← PreviousMaking our way to IncheonFrom Songdo to Incheon airport, the loop closes after four months of travelling in South Korea and Japan. Between sudden downpours, children's museums and last spicy meals, the days slip by with a mix of nostalgia and excitement. Then comes the big journey home, with all the logistics of the bikes and an endless flight to Europe.
Saturday 6 September
The sky is grey and rainy this morning when we open the huge curtains of our hotel room. But it doesn't matter, as check-out is at noon and we're not planning to ride today apart from a few kilometres to tonight's hotel. With no rush, we laze about in the room, and Stéphane and Clémence even treat themselves to another bath. We still need to eat, though, and luckily the neighbourhood is full of delicious cafés and bakeries. It has stopped raining when we step outside around 10:30; you could even say the sun is back and beating down. We have an excellent brunch in a café with huge picture windows, which makes it bright and welcoming. Life must be sweet here, we think, and we could easily imagine it as our local café for Sunday mornings.
Full, we head back to the hotel to finish packing the panniers, as it's almost noon and we have to hand back the keys. We leave everything in the luggage room at reception while we go to a huge shopping centre (called an "outlet" here) two kilometres away. Songdo is a rather well-off business district, and apart from its huge parks and abundance of restaurants and cafés, there isn't much to do except shop. We're not big consumers, but we have to admit their shopping centres are always beautifully designed, full of greenery and terraces, often with play areas for children.
So the aim of this "visit" is really to enjoy the facilities. Cassandre does look for a new pair of jeans, but comes up empty-handed. In the end we spend hours enjoying the activities laid on for children: a rooftop carousel, easels with big A2 colouring sheets, wooden games of every kind… Clémence doesn't notice the time passing and throws a tantrum when it's really time to go. It's after 4 pm and the sun that was shining until now has given way to threatening black clouds. So it's with Clémence crying on her seat that we get back on our bikes towards the hotel. We're only 2 kilometres away, but the inevitable happens: it starts to rain, and the deluge hits just as we're almost there. We only ride 30 seconds in the rain, but it's enough to soak us.
We collect our panniers and the trailer from the luggage room and get the bikes ready. We also put on our rain gear, because even if the worst has passed, it's still raining. We only ride four kilometres to the next hotel, and fortunately the rain stops on the way. The neighbourhood where we're sleeping tonight is of no interest, borderline seedy, dirty, without a single green space or playground. Just roads, cars everywhere and even stray dogs, which is extremely rare in this country. By the time we've had a little quiet time and a shower, it's already time to eat. Even if the area isn't appealing, there's always life in the streets, and we know we'll find somewhere nice to eat.
We soon notice there are lots of Arab restaurants. Immigration in South Korea is very different from ours. It comes mainly from Asian countries, of course (China, Malaysia, Vietnam, Thailand and so on), and from Western countries. In three months, we've met very few, if any, people from Africa or the Middle East. We pick a restaurant at random, and it turns out to serve Yemeni food. For once, we're not the only non-Koreans in the restaurant. In fact there are no Koreans at all, only immigrants from the countries above. Around us we hear Arabic, English and Farsi. The friendly waitress is Moroccan and speaks French. She explains the different dishes because, Korean habits being what they are, we don't want to pick anything spicy. Each dish looks more tempting than the last, but we finally make our choice and it turns out to be a delicious feast. After four months in South Korea and Japan, it feels good to discover other flavours and eat something different!
After the restaurant, we decide to go for dessert in a café. You might think there wouldn't be any in this somewhat neglected area. And yet, not far away, at the top of a climb of at least 25% that would make many a cyclist go pale, we come out onto a cluster of Korean restaurants (so that's where they are). Once again the café is beautiful, though its prices are less so. Clémence and Cassandre share a big slice of chocolate and whipped-cream layer cake, and Stéphane has a bowl of homemade vanilla ice cream. Final bill: €10 (very expensive for Korea).
