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We left our hotel at 8.30am and walked down to the lift to Yeoksam Station, avoiding the need to carry luggage down the steps. Being a Sunday morning it was eerie because only one other person was on the platform. They have a video display which shows the location of an approaching train for the previous two stations. The little red and white rectangle on the screen is our train. We found our way to the main hall of Seoul Station where we stood, as usual, in front of the departure screen until our train came up with its platform number. While waiting among the holiday crowd we saw two little girls in colourful costumes.
And shortly after a boy.
We settled into our first class seats in the KTX. These trains were leaving for Busan every five minutes with about 20 carriages, and ours hit 296 kmh on the way. Between 5.30am and 11.30 pm 60 trains to Busan leave and an equal number arrive. That averages out at one every 18 minutes. We were very comfortable and it was clean and quiet. As we left Seoul we noticed again the presence of many crosses in the sky.
We said goodbye to the Hangang River as we sped across the bridge.
At the first stop a couple sat in front of us with a one year old boy who peeked at Malcolm, probably having not seen a man with a beard before. Very rare in this country.
He was guilty of regular high pitched screams and the woman in front whose head appears in this picture turned around and had an animated discussion with them. A little bit of drama. There was free wifi on all the trains so we put a few more photos on the blog.
We had 40 minutes to spare before motel check-in time so sat in a cafe for lunch at the station. Like most stations in Korea it was very well organised and designed.
We had booked the Hansung Motel because it was close to the station so we asked at the information office for directions. Three girls held a little conference and showed me a map of the station and said "go out and turn left" which we already knew. We wandered around the block and saw several hotels and quite a lot of motels, some of which had no English spelling of their name. We ended up back at the square and asked a senior gentleman sitting there but he could not place it. Lyn stayed with the luggage and talked to the gentleman while Malcolm wandered again and after asking several more people finally found it. The room has good wifi and all of the usual amenities, including cable TV with 100+ stations. We located The Australia Network which does a wonderful job throughout Asia but found they were not broadcasting the Rugby League Grand Final. Strange after they put the AFL on yesterday. So we got the progress scores and comments on smh.com.
Zebra crossings have different meanings in different countries. Here they are handy places to park your car for a few minutes. When there are pedestrian lights drivers only stop if there are actually pedestrians in front of their car. We never cross on the green before looking carefully to the left for late cars.
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