majority of our videos are of the perpective of people living in Korea
but we know that a lot of the people that we talked to out on the street whenever we
meet them
wined up saying that they are just visiting Korea.
So today we're gonna give you our best tips and tricks if you are gonna visit Korea
and by visit you mean vacation? You keep using this word visit, like as if you are going to your aunt's house. [S]yeah ...[M] "I am going to visit"
All right Hot Tip number 1: so you've just arrived at Inchon Airport and you are all ready to go
to your hotel
you've got your google map you've got the address in your phone and then you realize
that Google Map does not work in Korea.
Apple maps isn't really working in Korea either. [M]Please, please, please come
prepared with the address of your hotel written in Korean
because the taxi drivers if you're taking them, anywhere, they will not know where you're
going.
There are so many tiny hotels and hostels
all around Korea. So if you just mention the name of it to your taxi driver, they
probably won't know, unless you are at a really swanky place. And it's a lot safer to have
the address of your hotel than the move of it. So tip #2:
For us whenever we travel to other countries we tend to get little wifi eggs
that we could stay connected to the Internet. In Korea you
you can get those but you don't need it. Because there are so many open wifi
spots everywhere. [M]Everywhere.
No passwords on them. As opposed to if you go to Japan, whenever we go to
Japan, I can never find any open free wifi anywhere and I need an egg.
You must get an egg if you go to Japan. [S]Yes. [M]You can easily pick them up by like
ordering them online at the airports.
-Korea -really it's a waste of money for you. [S]Right. [M]You will be
wired up everywhere you go. So don't worry about it. [S]If you're in a city that is. If you're
out in the sticks and you might not find that many wifi hotspots. But
in Seoul I think you gonna be alright. But who is gonna come to Korea and go to the countryside?
[M+S] eeeeeh..... Tip # 3: Get this App!
The Jihachul subway app. It is very very useful for you when youy are in Korea, more than likely
you gonna be using the subway because the subway system here's almost perfect.
It's like webbed-out to
every region guys.
And this is the best subway app that I have ever seen
in any country. If you wined up clicking where you are and where you wanna go
it'll
tell you exactly how to get there, how long it's gonna take you to get there,
what time the subway is gonna come, [M]How much it gonna cost, [S]How much it gonna cost,
[M]depending on the route you wanna take [S]and here's what's great about it: if you have
any transfer points in between
it'll tell you the transfer points and it will even tell you
what subway cart to be on and what door, so you could be closer to the exit
when you transfer.
It's brilliant. Ultra useful better than anything I've ever seen in anywhere else in the world.
Besides the subway app, which is super super helpful, there is also a really cool bus app,
which might be for more adventurous people that wanna get on the bus. But the buses
and subways are connected with the theme card. So when you come here, if you decide to
get the T money passcard,
which I recommend, because it's easy to use, you can beep on the bus,
beep on the subway,
you beep off the bus, you beep off the subway and it takes you all over Korea cheaply.
And the app for the bus actually shows you when it's showing up, what time, where you can catch it from,
and when you use the subway map, you can press like,
the search nearby and it'll show you all the places that are nearby for you to get on the subway or to catch the bus.
Tip # 4: A lot of people are now traveling with many more
electronics than before and I'm not sure if you've had this experience
if you go to a hotel and you try to plug in your devices you might have five divices
but only two outlets,
and you are screwed! [M] And the rest of them are like behind the bed, and you're like: why would you put that there.
So then you go on this rotation; and you got like plugin to over here and you got a plugin one over there,
in the bathroom. [M]and you
..what percentage is your phone at, mine is at 32. [S] OK I got a solution for you, [M] mine is at 25.
This thing right here, we wined up getting it.
It's a 5 USB device charger. Right here
its got a back thingy, and usually comes the cable. These are usually universal 100 and 240 watts
If you have an adapter for it won't blow out your devices. It could charge 5
devices
at once, through 1 wall outlet. This is great, I bring this with me
everywhere. It makes things a lot easier. You will like it. Hey,
get one of these, travel with them, they're great. Tip No. 5:
Time to go over
money stuff, because we've had a lot of visitors come to visit us, and we've seen
the stress people went through. [S]yes. Number one: a lot of people want to wait until they arrive
at the airport to convert money when they are in Korea.
