Sleeping at Incheon Airport

If you've ever glanced out the window flying into Incheon Airport (ICN) before, you might have noticed that it's pretty much in the middle of nowhere. It is, in fact, on its own island. It takes at least an hour to travel to Seoul Station, and that's not even accounting for traffic.

If you have an early morning flight out of ICN - or a late-night arrival - you're probably on the hunt for accommodation close-by. And if you're on a tight schedule (and a budget!) there's no better bet for a quick night's sleep than the airport's own sauna and lounge.

Spa on Air (SOA)

For a mere 20,000 won (about 18USD) you can shower, soak, and sleep for the night in one of Korea's classiest sauna establishments.

[Note: if you don't want to spend the night, make sure you get to SOA before 8pm, when the price is only 15,000 won.]

Spa on Air is one of the most expensive saunas I've been to in Korea (most average around 7,000 won), but it's also one of the most regal. The individual semi-private showers with waterfall showerheads are a nice treat, and the all-granite interior lends a quiet elegance to the place.

SOA features gender-segregated bathhouses with hot and cold pools, dry and wet heat (steam) rooms, and individual shower stalls with frosted glass.


































After winding down, throw on shorts and a t-shirt (provided) and head into the lounge area where couches, lounge chairs or floor mats are available to crash on.

If you want more privacy (or are a loud and chronic snorer!) you can book a private sleeping room for an extra 15,000 won (35,000 total).

Family room (extra bedding available)

If you're traveling in a group, you can book one of two family rooms for 40,000 won (per 12 hours). Each room sleeps up to 5 people.

[Note: This is in addition to the admission cost per person to the sauna.]









The best part: it's actually INSIDE of the airport! (Though not located inside of the secure terminal area; you don't need to be flying to visit.)

TIP: If you're stuck inside of the secure terminal area for a few hours on a layover, there are FREE shower rooms for use. It's reasons like this why Incheon is consistently ranked as one of the world's top airports!

[Spa on Air is located on the East side of the basement (B1) in the Main Terminal, past Cold Stone Creamery and Starbucks.]

To make a reservation for a private room, or for more information, call Spa on Air at 032-743-7042. (For international calls dial +8232-743-7042.)



If you're in the market for a bit more luxury, there are a few hotels and guest-houses nearby ICN, and some of them are actually reasonably priced:

Best Western Premier Incheon Airport (from 115,000 won)
Hyatt Regency Incheon Airport (from 200,000 won)
Incheon Airport Guesthouse (from 50,000 won)
...and a bit further away:
Oceanside Hotel (from 90,000 won)

Weekend in Seoul

Lisa and I haven't spent much time in Seoul since arriving in Korea 7 months ago (numbers like that- 7! -have become surprisingly unimportant to me anymore), though I never really had an itch to go. Seoul seems so far away, crowded and polluted, that its charms and attractions never held much appeal for me. I think now I considered Seoul with disdain mostly because I didn't know what I was missing.

Bella, a friend of ours from Peace Corps in Kenya, flew into Seoul last week from San Francisco. We couldn't wait for her to come all the way out to Pohang to see her, so we flew into Seoul over the weekend instead. Tried to fly, that is. Flights from Pohang to Seoul are surprisingly cheap (around $100, not much more expensive than a round-trip bus or train ticket) and incredibly fast (1 hour, just enough time for the flight attendants to serve you a cup of coffee and throw it away) so it has become our preferred mode of travel to the city. Unfortunately, there is only one evening flight out of Pohang each day, and on Friday that flight happened to be canceled when the plane allegedly began smoking. It was difficult to get the full story, since everything was coming over the intercom in Korean. Luckily a Good Korean-Samaritan bystander filled us in, and made sure we got on one of Asian Air's (free!) Seoul-bound buses. Six hours later, at 2am, we collapsed into bar chairs in Insadong with Bella, Blake, Rob, and Jeane a sheet and a half to the wind already, having been forced to drink for us in our absence. We quickly caught up and stumbled into our hotel at 6am - 1 hour before Bella's scheduled DMZ tour.


