Incheon International Airport 인천국제공항 仁川國際空港

Yeah! Finally arrived in Incheon International Airport at 8:40am from KLIA. Midnight flight is totally not my thing, hardly had any sleep at all. Looking out the aeroplane window, OMG, raining! It was a long wait at the baggage carousel, probably the LIFO theory of baggage check in. We did ours rather early on the previous day, as we took the ERL to the airport. Luggage appeared almost at the end, where we can witness the carousel belt stop after collecting our luggage. Passport control and custom clearance were a real smooth and fast experience. Custom only require one form to be filled per family.

First thing after all the clearance, we headed straight to SK Telecom (the only option for Celcom subscriber) counter at the arrival hall for mobile phone renting service for my sister. I made the reservation a few days before arriving in Korea, via the Korean Tourism Website. For GSM phone like what we use here, you can opt for renting a phone if you do not have any 3G phone (₩1,300 per day). Take note that SIM compatible phone is not as user friendly as you might have with your regular GSM phone. If you are into the feature-packed Korean CDMA phone, you can rent a phone with a local number, not too expensive I should add.

What is so bad about that SIM compatible phone? Firstly, when you make a call, your phone number displayed on the receiver end is not your number, but the phone number of the phone that you just rented. The receiver might not recognise you directly, and when the receiver try to call you with that local number, it never works. Secondly, + sign that we use it so frequently on GSM phone never work with Korean network. Except for local Korean number, you would always need to use the super long prefix 00700 to dial any non Korean number. That is the prefix for IDD calls. Thirdly, and the most annoying disadvantage, sending SMS NEVER works, even the manual that they provided never show any instruction on that. Probably they know it never works, so why bother printing it. Receiving SMS seemed to be ok, but there will be some random code at the end of message.

Since I do not need a phone to use in Korea, we went straight to the ticket counter to purchase bus ticket heading for Suwon (수원 水原), our first stop in Korea. Ticket costed ₩12,000 and boarded the bus at bus stop 7A. All information about buses can be viewed at Incheon Airport website.