Beyond Bounds Blog

I recently spent a week in Korea (which explains my sudden hiatus). I have been planning on learning Korean as my next language for a long time, and have had many false starts (Which I’ll talk about later).

First off, the current exchange rate between South Korean Won and USD is 1,338.69 to 1. From Won to Chinese Yuan it is 196 to 1. (Yikes!)

Travel Costs (1 week):

Fixed Costs:

Plane ticket, Beijing-Seoul-Beijing: $300 (PS, Seoul is the capital of South Korea). Booked at www.ctrip.com
Hostel Stay: 24,000 Korean Won Avg / Night ($16.35 per night!) x 5 nights = ~$89 (www.hostels.com / http://www.travellerspoint.com)
Phone: 30,000 Won + 10,000 Won pre-paid minutes: (~$30)
Bus from Airport to Seoul: 9000 Won x 2 = ~$13.35

Cabin stay on an island (include food for 2 days): 40,000 Won (~$30)
Club Entrance: 20,000 Won (~$15)

Total: ~480

Variable Costs:

Subway: Avg ~1000 Won (~$.75)
Food: Avg 10,000 Won (~$7.5)

Food costs actually can be MUCH lower, depending on how you eat. My friends took me to really nice restaurants in expensive areas, so I was paying about $7 per meal, but a few times I was able to get away with only $3-4 per meal. At a hostel you can cook, so you COULD get away with even cheaper as long as you head back whenever you are hungry.

Obviously not everyone out there can find round trip plane tickets for $300. The plane ticket would be most expensive for anyone out there, and actually was the largest cost of the entire trip - the hostel + food + traveling around cost about the same as the plane ticket. However, if you shop around, and buy the ticket last minute like I did, you should be able to get a better price. In my experience tickets are cheaper at the last minute, as long as you aren’t purchasing during the holiday season (in that case there may be no tickets left). This is because plane seats are worth nothing if no one is sitting in them when the plane takes off. Keep that in mind.

http://www.bookingwiz.com/ This site is good for comparing multiple travel sites at one time. I just searched “LA to Seoul” to leave three days from now and to come back in a week, and I found round trip tickets for $739! That’s really good I’d say.

A lot of people recommend Couch surfing, www.couchsurfing.com, but I haven’t tried that yet. You can try, but it may take more than a few days to get set up with a couch to sleep on.

Most people probably won’t need a phone while they are in Korea, but since I have friends there and I plan on going back for a longer period of time (3-6 months), buying a phone now helps me prepare for the future. If you are just coming for the week and don’t know anyone, your expenses will be even lower.

My Cabin stay on a nearby island (about 3 hours outside of Seoul) was shared amongst 10 people. We all slept on the floor in the cabin - which is something that Koreans seem very comfortable with - and brought our own food to cook. This was just after hiking a mountain for half the day, so we just played some sports, cooked, drank soju, and enjoyed being away from the city. I met these guys through a friend, so it may not be as easy for just anyone to do the same, but you could easily do something similar.

I spent one afternoon watching Starcraft matches live, and it was free. If you don’t know, South Korea is the capital of professional video gaming in the world, and it’s actually a national sport.

The theme here is that as long as you don’t need luxury (hotels, personal space, top of the line restaurants), travel can be cheap and even more enjoyable, as this way you meet more people. In hostels you meet a lot of other travelers as well as natives from other cities would be willing to adventure with you. Stick to the basic restaurants and not only do you get a feel for what the average person eats, but you also save money.