Day 1: Settling In
After catching up with my 2 aunts and unpacking all my clothes and gifts I had a small breakfast and then later on in the morning went out with my aunt to the supermarket to buy some groceries for myself since I don’t eat Korean food with the same rigor as my relatives. I’m not a big breakfast eater and normally I will not have anything more than a yogurt or a banana or a piece of toast. Considering that Koreans breakfasts tend to resemble what they would have for lunch or dinner, my aunt was always generally concerned that I hardly ate anything in the morning to the point where one day she got emotional that she thought she was underfeeding me. Sweet aunt. I assured her that my eating habits were the same in Canada and that my not eating a lot wasn’t because there wasn’t anything to eat but because I just don’t eat big portions, especially in the morning. I can snack all day or have many mini meals throughout the day and be totally fine and content whereas my relatives were of the minds that breakfast and 3 square meals a day were essential. Towards the end of my trip though, my aunt was finally beginning to accept that I just wasn’t a big eater which made me happy that she wasn’t worrying for me anymore. To be honest though, I think she was still worried but just didn’t show it. At the supermarket, I picked up some yogurt, bananas, some Kelloggs cereal, soymilk and orange juice.
It was still the morning of my arrival and I had no interest in sleeping as that would reinforce the time difference and jet lag so I decided that I would stay up the entire day and then sleep at night. I was also itching to get out and see Seoul!
Before leaving for Seoul, there were a few options for converting money. The option that gave the best rate though was through a Korean bank like the KEB (Korea Exchange Bank) to simply wire transfer the money from Canada to Korea to either someone you know (and hopefully trust!) or you can even wire the money to yourself in your name and then pick it up in Korea with passport identification. The rate at the time was about $1CAN to about just over 1300Won. One of the first things I checked when I got to Korea was to see if my cellphone worked and sure enough it did. So long as your cellphone operates on the 3G WCDMA (UTMS) 2100 frequency band, it should work and allow you to roam. From what I understand though, foreign cellphones will work but only when roaming with your foreign SIM. If you try and take your foreign unlocked cellphone and insert a local Korean SIM, it will not work because Korea uses a white list of all the phones which can be accepted on their networks (i.e. phones bought in Korea) and if your cellphone isn’t on the white list, you are out of luck. When I first got to Seoul, my phone roamed on KT but then some time early on it switched over to SK Telecom and stay there for the rest of the trip.
It’s not like I used it though as I didn’t want to incur any roaming charges. I sent a couple of text messages back home and my oldest aunt gave me her local Korean cellphone to use and carry around with me. One thing I noticed while carrying around my aunts cellphone was that Koreans would get spam or advertising text messages every so often.
My aunt gave me a T-Money Card which is a rechargeable swipe pass that can be used to take all forms of transit in Seoul. It comes in card form or key fob form. You can use it to take the subways, buses, taxis and even to purchase items located in subway stations shops such as food and drink.
She put 50,000WON on it for me and that pretty much lasted me the entire 3 weeks. I recharged it a couple of times and found it was super easy to charge as the charging machines located at the entrance of subway stations all had English instructions. With money, cellphone and T-Money Card in hand, I was ready to see Seoul. My aunt walked me to Dongnimmun Station which was the closets subway station about a 5-10 minute walk away and was being cute and overly protective showing me how to use the T-Money Card even though I knew already. I had designated the day to visit sites that I grouped under Gwanghwamun North. Then I was off to see Seoul...
It was still the morning of my arrival and I had no interest in sleeping as that would reinforce the time difference and jet lag so I decided that I would stay up the entire day and then sleep at night. I was also itching to get out and see Seoul!
Before leaving for Seoul, there were a few options for converting money. The option that gave the best rate though was through a Korean bank like the KEB (Korea Exchange Bank) to simply wire transfer the money from Canada to Korea to either someone you know (and hopefully trust!) or you can even wire the money to yourself in your name and then pick it up in Korea with passport identification. The rate at the time was about $1CAN to about just over 1300Won. One of the first things I checked when I got to Korea was to see if my cellphone worked and sure enough it did. So long as your cellphone operates on the 3G WCDMA (UTMS) 2100 frequency band, it should work and allow you to roam. From what I understand though, foreign cellphones will work but only when roaming with your foreign SIM. If you try and take your foreign unlocked cellphone and insert a local Korean SIM, it will not work because Korea uses a white list of all the phones which can be accepted on their networks (i.e. phones bought in Korea) and if your cellphone isn’t on the white list, you are out of luck. When I first got to Seoul, my phone roamed on KT but then some time early on it switched over to SK Telecom and stay there for the rest of the trip.
My aunt gave me a T-Money Card which is a rechargeable swipe pass that can be used to take all forms of transit in Seoul. It comes in card form or key fob form. You can use it to take the subways, buses, taxis and even to purchase items located in subway stations shops such as food and drink.
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