Sometimes ignorance is bliss. It can be a little embarrassing in hindsight, but I think at the time it's often better. In future though I will make an effort to pick up a tourist map upon leaving the airport, having just arrived, rather than upon arrival at the airport, preparing to leave. Let me splainyou.

Incheon Airport has a large terminal, laid out as one long curving arc. Customs, Immigration and the Korean Air transfer desk where you get stickered and vouchered up to indicate yor status as "stopover cattle" are all at one end of the arc. Immediately outside the terminal are all the stands for the busses to far flung destinations with exotic names. At the extreme far end of the arc from where the weary traveller finds him/herself upon successfully navigating the Immigrationbaggageclaimtransferdeskotron is the stand for the Hyatt Regency airport shuttle. The only stand further away is that for the U.S. Army, which actually reminded me that I was in a divided country, one of the last in fact. A strange eery realisation it was too. Being the keen geometry student I never was, I decided to walk outside the terminal to the bus, rather than inside, thus sparing myself approximately x(20) metres of walking, where x is the angular distance covered by the terminal in radians, which I obviously don't know.

Had I stayed inside the terminal until I reached the shuttle bus stop, I would have passed the tourist information counter. I have a theory that the most foolproof travel information is always to be had near the largest gathering of loud americans. Had I applied this theory I would have been rewarded straight away with what I in actuality only picked up when it was already too late: the Incheon Tourist Map (which bears the unabashedly grandiose sub-title "Heaven of Tourists - Open to Skies, Seas and the Earth").

Oh, look, Incheon Airport may be on a vast field of reclaimed land joining Yongyu and Yeongjong islands, but not only is Incheon itsself the massive sprawling city over on the mainland (which according to the map looks to soon gain even more reclaimed land) but it, and for that matter pretty much every part of the airport islands and the surrounding islands looks to be of vastly more interest than the desolate patch of swamp I spent my stay exploring. Oh well, guess that just goes to show you (and more importantly me) it's possible to have fun in the holeyest hole for miles around, provided you're ignorant enough not to realise it.