Hey Hive!
If you missed the last post, I finished writing about our trip to Genting Highlands, Malaysia, that we took back in September 2022! It was my first time visiting Genting and we had a lot of fun exploring the integrated resort there with endless entertainment!
It was fun taking all these short trips but for our last trip of 2022 we finally got the chance to go on our honeymoon! We'd been waiting a little post-covid for everyone else to go on their big holidays before taking ours and we initially had plans to go to Japan for our honeymoon since it's our favourite country. But as Japan was still limiting tourists at the time we decided to venture to South Korea instead!
It was our first time visiting Korea and we wanted to see the fall foliage since we've never experienced the fall season before, so this trip would be full of firsts! Let's get to it!
8 Nov 2022. Tuesday.
Our flight was pretty late at night but Sean had access to the airport lounges that we wanted to try for the first time so we made our way to Changi Airport ahead of time so we could enjoy it.
Once we arrived at the airport we checked in our luggage and headed straight into the departure hall.
To this day I have yet to see any other departure hall that is as big and has as much stores inside as Changi. Some of the other airports we've been to has nothing past the customs aside from vending machines or small souvenir stores. But here there are food courts, plenty of restaurants and luxury stores. It's like a mall on its own!
Anyway we headed to the lounges since we weren't sure how it was going to work and there were actually a few lounges we could check out.
The main differences between them were the seating and the food offerings but they all looked fairly comfortable and cozy, although some were more crowded than others because of how many airlines they cater to.
Each lounge also comes with a buffet with a mix of local and international dishes.
Ultimately we decided on the marhaba lounge which is available to business class passengers of certain airlines like Air France, Air China, Finnair and a few others. We were not flying any of those airlines but Sean had access via a credit card he had.
This one was one of the more spacious ones with plenty of seating, not too many people and a variety of dishes!
After we found a table and settled in we immediately hit the buffet since this meal was both our dinner and our last meal until the middle of our flight.
They had quite a variety of soups, curries and stews and satay here.
Everything looked and smelled pretty delicious! We made sure to pace ourselves so we could try a bit of everything.
The only thing that was really missing from the array of dishes was some cooked greens. I'm not sure if there was a salad bar but either way we're not fans of salad.
They had plenty of carb options though with pasta, rice, and lots of potatoes.
There was a nice light Japanese soup with mushrooms and carrots that I remember enjoying.
There was also a fridge with lots of different drinks and also a bar with various alcoholic drinks but we don't think so we just got regular juice and soda.
It was such a long aisle of food and drink I couldn't capture it all. But it was lucky we were seated pretty close to the buffet table since we ended up taking quite a few rounds of food!
After that we had dessert and fruits to end it off and I was pretty stuffed.
We relaxed there at the lounge for a while before exiting to our gate and it was pretty busy so we waited for a bit before heading in.
We ended up taking some goofy photos while waiting since we had these new matching shirts on that Sean bought.
It was kinda hard to take some nice photos since there were so many people around though.
Eventually we headed in and it was really crowded past the luggage check ins. There were quite a few flights taking off from this gate though so it made sense.
We made sure to standby our gate ahead of time so we wouldn't have the panic from last time where we almost missed our flight.
Eventually it was time for us to board!
We were surprised to find our flight fairly empty, but I guess because it's a midnight flight.
We actually had an empty seat next to us on the flight which was pretty lucky.
Our flight time was about 7 hours and halfway in we had breakfast on the flight at around 4am.
It was pretty simple breakfast but actually quite yummy! I wasn't too hungry at the time but with an omelette, potato wedges, sausages and mushrooms it was fairly light.
I tried my best to sleep on the flight but I'm not very good at sleeping upright on planes and only managed to doze off for about 2 hours.
Eventually we arrived at Incheon Airport safely and the sun was just past sunrise shining brightly to wake us up.
We walked quite a distance to the main immigration area and after a while we made it out and into baggage claim.
After we got our luggage we took our time to figure out where to go from there since it was our first time and it was still fairly early at 8am. We wouldn't be able to check in to our hotel until afternoon so we had plenty of time to kill.
Incheon is a pretty nice airport though; it was big and spacious which was good.
We wanted to get the T-money cards for the train but the machine with the LINE Friends design wasn't operational at the time which was disappointing. We wanted the cards with the designs and figured we could get them at a different train station.
So we headed to the Express Train Vending Machine to get one way tickets to the city.
It was a little difficult but we finally managed to get our tickets and headed to the platform.
It was pretty empty when we got there ahead of time.
The train was pretty comfortable and reminded us of the bullet trains in Japan.
They even had English instructions on how to transfer to the regular train after.
The seats were pretty comfortable and Sean dozed off pretty soon after.
It was a beautiful day and we had a nice relaxing train ride while enjoying the views outside.
After we reached the end of the express train (a little too soon) we had to change trains to the regular subway.
It was quite a long journey but we were nearly at our destination!
Eventually we arrived at our stop in Myeongdong and of course one of the ads I saw at the station was for Genshin Impact.
There was some nice wall art at the station too.
Eventually we made it out to the streets of Korea and felt the nice cool wind on our faces.
We also caught our first glimpse of autumn!
We were staying at the hotel called ibis styles which was 2 streets from the station.
The lobby was quite nice and welcoming with some modern-looking furniture.
The alley to the reception was a little narrow though.
We checked our booking and since we were early for check in we left our luggage with reception before heading out to explore for a bit.
But I think we'll continue with that next time! Tune in next week for the official start of our journey in Seoul!
Thanks so much for reading!
To find out more about me, check out my intro post here!
Check out my previous post in this series!
TacoCat’s Travels #225 (Genting): Gaming and Gambling before Road Trip Home! 🚐