6 March 2015
Where did everyone go?
The Incheon China Town
Its Friday night and theres no one around.
Is Korea playing in a world cup final I didnt know about?
Perhaps the direction I headed in, to the port, is just wrong.
Or perhaps its too early, and everyone waits until later.
No matter the cause, I did find it to be eerily quiet, even Incheons number 1 tourist attraction (apprently) the authentic (not really) Chinatown was all but abandoned.
I managed to find a guy selling meat filled buns, which I had as my kind of dinner, no photo as it was a street food and I needed both hands to eat it.
Other things I saw on my 2 hour walk included -
Numerous hidden underground shopping passages, huge, with endless shops selling fake clothing, much of it camo tracksuit pants. These are the kinds of shops that poor people frequent.
Love hotels, one street back from the main road, more of them than there are houses. Koreans got a lot of secret love to be giving out it seems.
Churches, so many churches, you have to go somewhere to beg forgiveness after vising the love hotel.
Convenience stores, apparently Taiwan has more per capita, but here they spring up in the most unexpected locations, on the roof of a petrol station, in the middle of the road, down a set of stairs, inside the train station toilet. There is no escaping them, theres one in my hotel room, the guy looks particularly bored reading his phone waiting for me to go to bed.
Tomorrow I make the relatively long journey to Daegu. Relatively long because I have to get to the main Seoul station, locate my tickets somehow from the ticket exchange office, then take the relatively short 2 hour train ride to the South of South Korea.
Not the extreme South, that would be Busan, but the South South. Theres also Jeju which is an island off the coast of the extreme South. I am not going to Jeju but I am going to Busan.
I honestly just thought it was an underpass to cross the road, turns out its a really crappy shopping arcade under the road. I know I exaggerate, but I have halved my mental estimate and still think it was 2km long.
Then later I found another.
This is a bus stop. Nothing special about it. No one waiting at it, yet it manages to have a big color screen showing where all the busses are on the street right now.
This is relevant because I just read in Adelaide (I sometimes live there) their shitty website that tells you when the bus might come thats never been able to detect where I am stopped working a week ago because they are 'facing some issues with their ISP'.
The entrance to Chinatown. I have been here before! Last time there were people.
The restaurants are mainly open, but theres no one in them. They specialize in only one dish, black bean noodles. All the restaurants sell just this. Its a very strange setup.
The only other choices were street food, which I had, a kind of mystery meat pie in a charcoal cooked bao.
Last pic, not many tonight as I thought my hands might fall off.
This is the Incheon port, 2nd busiest in Korea, after Busan.
There was a neon lit pagoda on top of a hill, with people up there seemingly partying. I wandered up. The party stopped suddenly, everyone left.
I have that effect on all parties.