One of the stranger things you can experience in travel is crossing the international dateline. Our flight on Asiana airlines from San Francisco to Inchon airport outside of Seoul takes off at 11:30 PM on Friday, February 2nd, but doesn't land until the early morning of February 4th. So no February 3rd for us. But don't worry, coming back, we are going to arrive back in San Francisco before we take off from Seoul!
Our flight takes us up over the Aleutian islands of Alaska then down over the northern Japanese island of Hokkaido, across the Sea of Japan and then across the Korean peninsula - passing right over Gangneung where we will be based in a few days. I can't say that we saw much because we were trying to get as much sleep as we could. The flight was supposed to take 13 hours, but headwinds are lighter than normal so we arrive at Inchon 90 minutes early. Walking down the unheated jetway, one thing is clear. It is cold out here, especially for a pair of whimpy Northern Californians where the temperature was 78 F the day we departed.
Normally, getting in early is good news, but in this case, it means we arrive at 4:10 AM. It takes a while to get our bags and clear customs, but it is still only 5 AM when we get out. I thought for sure that I would not be able to pick up the SIM card that I'd ordered. But apparently, selling SIM cards to tourists is such a lucrative business that people will work whenever there are plane landing. We get the card, put it in the phone, and viola, we have unlimited data access for the duration of our stay.
We are so early that the buses to Seoul are not yet running. But that gives me time to get a picture with the Olympic and Paralympic mascots, white tiger Soohorang and black bear Bandabi:
Other than this display and a few signs pointing Olympic athletes toward Olympic accreditation and transport, there is almost nothing to indicate that the Winter Olympics are going to take place in less than a week. Perhaps there is more in Terminal 2 which was built specifically for the Olympics or maybe there will be more going on in the next few days when more spectators begin to arrive, but I would have thought that the PyeongChang Olympics would be a bigger deal to Koreans than they appear to be.
While waiting around for someone to sell us a bus ticket, an older Korean guy approaches us and in pretty bad English volunteers to take us to Seoul for 70,000 Korean won (krw, divide by 1000 to get US dollars). The bus was going to cost 30,000 krw, but we were going to have to wait at least another hour to get on one, so we decide to take him up on the offer. Back outside, where it is a balmy 8 F, and into his small limo. Inchon airport is out on an island in the middle of Inchon harbor surrounding Seoul so it takes nearly an hour to get from the airport to our hotel. When we get there, I hand the driver 70,000 krw. He waves his hand and points to the meter (which says 95,000 krw) and explains that the difference is the tolls to get out of the airport and off the island. Oh well, at least we got to where we wanted to go.
As expected, the people at the hotel desk said that our room would not be available until normal 3pm check-in. But as they are checking our bags into their baggage room, they tell us that they think that a room will be available at 10:30. We had been discussing whether to go look around but this is soon enough that we elect to wait for a room to open up before going out to explore. That is when things started going wrong.
I had not turned on my surface since shortly after we'd left Rio in 2016 so you can imagine the number of Microsoft updates that were waiting for it. I had started this process before we left, but something had gone wrong and I needed to close the computer right when it has the screen "Update in process. Please do not turn off the computer". So, there was some possibility that nothing would work when I turned it back on. Fortunately, it seemed to pick right back up where it left off. Unfortunately, the update failed again. But it did fall back to the previous update so everything still worked. Yeah!
After taking a look at the PyeongChang Olympic pins currently on sale (much more on pins later for those who have not looked at any of the previous blogs, sorry to those who have read this blog previously who are sick of reading about pins), I decided to put some notes on my blog for later. I could look at the blog, but when I tried to create a new one, I got a message from Google that I needed to log in instead of being logged in automatically. This was a problem because neither Beth nor I had any idea what our Google password was. Even worse, when I clicked the forgot password link, Google wanted to send a text message code to our rescue phone. Unfortunately, Beth's phone, while physically in Korea, could not find any compatible AT&T networks so we could could not get the text code. Google lets you send the text code to an email address which worked fine, but when I put the code in, Google says "we cannot verify that your email address is owned by you". Over the next 2+ hours, I tried everything I could think of including trying to reach Google customer service. Google goes out of their way to make it impossible to speak with an actual human, but I did manage to get a reply by email in Korean. The Google translation (irony) of the email said exactly what the website had said - that I needed to authenticate myself on a device that they already accepts as being mine. Sigh. I finally throw in the towel, created a new Google user, new Google blog (olympiholic2.blogspot.com) and new Google document file (for photos) which is how you are reading this striped down version of my usual blog. I will recover the old blog when I get back to the US.
The front desk staff finally lets us know that our room is ready. We pick up our bags, take them up to our room and then head off to our first adventure - a visit to the 1988 Seoul Olympic park. But first, we have to navigate the Seoul subway system. The subway map looks like someone took 16 pieces of colored yarn, started each one at irregular intervals around the outside of the city and weaved them back and forth in the interior so that no one can predict where a line will come back out. We think that we've worked out that we need to take the #4 train 4 stops then change to the #5 train and go about 9 stops. We find a ticket dispenser and find that our trip will combined cost us only 4,100 krw. Most signs have the station names in both Hangul (the phonetic Korean writing) and English so it was reasonably easy to figure out whether the train is going in the right direction.
