Busan, South Korea: A Colorful Gem
The train from Seoul to Busan was zombie free and uneventful. I on and off dozed asleep while the rain pattered lightly against the train cars. Honestly, it was a good day for rain if we had to have it. It only took the KTX bullet train 2.5 hours to more or less cross the entire country.
We Arrived in Busan around 4pm and had a short transfer to a subway to get to our hotel in Nampo Dong. Transferring stations here was actually our first time to accidentally take the metro in the wrong direction! It was a split station, and we had followed the crowd through the wrong turnstiles, and then once we were set on a direction misread the sign (maybe it was wishful thinking?) and got on in the wrong direction. We realized our mistake as soon as the subway took off and therefore only went one stop in the wrong direction but unfortunately we still got double charged because we had to exit and reenter the station to go the correct direction.
Day 0, Nampo Dong
Wednesday September 24, 2025
wOur hotel was very close to the subway station and easy to find which was nice with our luggage. It also came with a lovely view of the bay, granted it was a working bay with lots of freighters and fishing boats. With so much fishing industry coming and going we were also close to a famous fish market that being mostly vegetarians we never explored. But, we did later see plenty of people methodically cutting fish heads and tails off on the side of the street while walking to and from our hotel.
It was still off and on raining after our arrival, and we were a little fatigued from the travel, so for our first night in Busan we opted not to wander too far away. We explored the nearby Nampo Dong attractions. Our hotel gave us a map of food recommendations within walking distance, and since it was so hot/humid out (comparative to what we’re used to at least) when we saw a cold noodle place flagged on the list we were all in.
We meandered through the markets around Nampo Dong doing some shopping and browsing before eventually zigzagging our way to the noodle house, Bubu Cold Noodles. As an aside, the restaurant name was only written in Korean on our recommendation list, and I was very proud of myself for learning the hangul (Korean) alphabet so that I could give us something to look up with English letters to find it easier on Naver. Go team! (The Translator app can only do so much, it especially struggles without context).
The noodles were delicious! We later learned that cold noodles are a traditional staple of the area. I thought it was interesting that there was a note in English at the noodle house that was in my opinion very defensive of cold noodles in general. It felt like it assumed that people wouldn’t want them, even when we arrived they checked to make sure we knew the noodles would be cold. Duh, that’s why we came – it was perfect! Who wouldn’t want cold noodles on a hot day?! I guess most hot countries don’t have traditional cold dishes because of food spoilage. But Korea figured out a way, and I’m glad they did!
For dessert, Andrew forgot to save room, but I enjoyed a piping hot fresh seed hotteok. They are amazing sweet filled deep fried pancakes made fresh by street vendors. Busan is known for the cinnamon sugar filling with seeds but they come in all sorts of flavors. I went with the classic and it was divine. If anyone knows of a place in Portland that makes them, please share!
After eating we did some more shop wandering. Nampo Dong was much livelier at night than the Bukchon Hanok Village we had been in in Seoul. We popped into a couple shops as well as a few gachapon stores, although we looked at hundreds, we never did end up buying any of those surprise capsule toys on this trip.
While exploring Andrew spent a lot of time admiring all the neon lights that we joked were probably some form of strip clubs, wondering how he looked taking pictures of the signs. The translator apps didn’t work as well with the stylistic fonts, but we later determined they were mostly karaoke places and “karaoke ;)” places.
We eventually made our way over to the Busan tower because we had to check off looking at the tall skinny tourist thing off the list (and it was close by, so why not). Unlike in Seoul, there wasn’t a cable car to get to the top of the hill, there was however a series of escalators, and only one was out of order. There were a lot of cool colorful light displays on the way up and around the tower including more neon lights. We also admired some of the chill street cats. But, not wanting to wear ourselves out too much we then made our way back to our hotel for much needed showers and relaxation.
Day 1, Haeundae Beach and Further North
Thursday September 25, 2025
Our Busan hotel doesn’t serve breakfast, so we were on our own. For our first morning Andrew found a nearby bakery/coffee shop that opened early and we had fun sandwiches and iced coffees to fuel us for the day. Today was our beach day, and unlike the areas we explored in Seoul, Busan is very sprawling, so even with a very efficient transportation system, it was still close to an hour and a half up north to Haeundae Beach our destination for the day. (Haeundae beach is where most people book hotels, but we’re not most people.)
After our kerfuffle the day before on the subway, we made extra sure to enter the station on the correct side this time and were on our way. With transfers it took about 75 min to get from Nampo Dong up to Haeundae Beach but thanks to all sorts of buffers I had built in to our schedule we had about an hour to explore before our sky capsule reservation. (Per others, it is highly advised to get the sky capsule tickets ahead of time).
