A stupendous idea.
Kimchee refrigerator at Yonggungsa Temple
Traditional kimchee storage containers
As I have mentioned before, the ongoing game of Count the Countries has some hard and fast rules. One of the rules most commonly flaunted by my friends and acquaintances is the one that requires a person to leave airport property in order for the country to count. Merely having a stopover while changing flights is not going to net you a new country. Unless you cheat (you know who you are)... or, in an exciting new development, you happen to fly through Seoul's Incheon Airport. Some S. Korean mastermind has come up with a venture called "Transit Tours". What they do is provide tours ranging from one to eight hours for people that are, well, in transit. This means that you not only get to leave the airport, thus making the country legitimately count in the grand total, but you get to kill time by sightseeing instead of just sitting in an airport lounge drinking overpriced cocktails (or worse yet, sitting in a waiting area watching CNN replay the same story for the fortieth time). I wish there was a way to send a memo to all the entrepreneurs of the world, suggesting they set up something similar in each and every hub airports. It would be great, think of it, instead of cursing the airlines for their screwy scheduling that has you stewing in Orly for 6 hours, you can take a walk around the Eiffel tower or do some shopping on the Champs Elysees. C'est magnifique. Or imagine you have a five hour layover in Incheon on your way from Shanghai to JFK, you could grab some of your new friends from a recently completed China tour and head out to Yonggungsa Temple, a Buddhist temple dating back to AD 670. Not only will you see an 11 meter tall Buddha and a festively colored temple, you will also learn about a somewhat surprising passion the S. Koreans have for kimchee. As it turns out, most homes (and at least one 1300 + year old temple) have something called a kimchee refrigerator, which Wikipedia describes thusly:
Kimchi Refrigerator (Korean: 김치냉장고) is a storage-specific refrigerator for kimchi only. It is specifically designed to meet storage requirements of varied kimchi types, including temperature control and different fermentation processes. In a consumer survey aimed at Korean housewives conducted by a top-ranking Korean media agency in 2004, kimchi refridgerator was ranked first for most wanted household appliance.
You will see and learn all this on the one hour tour (total cost: $5 per person!), the time will fly by and quite possibly, by the time you return to the airport, you will have hit #70.
