Seoul Travel Budget
Exploring one of the largest metropolitans in the world. Travelling outside South East Asia is considered to be more expensive. How much does one spend in such a modern and vibrant city as Seoul? Here we share the expenses of our trip. We spend 6 nights in the capital of South Korea. Arriving and leaving at midnight, makes it five full days.
Currency
The South Korean won is the currency of South Korea.
You can pay almost everywhere in the city with your credit card. Nonetheless, you will need some cash to pay for public transportation and for food stands or restaurants that don’t take cards.
The best is to withdraw some won when you arrive. Not necessarily in the airport, it’s also possible to do it in Seoul Station. That’s where you arrive after taking a metro/train from the airport to the city.
We both have a simple converter app on our phone (Currency+), which makes it easy to convert currencies.
Transportation
We booked a return flight from Da Nang to Seoul for € 456,82 for two persons. Flights outside Asia to Seoul will be more expensive.
Incheon Airport is located on an island outside Seoul. To get to the city centre, we took the express train for €7,07 per person.
Public transportation is an easy and convenient way to get around the city. The system works with t-money cards, which can be used for every transportation (including metro, bus, and taxi). We bought a card for €2,20 each. In total, we charged our cards KRW 66.000 (around €48) for both of us.
We left the city at night when public transportation is not available. So we had to take a taxi. This was KRW 69.000 (around €50) in total. Luckily, we could pay the driver in cash and with the leftovers of our t-money cards. So we left the country without any won or any money on the t-money cards.
In total, we spend €536,85 for transportation including flights.
Accommodation
Accommodation in a big city is always pricey. We took our time to figure out where we wanted to stay and what the prices are. We booked a room in a small hotel in Jong-ro for €37,07 a night. This area is between Insadong, Gwangjang Market and Myeongdong. In other words, in the centre of all sights you want to discover on a first-time trip to Seoul.
This makes a total of €222,42 for 6 nights of accommodation.
Food
Koreans are reel foodies! You have restaurants, markets and street food everywhere. When going somewhere, we think it’s important to eat what locals eat to have the ultimate experience. So, that’s what we did this time as well. Prices in Seoul for food are cheaper than Southern-European countries but more expensive than in South East Asia. You’ll get the best prices when buying food on markets and street food. But you definitely want to try some Korean BBQ and a good Hot Pot as well. That will be more pricey, but still affordable!
To save some money, we bought our breakfast at Seven-Eleven. We even had some instant noodles for dinner to save even more.
For food and groceries, we spend €156,71 in total for five days.
Activities
Good news here! A lot of places in Seoul are free to visit! That’s a nice surprise to us after travelling for 8 weeks in Indonesia and Vietnam.
The only activity we paid for was a combi ticket to visit the palaces. We bought a ticket for €7,41 each covering Gyeongbokgung Palace, Changdeokgung Palace and its Secret Garden, Deoksugung Palace, Changgyeonggung Palace and Jongmyo Shrine. Only the last one we didn’t visit.
This makes a total of €14,82 for activities.
Others
To enter South Korea, you need K-ETA. This is not a visa, but more of a data-information policy. This costs €8,75 per person and allows you to enter the country (valid for three years).
The only other expanse we made was an ATM cost of €6,11 (for withdrawing €152,98).
Total Breakdown
As you might read in our previous breakdown of Indonesia, we have set a budget for our Asia travels of €66 a day for two people including everything except insurances. We know we can’t live on this budget in places like Seoul, but we tried not to exceed twice our daily budget. Let’s see…
In total, we spend €990,48 including everything. That makes a daily average of €198,10 when we’re calculating only 5 days. Not good, but also not bad for a week in Seoul. For us, this was definitely worth it!
