View from My Window

Well, I made it to my hotel. And I got about 5 hours of sleep before waking up and desparately waiting for my room service breakfast. The last time I was here, I discovered that ordering breakfast that way got me my most reliably edible meal of the day -- especially after I started ignoring the standard choices and writing "Coca-Cola" under the beverage section.

I am giving myself a leisurely morning. The conference registration doesn't start until 3 pm (It's currently 9:30 AM Sunday here, despite what the timestamp may say.) Since the conference hasn't started yet, I'm having to pay (gasp) for the Internet access. Actually, 1/2 an hour is free. (I wonder how many free half hours I could get?) But since I'm being leisurely, I paid the 5000 won for a full hour.

How much is 5000 won, you might ask? Around $5. The exchange rate is rougly 1000:1. This led to a certain amount of confusion last night when I was taking the taxi to the hotel. I asked the fare, and the taxi manager (or whoever he was) said, "three hundred". I'm thinking...that can't be in won (30 cents for an hour in a taxi), and it better not be in dollars. Eventually, after I repeated "three hundred?" enough times in a sufficiently incredulous voice, he realized his mistake and said "thirty thousand." That sounded about right.

I don't remember having a nice view from my window last time (it's not among the pictures I linked to here) -- maybe I was just too discombobulated to notice. Even though I'm in the less expensive "mountainview" room, I did enjoy the following views...

Back in Korea

I left home slightly over 25 hours ago. This is what I look like after that much time on the road...

Greetings from the Asiana lounge in the Gimpo Airport in Seoul. Since my last trip to Korea, they've opened a new airport -- Incheon Airport. But Incheon is (mainly) for international flights, and Gimpo is (mainly) for domestic flights, so after my 13 hour flight from San Francisco, I had to clear immigration and customs and hop a bus here. All has gone well so far. My flight for Jeju (formerly Cheju) leaves in 45 minutes, so I'm going to wrap up this post and head through security. More later!

I think that I shall never see...

Christina took some pictures on our drive home.