We’re leaving Taiwan today, and are moving on to South Korea - just a short stop of a few days on our way to southern Japan. As we’ve seen in the last week, we’re in a very different leg of our trip now: no more backpackers in these big, efficient, modern cities where everyone is dressed smartly in the latest fashion. Despite our last minute shopping in Hanoi and Taipei for warmer, less casual clothes, we still stand out quite a bit - but we’re not freezing yet, although this may change in Seoul where the average temperature is forecast to be under ten degrees Celsius! At least we’ve left the crazy motorcycles behind now, and are slowly coming back to a culture of pedestrian priority, which is a welcome change.
Our plane is leaving in the middle of the day, but we haven’t really planned much for the morning - a good occasion to have a bit of a lie-in and a lazy pack. We need it as well as we celebrated our final night in Taiwan yesterday with 10% Long Island Iced Beer - very strong! The mini lanterns we bought in Shifen light up, and we have to conceal them right in the middle of our bags to make sure we don’t spook the airport security with unexpected flashing red and blue lights. Once everything is securely in, we head out back to Taoyuan for a relaxed lunch at the airport before queuing up for the flight to Seoul.
We’re on a massive plane, very comfortable (compared to European budget airlines) and we settle in for a quiet few hours as we fly north. Soon enough, we start descending through what appears to be infinite layers of clouds - we must be far from the ground yet! But unexpectedly, the wheels come out when we’re still fully shrouded in white, and it’s only literal seconds before we land that we finally make it past this very low-hanging cover. The mists are less than a dozen meters from the ground!
Very impressed by the still-smooth landing in these circumstances, we head out and prepare to find our way to Seoul town centre. Immigration and customs are rather fast - I’ve filled in all our details online, and the queues and process are overall efficient. Once we make it out of the terminal however, things start to get more complicated. It’s a struggle to find a SIM card to get some data - and the prices are nothing like what we’ve experienced so far. After a long queue at the only stand that sells them, we finally manage to get one - with very lacklustre performance for the price.
The next step is transport cards, but for some reason they are only available in convenience stores rather than ticket machines - and every single shop that is meant to sell them has run out this evening. We don’t really have another choice than a single-use ticket then, and therefore head over to the train terminal, trusting we will be able to buy it at the station. Once we make it there, there's no one to talk to: the only way to buy tickets is through machines, with little guidance for newcomers. It take some figuring out to work out the right thing to buy - nothing is simple here! - and as we try to pay we realise with dismay that the automatons are cash-only. We haven’t withdrawn any wons yet, counting on being able to pay by card (like at all the other shops so far), so we need to backtrack quite a distance to find an ATM - or three, as the first two don’t accept international cards (in an airport?)
Equipped with cash, we finally get our ticket from the machines, and work out which train to take. Confusingly, there’s two, taking around the same time to get to the city, but priced very differently - we got the cheap one and need to wait an extra ten minutes for it to arrive. It’s getting cold on the platform: the promised seven degrees are biting and we’re glad we packed all our layers in our day bags so we can wrap up easily. The journey to the town centre is about an hour, and thankfully covered (including changes) by our single ticket - and we finally make it to our accommodation, but not before I need to turn my buff into a woollen hat to combat the cold.
Seoul is an expensive city, and we didn’t want to splurge too much (as we know we’ll need the money for Japan too) so we booked a rather basic hostel in the centre. We still have a private room, but as we get there, we can barely fit both of us and our bags in and close the door behind us: it’s tiny! The (small) bed takes up the bulk of the room, with the only free space a short bit of corridor including the door to the bathroom. At least we have heating, which we immediately turn on to unfreeze. A quick snack on a few random bits we got from a supermarket on the way and it’s time to go to sleep - rather disillusioned with this first contact with Korea.
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