The name intrigues you. Sandwiched between Dongam and Dongincheon districts is a tiny locality that bears a distinct Latin name, Juan (pronounced Huan). It’s a quiet start to the day so you decide to explore the city.

After spending a week shuttling between venues in the comfort of the media buses, you decide to go metro-hopping. Like most public places here, this too has very little information in English. So you arm yourself with a route map that has some important tips for tourists – like counting the number of stations that precede your destination so that you don’t miss it. Juan is the eighth stop. Don’t miss it, I tell myself.

I decide to take the Rapid Line 1 from the Central Park station, which will take 25 minutes to reach Juan after changing the train once, the metro guide says. I bring up my geeky side and during the journey, I decide to brush up my knowledge on the city’s metro network.

The guide tells me that Incheon has one of the longest subway lines in South Korea but is still incomplete. The Metro 2 project was scheduled to be open to public by May this year.

As it turns out, there’s very little progress on the lane apart from laying the foundation stone. Three years delay is what the locals are expecting. I smile and think of all those days when I’ve cursed Mumbai rail officials for their inefficiency in implementing the Metro project.

Whoever has been to Incheon and calls it a sleepy city hasn’t been to Juan. It’s Incheon’s equivalent to Trafalgar or Times Square. Not more than 5km in radius, the place is swarming with tourists and locals, who’ve filled up the road-side cafeterias. It’s just 10.30am and the place is already bustling with activity.

A ‘Happy’ day

Bang in the middle of the road there’s a makeshift stage. Pharrell Williams’ ‘Happy’ is blaring out on a loop from the speakers kept on the sidewalk. Every weekend, one of Incheon’s busiest streets turns into an open air stage for all.

A few yards ahead, there’s a night club. And a couple of blocks next to it is a church. At least a dozen restaurants which serve anything from Japanese to Italian, Korean to Halal cuisine are lined up on the roads. I am looking for an Indian restaurant that a friend said would be just around the corner from the station.

The manager of the restaurant is a man with a colourful background. In his mid-20s, he narrates the fascinating account from his journey in a remote village in Patiala to managing two Indian restaurants in Incheon and Seoul over a sumptuous thali. He reached Seoul five years ago on a tourist visa, married a Korean girl nearly twice his age and now is a legal resident of the country. “Set zindagi hai yahan paaji. Koi fikar nahi (My life is set here, no worries for me),” he says.