My Daily Kimchi: Practical things about Seoul

First : going around!

Public transportation in Seoul is one of the best in the world. Varied, cheap, effective, clean and pretty safe. When I first visited Seoul in 2007 I mostly used the metro unless I was accompanied because it was kinda hard to get oriented and know where to get off, also to understand the bus system which was very different than Montreal and there are not so visitors friendly. But this time since I was gonna be here for a year I thought I'd give it a shot since my friend Youssef who's been teaching English here for 3 years was always raving about them. I'm surely glad I did, now I'm becoming familiar with the buses around my houses and they sure are a saver when you don't want to transfer 3 times subway lines for a not so far place and when it's rush hour usually they are less crowded than the metro. Actually I was pretty amazed by how the transportation system had improved and continue to developed since my last visit 2 years ago which I was already considering at the top of the class at that time. Some of the new developments I spotted so far includes: touch screens for search with satellite view of map and location in the subway, GPS in all buses and the possibility to track them in real time with app on your phone(which I use all the time and it works awesome!) Touch screens are some bus stops to track your bus as well :)...

Here some pictures of the subway:

just a normal subway station from outside

The card reader: could be a card, in your cellphone etc... you pay by the distance. use it to pay in the taxi, at the convenience store ^^

Screen tells about next train coming and the weather etc..

first figure out where you are and where you want to go haha

This is just the subway map btw.. and also I think this map may not be up to date lol

And now, what about those buses? There is 4 types of buses.

Basically, Seoul is divided into small regions, Green Buses go in the immediate neighborhood within that region, the Red are express buses connecting theses areas with downtown, Yellow buses connects major subway stations, tourist attractions and major business centers while Blue buses connects surrounding regions together.

I mostly use green and blue :P

What I don't get is why the buses don't have automatic and the bus drivers are known for their crazy driving, anyway once you get use to that and hold on thigh its like a cheap amusement park ride :)