Article One
Journal Entry: 18 August 2007: Vladivostok via Seoul
Seoul
Brisbane to Seoul
Departed from home via an AUD$40 Taxi to the airport with no hassles. Checked through Immigration and let loose into duty-free land. Not much use as we are restricted in what we can carry on to an aircraft…Duty-free liquor bought in Brisbane will be confiscated at any other transit airport visited! Thank you American Home Security and Qantas Unionised flight attendants…These regulations are NOT in force at Seoul or Vladivostok Airports and I would bet, not at many hundreds of others around the world.
Arrived in Seoul after an uneventful 10-hour flight, only one movie in English plus some documentaries…all the rest in Korean, Russian or simply English language movies but dubbed in God knows what with Japanese sub-titles! Food was good and plenty of lubrication if needed. Our Travel Agency (TA or Maverick) gave us our instructions “…please pass through Immigration, bypass luggage pick-up, clear customs with our hand-luggage only (heavy bags booked straight through to Vladivostok) and then meet Korean Airlines Agent at the Korean Airlines Information Desk immediately outside the luggage hall at Terminal Entrance Seven!...”
WRONG! The Information desk when we finally located it is half a kilometre around the Terminal adjacent to Terminal Entry Three. This we found after being re-directed three times to different gates! Once there, the little agent-man issued us with our Hotel Accommodation Voucher and Transfer Vouchers to travel by Shuttle-bus to the Hyatt Hotel. Finally! No, not done yet, the Hyatt Shuttle-bus operates from Terminal Entrance THIRTEEN, that is, almost a mile back around the terminal perimeter. Once there, we had a ten minute wait and the bus took us literally, around the corner to the hotel. All this walking and swearing in 29degree Celsius heat
The Seoul Hyatt hotel is located at the airport itself and is one of three or four hotels, which, it seems, were built for the Seoul Olympic Games. With the exception of the Hyatt, all the other hotels appeared empty! In fact, the others appeared deserted and decaying!
Back in the Hyatt, we had some free drinks at its little Casino, investigated the hotel restaurants and virtually decided we would have this or that for dinner, dinner being included on our vouchers. Wrong again, dinner was a fixed menu of powder-based pumpkin soup, ‘chipped-beef’ with fried rice…where the beef had been ‘chipped’ whilst still frozen then stewed in its own de-frosting juices. The vegetables were cold, soggy, and, the so-called ‘fried-rice’ was wet and gluey. Desert was a slice of stale cake with much older, staler custard! Absolutely disgusting! We, like nearly everyone else dining on the fixed menu, left 90% on our plates!
Early to bed, breakfast was OK and away to the airport. Back on another, smaller plane and two hours later, we arrived at:
Vladivostok
Journal Entry Two
