Our Adventure in Busan

One of the reasons why we chose ISA as our program to study abroad was because they included various excursions to different parts of Korea. One of the excursions  we happened to go on was Busan. This excursion included trips to Haeundae Beach, Dongbaeksong Island, Haedong Yonggungsa Temple, Jagalchi market, and Taejongdae Resort Park.

We took off early in the morning to grab breakfast before heading to Seoul train station, but we ended up grabbing breakfast at the station since they had various restaurants there.  

The picture above on the left is inside Seoul Train Station and the next one to the right is  the bus we took to Haeundae Beach once we had arrived to Busan. The trip from Seoul to Busan on the KTX train took about 3 hours. Right outside the station in Busan were fountains that would go off every now and then. There were many children playing in the water and just crossing the street was Chinatown! 

We were given about an hour to grab lunch before we left for Haeundae Beach and since we were exploring Chinatown  we happened to stop by a restaurant to look at there menu outside, but the ajumma dragged us in and we ended up having really delicious meals.

We spent about an hour bathing in the sun and enjoying the weather at Haeundae beach. Our program advisor had warned it would be extremely hot, but the weather was actually extremely nice! It was not hot at all it was actually really cool which was great because it was nice to get away for the weekend from the hot, humid weather in Seoul. 

A picture with our friend at Haeundae Beach who happens to live in Busan.  We ended up leaving our group to spend the day in Busan with him instead and we spent the whole day wandering around. We even went to a Noraebang and wandered around other parts of the beach. There is an aquarium located near and they had  huge turtles outside for the public to see. There were even performances around the beach. At the end of the night we had delicious Dal Kalbi which also happened to be the spiciest dal kalbi we have ever tried.

We actually backed packed all day because we weren't allowed to check into the hotel until 10 pm. We were so exhausted from walking all day and carrying all our stuff,  it was nice to reach our hotel. We had planned to explore Busan at night too, but our hotel was located far from the nightlife in Busan which was a bummer for a lot of us. It was fine though because we fell asleep as soon as we reached our beds. 

On our second day in Busan we woke up really early because we were going to Taejongdae Resort Park. We had to again carry all our stuff because we were leaving that night. We rode the bus for about 45 minutes to Taejongdae Park Resort. That bus ride was the craziest bus ride we've ever been on. We were standing because it was packed so we were thrown around the entire time we had to hold on really tight so we wouldn't fall. Once we reached Taejongdae we walked about 15 minutes to reach a van that would take us to the island. We crammed about 10 of us in a van! Once we reached the boats we were given shrimp chips to feed the birds, but we ate them instead, we love shrimp chips! Around were many restaurants and tents set up with fresh seafood ! 

This is the area around Taejongdae. It was really beautiful! 

We ended up skipping the trip to the island because we were terrified of getting on that small boat so instead along with our friend we decided to leave and once again explore on our own.  At first we didn't know how to get back because we had gotten there riding a van which was about a ten minute ride, but we ended up following some other people who were trying to find the way back by foot as well. We walked all the way back to the entrance which was about 20 minutes and then we walked to the nearest bus stop. We pondered on wether we should just take a taxi or take the bus! We decided it be a lot more fun to ride the bus on our own.  This time the bus ride wasn't so bad and we got off as soon as we found the nearest subway station which happened to be 30 minutes from Taejongdae! We surprisingly ended up in Nampodong where we found Aqua mall. This Aqua mall was about 7 floors! They had a food court at the bottom and then 2 floors of Uniqlo! Also they had this store where they were playing our favorite Korean hip hop artists Illionaire artists Dok2, The Quiett and Beenzino! We spent quite some time at that shop.  They also had a water fountain running from the bottom to the top of the ceiling where they had a light show and the water moved to the sound of classical music! It was actually really awesome!  We then ended up at this bookstore and we ran to the CD section where we ended up finding all the albums we couldn't find in Seoul!! 

After that we walked to the subway station to meet with our group so we could head to Busan station and leave to Seoul. The subway station in Busan was so different from that of Seoul! We were definitely surprised to see the train this empty! This rarely ever happens in Seoul! Outside the trains they had a vending machine filled with books!! Also rather than use our metro card we bought a ticket instead which is something that I haven't seen in Seoul subway stations. The trip was extremely tiring, but it was a lot of fun meeting up with our friend and exploring on our own. We're not fans of traveling with large groups so it was a nice get away for us. We got back to Seoul around 10 pm and although we were exhausted we managed to go out for a meal. We hadn't really eaten all day. It was nice to be back in Seoul.