My flight from Seoul to Beijing was from Gimpo, the “Domestic” airport of Seoul. The trip there was easy as I picked a hotel that was close to the airport.
In Beijing, immigration was super smooth, as this year people from 5 countries, including The Netherlands can visit China for up to 15 days without a visa. I wasn’t sure about the process, but upon showing my passport, the friendly airport official waved me passed the queue saying loudly, “Oh, You’re Dutch, you can go straight through”.
A photo, a set of fingerprints and a passport stamp at the immigration booth later, I was in China.
Both Seoul and Beijing are huge cities, and on the map it looks like you’re close to the airport, but in reality it still takes about an hour-hour and a half to take the metro anywhere. Annoyingly Beijing is one of two cities where Alipay doesn’t work with a foreign phone number attached, so I had to go to a ticket booth for every metro trip.
Two hours after landing I was at my hotel, where it was already evening. My short flight took almost the entire day. Luckily there was a shopping mall nearby with a "Din Tai Fung”, a super famous restaurant with some of the best dumplings in the world.
