안녕 Hello! What can I say about my travel adventures in South Korea (mostly Seoul). It is really hard to explain with words but to travel there and live amongst the local on my own was one of my favourite travel experiences ever. I had a couple of friends here and there in Korea, but the majority of the time I was on my own. I learned a lot about myself: learning to overcome being homesick, being alone in a foreign country, and just getting out of my comfort zone to explore, learn, and experience new things I otherwise wouldn't be able to do back home.
I was able to somewhat learn some basics of the Korean language and its hangul alphabet, from listening to others, practising on my own, conversing with locals, and studying phrasebooks and Korean language books in the bookstores. However, sometimes I would still feel intimidated to speak Korean or to try to order food without any English, but I was able to. Learning some basic food words was really stomach-saving.
And yes, this was not my first time traveling to Seoul, I had gone the year before for a five day tour while I was in Hong Kong in the summer. A completely different experience nonetheless. Sitting in a tour bus being brought everywhere compared to finding the right transit bus, subway, route to take on your own. Or having food ordered for you and everything in the itinerary being planned out in a schedule. You can view my previous posts about my first trip to Seoul here:
The Planning: Flights and Accommodations
Well to say the least, there wasn't much planning. Only a budget of $5,000 for 7weeks. I had originally planned to go with my cousin but his indecisiveness delayed any progress (and he ultimately flopped). The flight would have been around $1500 - $1600 from Toronto to Seoul with Air Canada or Korean Air which for me, is really expensive. Luckily I had found a deal with Singapore Airlines for their flights to Seoul from San Francisco were starting at around $690USD. What a deal! It was perfect because it allowed me to "stopover" at SFO to visit my cousins and go LA with them for 5 days in June. Perfect!
So I booked my "free flight" to San Francisco using my Aeroplan miles (paying around $100 taxes/fees + $50 for round-trip one checked baggage) and I had my flight to San Francisco booked with United Airlines. In the end, I settled for a slightly higher fare with more flexibility (which saved me in the end for rebooking, and earned Aeroplan miles) for $880USD and plus the original $690 price was no longer in sight less than one week before departure. Cheap price, but one hassle: on the way to Seoul, I would have to check-in and go through security twice. But I did have plenty of time while connecting flights as I waited patiently for my Singapore Airlines experience...and what a flight experience it was.
Total paid for flights: $1050.
Departure:
United Airlines: YYZ - SFO @ 06:51 - 09:39
Singapore Airlines: SFO - ICN @ 14:10 - 18:35 +1 day
Return:
Singapore Airlines: ICN - SFO 17:50 - 12:40
United Airlines: SFO - YYZ @ 16:05 - 23:52
It was when I completed making my flight purchase, reality began to sink in that I needed to find a place to live and stay for the duration of my trip. I searched online and found this website: http://www.airbnb.com where it allows locals to rent out a room in their apartment/house, or the entire apartment/house. Similar to staying at a hotel but much cheaper. I decided to choose this one: http://www.airbnb.com/rooms/455393 and was lucky enough to be the first guest to stay at the new studio. So I booked it for 5 nights at $25/night and thought I would find a long term place to stay while I settle in my new city for the first couple of days. The apartment exceeded my expectations, I wished I had just stayed there the entire duration but the host had wanted $1100 for the 5weeks (35nights), so I had to apartment hunt.
There was some difficulty to find an apartment or room for just one month using traditional methods: craigslist, real estate agencies, short term oneroomtels; and the Korean way of handling rentals and leasing, including the need for key money and deposits and first and last months rent. Just too complicated for me especially while I was looking for a place to stay for just one month's rent. Luckily my friend in Korea was helping me look for places to live, but I narrowed my search with Craigslist down to two choices.
The first was a decent villa style house where I would share with a roommate the kitchen and washroom, no AC (which was actually survivable to my disbelief) and cheap (original rent 400,000KWN) and good location for the bus (less than one minute walk) and subway (three minute walk) and closer to Hongdae. The second was farther away and harder to reach because I did have some difficulties finding it when I was going to look at the apartment. It was a studio with AC, really basic furniture and LAN internet but no WiFi. There also wasn't much nearby in walking distance but it was somewhat close to Ewha and Sinchon stations (a ten minute bus ride), and more expensive too (700,000KWN PLUS utilities). It was kind of obvious I chose the first option and I began to warm up to living there and sleeping on the futon on the wooden floor- Something I wouldn't do in North America.
Total paid for Accommodations: $600
Total paid for Flights & Accommodations: $1,650
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