Travel Budget South Korea
The expenses below DO NOT include airfare to get to South Korea. We cashed in 100,000 airline miles with American Airlines to purchase the major legs of our trip, and Tokyo-Seoul was one of them. (See Statistics page for details, and look for more planning tips in a future article!) We purchased our flight from Seoul to Beijing while we were in Seoul, but this is counted as a cost of getting to China.
South Korea, the country we knew the least about in East Asia, was a wonderful surprise. Sharing some of the modernity, positivity and kindnesses of Japan, South Korea also had a youthful energy and earnestness all its own. People went out of their way to help, whether they spoke English or not. They were curious, inquisitive, often chatty, and sometimes even assertive in their friendliness. One older lady physically pushed me back down into my seat on the train twice when I tried to get up and offer it to her. In Asia K-Pop (Korean pop music) has taken over, and in Japan they’ve televised Korean language learning programs so people can watch the extremely popular Korean soap operas untranslated. While the fine line between friendly curiosity and gawking at foreigners was sometimes tread, it opened up lots of discussion on the subject, a topic for a future post.
In South Korea we felt free to wander. It was the second year of the “Visit Korea” campaign (2010-2012), with many related specials to take advantage of, including hotel discounts and free transport. Especially in Seoul, there are student tour guides at many of the major sites, offering free guide services while getting in some good English practice. See below for more details on expenses.
Notes on Spending
Accommodation
Hostels were the lodging of choice for us in South Korea. There’s quite a range of prices, so be sure to shop around. We could have stayed even cheaper using dorms, widely available, but we opted for a private room with private bathroom. Agoda was a good resource for finding hotel rooms, and sometimes hostels as well. It’s always good to cross-reference several hostel booking sites, hotel booking sites, and direct booking with the property if you’ve got time and a good internet connection. Prices can vary wildly from one site to another, and it’s not always one in particular that’s got the lowest prices.
Transportation
The Air Transportation number is for flights to Jeju Island, about $80 each. We took advantage of this great fare, round-trip from Busan, to visit this very special place, even if it was fogged in the whole time we were there. If the opportunity presents itself we’d definitely give it another try. The Visit Korea campaign had a free shuttle bus for tourists, but we were never able to plan far enough ahead to make use of it. The T-Money card in Seoul is very handy, and can save you some won. Trains and buses are quite straightforward and user-friendly.
Food
Street food is a great option in South Korea, with a wide variety of snacks and treats at low prices. It also helps that you can just point at what you want, avoiding the sometimes difficult translations in restaurants. Unlike Japan, Korea doesn’t always have a picture menu, or plastic food outside to help non-Korean speakers. Learn the characters for bibimbap (비빔밥). They’re easy to remember, ’cause the sounds repeat, and VERY handy when you just want to eat something yummy in a hurry. Another tactic we often used was using a cellphone to take a photo of menu items pictured outside the restaurant and bringing it in to show the server.
Our favorite shots can be found in our Reflections Gallery.
Photos from Seoul. Other from South Korea available from the main albums page.
