Apparently travellers have voted Seoul Incheon airport the best in the world. I can't say I agree. I don't particularly enjoy airports at the best of times, but ICN was especially crappy.

For a start, there are almost no useful shops. Now, I can deal with airports without shops; there are a lot of those. But Incheon is just packed with perfume and shiny things and tat of all kinds. Although there's a huge concourse of shops, it's really disappointing to find that there's nothing but rubbish there, aside from two tiny bookstalls. And absolutely nobody selling DVDs, thus failing to provide the two basic ways of whiling away the time spent locked in tin cans. It was extremely disappointing.

If I'd wanted to buy 500 handbags from 17 separate but (to the untrained eye) identical shops, I'd have been perfectly happy though.

There was no Internet access either. Again disappointingly so -- it looked like there was, but on trying to pay for an hour's access and getting a few screens through the process you get a popup dialog saying "Try again, please after setting the Plugin!". Closer investigation shows that it seems to be trying some Windows-only plugin just to register for access!

Not a good airport. Hong Kong, from which I type this, is much nicer. Also lots of tat shops, but at least there are some real shops amongst them. And working (and free) wireless access. And a Virgin lounge, which helps... :)