It is actually better for you to convert money back home, because the airport will usually rip you off
with the
worst possible ... what it is called? transfer.. [S] Yeah, transfer rates, currency rates,
fees, everything. I never transfer money at the airport unless
crushingly desperate. But do that ahead of time. It'll be easier for you.
Tip No.2: please make sure, if you're gonna use credit cards in Korea that you call your
credit card company
before you leave for Korea, to let them know that you are traveling. [S] It seems so
simple and a lot of people forget about it and then they come here and try to buy something
with a credit card
and it gets declined. Just give them a call it'll take you only like three
hours of being on hold.
So say you are not a credit card person and you took out all the cash, and already spent it all,
and now you need more cash while in Korea. This is gonna be a little bit
tougher
Not every ATM machine in Korea will accept your foreign crads.
So you've got to make sure that you find the ones that except it. They usually have a little
symbol on the back of your card, and if it matches the symbol on the ATM,
you could use it.
If you don't wanna go looking for every symbol, go to a Citi Bank machine.
[M] C I T I [S] C I T I bank.
Those usually work and they will be able to accept your card, and give you
the cash
that you need. [M] Yes. However it's not always easy
to find them. I remember when my sister and her husband came down, [S]yeah. We like
went all over the city trying to find a stupid freaking Citi bank. And we ended up finding one at
like a random
7/11 It looked like one of those little tiny ATMs that are set up by the
mafia, but it was a real
ATM. Also, important for you to know is, if you do wined up
using your bank card in Korea, make sure you speak with your bank beforehand,
and know if your bank card is usable overseas because some bank cards cannot
be used overseas. I remember with our korean bank account
we have to ask them specifically to give us a card, that we could use in Japan, in Canada and
all that. So make sure you ask your bank if your card is capable. [M]But one really good
thing about Korea is that majority of places do accept like credit cards and
debit cards.
So unless you are going to like a small street food stand or like you try to
haggle for clothing
you can pretty much use credit card everywhere, like coffee shops will
accept it for like a two dollar purchase. There's no like
extra charge or anything. [S]Convenience stores and everything you can use your credit cards. [M]However, when you
go to Japan
[S]yeah. [M]You are screwed if you do not have cash on you. [S]Even for major franchizes. Like you go to a Coco Curry
which they have them almost everywhere. They only accept cash, which really was
frustrating for us because we didn't plan this one in advance. I wish I would
have seen this beforehand. [M]Yep. Korea is very wired up when it comes to
credit cards. [S]So we're making this seem all very doom and gloom, we're just trying to prepare
you. But more than likely you gonna have no problems with shopping in Korea. [M]Speaking of
shopping.
Tip no. 6: our last tip had like 18....[S]It had
subtips. [M]subtips if you will. When it comes to shopping a lot of people hit the major
touristy areas, like Myong-dong, because the clothing there is pretty cheap.
If you go to a department store in Korea, where looking at like name-brand
places, you know you can try on the clothing, you can use your credit card to purchase it,
but you might find that Myong-dong will give you a better deal.
However that usually means cash purchases and they won't let you try on
the clothing.
[S]yes. We run into a lot of people who say things like: oh, because I am a torusit
they won't let us try it on. [S]They don't like
foreigners, and what not. That's not the case. It's not anything specifically
against
you or your race. [M]No, it's actually just like it's such a cheap kind of like
quick exchange of goods place.
If you try on the clothing, first of all people get make-up smuged all over it.
So they don't want you to try it on, but a lot of places don't have the language to
express it. So they'll just do things like
no, or like you can't. So people feel like it's really rude when
in reality it applies to everybody living in Korea. So cheap clothing is
great but might be inconvenient so I would say where some kinda clothing that
can help you
push it up against your body to try to eyeball it, and be aware of free size.
The F, which means one size fits all which one size is not
fit all. [S]Free size usually just means that I'm
the designer, I made 1 size and if you don't fit it, then you're free to f*ck off.
