MuffinMasterful asks
Is it cheaper to live in Korea than in North America?
I notice how all of your FAPFAPs, the food is generally cheaper.
Is is the same with other expenses as well?
THE FOOD EXPENSE QUESTION!
What are you looking at mister?
What are you doing?
Do you got the crazies?
Guise, we've got a little of the crazies
We've got the crazies
Um...Dr.Meemersworth have been keeping us awake up at night like
Hey I'm a kitty
HEY
So we are little bit of sleep deprived
If we have a baby
yes, we do have a baby
for a baby kitten
THE EXPENSES!!
Back to expenses
So to you answer your question very generally I'm going to say yes
So that's it for this week's TL:DR
We could get to more detail for how things are cheaper
not everything is cheaper in South Korea
but we find that generally the cost in here is cheaper than North America
But we are from Toronto, Canada
and we could only go from that perspective
And now again, not every part of North America has the same cost
so living in Toronto might be more expensive than living in other parts of America
So I'm not sure where you're specifically from
we only speak from our perspective
Let's start with something easy like transportation
Now, we don't actually drive a car
so we don't know about the insurance for cars
or the gas costs of..
so we can't comment on that
NO, We have a scooter and it's really really cheap
It cost about 4 bucks for every take and it lasts for a month
so we don't drive it that often
So instead, let's look at something like subway system and buses
The basic cost to get on the bus is 90 cent
if you have a swipe card
900 won, so that's a little bit less than 90 cent
But if you just wanna pay it in cash
looking at a 1000won
so that's like a dollar roughly
or roughly like 90 cent
My currency conversion isn't really accurate
I just say that it's almost like a dollar ratio but a little less than that
So that's only a one way ticket
TICKET ONE WAY~ TICKET ONE WAY
But if you're not doing a one way
and you have to go like couple stops and you are heading to another Seoul
It will charge you by distance
The most paid for the subway is probably like a dollar 90
So When we say it's charged by distance
it's not a big amount of money charged for distance
While we are used to in Toronto is only 2 lines
like the east right line and there is a U line
And pretty much if you go one stop over it cost 3 bucks
It's really expensive to use the subway in Toronto
I don't know what it's like in other cities
so please comment on the comment section
so we can complain altogether
but we 100% appreciate the Korean subway system here
It is AWESOME
Next step is TAXIs
We take a lot of taxis because every time we go filming we have a whole lot of gear
like tripods, audio equips, lenses and lights
Like we don't wanna bring that in the subway and take up an entire cart
Especially where the subways are usually really packed
so it's an awkward us to be like
uh..excuse me... we have a cat in our sink
We take taxis a lot
If this was Canada and I take taxis
you'll think I'm pretty loaded
because in our experience taxis are really expensive in Canada
I only remember taking it for like 15 minute ride in Canada
and it cost me like 40 - 50 bucks
The price has gone up really high like quarter
increments in quaters in Cananda
while here in Korea, they start like 2400won which is $2.30 or so
and it goes increments of 10 cents
rather than a quarter
So for example, regular three prizes we work with
We usually do Bucheon to Hong Dae
depending on traffic that day, it costs us around 16-17bucks
sometime it's 13bucks
That's on our good day when we are just like 15minutes over the bridge
Or we go often to Itaewon from Bucheon
and that costs us 23, or 22 bucks to get there
And if go to Gangnam or the Apgujeong area
That will cost us to 30
As soon as you hit the Gangnam area,
you get stuck in the worst traffic in the planet
We gone in all different time of the day
It doesn't matter, there is consistently traffic on the one direction where we are going
So to keep our cat occupied, we're gonna keep her on our shoulders now
so she can stop meowing at us and drinking chemicals
Not sure if this is gonna work
OK Enough about transportation
What's it like to eat in Korea?
Answer : VERY CHEAP!!
We are like looking at a normal meal in Korea
something like Kimbab Cheon Guk or like Kimbab Nara
It's kinda like Korean fast food
But I'm not talking about hamburgers like they have McDonald
and they have BurgerKing and stuff
We're talking Korean food made quickly and cheaply
The price range is between $1.5
and $6 is the most expensive thing that we've seen around, right?
The thing that it amazes us is like for $1.5 you can get a Kimbab
which has actual nutrition value with real rice and real seaweed
and real vegetables inside
I can't think about anything in North America that I can buy with a buck 50
with a nutritional value
like a buck 50 you can get like a bag of chips
or like you can get like a sandwich?
