Korean Job Discussion Forums

[Seul]

I wanted to thank everyone who helped me out in my previous thread about Cambodia and Laos. The flights ended up being really expensive so I decided not to go.

Instead I took a two week trip to Japan. I live in Seoul so I KTXed down to Busan and then took the ferry over to Fukuoka. Mirajet the Korean equivalent of the Beetle was cheaper so I used them.

I got a 14 day Japan Rail Pass and went to Fukuoka, Hiroshima, Himeji, Kyoto, Hamamatsu (friend lives there), Tokyo, Yokohama, Osaka, and Nara.

I stayed in hostels the entire time, mainly Khaosan and J Hoppers. The hostels were great actually because I saved a lot of money, met a ton of people, and the staff can really help you out with what to see and getting around and booking tickets to concerts on Japanese websites and stuff like that.

All in all, between the KTX, ferry, 14 day Japan Rail Pass, hostels, food, beer, and everything else I spent around 1.8 million won for 15 days. I thought that was pretty good since I would have spent a chunk of that here anyway in Korea.

[AsiaESLbound]

That's really cool trip. I wanna do that. $1600 for 15 days is good. I can spend that in Korea all too eas

[VanIslander]

[Kurtz]

I'm surprised by YOUR thinking VI.

Did you used to be an accountant? Your mindset seems to be focused on maximum returns on your investment ie., why go to Japan and travel cheaply when you can "live like a king" in SE Asia. It's just wrong. It's like saying, why go to an expensive restaurant and eat quality food when you can go to Pizza Hut and eat as much as you can for the lunch time special.

Personally, I can't wait to get back to Japan. I'm willing to spend the money as I want to be there, the costs get rid of lots of the riff raff penny pinching types of SE Asia, and the scenery and proper hiking trails beats anything I've seen in SE Asia. Show me some multi- day tent based unguided hiking in SE Asia, doubt you can.

[Dude Ranch]

1.8 million for two weeks of Japan sounds pretty decent.

Can you tell us how much the beatle boat cost and how much the 14 day rail pass was?

[Seul]

Hey VI... I hear what you're saying. With such short notice and the Chinese New Year around, the best I could find was round trip to Phnom Penh for about 875,000 W plus I figured I would want to do another round trip to Laos to save time having only 2 weeks. So add at least another 200,000 W. Even though the entire Cambodia / Laos trip could have been done cheaper than the Japan trip, I figure I can do Cambodia / Laos later on for much cheaper whereas the Japan trip would cost at least the same.

For the Japan trip, transportation was pretty much half of my costs. The round trip KTX from Seoul to Busan was about 100,000 W, the round trip ferry was about 200,000 W, and the 14 day Japan Rail Pass was about 600,000 W.

Here are some links...

KTX (really easy to book online)
http://info.korail.com/2007/eng/eng_index.jsp

Mirejet Ferry
http://www.mirejet.com/

Japan Rail Pass
http://www.japanrailpass.net/eng/en001.html

For the Japan Rail Pass you must buy an exchange order OUTSIDE OF JAPAN, you can not get it once you are already in Japan. You can read the details on their website.

For the hostels, I stayed at Khaosan in Fukuoka and in Tokyo.
http://www.khaosan-tokyo.com/en/

I stayed at J Hoppers in Hiroshima, Kyoto, and Osaka.
http://www.j-hoppers.com/

I spent between 2,000-2,300 a night for the hostels except one night when I had to spend 3,000 at Sakura Hostel in Tokyo which was a decent place as well. So that was around 25% of the cost of my trip.

I went pretty cheap on the food end of things, yet still trying a lot of Japanese stuff. I ate stuff like Okonamiyaki, Yakisoba, Tempura, 100 Y sushi places, noodles that were pretty cheap. I would also buy cheap food at the grocery store to cook up at the hostels.

It was not my original plan to do the trip so cheaply. I had originally budgeted 3 million W for the entire thing. However, I only exchanged 1,000,000 W into yen before going (after I had already bought all the transportation stuff here in Korea) and I realized after the first couple days there that I could actually maybe make it through the end of the trip.