Despite the rain, we opted to slowly walk along the beach path rather than the most direct route. Unfortunately most shops in Korea don’t open very early in the morning, so there weren’t any shops to browse, but we did swing into another convenience store for some fun drinks. When we made it to the sky capsule station it was full of people. But at the station we found some open cute souvenir shops.
Once it was finally time to board our capsule, we didn’t have to wait in line very long and we were off! Each capsule seats up to four people and you book the entire capsule. It rides along the shore line from Mipo to Cheongsapo (or vice versa) which takes about 30min. There is an alternative cheaper coastal beach train that has more stops, but we were here for the cuteness. And, we lucked out on the cute factor, each capsule is a different color with an occasional fun character capsule sprinkled in. Ours was one of the character capsules, it was pink, and had the city mascot on it, Boogi the seagull!
Nicer weather would have been appreciated, but fortunately even with the light rain, the views were still there so it was still lovely. Yes it’s very touristy, but both Andrew and I still enjoyed ourselves on it.
Once deboarded, we continued along the beach walk (“Busan Green Railway”) to the north. We were planning to go to the Daritdol Skywalk which is a one of several elevated walkways over the ocean with a glass bottom. Unfortunately, probably due to the glass bottom floor, it was closed due to the lovely weather we were having. It was disappointing, but good thing there are several skywalks in this city.
We continued walking towards Seongjeong Station at the end of the trail where we stopped for lunch at a charming noodle house, Gwangeogol. The menu was entirely in Korean and the translation app was not calling the items anything useful (look at you Bean-Water Noodles), so it was our first time going off vibes when ordering (it did have pictures). Only after we put the order in on the electronic screens did we see up on the wall a giant sign in English describing the types of noodles: hot, bean, and cold. Granted it was written out in English, and the menu was in hangul (Korean alphabet), so I could only tell which was which because I had learned hangul. But we could have made more educated choices on our ordering had we seen the sign earlier, but we at least knew what we had ordered before it arrived. Andrew had ordered the bean noodles, and me the cold noodles. Oddly enough, my cold noodles were very different from the night before and still delicious. Andrew’s noodles were very beany – I don’t know that I would choose to order bean noodles but it’s nice to try new things.
After lunch we caught a bus to head even further north, out to the Haedong Yonggungsa Temple, Korea’s “most beautiful temple” built on the coast. The temple indeed was beautiful. We spent some time wandering and taking pictures. Aside from the market, this was our first attraction where we had to deal with crowds on the trip. It was made worse with everyone’s umbrellas as we tried to squeeze past one another without hitting or dripping on anyone. But we made it through and still managed to have a good time!
Up to this point we’d been having some minor worries. Our debit card didn’t seem to be working at the several ATMs we tried and we were basically out of cash. Our T-money card (for transit) which can only be refilled by cash was also running dangerously low. We weren’t sure we had enough funds to get all the way back to our hotel! While we always had the back up of hailing a cab that would take a credit card, we weren’t ready to give in just yet. At the temple we found another ATM and after my card was denied, I told Andrew to try his again. In trying our cards back to back we realized what had been happening. When you go to use Global ATM there are options for several languages and a “Foreign Card”, apparently if you just press “English” the ATM attempts to run your card as if it were Korean and you just prefer English. Which, honestly, fair enough. Instead you have to click “foreign card” first if you want to get anything from an ATM with a foreign card. It seems obvious in retrospect, but it was not at the time. Crisis averted!
After the temple we opted to head back south to an area closer to our hotel known as Bosu-dong Book Street. As you probably guessed, it was a street with many bookshops, with books lining all of the walls in massive stacks as well as spilling into the covered parts of the streets. It was two hours of bus riding to get there, but we managed to catch the express bus with large cushy seats which was so much nicer than the subway. We actually enjoyed looking at all the buildings and portions of the city we hadn’t seen much of since we’d mostly been traveling underground up to this point.
We had no intention of buying anything at Bosu-dong Book Street-what are we gonna do with a book written in Korean? But we came across an open storefront that had just opened and it had some information on the creation of the Korean alphabet (hangul). Hangul characters were created by King Sejong in 1446. He designed them such that each character is based on the shape that your mouth makes when you make the character’s sound. Is that not super cool? The shop we had stumbled upon was owned by a professor (Kim Sang-Yoon) who was selling copies of his book that included scans of the original document describing the writing system as well as Dr Kim’s commentary on how it may have been developed. So, of course we bought a book. After chatting with us, he even took some photos and signed our copy for us! What a neat experience.
After bookstreet there was a vegan Korean fried chicken restaurant, Soban, I had read about that was nearby so we made our way there for a tasty dinner. Some of the decor and TV stations were oddly familiar with the previous vegan restaurant we had stumbled on. We later learned they are operated by followers of Quan Yin, which is very cult shaped. One of the pieces of advice you get before going to Korea is “don’t join a cult!” So we thought it was funny we had stumbled into some cult run restaurants (although they are an international franchise apparently). Cult or no, the food was still great!
