"Mainly a Hotel Tip" a Seoul Travel Page by SurfaceTravel

I first stayed here for 12 hours when transferring on Korean Airlines from Canada to Bangkok. Back then the airline used to bus you into the centre of town, put you up at the Lotte Hotel overnight, complete with meal vouchers, and bus you back to the airport the next morning. This was an excellent deal, especially since I had booked this airline because they were the cheapest option. The Lotte is an excellent top-end 5-star hotel right downtown. I was able to walk around and see the city.

You are supposed to cross the roads using pedestrian underpasses. I jay-walked across the surface once and was immediately accosted by a police officer. He was bawling me out and had his ticket book open, scribbling away, but the language barrier was so absolute that he had to give up in the end.

This was another stop-over on the way home from South East Asia, this time with my wife. It was quite chilly and there was snow on the ground. We stayed at the excellent Grand InterContinental Seoul hotel (see tip). We went to a museum where the signs of the exhibits were very pro-Korea and slightly anti-Japan. We saw an old palace (sorry, I forget which one; this is before I blogged) with under-floor heating. We also went shopping at the Marks & Spencers: same goods, half the price.

I had yet another brush with the law in Korea. There is a lot of security at the airport. I estimate that we went through 2 metal detectors and luggage scans, passed 3 sets of guards armed with submachine guns, and showed our passports to at least 6 officials between the plane and the taxi.

I had purchased a dozen $20 Rolex watches from Chinatown, Kuala Lumpur to bring home for friends. One of the first x-ray machines must have seen them. We were in the very long line for customs. An official walked up to us and motioned us to follow him over to a separate area. We could not communicate to each other at all, except by hand motions. He motioned us to open one specific bag. I shrugged and asked if he was looking for anything specific. He motioned his watch. The watches were in the bag we had opened. This was what he was concerned about. We managed to convey that they were fake, but maybe that was the problem. Long, long story short: we signed some piece of paper (which was Korean) and he took the watches. We think he was saying that we could retrieve them again on the way out of the country; he said the word "receipt".

When heading out to Canada, we arrived at the airport well and early to see if we could figure this out. Another long story, but in the end we handed in the receipt and got the watches back.