It takes us about 20 minutes to get to the correct station. We see a sign indicating that the exit to the Olympic park is to the left. But to the left is a wall. After walking around for about 10 minutes, we finally just take one of the other exits. Once we get up to the surface, we look across the street and see that the side of the station that we were supposed to exit from is under construction. Okay, we are not crazy.
We cross the street, past a big wall and see this:
The front desk staff finally lets us know that our room is ready. We pick up our bags, take them up to our room and then head off to our first adventure - a visit to the 1988 Seoul Olympic park. But first, we have to navigate the Seoul subway system. The subway map looks like someone took 16 pieces of colored yarn, started each one at irregular intervals around the outside of the city and weaved them back and forth in the interior so that no one can predict where a line will come back out. We think that we've worked out that we need to take the #4 train 4 stops then change to the #5 train and go about 9 stops. We find a ticket dispenser and find that our trip will combined cost us only 4,100 krw. Most signs have the station names in both Hangul (the phonetic Korean writing) and English so it was reasonably easy to figure out whether the train is going in the right direction.
It takes us about 20 minutes to get to the correct station. We see a sign indicating that the exit to the Olympic park is to the left. But to the left is a wall. After walking around for about 10 minutes, we finally just take one of the other exits. Once we get up to the surface, we look across the street and see that the side of the station that we were supposed to exit from is under construction. Okay, we are not crazy.
We cross the street, past a big wall and see this:
Hmm, big gold thumb. Are we in the right place? What has that got to do with the Olympics? The answer to the first question is that the main Olympic stadium is to the left and the baseball stadium is to the right, so I'd have to say that we are in the right place. As far as the big gold thumb, it has to be art. But why is it here? We keep walking. Next, we see these:
I did not record all of the artists, but I started noticing that they came from all over the world and all were installed in the year or two before 1988. Apparently there was a huge art festival in the park and they were left here after the Games ended. This is way cool. One of the most important parts of hosting the Olympics is the legacy that is left after the camera lights turn off. That is one of the saddest thing to me about Rio because after all the money spent, the country and city are not financially able to keep most of the stadiums open after the Games, although I think that the subway line to the Olympic park will remain. Seoul on the other hand has done well in establishing an lasting Olympic legacy. They built 3 subway lines including both of the ones that we took to get here. They have this Olympic park for the locals to enjoy, but also contains the training facilities for most Korean summer Olympic athletes.
Beyond the art, we arrive at the Olympic plaza:
We're getting pretty cold so it is a good thing that the Olympic museum is directly in front of us. The museum did a good job of following the whole history of the Olympic movement beginning with the Ancient Olympics (the reason Greco-Roman only alows holds above the waist is the athletes wrestled in the nude!) through the reintroduction of the Olympics in 1896. Then they showed the Seoul Games beginning with the bidding process when Seoul was considered a dark horse to win the Games (Nagoya, Japan was the favorite) through the end of paralympics. Here is a picture of the huge drum called a chinko which was used during the Seoul Olympics:
Just before we left, we stopped in the museum shop to see if they have any...you guessed it, pins. They do, I thought that the entire set of 24 Seoul mascot (the baby tiger Hidori) sports pins cost 5,000 krw - that is incredibly cheap, but the reaction from the sales woman when I indicated that I wanted one of each sport tells me that I've gotten it wrong. She does not speak English, but we manage to ask her if the price of 5,000 krw is for one pin or for all of them. She answers that one pin costs 5,000 krw. At 120,000 krw, this is still a good price, but I don't want to spend $120 for pins I'm only going to trade. We tell her thank you, but no thanks and head back out into the cold.
We are going to toward a different subway station that is closer to this end of the park when we happen across this scene:
The big gate in the background is called the World Peace gate and was constructed for the Seoul games while a smaller temporary display for the PyeongChang Olympics is in the foreground - a nice superposition of the two Korean Olympics.
Our trip back to the hotel was uneventful despite having to change trains twice because we started from line #8 instead of line #5. It is now about 1:30 and we haven't eaten anything today yet so we stop at a shop that is in the basement underneath our hotel. I'm keen to use Google Translate to read the menu, but they actually have an English menu. Beth orders gimbap, which is a Korean rice snack sort of like sushi except that it only contains vegetables. I am not sure if my stomach is up to the normal Korean spice level so I order a chicken curry. The meals come with two small dishes (a small number for a typical Korean meal, which can contain 10 - 12 sides) - assorted pickled vegetables and kimchi, which is fermented cabbage flavored with chili pepper. Delicious!
We go back up to our room. Beth watches TV while I work on editing pictures and begin work on this blog. Neither our stomachs or heads know what time zone we are actually in so around 7 pm, we decide to go back to the same shop. This time I have bulgogi, which is a thinly sliced marinated beef dish. Beth had fish cakes in a chili sauce. Usually, the redder the sauce, the spicier the dish and this one was bright red. She eats about half before giving up due to the spice level - something I've never seen Beth do. Korean's appear to love spice so we will have to be careful on what we order.
We head back to the hotel and hit the sack after a very long day.
Tomorrow we are off to the National Palace Museum. Stay tuned.
Steps for the day: 9,324
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