I had a bit difficult to decide which part should I pick for my first posting and after think and think again, I choose Transportation as the winner!
Okay, I only explain about public transportation.
So, most in cities in Korea they have 3 kinds of transportation systems; taxi, bus, and subway
Taxi, as everyone knows, you can use it as same as in your country and better to pay with cash rather than a card because some taxi not accepts card payment. As taxi user, I have good and bad experiences about it.
Let’s talk about the good first.
So, as long I stay here. I have met several taxi drivers that made me think they are good people.
The latest one was enjoyable. I sat in the back seat with two Japanese friends. The driver talked with me in Korean. When he learned that two of my friends were Japanese, he started talking with the help of conversation mode google translate through his smartphone that hanged under rearview mirror. He was very talking active then and that ride was one of the best taxi ride experience in Korea.
Another good experience is when I took taxi past midnight, the ahjussi (the driver) gave me the normal price which is made me surprised. I said to him that you took normal price but he said that is fine and smile. FYI, in Korea. If you take taxi past midnight you will get charge higher than during the day. Then usually, the drivers tend to take more than less, don’t they?
And most of them had driving smoothly, helped me with my big luggage, and was still polite even my friends and I talked.
One of that foreigner must know about Korean taxi driver is they are don’t like noisy passengers even you talk with small volume. I am not exaggerating it, it is a fact. The signal that driver gives to us is when he is upset are; veering sharply when the streets are in a normal state (you are not in hurry), braking suddenly in front of a red light, glancing sharply through the rearview mirror, or not driving smoothly.
If you find one of this situation when you having a conversation, I suggest you be quiet immediately.
And I had those bad experience more than once.
Another bad experience happened when I traveled to Seoul and wanted to take a taxi in Itaewon area at night. At that time there are several foreigner groups that waited for the ride also, even we saw empty cars but no one stopped for us and we thought, maybe it was already reserved. It changed when a taxi stopped in front of Korean, but the Korean only just came to the line and people (foreigners) already stopped the taxi before him, for God Sakes! We were angry, hey what’s going on?! And finally after tried so many times, we got it. Thank God.
I tried to positive thinking then. Maybe the driver though for his safety, and we are foreigners in Itaewon though. The logical reason is there were cases about foreigner’s bad habit in the taxi, drinking maybe. I don’t know but maybe it happened, just my conclusion. It was Itaewon after all, the international area popular with foreigners in Seoul.
So, if you come to Korea don’t forget my advice BUT as I said before, I also have a good experience and the bad one only happened on my unlucky day
If you already stay in Korea and cannot speak Korean fluently, please kindly share your experience in the comment below
Have a nice day everyone! ^^
PS: I almost forgot the important part.
If you want to order a taxi, you can use KakaoTaxi app. You can download it to your phone and don’t worry, it has English service. You can choose your destination and just turn phone location on if you don’t know the address. Voila! The taxi will pick you up.