DAY TRIP TO BUSAN
Our short week in Seoul was ending, and our little group wanted to explore somewhere new and different. Many places came to mind such as Ulsan, Paju, Suwon, Nami Island but Busan stuck out to me. I haven’t visited Busan in more than 10 years, and I heard from friends and family that the city was becoming a hot spot for local and foreign tourists. We thought it would be an excellent way to conclude our Korea trip in Busan and immediately planned our day trip down south.
The alarm clock buzzed at 5:00 A.M., breaking the stillness of the Seoul morning. With groggy eyes and sleepy minds, we dragged ourselves out of bed, fueled by the anticipation of the day ahead. Today, we embark on a journey from the bustling metropolis of Seoul to the coastal oasis of Busan, all aboard the iconic KTX train (Korea’s bullet train).
Since we didn’t have the luxury of time, we wanted to maximize our one full day in Busan. We bought round-trip tickets from Seoul to Busan, departing Seoul at 07:00 a.m. and Busan at 10:00 p.m. (the first and last scheduled rides from each city). With our KTX tickets and nothing but excitement and anticipation, we quickly got ready and left our hotel at 6:00 a.m. to Seoul Station.
Tip: When buying the KTX tickets, please make sure to buy it from the official KORAIL website. For some reason, the other unofficial websites like Koreantrain or Ninjarail are ranking higher on Google’s SEO than the official website and charge more than the actual fare. So yes, while the official website is clunky and looks outdated, please buy from the official website to avoid the higher fees but most importantly, to avoid any issues you may have with your ticket during your trip.
And thank goodness we left at 6:00 a.m. Mishi and I are from Los Angeles, so we know a thing or two about commuting during traffic hours in a dense, metropolitan city. But we did not expect Korea to have even worse traffic. Fair warning to others looking to travel to South Korea, please make sure to ask your hotel front desk about the traffic hours and plan accordingly. Because we had a group of six people, we thought it would be easier and faster to take a taxi to Seoul Station. As it turns out, it would have been better and much faster to take public transportation such as bus or train.
We eventually got to Seoul Station with some minutes to spare, so we decided to grab some snacks and drinks for our two-hour ride down to Busan. Mishi got some kimbap with a bottle of corn husk tea while I grabbed some tteokbokki and a cup of odeng broth. Equally excited with anticipation for our take-away breakfast, we headed towards our train and quickly got on board as we heard the last call for our departure.
The bullet train ride from Seoul to Busan was quick and pleasant. We enjoyed our humble but satisfying breakfast, watching the skyscrapers in Seoul fade away as mountains and green valleys started to fill the scene. Through the window, the cityscape was transforming into a patchwork of farm fields and winding rivers, each bend in the track revealing a new panorama of the country’s diverse landscape. Other than a few stops along the way, the journey down south was short, and before we knew it, we arrived in Busan.
Arriving at Busan Station, we quickly made our way towards Bupyeong Kkangtong Market. Busan Station is also the city’s main central train station, so it was easy to find directions to the market, which ended up being a quick fifteen-minute subway ride. During our short ride, we were taking notice of everything — even though Busan is the second-largest city in South Korea, the city felt and looked so different from Seoul. While Seoul is shiny, glitzy, and super modernized, Busan is the humbler, grittier, and more authentic city giving that nostalgic sensation of being transported into the past.
Walking through the alleyways and tiny streets of Busan, it felt as if we were visiting Korea in the 90s. From the ubiquitous stacked neon signs to fishmongers and street vendors setting up their makeshift storefronts in preparation for the morning rush, it was a delightful treat to experience a familiar but distinctly different city at a much slower pace.
Famished, we finally entered the Bupyeong Kkangtong Market. Bupyeong Khangtong Market is another street market like Gwangjang Market in Seoul but without tourists. Gazing upward, I was surprised by the architecture of the aging market. The market’s frame was impressive and resembled the famous Galleria Piazza Garibaldi in Naples, Italy. Instead of luxury brand stores, street vendors were hawking rows and rows of colorful banchan, local fish from the morning catch, and street food but Busan style.
