You’re Doing Travel Wrong

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Thwarted by the weather!

Ah, travel! The exhilarating experience of upending your entire life to join insufferable crowds, destroy foreign monuments, and consume bizarre foods, all at a premium cost. Sure, you make lifelong memories of standing in long ticket lines, but you always return from your vacation in need of a…vacation.

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Sale! Normally 2,000 Won – but now only 3,900!

The fact is that you’re doing travel all wrong. You could be standing in much longer lines, wearing your own smelly clothes, and paying more money. As an expert traveler (self-certified) let me educate you. (See disclaimer at end)

The first thing you’re doing wrong is staying in a hotel. Maid service, individually wrapped soaps, and a minibar minifridge? No, that won’t do. You need to be staying in Airbnb. Sure they’re destroying the local housing market and forcing out locals, but those people were going to yell at you anyway for stopping on the sidewalk to take a photo of a vintage (“distressed”) door. With an airbnb, you have no idea whether there will be any soap, you might be in a graffiti covered building, and you could get yourself and your host evicted! Ah, memories!

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A Taste of Korea

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Early view of Seoul

Last weekend I went to Seoul, in the Republic of Korea. A whole weekend! Now I’m an expert on all things Korean.

The Won is the Korean currency (“wahn”). What do you call a bunch of Won? A Won-ton! (Now I’m hungry.)

There’s about 1,000 Won to the dollar. Just think of the comma as a decimal point. Try not to get nervous when you pull 100,000 Won from the ATM.

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Where’s the comma?!

They should drop 3 zeros and reprint their currency. (Japan needs to drop 2 zeros from theirs. <hold breath>)

Friday afternoon we wandered around Itaewon (pronounced eat-taiwan, which seems like cross-marketing. And makes me hungrier.) We found a hamburger place run by Americans. We had Guinness at an Aussie bar. And then we struck gold. Pancake Hotdog Sale. Yep, bratwursts with a pancake for a bun and yummy asian sauces drizzled over them.

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