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Korea 2015: A day in Busan
posted : Saturday, April 25, 2015
Coming down from YongPyong, took us about 3 hours to reach Jamsil station (bus doesn't go to Seoul Station for some reason) and about another hour to take metro to Seoul station, where we were supposed to catch a train to Busan, our last leg of the trip.
Back at Seoul station, headed to the lockers we had stored our barang the day before. A bit tentative and we were totally picturing the homeless people partying with our few boxes of snacks ahahahaha. But turns out technology is trustable la. Just that we had to pay even more coz we exceeded the allowable time (which we still had no idea how long it was). Just pay up and leave lor.
Didn't book train tickets beforehand, and there were only standing tickets left. Grudgingly bought those and had to race to the platform as train was scheduled to leave in like 5minutes sigh. Tiring. Boarded the train, we settled down in between two of the carriages.
On the train!
Don't know how we survived but we stood for the full 2.5 hours. One of the locals struck up a convo with the gals (and us guys), can speak English fairly well probably coz he's currently a uni student.
Was about 7.30 by the time we reached Busan station. Was supposed to metro to our accom at Haeundae, but one look at the metro map and we unanimously decided to cab instead. Haeundae was like 20 stops away from Busan station zzzz.
Decided to take two cabs coz we had too much things to fit one cab. Then we ran into trouble with the taxi drivers. Showed them the address in Korean, they didn't know where, key into GPS system also cannot find. To be honest the host did warn us that the building was pretty new and so we can't really find it on Google Maps (I guess by that extension it meant GPS system wouldn't be able to detect it either). At one point I was trying to tell them to just drop us off at Haeundae station and we walk from there (coz the directions given to us were about walking from Haeundae) but the message didn't get across. Ended up calling the host instead and had him explain to one of the taxi drivers, and the other one just followed.
The taxi driver for me and San was a grouchy uncle. Stel and KH later told us theirs was rather friendly and they even managed to communicate a bit sigh.
Checking into this accom was even easier than the one at Seoul. We didn't even meet our host, all instructions were accessible from his blog and the locks were all passcode based which he separately texted us the passcode. Easy peasy. Spent 5 minutes ooh-ing and aah-ing at the place lolol.
Hungry until not hungry alr at this point (broke out some snacks from our stock during the train ride but not enough lor). So we headed out and strolled the streets nearby, ended up having dinner at this restaurant that serves a rather good stew/soup with intense pork flavour (I almost typed "porky flavour" lol). Then contemplated strolling over to the beach (crazy idea for the time of the day and the weather) but we ended up visiting Haeundae Market for a bit (most shops are closed already) and called it a day.
 
Surprisingly good.
Strolling down Haeundae Market
Second day (and our only full day) in Busan started with a trip to Jagalchi Fish Market! This leg of the trip was handled by Stel by the way, and her intention was just for us to see see look look here. We visited the outdoor markets, contemplated visiting the indoor market (where there are stalls selling fresh sashimi etc) but decided against it in the end. Crossed the road over to BIFF (Busan International Film Festival) Square for street food as lunch, and hung around that area.
The outdoor market. Wish we had time to visit Gamcheon (in the background) but we couldnt.
Overlooking the port
Trying out street food at BIFF Square.
This was pretty good too! Pancake sandwiching peanuts.
Ice cream in a winter day!
Went over to Lotte Department Store nearby! Main attraction was supposed to be LotteMart to replenish snacks stock lol. But somehow after a while girls claimed that this wasn't the huge LotteMart like the one at Seoul station and the correct one should be at Seomyeon which was about 8 stations away...so metro-ed back. There we found out that the supermarket was a more upscale version i.e not the one we were looking for..so headed back to Nampodong =.= Decided to have dinner first before finishing off with supermarket trip, but the bbq restaurant we were looking for either closed down/we couldn't find it..so end up we just went to get our stuff from Lotte Mart and cabbed back.
And there was the 鸡同鸭讲 scenario with taxi driver again lol though this one was far more entertaining than the previous one ahaha. When we once again failed to communicate our address to him, we decided to rattle out names of a few motels near our place (there are lots of them by the way) and he gave us a suggestive "HMMM" ahahahaha. And he kept listening to our conversation trying to make out any signs of Korean language hehe. Managed to lead him to our place and he celebrated with us lolol.
Went upstairs to drop off our barang...and almost entered the wrong room #fail We were used to turning left after exiting lift, and first room after the lift lobby, that we didn't realize we took lifts on the opposite side and we were supposed to turn right instead. So keyed in passcode, all got stunned when the passcode didn't work, then only realize we were trying to break in some other person's place ahaha luckily that person didn't come out to check.
Had our last dinner at one of the BBQ restaurants on the way to beach! Then went back to room for some accounting work lol. Too many people involved in paying various shared expenses so it took a while.
Will miss authentic Korean BBQ
And packed. Which needed some strategy coz of weight limits ahaha. Nearing the end of our trip!
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