The next day (while Bella was off on a still-drunk-and-then-very-hungover DMZ tour) we made for Itaewon, probably Seoul's most popular expat (and military...uhhh) hangout. I wouldn't be surprised to find out that foreigners outnumber Koreans in this neighborhood. WE were there for some of the same reasons as the other non-Asians: good international food (enchiladas, anyone??) and Whatthebook, Korea's most well-known (and only, for all I know) English bookstore. We made it back to Insadong in the early evening, several hours, and several paperback pounds, later.

After a glorious nap we set off on our pilgrimage to find a particular jazz bar that Jeane had discovered on the torn-off page of a free tourist guide book. We knew nothing about the bar except that it had "jazz" and "live" in the same sentence in the description, so we did not question the suggestion. The jaunt took us through Hongdae, the artsy neighborhood home to Honggik University, street vendors peddling everything from used sunglasses to homemade woven-yarn cell phone charms, a store called Condomania (yeah, it's exactly what it sounds like), and random cool art in random cool places.

The next morning we finally made it to the puer tea house that Rob & Jeane have been raving about (literally, they're quite mad about it), and Lisa and I (and Blake and Bella, too, I imagine) were instantly hooked. Looking at the pictures it's not hard to see why.

Legitimate puer tea is notoriously difficult to find - according to Kim Eun Joo, the woman who runs the place, only 5% of the puer tea market is real. That is, fermented naturally and not through a chemical process that speeds up the aging of the puer tea leaf. Authentic puer tea will be dried and fermented naturally over a period of 16-60 years. There are some purported health benefits to drinking the tea, but from what I can tell the main benefits are metaphysical. After several cups of well-brewed tea you begin to feel an overwhelming sensation of relaxation, and your body begins to tingle. Some old puer tea can get really expensive, and we asked Ms. Kim what the 8 million won (8,000USD) tea brick was like. "It's better than fantastic," she said. "You can forget all of your worries and troubles. You begin to feel extremely generous with everyone around you." Generous enough to give away 8 million won worth of tea, I asked? She laughed. "Not that generous."

Later in the day we attended one of Seoul's last shows of Rent the musical, featuring 3 of the original Broadway cast members. It was expensive (70,000 won - 40k seats were sold out) but utterly worth it. I've never seen a live show I enjoyed as much.

Luckily the trip back was much easier, thanks to an on-time flight to Pohang. Now we've got another free trip to Seoul in our pocket which, judging from the time we had this weekend, will be sooner than later.

Weekend in Seoul

On Friday Lisa and I flew to Seoul (we're really not the ballers this makes us out to be. flights were really really cheap) to meet up with Cassidy, a college friend of Lisa's who had flown in for a brief but whirlwind tour of the city. Since we hadn't spent more than a day and a half in Seoul before, we were all set to do the tourist thing together. Lisa and I spent the week looking for cheap and easy accomodation anywhere in the city, which turned out to be much harder than I anticipated. Who knew that Seoul was such a happening place these days? We eventually scored a couple of rooms in Green Park Motel in Dongdaemun (동대문). While Dongdaemun and its spread of clothing markets turned into a pleasant surprise, our rooms were true to the spirit of Korea's love motels - dingy, smoky, and noisy. Luckily we weren't planning on spending a lot of time there.

Built in 1397, this is the East gate of the original fortress wall surrounding Seoul. Now just called Dongdaemun gate.

John Stamos apparently sells electric razors. It's common to see well-known American celebrities as the face of local or otherwise obscure goods here. It's an easy gig for them, it pays well, and their image doesn't suffer at home - no one who cares ever sees them. Por ejemplo, Paris Hilton is the face of Fila in Korea.


Dongdaemun is home to one of Seoul's largest markets. They sell shoes in particular.
This guy was selling juice extracted from these giant roots. 1500 won/glass. I didn't know what it was at the time, but people passing by on the street would stop and drain a cup or two, so I figured there must be something to it. It was dark as a shot of espresso and tasted quite bitter, but not altogether unpleasant. I later found out it's the root of the kudzu plant, which, if I remember correctly, grows like a weed in the US and is suffocating well-established forests around Virginia.

In Pohang, and on the East coast, the cherry blossoms have already fallen. Luckily we caught them at their peak in Seoul's milder climate.

But it wasn't all pretty. The smog was atrocious, and so thick that visibility was limited to less than a mile. Seoul makes Pohang, with the giant smokestacks of our near and dear steel factory POSCO, look like the garden of Eden.