As soon as I was in Korea, I plopped down in a seat and logged into the free Wi-Fi. I have international roaming available on my phone, but at 1 RMB per MB, that can get pretty expensive. Though there is a lot of “free” Wi-Fi around Korea, most of those Olleh/KT signals require you to do something in Korean. Getting a local prepaid SIM card is on the top of my to-do list.
The other top priority is getting non-Chinese apps installed on my phone. It’s not just the convenience of having Twitter, Facebook, or Youtube in app form, it’s that Chinese apps are somewhat useless outside of China. For example, all the map apps are great inside of China, but have zero information about anywhere else. Even if you just want to see the name of city, the world outside of China is just a blank.
I can’t believe how much of a pain in the neck it is to get Google Play up and running on my Huawei phone (as yet unresolved). It was a fairly trivial matter to install all the Google services on previous Chinese smartphones, but I spent two hours in the International Port arrival hall repeatedly searching the Chinese app stores for the necessary components and attempting to install them. I equally blame China and Google for the situation. If Google would just let me download apks from play.google.com, it wouldn’t be a problem, but Google insists I have my device registered to my device which requires 4 separate pieces of software.
Anyways, I found an apk for Naver Map from a third-party site, which at least allowed me to look up how to get to the Airbnb. Frustrated with Google and feeling hungry I set off in search of food in the direction of where I could also hop on a bus.
I had a nice “army hot pot” and popped into a 7-11 to see if I had any T-money on my “Tour Korea” card. I had enough for a bus, but loaded it up anyways. Compared to China, buses and subways in Korea feel pretty expensive (typically starting around 1250 W), but it is wonderful that one card works all over the country.
My Korean is definitely not good enough to read a bus schedule, but it was easy enough to figure out when to get off the bus, and the Naver map keeps working in an offline state, so it was easy to find the apartment.
I didn’t explore much after dropping my bags off, only getting an overpriced coffee and later a simple dinner at a 7-11. The convenience stores in Korea, Japan, Taiwan, and Thailand are so freaking amazing. I don’t know what is wrong with China.
| Army Stew | 7,900 Won |
| T-money Recharge | 50,000 Won* |
| Airbnb (2 nights) | 190.85 RMB |
| Twosome Coffee (Mocha) | 5,100 Won |
| Curry Rice (7-11) | 3,400 Won |
| Total: | 592.5 RMB (USD 88.33) |
Running Total: 1732 RMB (USD 258.4)
Daily Average: 577 RMB (USD 86)
*I don’t want to have to track every single bus/subway fare, so it only seems like today is an expensive day, but I expect that should last about a month.