Sunday 7 September
Today we close the loop. Seoul's airport is actually on Yeongjong Island, which belongs to the city of Incheon, and that's where we're heading today, to the place where our trip began almost four months ago. Back then a van was waiting to take us into the city, because we didn't feel confident facing this new country alone. But this Sunday, we're completely confident we can do the whole way by bike.
We only have eleven kilometres to ride from our hotel to the little port of Wolmido, where we're aiming for a ferry. Once again the bike is the poor relation of transport, as it's impossible to reach the island by bicycle. You can take bikes on the metro at weekends, but only if you don't disturb other passengers, an impossible feat with two fully loaded bikes and a trailer. Once again we ride on parodies of cycle paths, and we'd love to know the name of whoever approved them. Does he cycle? If so, has he ever ridden on them? Would he send his children out on bikes on the roads where he sends us?
The eleven kilometres take us more than an hour, and we're exhausted from having to negotiate tiny pavements, roadworks and cars. At Wolmido we buy our ferry tickets and settle into a café to recover. From the huge window we look out over the Wolmido funfair, which must have had its heyday a few decades ago. The place has a bit of an American "boardwalk" feel, but without the polish. The buildings are old and you can tell it isn't very popular any more.
We still let Clémence go on a few rides; she's now big enough to go on her own. We board the 1 pm ferry in a cheerful shambles of cars, motorbikes and foot passengers. The crossing only takes fifteen minutes, and we soon leave the traffic jams behind to join the island's real, safe cycle path. After about ten kilometres, we eat in a convenience store before visiting a science museum for children. Another one, you'll say.
But you have to admit these are places where children have fun and time flies. This museum has experiments to try over four floors. You can test gravity, make tsunamis, spin wind turbines, watch the constellations in a dome, play an invisible harp, generate energy by jumping, and so on and so on. There's so much to do that we leave without having tried everything. We then check into the hotel, five minutes away, and Stéphane immediately sets off alone on the metro. His mission: go to the airport and check whether the information we found online about packing bikes is true.
Two metro stops later, and after a few moments of confusion in this huge airport, he finds the service that will put our precious bikes in boxes. That saves us the logistical headache of finding packing materials ourselves. Satisfied, he goes back to meet Clémence and Cassandre at a playground near the hotel. We have a great time there playing tag and going down the zip line. Night falls, we go and eat, then to bed, realising that tomorrow will be our last day in Korea.
Monday 8 September
Today is our last day in Korea. We'd love to tell you we made the most of it and did loads of activities. Spoiler alert: you'll be disappointed. First, because today is when we take the bikes to the airport's packing and oversized-luggage storage service. And it will turn out longer and more complicated than expected. After a simple but hearty hotel breakfast, we cover the 11 kilometres to the airport at a comfortable pace, since we're not towing anything. A path in very good condition takes you all the way to the terminal.
We arrive at the terminal entrance just after noon, and so far so good. Since Stéphane scouted the place yesterday, we find the bike-packing counter without difficulty. Now we have to take the bikes apart: front wheel, pedals and handlebars. On the Kona it's done in no time, and once the handlebars are taped firmly to the frame, off it goes to be packed. The Touring is a different kettle of fish. The right pedal is completely seized. We easily spend 45 minutes trying every method we can think of. We force it, while worrying about stripping the thread if we push too hard. We ask the packing service whether they have WD-40 or a similar penetrating oil to try to free the mechanism, but they don't, and it seems hard to find in an airport.
That's something we hadn't anticipated. But the intense heat combined with the humidity of the past three months, not to mention the torrential rain, hasn't spared our drivetrains and moving parts. We have to admit lots of small parts have rusted, seized or squeak. An hour has already gone by, it's past 1 pm, and the situation seems hopeless. We don't know what to do because, in the boxes we used last time, the bikes only just fit without the pedals, so we know in advance it won't go in.