Our options were limitless and as we purveyed the local treats, we decided to try Busan’s infamous milmyeon. Milmyeon is a humble cold dish comprised of rice noodles, anchovies, kombu-based stock, and fermented white radish for texture and acidity. It’s such a simple but complex dish that hit every flavor profile — the soup base was savory and full of umami, the fermented radish lent a funky, sour, and sweet crunch, and the rice noodles tied everything together in a perfect satisfying slurp. I’ve had this dish many times growing up, but it never tasted this fresh and delicious. The best part was that this delicious bowl of noodles cost only $2.00. Realizing how cheap the food was in Busan compared to Seoul, we quickly consumed the rest of our noodles and went back into the market to try some more local cuisine.
As we walked through the market, we enjoyed more street food like ddukgalbi, korean corn dogs, hotteok, and more tteokbokki. The market was a sensory overload — with delicious food being cooked and sold in every nook and cranny, surrounded by the noise of fishmongers and customers bargaining, and in between, the most colorful arrangement of local ingredients being sold for the day. Being city folks, we’re not used to seeing such lively interactions. Like most folks, we live the daily grind and rarely get to enjoy the simple things in life; so being able to see things like a simple transaction of fish being sold, food being prepared for locals and tourists alike, and just observing life pass by was such a simple pleasure.
This feeling is one of my greatest joys of traveling.
Satisfied and full, our group decided to move on to our next destination, Gamcheon Culture Village. After consuming enough calories to last us a week, we thought it would be best to walk the short mile from the market to Gamcheon Culture Village.
Oh, and how that was a mistake.
The short-mile hike turned into an unexpected climb up the stairmaster. And to make things more difficult, even though our time in Seoul was cold and frosty (we visited during Thanksgiving weekend), Busan was sunny and hot which felt like summer. We appreciated the temperature change, coming from Los Angeles, where we also experience summer temperatures during the winter. But under the oppressive sun and heat, while climbing what seemed like never-ending stairs, we had to call an emergency group meeting and decided to ride the local bus the rest of the way up. As the bus approached, we entered the air-conditioned vehicle and immediately felt relief. The bus was full of senior Koreans going about their day, and children heading home from school, filling the bus with laughter and chatter. What would have taken us another grueling thirty minutes of walking uphill on a hot, sunny day, took us a mere few minutes in a comfortable air-conditioned bus.
Entering the colorful village, we visited the tourist office and gathered some reading materials about the village and also picked up a map for a fun scavenger hunt. This historic village was built by the Busan government in the 1920s to relocate the working class away far enough from the port but close enough to provide labor. Since then, the small village that once had only one district expanded into nine, creating the rainbow-colored village. The pastel-colored houses looked as if they were neatly stacked in the most chaotic but organized way.
We meandered through narrow alleys adorned with vibrant murals, many of them depicting The Little Prince. Not sure why, but it added a level of cuteness to this already aesthetic village. What surprised us the most was the large amount of things to do at this place. From doing photo shoots, to gathering stamps for the scavenger hunt, while devouring more street food like a crème brulée’d marshmallow; there are so many things to do in Gamcheon. But one thing we highly recommend for everyone is the iconic love lock.
As cheesy as it was, the love lock was one of the most memorable things we did that day. As each couple purchased a lock, Mishi and I sat together and at first, we couldn’t help but laugh at what we were doing. But after the initial laughter wore off, we were surprisingly enjoying the process of designing our heart-shaped plastic letters to our future selves.
We recommend purchasing a love lock at the ‘Little Planet’. Not only because they have a cute café downstairs where we designed our locks, but after you’re done, you can go up to their rooftop to lock your forever messages. And the view from this café was inarguably the best in Gamcheon.
As the sun began to set, the once-hot weather beating our backs became a bit cooler, feeling like the weather we had back in Seoul. We said our goodbyes to Gamcheon and our love locks and headed towards our final destination in Busan: Songdo Cable Car.
Just as we came up, we took the local bus and headed towards the beach. Busan is a beach town, and when most people visit Busan, they first go to the beach. But for us, I wanted to save the beach for last, with the hopes of catching the sunset on the cable car ride to Songdo. And as luck would have it, we were in for a treat.
The cable car ride to Songdo was amazing.
Of course, the Koreans would build these cable cars to have Bluetooth capability, so Mishi turned on some Emotional Oranges, as we admired our view. Ascending and descending over the ocean, we saw commercial boats leaving and entering the port, cotton candy-colored skies, and the green mountains towering above Busan.
Gazing at Busan and its iconic coastal skyline was a beautiful finale to our Korea trip. Korea will always have a special place in our hearts, and we know we’ll be making our way back to this beautiful country.
