2 Days in Seoul

Because of the difficulty in getting flights I had to stay in Seoul 2 nights, waiting for the rest of the engineers to get in-country before we headed to TaeAn. I had to drive an Opirus (basically a luxury edition of the Hyundai Sonata) from the Incheon Airport into the heart of Seoul at rush hour on a Friday. Fortunately my Arab genes kicked in and I embrassed the chaos and made the 30kM drive in only 2 and 1/2 hours. Basically the rules of driving in Seoul are the biggest vehicle wins, and if you are both the same size, bravest wins. I was pretty brave, but I kept showing signs of weakness.This is the room at the Seoul Palace Hotel. It is a nice hotel just south of the Han river that runs through Seoul. 4 Restaurants and a buffet breakfast, you can't beat that with a stick.

When you enter the room there a slot for the (old school) key and the lights come on. There is a control panel on the right side of the bed where you can then reduce the lights. It took a while to figure out because the button labels were in English, but didn't correspond to where the lights were. The bed felt like a sheet of thick plywood over a thin box spring. But the pillows were good. Extensive mini-bar, but I'm too cheap.


Huge flat screen TV, but not HD and only 5 channels. One was BBC, others Japanese or Korean. I watched part of the ALCS Game 6 on the Japanese Channel.

But the piece de resistance was the toilet.
Yes, it is the finest Korean robotics applied to the bidet. The controls are labeled completely in Hangul so the only English word was 'Auto'. I pressed that and boy did I get a surprise. Evidently it was invented by women because if I didn't finish my business fast enough it gave a high pitched ear splitting alarm. That's incentive. Also, the little spigot that sprays the water comes up and salutes you when you come into the room and put the key in the slot.