November 1st, 2022
Day 1
After arriving in Korea, its pretty standard. You need to go through immigration, pick up your luggages, and head out towards the final border inspection. They normally don’t stop people, but be prepared to be stopped and get ready for your luggages checked.
You can choose to exchange your currency at the airport, or you can choose to exchange when you reach your destination and find a currency exchange shop there. I didn’t know whether Korean taxis take credit cards or whether how expensive it is, so that’s why I exchanged $200. Exchanging right at the airport might get you a worse rate, but it’s worth it if you didn’t want to waste time finding another one. Korean Taxis do take credit cards, however, so you don’t have to exchange at the airport.
When you are officially outside the airport, there will be a line of taxis right there waiting for you. There will be a person standing outside who will ask your where you want to go and translate that into Korean. Take that piece of paper and get into any taxi, and they will take you to your destination. Pay with either cash or credit card.
After getting to your hotel, I recommend you to download four apps for your stay in Korea:
Naver Map
Kakao Talk
Kakao T
KakaoMap
Here is a screenshot of what each of these apps look like. You can download them from either Google Play Store or Apple App Store.
Google Maps does not work in Korea. You may use it to search for specific address in English, but it does not offer navigation or even route calculation at all. I do not use an iPhone, so I don’t know if Apple Maps would work, but I would guess that it doesn’t work, because my Korean friends with iPhones don’t use Apple Maps.
The reason why you need both KakaoMap and Naver Map is because none of them are perfect. Korean map apps do not offer turn-by-turn navigation. KakaoMap offers better English search results, but it does not offer satellite location, so you cannot know where you are going once you started walking. Naver Map has really bad English search results, but it at least has real-time satellite tracing, so you know where you are exactly on the map. You can always use KakaoMap to search for a result in English, copy the address and paste them onto Naver Map.
Kakao T and Kakao Talk are really useful if you do not plan on getting on the confusing Korean Metro system. Kakao T stands for Kakao Taxi, and it is a ride-hailing app that is extremely helpful if you do not speak Korean at all. You just need to input your destination, and your driver will just take you there. You don’t even need to speak to the driver at all. You need Kakao Talk to log onto Kakao T, so even if you don’t plan on using it for chatting, just download it for Kakao Taxi.
You can wave your hand at a Taxi that has a green light on the top, but it’s just too hard to try to communicate where you want to go when you do not speak Korean. If you are adventurous enough tho, you can certainly try.
Since my flight got delayed in air, and it took a while for me to get all my luggages, it was late. After I checked in at my hotel, I just slept.