South Korea - $209.02
In South Korea we were once again over our target daily budget, ending up at $209.02, about $15 more than we wanted to spend per day. This was partly due the timing of our visit over South Korea’s “Golden Week” and otherwise due to our journey to the DMZ, which had a high cost as a guided tour is required. While South Korea doesn’t technically have a Golden Week like China or Japan, when many of their public holidays fall in short order like they did during our trip (Labor Day, Children’s Day dual holiday, Buddha’s Birthday), many people will refer to it as such.
Our highest daily cost was lodging, mostly thanks to the high demand for hotel rooms in Seoul during Golden Week. We spent an average of $95.24 per day on hotels, apart-hotels and hostels. We stayed at two 5 star hotels during our trip, The Shilla Seoul and The Mayfield, but both cost us less than $120 per night. This low cost for luxury resorts was thanks to our American Express Platinum perks and Expedia membership. During our two nights in Busan we stayed at an apart-hotel where we could wash our laundry and cook at home, saving us some money on other expenses while only averaging $66.50 per night. Despite these lower expenses, we had limited options in our search for our primary stay in Seoul and had to spend an extremely high $97 per night on a small hostel room.
Our next highest expenses came from Food & Other Transportation. We found food in Korea to be generally on the cheaper side and since we wanted to try all the culinary specialties that Korea has to offer, we ended up eating out for most meals. The cost of food was pretty reasonable, only averaging about $33 per day while eating out for almost all of our meals. Our cost for transportation was brought up through our roundtrip high speed rail journey to Busan, which cost $88 for each of us. We also took a few Ubers in Seoul and Busan when we had to move our luggage or were running a bit behind schedule, but tried to keep these to a minimum.
Our Activities cost a bit more than we anticipated in Korea, which pushed our overall budget above our goal. Almost all of our activities expenses came from our day trip to the DMZ, costing us $148. While the cost of these tours to visit the DMZ are typically in this ballpark, we felt that our trip to South Korea would not be complete without this visit. We also took the Sky Capsules at Haeundae beach in Busan which cost about $25, but was a fun way to spend some time along the coast. These two expenses alone account for about 98% of our activity budget as the cost of entry to museums, temples, and palaces are typically very low. One activity that didn’t bring as much value to our short time was the Seoul Tower, coming in at $13 each for the cable car and $15 each for the tower. While it’s a top destination for a reason, the short trip to the top and hazy views didn’t justify the price of the visit. If you’re considering going to the Tower, remember that air pollution from emissions and Chinese desert winds in Spring may cloud your view.
While we did not have to use nearly as much cash in South Korea as we did in Japan, we still took out about $200 in cash to ensure we could pay for items at smaller shops. These costs are all lumped into Miscellaneous, but much of it was spent on subway tickets, snacks from smaller vendors, and a few small activity costs.
We used both Miles & More miles and AAdvantage miles to pay for our flights to and from South Korea, and did not take any domestic flights, so did not have any flight costs for this journey. Once again, we had no cost for visas as US passport holders do not need any visa for South Korea. We also did not rent a car in South Korea so had no expense here, but if you do intend to rent a vehicle in South Korea please be aware that you will need an International Driver’s Permit to do so.