We have a long travel schedule ahead of us, first a five hour red eye flight to Beijing, a three hour transit and then a two hour flight to Seoul. There, a rental car is waiting for us and we finish with a four hour drive to our destination Sokcho on the Eastern coast of Korea.
We must be creative to get some sleep at our first flight, leaving from Tashkent at 21:30: the four of us have 3 seats in the middle row next to a big Uzbek. There is an extensive entertainment programme that consumes Cleo in total. And there is a continuous food and drink offer, making the kids excited. In the end, Cleo moves to the floor where she can lie horizontal, creating space for Zeno’s legs and Tims arms. At least the children sleep a few hours.
Beijing airport is gigantic and we land in a maze of checks, scans, steps, controls, handing in all our water, checking and double checking the batteries in our carry-on luggage, taking pictures of all four of us (Cleo’s picture is a very sad one), health checks through a temperature measurement, etcetera. We are happy we make it to the departure hall, eat a noodle breakfast as we skipped all the snacks in the plane, loose each other when exploring the Chinese airport garden and get reunited again at the gate 20 minutes before boarding.
It’s only a two hour flight, which flies by as Zeno is vast asleep and Cleo has a lolly and some games to play. We’re excited when we spot the sky scrapers of Seoul. What a culture shock again, after historic Uzbekistan.
The lines at the passport control are huge, but half way (after an hour) we are offered to skip the line because of our two kiddies. We pass security, collect our suitcases and the Deuter and take the bus to another terminal to pick up our rental car.
We rented a Kia K3, and so far, we can recommend it. The navigation is excellent, it could even find our hotel when we searched for it in English, it’s specious without being big and we see ourselves exploring all corners of Korea with our K3friend.
The only downside is that the children car seat reservation did not make it to our car. The rental agent confirms they threw away all their car seats during the corona lock down. We drive to the nearby mall to buy two car seats ourselves, but while they offer everything for kids, from trip trap sets to glamping and sports accessories, car seats are not to be found.
As the travel day is far from finished yet (but our energy is not unlimited), we decide to first travel to our hotel, and look for car seats again there.
So the Uzbek car setting continues, except Tim is driving now. We exit Seoul just before 15, when the roads are still relatively quiet. We still have to practice the Korean alphabet, as not all road signs are translated to English.
After 1,5 hour driving we stop at the roadside food court. And unlike in Uzbekistan, we feel tempted to buy half the offer, as it all seems to be so nice and much is vegan. We try some tofu chips and jasmine tea and both are excellent. Oh, all the food that is waiting for us in the coming weeks! Those flavours! We cannot wait to eat it all.
The children sleep the full four hours, not very smart jet leg wise, but all parents know: never wake a sleeping child before the destination is reached.
We pass through many, many tunnels. But when we exit we can still enjoy the cherry blossom trees which makes us very happy! Another funny thing we notice is that they have fake police sirens and flashing lights. To trigger drivers to stick to the rules?
We end our day in our aparthotel by the sea. We walk to the seaside to explore the town and find something to eat. Swimming doesn’t seem to be an option as there are two menacing photos of a great white shark with a bunch of Korean warning texts. We find a typical Korean diner and order ourselves via a tablet at the table and a robot tray brings our food. Still not completely vegan but at least very tasty and with lots of vegetables.
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