Travel Tuesdays – Busan, Korea

Ack, I am just the worst at posting these Travel Tuesdays. It’s been 2 months and I’ve only written one post on my 10 day trip to Korea and Japan. Sigh. Sorry! Hopefully, my memories of these experiences are still fresh in my mind. 🙂

So this time, I’ll be describing my time in Busan! Woohoo! I was only there for two full days so apologies if it’s not terribly exciting. Disclaimer: It is very food oriented. LOL

After my one night stay in Seoul (I blame not having enough PTO days), I made our way to Busan from Seoul via the KTX bullet train. Fortunately, the AirBnB I stayed at was situated very closely to Seoul Station, where the bullet train was. Unfortunately for us, it was pouring that morning and we spent a lot of time hiding in restaurants and cafes.

Seoul to Busan is about 202 miles and with the KTX bullet train, I was able to get there in less than 3 hours! THREE HOURS! Isn’t that insane? I can’t even get to LA from San Diego in less than 2.5 hours and that’s only a 100 miles away. The United States needs a bullet train ASAP.

The bullet train tickets were very simple to book. There are a lot of trains that head out from Seoul and you can book it online with no issues. You will have to pick up the physical tickets at Seoul Station though, but the booth is super easy to find.

Once we got to Busan, we made our way to our AirBnb near Seomyeon Station. After setting our stuff down and cooling down a bit, we decided to explore a bit and I’m super glad we did. Here are the things I learned about this area:

The area is busy, but not overwhelming – I was able to navigate fairly easily with google maps. There is a bit of dodging here and there, but nothing too bad (unlike Japan).

There are underground shopping centers – Something I didn’t realize about Korea and Japan is that there are underground shopping centers. When it gets too hot and humid, people go under and cool off. 🙂

Mul Naengmyun is BOMB – I didn’t have any high expectations of the food coming in, but after eating in 3 days, I found myself extremely impressed. After a few days of being back in the states, I was craving Korean food. LOL.

Mul Naengmyun is a cold noodle dish packed with flavor. The noodles are placed in a chilled icy broth made from beef and/or radish kimchi water. It is often served with an egg.

Gachapon shops are a thing – Remember when you were younger and at the supermarket, there would be these vending machines that dispensed random toys in capsules after you put in a quarter or two? Do you remember? Okay, now imagine a room filled with these vending machines. That’s what a Gachapon shop is. My boyfriend and I found this place accidentally and spent a good 20 minutes debating how to spend all of our money on little toys. LOL.

Korean Night life – It could have been just the area I was in, but Busan knows how to have fun. We were walking around at 11 pm and stores were still open and it was a Sunday night.

Dwaeji Gukbap (Pork Soup) – If you’ve ever seen my IG stories, you’ll know that I live for food. It’s a huge part of why I run so much. So I can eat all of the things. 🙂 So it shouldn’t be a surprise that a lot of my travels revolve around food. Sorry not sorry. 🙂 Dwaeji Gukbap is a specialty in Busan. It’s pork soup that is really rich in flavor. The soup itself is fairly bland, but you can taste the fattiness of it and you can season it with salt. I swear I’m doing it justice by describing it. If you’re ever in Busan, please go try this dish. Especially if you have a hangover. I heard it’s really good hangover food.

The second day, we moved to another AirBnB near Haeundae Beach. Unfortunately, we didn’t get to do too much exploring because a storm was coming in. I did get to try one memorable thing and of course, it’s another food item.

BBQ – I figured it’d be fun to try Korean BBQ or as they’d call it in Korea, BBQ. My boyfriend and I stayed near Haeundae Beach our second night and was able to find a famous BBQ place called Haeundae Somunnan Amso Galbijip. The place was set up like a traditional Korean house and you get to sit on the ground and grill your own meat. 🙂 This was a bit pricier than the other meals I had in Korea, but I really love Korean BBQ and this was worth the experience.

I had a really fun time exploring Busan and I’d probably come back to visit the other neighborhoods. Just have to get more PTO days. 🙂 In the mean time, I’ll write about my travels to Japan soon.

Question for you: Have you been had Korean BBQ? What’s your favorite dish? I love brisket and beef tongue. Yummmmm.