Going to Seoul, South Korea April 9th-19th. Have a few money/communications/logistical questions
Hi all, just put in my vacation time and bought a ticket to Seoul to spend about 9-10 days there. Currently looking at airbnbs now. I've only previously been to Europe so I had some questions about phone and money usage.
In Italy, I brought an old iPhone 5, got a Vodafone sim card two years ago and I've been using the same sim card and all my return trips. I simply land at the airport now, put 15 euros on the phone and I'm good to go for the 2-3 weeks there with 4g data pretty much everywhere I go text and calling too but everyone uses whatsapp so I didn’t have to use that. When I went to Spain I repeated the process but with a Lebara sim card instead. Absolute breeze. Is it pretty much that easy in South Korea? On the Airbnbs I’ve been looking at, some advertise a portable wifi ‘egg’ to use. Is this because they assume travelers won’t have data to use? If I just swap sims in my travel phone can I just buy a few gigs of data as I do in Europe? Also is whatsapp as ubiquitously used in Asia as it is in Europe?
For money I always charge on credit cards, never a bank card. This makes charge backs easy if someone messes up a transaction which has happened twice now. Money returned within a day and no harm done to my accounts or credit scores. Usually I bring 3-4 credit cards and a debit card as backup. Never had a problem with this set up. I have every one of the major cards, Mastercard, Discover, Visa, and American Express. Sometimes Discover and Amex didn't work in Europe so I always had a backup. Debit card was for withdrawing cash only. Is S Korea primarily cash based? Or will I be okay using my credit cards everywhere I go with a cash backup? A quick check on XE.com puts $100 USD to 107,127 South Korean Won. Is the USD that much more powerful than the Won or is it just because prices will be higher in Korea?
My Korean friend highly recommended I go to Busan as well. I see that flights from Incheon International in Seoul are only about $100 and it's an hour long flight, multiple flights daily. Is this the best and fastest option to getting to Busan if I wanted to go? Since there are so many flights, is it okay if I just show up at the airport and catch a flight 2-3 hours out?
I think that's it for questions, I'm trying to learn the very basics in Korean since I'm guessing English proficiency won't be very high. Plus I've found my interactions are much different when I lead (or at least try to) in the native language.
Thanks for reading
Submitted February 01, 2018 at 10:26AM by romafarzo http://ift.tt/2DQVEDX
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