I’d like to check in.

Why this spelling

This romanisation is not the spelling copied letter by letter. It is built from the National Institute of Korean Language’s Revised Romanization, which writes what the word sounds like once the sounds next to each other have changed it.

When you would say it

Passport in your hand as you say it, and the rest usually happens without another word.

Checking in, and what’s already in the room

**Have your passport out before anyone asks.** Anywhere that takes foreign guests keeps a record of them, so the desk needs the document itself rather than a number you copied down, and it may photograph or scan the page. It happens at a hotel counter and at a guesthouse owner’s kitchen table. The name on the booking has to match the passport, so if somebody else made the reservation, say whose name it’s under.

From the same chapter

Where You Sleep

Card number 72 of the book

The guidebook prints these as numbered cards, so you can hold up a number instead of trying to pronounce it. The Korean edition comes with it and has the same numbers in the same places.

See the guidebook