I don't think so
If you don't wanna eat Kimbab roll the whole time
then there is so many other things that you can get in Kimbab Cheon Guk
Most we paid is like 7 bucks for like a super special
that has 3 different things in it but it's still like 7 bucks
no tax on top of it and no tipping on top of that
for like a full meal that we'll get you so stuffed
Now we are talking about kind of fast food type chain right?
But if you wanna go somewhere like grilled meat, like Sam gyup sal or Galbi
or like chicken dish, stuff with like lots of meat in it
Or if you want something like fancy kind of cow cuts
YES You will be paying more money for that
You are looking at a $9 to $15 a person
and they usually weight things by grams
so you will see like how much it ways
It's not like you're getting a random portion size wherever you go
But still that's not like your'e gonna drop it like 100 or 150
If we drop the $100, 150 out in a Korean restaurant
I think that's a month worth of meat
Yah, we would be eating meat for 30 people
and like we would be trashed and like
We'll be eating like kings and queens
It's really , it's really great
When it comes to eating, one thing is that more expensive in South Korea
we found is the produce
like WHOOH,,surprisingly more expensive
We've seen watermelons for 17bucks, 20 bucks
Avocados are not common to get here but when we do find them
they are like 5 bucks for an avocado
One thing that is really good about Korea is that they don't really do seasonal stuff all year around
They only do, literally seasonal
Like you can get watermelon when it's in season, so it's expensive
Once it's out of season, that's it
Right now watermelon we have couple left in the stores
it's gonna be gone
We just can't buy it all year around
We've gotta enjoy it while we can
Speaking of expensive food,
We once ate a 48 Dollar MANGO
by accident
We were grocery shopping and we bought a whole bunch of meat
that we expected that it was gonna be expensive
and we got a mango and we were like "WOW! We haven't had mango for a long time"
"Let's put this on the shopping cart, buy it and go home!"
And then we ate it and was like
"That was a little over right, it wasn't that great mango but at least we had a mango!"
And then we looked at the price at the bottom ..
48000
THAT IS 48 thousand won
When I saw that, I was like, "This gotta be $4.8, it doesn't make sense"
The only reason that we didn't know because that day we had told ourselves in advance
that we're gonna spend a lot of money in meat
We knew this was gonna happen
We are gonna buy salmon, we're gonna buy beef, buy it all
Meanwhile, half of our bill was mango
Now that everyone is going to come to grocery shopping to Korea
so what about things shopping that is usually
shoes, and clothing, and jewelry and accessory
That is kind of iffy
sometimes it's more expensive, sometimes it's lot less expensive
But it is difficult to say that one is heavier than the other
I personally say one is heavier than the other
I would say that lots of stuff is lot cheaper
because if you are looking for named brand,
name brands are expensive wherever you go
So if you go shopping in a department stores, it's gonna be pricey anywhere
I've seen a $120 pair of Levi's here
But yah, Levi's is a name brand and Gucci is a name brand
But I was looking for name brand subway clothing
HUH!
I can get some quality shirts between $5 and $10
They are quite the quality
Hey, is this because you can't buy cute Korean clothing,don't be jealous of me
I can't buy their shoes, shoes are so cheap
Now, cheap goes on the same level
cheap price, cheap quality you know
but the one thing I've notice is that, when I was in Toronto
we used to call things club gear
which was like cheap clothing with club gears
like you wore out dancing but you wouldn't wear it anywhere else
because the quality is not that great
But Korea has really cheap clothing that should be considered club gear because of the price
But it's like adorable, it's like cute
It's like life gear son
NO, It's like a little knit dress with a bows on it like little cherry stuff
That things shouldn't be ten bucks but it is
So underground subway shopping or street shopping
you can get really cheap clothing
Some of the clothing's quality is cheap as well
Same goes for shoes, and earrings and hair bands
You've got the whole range of stuff to go for,
so prepare your suitcases with cheap, everyday life club clothing
Now we can't cover every single living expense in Korea,
we're gonna mention some more in our blogs
If you wanna find more about it,
head on over to eatyourkimchi.com
and we will have a blog post there about it
So that's it for this TL:DR
If you have a question for next week's TL:DR,
leave your question on the comment section below
Or check out the question that is already asked in the comment section
and you can thumb them up to get to our attention
and perhaps we might choose that one
Or perhaps we won't
We are very whimsical that way
Let's enjoy our $6 cup of coffee we've purchased
OH...BOY..