11 Dec 2009: I am looking at 12 construction cranes - the view from just one direction of the Songdo Metro Hotel (not to be confused with the Songdo Park Hotel on the next block). We are marooned here for 24 hours on complimentary transit accommodation paid for by Korean Airlines. It is a 5 start hotel, a souless place that had its grand opening on 20 November 2009. The beds are comfortable, but everything is beige. We are on the edge of a new development/planned city - think "organised Blade Runner". There are two types of urban space - towering modernistic glass towers covered in neon at night, or manicured parks with precise paths, trees and plants. There are hardly any cars and I am not sure where the people are. After Ulaanbaator the roads here feel deserted and the taxi's drive so fast we all put our seatbelts on.
The hotel itself is ghostly empty. The toilet requires a user manual, and it has electronically controlled bidet buttons for both male and female use. We checked in at 1:30am after a delay in our flight. When I went to use the toilet I couldn't figure out how to flush it (there is a normal flush handle off to one side, but all the controls scared me). Keira woke up with both eyes red and swollen. So we ventured out of the hotel in a taxi and found a friendly pharmacist. Whenever we transit through South Korea it is winter and grey, so our opinion of Seoul is not that high. We have two nights in Seoul on our return trip in January so we will try to give the city a chance. Looking out the window again I see beyond the diggers an array of solar panels on the roof of a building labeled "Future City".
Chris and the girls put together a series of photos in the corridor that I call "Bordom Busting". Now they are watching weird Korean kids television.