Eventually we headed back to the hotel to do some painstakingly slow laundry. (No shade to the hotel, laundry is just slow when you wanna go to bed!). Granted, our clothes didn’t fully dry so we ended up laying most of it out all over the room for the rest of the night and into the next day. The price you have to pay for smaller luggage to lug around.
Day 2, Our Anniversary
Friday September 26, 2025
We awoke on our own around 7:30am and enjoyed a ramyeon breakfast in our room that we had procured the night before. Today was our anniversary, and consequently jam packed with activities.
First stop was to the south at Songdo Beach. We later learned that the Songdo Beach was created during Japanese occupation as a tourist destination back in 1913 and as such was one of the first beaches to open in Korea. And one hundred plus years later is still a very popular tourist destination. The beach is nestled into a bay, and full of firsts, it also contains Koreas first cable car that spans across the beach.
The sky cable cars have been upgraded since their initial construction and were an absolute treat to ride. We purchased our tickets on site and splurged on the “crystal car” which came with a glass bottom floor (and a shorter boarding line). It was a lot of fun riding across the bay with amazing views all around. While the crystal floor didn’t really add much to the experience due to the height above the ocean, I’d say it was worth it for skipping the lines. They even gave us fans covered in advertisements to use while in the cars, although we hung on to those (with permission!) for the rest of the trip because it’s been hot. We forgot that unlike in Portland, you need to look at the “feels like” temperature not just the temperature.
Take two at a skywalk! Once across the bay we made our way to the Songdo Yonggung Suspension Bridge. It jutted out to a small rock island and circled around it offering more stunning views. Busan is so big and mountainous that even looking north the area we had been yesterday was obstructed from view. And I guess we were early enough to basically have the bridge to ourselves.
Being rebels we ignored the English wayfinding signs and took a random scenic but humid path back around the long way to the main plaza area of Amnam park. We explored the attractions a little before taking the cable car back. (It did look like there was a cool cliffwalk along the coast if anyone had a lot of time and it wasn’t stupid hot- we only saw construction workers on it from our lazy vantage point).
Back on the other side there was yet another bridge jutting out into the water, Songdo Cloud Walk, so of course we had to check that one out. Being closer to the water it came with a much needed breeze as well.
The next stop for the day was the Gamcheon Cultural Village. A former slum area, that has revitalized itself into an art and tourist area.
On our way there we had gotten too confident with busses and accidentally got on the 96 bus, instead of the 96-A and ended up not at our transfer stop. Fortunately it wasn’t far, but it did involve us needing to take a bunch of random twisty stairs to get to our correct transfer spot which ended up being a fun adventure. Honestly, when everyone warned us not to bring too much luggage because of all of the stairs, this is the sort of thing I was imagining, but in reality the advice was mostly directed toward the amount of subway stairs.
Once on the correct bus it was easy to find the village entrance. Before heading in, we opted to get some caffeine and sugar at the Coffee It House a cafe known for their awesome views of the village. Confirmed, the views were amazing! They even had a nice and cool basement space with huge windows overlooking the village giving us plenty of time to recharge before heading back into the heat. (The iced coffee and cakes weren’t anything special but worth it for the views; maybe we should have gotten colorful smoothies to match the surrounding buildings instead).
After cooling off we made our way down the main tourist stretch. Everything in the village is so affordable and cute it’s hard not to buy things. I even found a cute hat which was something actually on my wish list.
Andrew found a cute wooden art piece at one of the shops representing the village and it turned out to be a creation of the shop keeper herself! She was so excited she took our picture with it. Her shop also had an upstairs viewing area of the village. Anyone who purchased something was allowed up, so naturally we had to go up for another photo op, this time without fighting other tourists for views. Which honestly finding a space like this is the best piece of advice I could give for anyone wanting to take a bunch of photos!
We wandered some more, had a delicious probably not totally vegan “vegan” lunch and then made our way back to the hotel. That involved riding a wild short bus, packed to the brim with people. Being on a hillside, the village is near a lot of twisty roads and the bus jostled around every twist and turn. Even after we managed to snag seats we still had to hold on! It was so crowded the bus almost left our stop before we had time to squeeze our way to the front to get off! But we made it. Phew! We have been on a real range of bus types in this country!
Before going all the way back to the hotel we wanted to swing by a vegan market to pick up some food as a souvenir for a friend. The place was a bit tricky to find as it was on the 4th floor of a building and seemed to be set up in the front half of an otherwise residential apartment. We picked out some vegan jjajangmyeon and kimchi and as we were making our purchase wouldn’t you know it, the same TV station was playing as back at Soban! The shop keeper also walked down with us and showed us the vegan bakery they ran on the first floor. Conveniently we had just eaten so successfully did not join a cult.
