incheon

If you have several hours of layover at the Incheon International Airport in South Korea, what would you do with your time in transit? You could wait at the gate for your next flight, window shopping at the various stores in the terminal, or — if you’re adventurous — go on a transit tour.

When I walked around the airport on the way to find out about my hotel assignment during the 22-hour layover, I saw billboards advertising the transit tours. I went straight to the hotel after receiving my hotel assignment, but the idea of taking a tour sounded interesting to me, especially considering on the following day my flight to Jakarta was not scheduled to leave until 3 pm in the afternoon. When I arrived at the hotel, I asked the hotel receptionist about the transit tour, and he said that’s a great idea and I should consider going back to the airport early on the next day and find out about the tour availability.

I went to the airport on the 8 am shuttle, and waited until the transit tour information desk opened at 9 am. Initially I was thinking about taking one of their shorter options (either 1-hr or 2-hr tour), but when the lady at the tour booth found out that my flight was not until 3 pm, she suggested that I consider joining the 5-hr Seoul City Tour that includes a traditional Korean lunch. She assured me that I would be back in time for my flight.

The Seoul City Tour took us to several locations within the city of Seoul. The city itself is about 45-minute drive from Incheon. We visited the Gyeongbokgung Palace and the nearby National Folk Museum, and then continued on to spend some time walking on the street of Insa-dong, an area full of stores selling arts and crafts. We also stopped by at the Cheong Gye Cheon, a man-made stream with walking path that cuts through downtown Seoul. We finished up the tour with a lunch at a traditional Korean restaurant. It’s quite a packed program for a 5-hour period. I made it back the airport with just enough time to go through security and find my departure gate.

Depending on your time availability, you can also consider other tours that are either shorter or longer in duration. One thing you have to consider is that you would need to go through immigration first and get a visitor visa before you can go on the tour. Depending on the time of the day, this may take an extra 30 minutes to 1 hour. I do think it’s worth the hassle. It gives you a much more memorable experience than just sitting at the waiting area near your departure gate.

The photo below was taken at the front of the Gyeongbokgung Palace. There was a changing of the guard ceremony going on when we arrived at the palace.

I would consider myself a seasoned traveler since I traveled very frequently for my old job. At least that was the case within the United States. Even when visiting new cities in the US, the routine was typically the same: finding the baggage claim / ground transportation area, getting to the car rental place, and following GPS or printed map to get to my destination. Well, when you’re traveling internationally, it’s completely a different story. Faced with an unfamiliar protocol / routine in a different culture with its own language / script, and I felt like a rookie traveler again.

When I landed at Incheon after the first leg of my trip between Washington, DC, and Jakarta, all I knew from my itinerary was that I had a 22-hour layover before my next leg of the trip, and I was going to get a hotel room for the night. After what seemed like a scavenger hunt to find the Korean Air staff who had the hotel assignments, I found myself in a little minivan with three other passengers being driven off the airport to a nearby area called the Airport Town Square. We were dropped off at our designated hotel, Hotel June. The driver spoke very little English, and motioned us to go to the hotel receptionist desk. Fortunately the receptionist spoke English pretty well, and explained to me and the other passengers about our meal coupons that we could use for dinner that night and breakfast and lunch on the following day, all served at the hotel’s restaurant. Apparently there is shuttle bus going to the airport every so often, so depending on when our next flight was, we could tell them which one to go on.

When I got to my hotel room, it was yet another new experience. I had a Platinum Elite status with Marriott Rewards at that time since I stayed so much time on the road at Marriott hotels in the United States, so you would think I could easily adjust and make myself home at any hotel room. Here, I was like someone discovering a hotel room for the first time. It started with learning how to use the room key as the main switch to turn on electricity in the room. Then more discovery on how things work in the room: figuring out the light switch with labels in Korean, using the sophisticated toilet and shower in the bathroom, and using a PC with Microsoft Windows with Korean language/encoding and Korean keyboard to browse the Web. It was very much unlike anything I had ever seen in any hotel in the United States.

I also ventured outside the hotel to walk around the neighborhood. The area was full of transit hotels like Hotel June, and there were many restaurants around. I like Korean food, and there were many of those places that looked like they had really good food, but I was deterred by the fear of not being able to communicate, especially after seeing the signs and menus all in Korean with very little, if any, English translation. And I didn’t know how much things typically cost, so I was worried that I might get ripped off if I didn’t know what to expect. But simply wandering around the neighborhood several blocks from the hotel was a good experience to observe a new culture.

The photo below was taken during the night walk through the neighborhood. Note that there was practically no English on any of the signs.