I feel like we did quite well last week. Like during the actual week. During the weekend we spent a lot of money for sure but it was worth it. We went to Seoul for the weekend to meet up with family friends who are visiting Korea from South Africa. It was great to see them and surprisingly fun to play tourist-tourist with them 🙂 It confirmed that I shouldn’t wait for visitors to be a tourist.

Walking from Myeongdong to near Insadong

Samgypsal in Insadong (the tourist pozzie in Seoul)

The toilet from the top of Seoul Tower (over looking the lights of Seoul). Talk about a loo with a view! Was just brilliant 🙂 🙂
So the week’s spend went like this:
To new readers of The Brat Experiment: I basically report on our weekly spending and then write up a summary of our spending for each month. You can check out other weekly spends and the monthly summaries in The Numbers section.
Groceries
11 120 won |
10 120 won | Groceries | Necessary |
1 000 won | Gum | Necessary | |
Eat Out
60 500 won |
49 000 won | Dinner and drinks with work | Necessary but we did indulge in beer tastings etc 🙂 |
11 500 won | Order in | Indulgence but cheap | |
Clothes | n/a | ||
Alcohol
12 750 won |
3 000 won | CU beer | Indulgence |
3 750 won | CU beer | Indulgence | |
6 000 won | Drinks before dinner | Indulgence but lekker (South African for “really nice”) | |
Once-off | n/a | ||
Bills & Fees | n/a | ||
Transport
10 200 won |
5 300 won | Taxi to work dinner | Necessary. It was super far. |
4 900 won | Taxi home after dinner | Necessary | |
Gifts | n/a | ||
Medical | n/a | ||
Travel | n/a |
Day to day total: 94 570 won
So basically, I was right and we were amazing with how little we spent during the week last week. Now for the tiny matter of Seoul…
Transport
95 200 won |
4 400 won | Taxi to bus station | Necessary |
43 000 won | Bus to Seoul | Necessary | |
43 000 won | Bus home | Necessary | |
4 800 won | Taxi home | Necessary | |
Accommodation
60 000 won |
60 000 won | Motel | Necessary |
Food
116 830 won |
5 600 won | Bus snacks | Necessary |
73 000 won | Lunch out for 5 | Necessary | |
2 500 won | Cool drinks | Necessary | |
5 000 won | Gimbap | Necessary | |
13 000 won | Breakfast | Necessary | |
17 730 won | Lunch out | Necessary. AND it involved steak – a REAL treat here | |
Alcohol
3 500 won |
3 500 won | Beer after Seoul Tower | Indulgence |
Tourist Activities
36 000 won |
16 000 won | Palace secret garden | Necessary. |
20 000 won | Seoul Tower | Necessary and awesome | |
Shopping
49 600 won |
3 500 won | Socks | Necessary. Been looking for ages |
5 000 won | Scarf | Indulgence but so pretty 🙂 | |
41 100 won | Harry Potter book and a puzzle | Indulgence | |
Gifts
5 200 won |
5 200 won | Postcards sent from Seoul Tower | Necessary |
Seoul travel: 366 330 won

Check how pretty my scarf is! AND it’s practical colours that I will use often – at least I felt responsible in my indulgence 🙂
We did Seoul a little differently to usual in that we only travelled up on the Saturday morning and so didn’t to pay for accommodation on Friday night – this was a big saver. Accommodation really does nail the travel budget… so long term we definitely need a camper van or something…
Week’s total: 460 900 won
Necessary: 387 050 won (84%)
Indulgence: 73 850 won (16%)
Overall I am very pleasantly surprised by our spending last week. We only have one more weekend before payday and we feel like we are actually going to make it without having to eat nothing but ramien (Korean noodles) for a week 🙂 And this is even with this weekend coming lasting FIVE days. Yip, it’s Chusok (Korean thanksgiving) and so today is the last day of work for the week (yaaaaaaaay!). And I’m very excited because we are going to play tourist-tourist again 🙂
Xxx
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