Travel Guide: Busan and Around

I didn’t know what to expect when we decided to travel to Korea for October break. Many of my colleagues started their overseas teaching careers in Korea and everyone spoke highly of it, but visiting a place is obviously different from living there. The only thing I knew for sure was that it would be fall. I hadn’t seen leaves change in a long time and I was really looking forward to it.

We organised our trip based on where we could get direct flights; from Singapore, we could fly directly to Busan and from Seoul. The opposite option, interestingly, did not exist.

We landed in Busan first thing in the morning and the fact that I lost all of my photos from the first day of our trip (no joke, I managed to recover none at all) is actually fitting considering how discombobulated I felt that day. We revived ourselves a bit with coffee before heading to Haedong Yonggungsa, a Buddhist temple famous because it’s built on cliffs overlooking the sea. I loved hearing and smelling the sea, exploring the stone cracks and crevices, and looking at the food stalls on the path leading to the temple.

Busan is located on the southeastern coast of the Korean peninsula and that means it has a beach! Several, in fact. We spent some time that afternoon walking along Gwangalli Beach and enjoyed how quiet it was. October isn’t beach weather and this was a Monday afternoon, but there were lovely art installations and displays of children’s art. It felt really good to walk along the sand and even touch the water, which was about the same temperature as the air. Pleasant enough but jeans and a jacket were required. And again, we smelled the sea. It smelled alive in a way that I forget exists when living in the middle of a city.

Everyone we spoke to promised that public transportation in Korea was cheap and easy to use, a promise that we tested on our first bus ride from the beach to the hotel. Not only are stops listed in English most of the time, but you can pay in cash on all buses and the metro. Alternatively, you can use a Tcard and reload it with money at any metro station. Easy indeed!

Korea has a lot of parks and nature and before dinner we walked over to Yongdusan Park, the home of Busan Tower. The real attraction, however, was getting there. We took a series of themed escalators from street level up a hill and at the top was the park! Each level of escalator was a different colour or played music or was decorated with lights and moving images, which was highly entertaining.

We also spent some time that evening wandering through Gukje Market and BIFF Square. The market was a lot of fun because it backed right into high-end restaurants and designer shops, and the food sections of the market existed on the same roads as non-food shops. Picture pancakes frying in the middle of the street in front of a shop selling scarves and then imagine the smells of oil and wool. Put a smile on your face and that’s where I was. BIFF Square, built for the Busan International Film Festival, had its own collection of food and souvenir vendors and even fortune tellers!

The next day we headed out of Busan to Gyeongju, the capital of the former Silla dynasty. The bus ride was really pretty and took us past rolling hills and small cities. We were there to see the burial mounds of Silla kings, most of which are contained in one park area but some are dotted through the town. (And now I have photos, yay!)

Turns out there’s a method to keeping the grass level, too!

I was also really taken by the fruit trees.

We were able to go inside Cheonmachong, an excavated mound named for the white horse motif painted on the outside. The mounds are built initially as platforms and then hollowed out at the top, which is a pretty cool feat of engineering.

The town of Gyeongju itself was pretty, too, with restaurants, cafés, and lots of little shops. This is also the first place we encountered the emphasis on Instagram – cafés were literally designed for this purpose and advertised as such!

The other reason to visit Gyeongju was to get to Bulguksa Temple, which meant another bus ride through a landscape of hills, trees, and flowers. Korea is home to birds I’ve never seen before, either, and it was a really nice to experience so much of the land around us. Bulguksa was built in the eighth century and, like most of Korea, was destroyed during the wars and has since been restored. The colours were remarkable and we got very lucky with the blue sky, late afternoon sun, and autumn leaves beginning to change.

We returned to Gyongju for dinner and found more street art, which is always a highlight for me.

We spent our last full day in Busan at Gamcheon Cultural Village, which I’d really been looking forward to. We spent hours wandering through the twisty alleys and streets, browsing souvenirs and handcrafts, and pointing out the large variety of snacks available for purchase.

Gamcheon Cultural Village is still home to many artists and other residents and I really couldn’t shake the feeling that we were dancing on people’s heads the whole time we were there. It was first built in the 1920s and 30s and the restoration and community building that is still prevalent there was really impressive.

There was art everywhere and we were completely immersed in it.

On the walls . . .

. . . and on the stairs . . .

. . . and installations everywhere you looked.

I particularly loved the book staircase . . .

. . . and the Peace Museum. A man came by with markers for us to add messages, so of course we did so.

Gamcheon also had a local market because, as I said, people live there! The market was one of our last stops so it was mostly closed for the day but I was delighted to be there.

Since we visited a beach on our first day in Busan, we thought it fitting to also visit a beach on our last day. We took a really nice bus ride to Haeundae Beach, which, I learned, has the record for the most umbrellas on a beach at one time. (Note: This fact came from my travel friend and has not been independently verified.) We reached the beach at sunset and watched the sky change.