Being the second most popular city to visit in South Korea, Busan is a must visit during your travel. Over the past weekend, we travelled from Seoul to Busan to have a look into its culture. We rode a bus to travel to Busan.
Before arriving to the city centre of Busan, we drove by the Haedong Yonggungsa Temple. We arrived ahead of schedule at 4:30 am and were able to view the stars in the sky before our main event in the temple: The sunrise along the seashore. We were lucky that there were no clouds, resulting in a sky full of visible stars.
As it reached 6 am, the darkness is slowly fading, indicating that it was time for our main event at the temple: The Sunrise. We started our 5 minutes walk into the temple and were given an incredible view of the temple under the sun rise.
While some eyes were focused on the temple, others looked out at the sea and the rise of the sun.
After 30 minutes of admiring the rise of the run, indicating the start of a new day, we took the opportunity to walk around the temple as well.
After our temple visit, we continued our bus rie to Haeundae Beach, one of the most beautiful beaches in Korea.
The beach stretches up to 1.5km long and has beautiful sand. The atmosphere around the beach in the morning was very relaxing, so some people decided to take a nap around the beach while others walked around to take instagrammable pictures.
We stayed at the beach for 2 hours and freshened up ourselves after the long bus journey from Seoul to get ready for the upcoming attractions we would be visiting in the remaining of the trip.
Other than that, there were also many food stalls, giving us different variations of food. But luckily we did not eat much from the beginning, because there were still the Gukje market and Kkangtong Market to visit, where many street food stalls were stationed. Most of the attractions were around the area, so we were fortunate enough to visit most of them.
There were so many different kinds of traditional korean food, but one of my favorites was probably the korean pancake, jeon.
Although we were tempted to eat more, we wanted to visit as many attractions as possible, and so we left the markets and went to the Bosy-don Book Alley. The book alley was, as the name suggests, full of books.
There were books with different languages and of different generations. As many koreans sold their books here to get money to support their families during the Korean war, the presence of books here has since been overwhelming.
Here is an example of what we mean by “overwhelming”.
The books are piled up to about 2 metres high!
Afterwards, we visited the park where the Busan tower was located in.
Despite that we did not go to the top of the tower, the park offers many different interesting attractions, e.g. statue of the 16th century naval hero Yi Sun-sin, Korean Traditional Bell, Flower Clock and more.
As the trip ran smoothly, we were also able to finish our trip with the last attraction, the attraction that draws most people interested in Busan. It is the Gamcheon Cultural Village.
Many people wonder why the village has many colourful houses. But the answer is simplier tha you may think. It is in order to attract toursim. In which, I am rather certain that they have done well in reaching their goal.
In our childhood, we have all probably read abut the story of the Little Prince. In the cultural village, they also have a statue of the Little Prince, who oversees the village. If you want to take a picture with the little prince, you may have to queue in line as he has many admirers from all around the world who also want to take a picture with him and the fox.
Overall, the trip ran smoothly, making the trip enjoyable and relaxing. Under the nice weather, we were able to experience as much of Busan as possible. If you would like to learn more about Korean history, I would recommend the Book Alley as it existed and became as famous as it is nowadays due to the sturggles faced in the Korean War. But one of the attractions that remains its top of the list status would be the Gamcheon Cultural Village as it has always been the place that many wish to visit when they travel to Busan and it does a great job in leaving you a fond memory of it.
One drawback of the trip would be that there were people who were not punctual at times, resulting in everyone else having to wait for them in the bus, but the tour guide did a great job in time-management and tried to bring everyone back to Seoul as soon as possible after the trip. Although we arrived back to Seoul later than scheduled, the trip was an enjoyable experience and Busan is definitely a place worth visiting.
Written by Felix Leung
