It's been already over 3 years since Covid outbreak. A flight from Seoul to Kota Kinabalu, it took 5 hours. The problem is that we landed at around mindnight. Only for the few hours of sleeping, I've just booked one of the cheapest hotels, called Hotel 7 suria.
Long way to Kota Kinabalu
1. KTX travel from Ulsan to Incheon
I've lived in Ulsan city where is far away from Seoul. Before Covid situation, I used to take off at Busan airport, which is just 1 hour away by car. Unfortunately, the airlines are serving much less flight than before, and I had to go to the Incheon Airport.
I took about 2 hours, taking KTX train from Ulsan to GwangMyeong. I decided to take an airport bus at GwangMyeong KTX station. The buses starts about every 30 minutes at GATE 4. The ticket is sold at the ticket booth. A ticket price is 15000 krw. (quite expensive)
On the way from GwangMyeong to Inchen airport, I saw the beautiful and peaceful west sea, passing through the Incheon Bridge. Looked so interesting to me who have seen the east sea all the time.
Since it was one of Thursdays, October, the airport was almost empty. Althought it was 90% emptyl, a group of Korean ladies was listening to a guide. (K-Ajuma under the K-counter, What a cute!)
2. One tip for the users of Incheon Airport at around midnight
In October, there was not enough restaurant opened yet. After passing the custom, I was looking around the food court on the 2nd floor, but the half of the restaurants were out of business. Only 4 or 5 restaurants were open, providing only a few options.
In spite of no options, I strongly recommend you to have dinner at the airport. The only meal you will have on board, is the meal box below.
A cold, hard rice chunk and meat balls. Plus, the commercial comment on the box, suggesting to buy a cup noodle. I bet they provide this hard, cold food only to sell the cup noodles. (This is why I did never buy them. Haha, I will not be trapped.)
Please, have some proper dinner beforehand.
Wowwwww, finally, I was on board after 12 hours since I stepped out of my place at noon. What a long way to Kota Kinabalu.
Okay, let's take off.
3. Hotel 7 Suria, the cost-effective hotel
After landing, it was a quarter past midnight. Luckily, there was a convenience store at the airport, allowing me to buy some beer cans and snackes to munch on.
Keep in mind that the price of booze in this country is much higher than Korea. I missed the promotion "4 cans for 10,000 krw" in Korea. The smaller can was more expensive than the larger can in Korea.
On the way to Hotel, I saw BTS in the Grab taxi. At first, I couldn't understand why they are promoting the water dispenser here, but soon I realized that their company took over the Coway company. haha
At around 1am, we were here in the end. This hotel was decent to sleep for a few hours before moving to the next accommodation. The price was only 60 dollars a night.
The beding and room conditon was not considered as great but good enough to take a shower and spend just a few hours of sleeping on the very first night.
The best strenghth of Hotel 7 Suria is its location. Since it is located on the 7th floor in Suria Saba shopping mall. You can find almost everything you want (Money changer, ATM, restaurant, and so on)
In addtion, there is a MacDonalds on the 1st floor next to the gate to the hotel. It was open when I visited at 1:30 am.
We've ordered fried Ayam(chicken), and enjoyed the beer that we bought at the airport.
This was a super long day of moving around. I was, however, so excited for the vacation after 3 years of staying home country.
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