day 7: Kumamoto to Seoul

Back to Kumamoto airport to drop off the car, which seemed to be the only way we could stop the satnav from jabbering away in Japanese at us and fly to Seoul. Most of the Japanese passengers have face masks on thanks to the swine flu publicity and we saw our first Westerner since leaving Seoul a week ago. And he was wearing a mask too, perhaps in an effort to blend in. Or maybe he understood Japanese and was responding to a directive. In 'normal' i.e. 'oh my god we're all going to die of a strange disease' times many of the Japanese wear face masks; I know I don't have a biology degree, but can't viruses get through face masks?

Goodbye to Kumamoto.

We were in 'Travel' class on the 90min flight up to Seoul but were well looked after so I'd imagine that Asiana Economy class would be pretty good long haul too. It was wet on arrival and Korean immigration included a thermal imaging camera which we assume to be aimed at detection of anyone with a high temperature - for swine flu detection - I was just hoping that my sunburnt nose didn't set it off. No queues though and we were on the shuttle bus to the Best Western within minutes.

Unfortunately, check in at the hotel wasn't so speedy. In fact, it didn't happen at all as I appear to have made a reservation for a month ago and because of the holidays all the airport hotels were full. As we waited for the shuttle back to the airport a nice Korean guy got on his mobile phone and found us a hotel that had a twin for USD80. It was difficult to know whether he was taking us to his brother's flat but in the end all was well; as seems to be the case in these parts people are actually trying to help you, not themselves, and we spent the night in the Hub Herb Hotel which was in a housing estate close to the airport. I'm sure something must have been 'lost in translation' (must watch that film again) as Hub Herb doesn't mean anything to me!

We went out in search of some local delicacies and found a bar around the corner. This proved most acceptable and we pointed at some dishes from the menu to go with our 'Hite' beers. Mine turned out to be sausage, chicken and something else which was quite tasty. Nick had a selection of various sausages with some pizza topping on top; each sausage had a different flavour, which inevitably leads to the question of which is the Dachshund, which is the Labrador etc.

This photo taken before Nick had too long to think and went monochrome. There wasn't much else to do near the hotel so that was that.