As a last resort, we still ask the staff whether the bike could go in as it is, with the right pedal still on. And bingo, the box is exactly the right width. A box whose dimensions also meet the airline's check-in rules. So the problem is solved, and we pack the bike as it is. It still costs us €20 per box. The shop also serves as a storage area, so we leave the boxes here overnight and will collect them when we arrive at the airport tomorrow.
Incheon airport is on an island. Well, technically between two islands. You can't see it on maps any more, but the whole airport was built on land reclaimed from the sea. So there are beaches, and we make the most of this last day to go and have a look. It's perfect timing, because it also lets us leave all our beach toys behind for other children to enjoy. The weather isn't great but it's mild, and we play in the sand for a few hours before going for a hot chocolate.
Then we take a very long bus ride back to the hotel to fine-tune the last preparations. Travelling with bikes and a trailer is very demanding logistically and nothing can be left to chance. After a last meal in Korea, we try to keep Clémence up as late as possible, hoping she'll nap on the plane tomorrow. Because keeping her busy for twelve hours is going to be quite a challenge!
Tuesday 9 September – Journey to the end of boredom
This is it, the big day. All good things must come to an end, we tell ourselves over breakfast at 6:30 am. This trip to South Korea has been wonderful from start to finish, and we'd rather leave before we've had enough. We wake Clémence at 7 but she can't come round and she's in a bad mood. She's been prepared for this big travel day for a few weeks and it's probably unsettling her. We get her dressed through the tears, and she manages to calm down just before we take the hotel shuttle.
So at 8 am there we are in a big van with our luggage and the trailer. The airport is only ten minutes away; we get off at Terminal 1, put the trailer back together and hurry off to collect the bikes. Then we join the queue to check in our luggage with T'way. With so much luggage, this moment is always a bit stressful, because the ground agent may decide to make trouble or simply not know the rules. At Marseille airport, the person at the counter didn't know that Korean Air takes bikes at no extra charge, and we had to show him the relevant page of the website.
We're also worried about the trailer, because although it's our everyday buggy, it's also a bike accessory. Buggies go in the hold for free on every airline in the world, so our trick is simply to put Clémence in it so the check-in staff have no doubts, and it works every time, today included. T'way has one big advantage: they pool the weight of your luggage. So we don't have to worry about the weight of each box and we send everything into the hold. So far, everything goes perfectly. It's afterwards that things get tricky.
We get through airport formalities quickly and are at our gate an hour early. We pass the time like everyone else in this situation: watching planes and drinking hot drinks. When we're supposed to board, the screen shows a 15-minute delay. We finally get on the plane and take off an hour late. As soon as we're in the air, we discover that Koreans travel in the dark. Nobody opens their window blind and the lights stay off. We don't understand, since it's noon, and we think it's so people can nap, but no: we spend the whole 13-hour flight in the dark.
The lights do come on for the little trays they dare to call meals, but they go off as soon as they're cleared away. We ask a flight attendant why the blinds stay closed; she says we can open ours if we want. But we're in the middle row, and she gives us an apologetic pout, as if to say there's nothing she can do. The journey is sheer torture; we feel like we're in an endless tunnel and the hours just don't go by. Clémence behaves like an angel, as usual, and we keep her busy as best we can by the reading light. We read, listen to stories and songs, draw, learn to write and walk up and down the aisles. She naps a few hours before landing.
The blinds open twenty minutes before the plane lands. There's a gorgeous blue sky, and the light reminds us we're alive and that this wasn't all a bad dream. Our bags come out on the normal belt, the bikes and the trailer on another, but everything is there and we quickly leave the airport to meet the host of tonight's flat, who's picking us up by car. The place is only five minutes' drive away (the man driving well over the speed limit), and he does one trip with Clémence, Cassandre, the bikes and the trailer, then comes back for Stéphane and the rest of the luggage.
Phew, this horror of a day is over. Clémence is at the end of her tether and has a monumental meltdown in the little flat. As long as she was in a stressful, unfamiliar environment, she probably kept all her anxieties to herself, and now they come out as tears and an uncontrollable mood. She falls asleep in bed crying, and we're not long in following.
On the road