After a quick break at our hotel, we made our way back north on the subway to Spa Land Centum City. What a perfect way to end our 10 year anniversary. Spa Land is a massive Korean spa (Jjimjilbang) that’s supposed to be a good intro to them in general. We didn’t go to any other Korean spas, so I have no comment on the accuracy of that statement, but Spa Land itself was amazing, and I will definitely be checking to see if I can find a similar experience close to home. Spa Land was also tattoo friendly! Although they did have a sign out front saying no full body tattoos, so I guess I’m not sure where they actually draw the line, I just asked at the front desk if my tattoo was okay and they all but laughed at me asking about it.
General admission gets you 4 hours, and if you spend 10,000 won on site (about $7 each) you get an additional 2 hrs. The facility is huge and split into the bath areas with several different pools of varying temperatures and water types as well as the various sauna room styles from around the world. Similar to Japanese onsen, the baths are separated by gender and no clothes allowed. I even got scolded for having my hair down such that it had touched the water. There was a lot going on and I must have missed that rule.
Andrew and I each opted to get a Korean body scrub. It was an interesting experience. It is kind of nice to have someone else bathe you, and my skin was softer than ever after the experience. Andrew’s favorite part was the absurdity of lying flat on a table with your eyes closed when the person scrubbing you throws a full bucket of water across you to rinse off the scrub.
After our baths and scrubs, we then met up in the coed areas to enjoy all the different rooms. Unlike most other spas I’ve been to there was a vast variety of room types, not just temperature types. There were various hot saunas that I’m more used to, but also an ice room to cool off, salt and charcoal rooms that provide healing qualities, lots of relaxing rooms like the hammock room, a room with lounge chairs, as well as an open air foot soaking space that I really enjoyed. There were even atmospheric rooms, the pyramid room, and the “body sound room” meant to relax the mind and heal the body. We had fun trying out every single one of them, some more crowded then others.
To optimize our time, we opted to have dinner on site, seaweed soup for Andrew and more cold noodles for Angela, both complete with lots of banchan (side dishes). The food was delicious but we prob should have split something because we were both too full to finish (maybe it was the matcha ice cream we had both had as an appetizer).
Spa land was the perfect way to end our anniversary, overall we probably spent 5 hours there. It was unfortunate that our hotel was a 50 min subway ride away, but it was definitely a highlight on the trip. Fortunately we still had time to swing in to BIFF square after and gets some street hotteok to end a perfect day.
Day 3, Avoiding the Heat
Saturday September 27, 2025
The one major tourist attraction of Busan I am sad to have missed was a visit to the Taejongdae Resort park. It had been our original plan for our last day in Busan, but instead we opted to find something less sweat inducing with all the unexpected heat. Unfortunately we had missed nicer weather by about a week.
Andrew found a trendy breakfast spot near our hotel, egg drop, where we waited about 45 min all together for some tasty egg sandwiches, french toast and hashbrowns with “corn mayonnaise”.
Because of the late opening time, and long wait we barely had any morning left. We made our way to the nearby Lotte Department Store. We’ve seen advertising signs everywhere for them and wanted to check it out. Attached to the department store was also a Lotte Mart which seemed like a nicer Walmart or a bigger Target complete with groceries and a -freaking Toys-R Us branded section. The Lotte Company seems to own all sorts of things like the attached department store and even a few amusement parks that without having been to them gave me Disney World vibes. We explored the department store a little, checking out the world’s tallest indoor musical fountain they had as well as Korea’s largest rooftop park.
Coming up on lunch time but not really knowing what we wanted or feeling that hungry thanks to our large late breakfast we ended up with a 7-11 lunch of gimbap, both traditional and samgak (triangle) style. I guess we bookended our Korea trip with convenience store meals.
After eating we decided to make our way back to one of the cat cafes we had walked past on a previous day. The cats were all rescues and getting various levels of needed care. It was interesting to see all the different breeds of cats. I’m so used to really only seeing American Shorthairs so seeing the adorable Munchkin cats was a treat. Petting and playing with all the adorable felines really made us miss our kitty Little John though.
At this point we were feeling a little tired and thirsty so we decided we may as well go check in for our ferry which had a large check-in window between 2:30-5:30pm. We swung back by the hotel for our bags and some water and made our way to the subway. Korea’s public transportation is amazing, except the 15 min walk from the subway to the ferry terminal was probably the quietest, least pleasant walk we’ve had so far in Korea. No wonder our hotel concierge kept trying to order us a taxi. It was eerily empty and some road construction in one area made for a really awkward street crossing. But we made it the the Busan Port International Ferry Terminal with plenty of time to check in, get snacks, and just sit until our boarding time at 5:30.
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