Scary airports

Seoul airport isn't nearly as polite and civilised as the city.

We recieved our fast track passes to get through customs and immigration, only to find that they apparently didn't work today. So we went through the first checkpoint where they scan your ticket and passport. And red warning bells went off. The lady scanning didn't seem bothered, but everyone else was very interested and I was expecting large persons to come and take me away. The lady waved me through and my colleague was scanned - and he recieved the red alarm treatment too.

Now, once we got through customs and immigration it was a perfectly nice airport, but going through the gauntlet was... an experience. There were lots of people of course, many of whom were not Korean - from what I can gather they were mostly Chinese.

And full of sharp elbows when it came to queuing for customs, sneaky pushing in and outright shoving their way through the queue. I've never seen anything like it. I know I'm very British with the queueing and that others nationalities have different views of queuing, but I've never known anything like the bun fight to get through customs anywhere outside post-apocalyptic scrambling for the last Mars Bar in movies.

Immigration was more civilised, although we did pick the queue with the officer who interviewed every person in front of us in depth. Except us. Maybe the red alarm at the beginning was our test instead, because except for a very fast process of our passports, she wasn't in the least bit interested. And no one came to take us away.

Flight back was very civilised, as was the M25 which was surprising for a Friday evening rush hour. Now back home trying hard to stay awake til 10-ish to maximise chance of getting over jet lag quickly.