Incheon is actually South Korea’s third largest city by population, and after Seoul and Busan. It’s not really a well-known place for international tourism though. And for most travellers, the only encounter we would have with this city is that it is one of the country’s two main gateways by air into the country: it’s where Incheon International Airport where we arrived into, and the other is Gimpo International Airport – less well known and actually closer to Seoul city than Incheon’s.
We spent a night in the city, again specifically because our flight home to Singapore was going to be departing from Incheon tomorrow fairly early morning, and decided we’d just find a hotel closer to the airport to spend our final night in South Korea. The area we’re staying in this night is Jung-gu, and the ride here to Unseo Station from Gyeyang Station was about 25 minutes. We kept our expectations very low: we needed only to be able to find grub for lunch, and dinner – and that’s it.
To our pleasant surprise, Jung-gu wasn’t actually quite a dead district. It certainly wasn’t as busy as Seoul or even Busan, but there were at least quite a few more locals – and even tourists – about during the day time and also evening when we stepped out to find dinner i.e. certainly more lively than Suncheon. There were perhaps a dozen hotels in close proximity to Unseo Station. And within 5 minutes walking distance of the station, there were half a dozen coffee joints – including Coffee Bean, Starbucks, Mega Coffee, and Oozy Coffee – a three level Daiso, and my guess is at least several dozen restaurants and eateries, including a Burger King. That really surprised us. From casual observation, it seemed to me that there were quite a few other international tourists staying in hotels around the station, and I guess also because they were catching flights at unearthly hours too.
Pictures from our short exploration of the Jung-gu district!
That’s a wrap for Day 17. We’ll be concluding our series of posts of this trip with a Day 18 post tomorrow, reflections of our itinerary, dining experiences, and a Final Notes post soon!