, have dinner and wait for my sister, niece and cousin. We ended up waiting about three hours for their plane to land, get to a gate and have them clear customs a
Remember when I took a "mini" food vacation to Hong Kong back in May? Well, on my way back to Seoul my flight landed at 4:45am local time. I had to make it back to Mokdong and work later in the afternoon at 2pm. I was already dead tired at the time and I needed one last trek until I would get a chance to sleep! Too bad I couldn't waste some money in the Incheon Duty Free!At first I contemplated taking a taxi, but it would've been way overpriced (about 50-70,000w at the bare minimum), thought about taking a bus (it was leaving in 15 minutes), but in the end I decided to wait at the airport until 5:30am to catch the first train aboard the newly constructed AREX Incheon to Gimpo Airport subway line. I first saw pictures of the station through Jon Allen's blog.Man, the arrivals area of Incheon is pretty dead at 4:45am...I felt like I was walking through a ghost town. On my way down to the AREX line, it was so empty and bare it led to an eery feeling (which is unusual because Seoul is so
If you're still following our journey home right now, by this time we have finally reached Incheon International Airport via the Airport Bus from Mokdong Station. Once we arrived, bag carriers helped unload our bags from the bus, free of charge. In some other countries, you'd be expected to pony up a tip right about now. I had mentioned before that all of our bags were overweight by at least 2-3kg (5-6lbs/bag)!Once we arrived at the Air Canada check-in counter we were praying that we wouldn't have to pay the overweight fees, although we were prepared to do so. Lucky enough, with my luck we ran into a very friendly employee who waived all the charges for us! :) So after checking in we went through security (my jacket weighed about 10lbs) without a hitch. Phew.Next up, was Korean Immigration. Here they check your passport to see who you are and why you're leaving the country. This is where we surrendered our Alien Registration Cards (ARC). They would have made great souvenirs though!
There are many ways to get to Incheon International Airport. You can now take the subway, taxi, or airport limousine (you can walk too, but that might take a while). I've taken cabs to Incheon before (think Hong Kong) and it's the most expensive choice. From Mokdong, which is in western Seoul, fare is about 40-50,000w ($40-50USD) one way. If you were to take a cab from anywhere else to Incheon, be prepared to pay a lot more.Since we left the next day in the afternoon, we had time to take the airport limousine. This bus makes stops throughout Seoul and runs about every 30 minutes to an hour. The driver helps you load up your heavy suitcases (our ajoshi probably pulled a back muscle--more on that later) and the cost is about 8-9000w ($8-9USD--I forgot the exact amount). Total travel time from Mokdong was about 40-45 minutes.The checked baggage allowance on Air Canada is 23kg (about 50lbs). As you can see below, after using the digital scales for free inside Hyundai Fitness, this bag wa
I'd like to be one of the first to bring you some pictures of the new Incheon to Gimport Airport railroad. Here's a shot of the station hall at Incheon:This is a view of the huge station hall at GimpoThe set of photos is here. The full story of my little trip coming very soon.
As I mentioned before, the Airport railway (or railroad as it prefers to call itself) linking Incheon to Gimpo is expected to open next week, Friday March 23rd. I went along to Gimpo to see how preparations were progressing.I took the subway from Yeouido, our nearest station, and 25 minutes later I was at Gimpo airport station. Here at the end of the platform, is the link to the new line.This implies you will be able to interchange with the new service without having to go through another ticket gate, which is good news; but it will be interesting to find out how ticketing works with the possibility of Express or Standard trains. How will they charge you extra if you took the fast train?Outside, there was still quite a lot of last minute work going on to finish tidying up the station entrances:Excavation work continues at three different places for the second phase of construction of the line.From the underground station at Gimpo the line rises to ground level and heads north to cross
Travellers to South Korea will be interested to hear that the new rail link from the main International Airport of Seoul at Incheon will open next month March 23rd.The new rail link to be known as AREX does not, as yet, take you right to Seoul city centre, but it does take you to the other airport in Seoul : Gimpo. From there you can travel on the Seoul Subway into downtown on Subway line 5.However, judging by the timing and price quoted in the article I'm not sure how many customers it is going to attract. The journey between the two airports will take 33 minutes and cost 3,100 won on the slow train (every 12 mins). The express train (once an hour) will take 28 minutes for a price of 7,900 won. By comparison, a bus takes about 30 minutes and costs 4,500 won.I guess the trains will be more frequent than the existing buses, but most visitors who are travelling to parts of Seoul beyond Gimpo will probably continue to take the limousine bus services. They go direct to a number of differ