[M]That's what it feels like. [S]yeah, that's what it means.
and unfortunately free size is you usually what you find in areas like Hongdae and Myong-dong.
So it's fashionable, it"s cheap, but it probably won't fit you.
[M]~despair~[S]Hey, hey, there there,
there there. I know you don't fit things here. Hey, I don't fit things here, I've totally
given up on that. [M]But I am a girl. [S] How about a double XL from the Nike store recently,
and it's like, my sweater thing, it's tight at a double XL.
If I bought a double XL in the US I can make a tent out of it.
That's what happened when Lee brought back pants for us. [S]Yeah, Lee brought us some double XL pants
and
they cover my nipples. [M]They are pajama pants. [S] The pajama pants go up to..and I just put them in
and...
Each of us could.. you could do the left leg, I could do the right leg, and we could create like a uni in the blanket.
It's like a snuggie blanket.
XL in Korea means more like a medium
in the US. [M]And tip no. 7 is when you leave Korea.
So when you leave from Incheon Airport, before you go through security, there is a lot
of like bakeries, there is even like convenience stores where you can buy
snacks and stuff like that But once you get through the other side of security,
[S]There is barely anything to eat it. [M]Yeah, it's mostly like namebrand shoppings. So if you are into buying
designer stuff, then enjoy eating your designer out of a bag but other than that
there is
pretty much one food court, which is painfully overpriced,
and not very... it's like 11 or 12 $ for a simple roll of bibimpap. [S]It's a huge rip-off
There's a Starbucks,
where you're like okay and then there's some really shoddy
food stands. So what I recommended is before you go through security
get yourself like a freshly made sandwich or a salad or get some like
snacks from the convenience store anything that's not liquid beacuse obviously it won't make it through
security.
And then you'll have something on the other side and you will thank us because we've been through
that airport so many many times.
Seriously pick up some good food on the other side of security before you go
through. So that's it for our 7 tips and tricks
if you plan on visiting Korea, we're gonna talk about a few more in a blog post. So make sure
to click on a link here,
if you wanna be fully prepared for your visit to this country. I feel like the blogpost
contains the most important vital parts of information. [S] I know. [M]So my question for you guys today is this:
Think outside the box. Imagine someone is coming to visit your country. They're
arriving at your
airport and they're trying to get to your city and get a hotel, do touristy things. What
is one or two pieces of advice
you would want to give them that they do not know from like the normal touristy
travel guide.
Think about it as if you're advising us because we do a lot traveling. There is a good
chance that we might visit some of your country this year. [M]For our last TL;DR we
talked about bakeries in Korea and how
different the breads are than what we're used to back home how much we miss it.
And we're talking about how we miss the Canadian breads and what not. We had an
awesome comment specifically from Akichan, who is from Iran and she wined up saying
that they
hate US bread which is surprising to me because I
miss it, I love it. What is it that you hate so much about it?[M]But you know what
is interesting is what I was reading through
the comment section a lot of people said things like when they went overseas to
North America, the bread was so soft,
[S]yes. [M]Like the sliced-style, it is squishy. They said there was like no texture.
As opposed to like Scandinavian bread, that's really really dense. [M]Yeah.
So people are used to like a grainy taste and they have a North American bread
and they are like what did this crap.
It's so interesting, right? Like we miss bread, you guys miss bread, people miss bread.
We miss it for different reasons. [M]yeah. [S]Also we had a really
interesting comment from
xDareDBx who we see in lots of our videos, thank you for commenting all the time.
We really appreciate it. [M]yeah, they left a really cool comment saying that in their
international business class
in Korea they learned that the person that found Paris Baguette [S]yes. was actually
found because McDonald needed people to make their bun and all
the A and B level bakers in Korea... [S]refused [M] were like,
no we are not gonna help you out. And then he was part of C level. [S]He
agreed to do it
and then afterwards used that knowledge to make Paris Baguette and
Paris Croissant and they became A MILLIONARE!
Who is laughing now A and B class bakers! You got nothing!
Even though I still don't like Paris Baguette and Paris Croissant's food. I can still respect that
this guy is totally
laughing at all the other people that snob McDonalds.