I’m writing this from a hotel room in Seoul, where I’ve found myself for a couple of days for a visa run.<\/p>\n
I flew out of Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk this morning on that well-known international airline, SAT Airways.\u00a0 Our aircraft was a Boeing, albeit one from the seventies, and a tiny one at that, which got thrown all over the skies whenever it hit turbulence, and the seatbelt signs came on to warn passengers that they\u00a0might at any moment be used to strap\u00a0a wing back on.\u00a0 But thankfully it got me here in one piece.<\/p>\n
While we’re on the subject of Russian airlines, let me just kill one myth dead here and now: that which says that the service on Russian airlines is appallingly bad.\u00a0 Truth is, it isn’t.\u00a0 Having flown Aeroflot, Transaero, and now SAT Airways, I have found the service and quality of food on Russian airlines to be no worse than it usually is on Emirates, KLM,\u00a0or Continental, and infinitely better than on Lufthansa, which I have vowed never to fly again.\u00a0 Okay, the\u00a0Germans’ planes\u00a0are less likely to make an unscheduled descent into the Sea of Japan, but at least when you’re hurtling to your death you’ll find a Russian\u00a0steward doling out bottles of vodka for the occasion, as opposed to some sour-faced, union-protected, harpy sneering down her nose at the passengers because\u00a0after paying\u00a0a long-haul price for a short-haul flight they – God forbid – expect some level of service.\u00a0 Having made several trips to Germany over the last 15 years, I have noted before that their previously high standards of, well, everything have slipped considerably in recent years.\u00a0 When Germans find themselves outclassed by Russians in\u00a0a field of service provision, you know something has gone badly wrong.\u00a0 Ground-based Russian service is, however, still appallingly bad.<\/p>\n
Anyway, I arrived in Incheon airport and after some humming and hawing about whether to take the high-speed railway which turned out not to exist, I jumped in a taxi to take me to my hotel in the centre of Seoul.\u00a0 My taxi driver, as all airport taxi drivers are wont to do, would not stop rabbitting away in poor English for the whole of the hour-long drive.\u00a0 He was making a valiant effort at learning English using CDs, he told me, but most of his English was a running commentary on what his phone-based SatNav system was saying to him in Korean.\u00a0 First time I went to Korea I was impressed with their phones, specifically their ability to sit on the metro and watch TV.\u00a0 Now they seem to have come up with a system of typing in a phone number, of a hotel for example, and the phone turns into a SatNav which guides you there.\u00a0 It seemed impressive, until the little lady doing the talking satellite navigated us right into the middle of the biggest traffic jam I’d seen since I\u00a0was last in\u00a0Moscow, and then its impressiveness diminished.\u00a0 Soon it was taking us through narrow streets where we narrowly avoided a head-on collision with a car which had the\u00a0cheek to be driving down his own side of the street, before it spat us out on a main road right where we needed to be.\u00a0 Both the driver and I were impressed once more.\u00a0 I’d have been\u00a0more impressed\u00a0if he’d bought a large-screen version so he didn’t need to keep peering at it with a Sherlock Holmes-style magnifying glass and ignoring road conditions such as walls and large bridges over the Han River.<\/p>\n
When I booked the hotel, I couldn’t see whether it had internet connections in the rooms or not.\u00a0 It mentioned kettles, ironing boards, and hairdryers, but no internet connection.\u00a0 So I called them up, and I was\u00a0told they had one in every room.\u00a0 I seem to remember when I last stayed in Seoul they didn’t advertise the internet connections in the rooms, and this place seems to be no different.\u00a0 Clearly internet connections in\u00a0Korean hotel\u00a0rooms are as\u00a0standard as doors, windows, and beds.\u00a0 Sure enough, this place, like my last hotel, has a 100Mbps connection which costs absolutely nothing and works as soon as you hook the cable up to your computer.\u00a0 No ringing the front desk for usernames, no messing about with passwords, simply plug in and off you go.\u00a0 Hotels in Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk which provide internet services for $10 per hour, please take note.<\/p>\n
Tomorrow I must go to the Russian embassy and apply for whatever visa allows me to apply for a work permit once I’ve rentered Russia.\u00a0 Apparently I can go there first thing in the morning and pick up my passport in the afternoon, although I am a little nervous.\u00a0 The words “Russian embassy” and “same day” belong together about as well as “Russian customs” and “same day”.<\/p>\n
Anyway, we’ll see how I get on.\u00a0 I’ve got a camera with me, so maybe I’ll take some pictures.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I’m writing this from a hotel room in Seoul, where I’ve found myself for a couple of days for a visa run. I flew out of Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk this morning on that well-known international airline, SAT Airways.\u00a0 Our aircraft was a … Continue reading