Busan Excursion: Day 1

Midterm weeks are supposed to depressing and stressful, but not for us. As exchange students, we are obligated to have fun, to explore, and to not care about school. And we did just that.

Okay fine, so maybe school and exams do matter regardless of being an exchange student or not, but at least for me exploring was way more attractive. I mean, I can always study later, right?

Anyway, we decided to go to Busan, the famous port city and second biggest city in Korea. It was my first trip so far away from Seoul so I was extra excited!

Here we goooooooooo

For this trip, we bought the 3-day KR Pass issued by KTX. This pass is designed for foreigners who are staying in Korea for less than 6 months and offers train tickets for less. Our 3-day pass allows us to just hop onto a train anytime, anywhere within that period. It was awfully convenient and cheap if you're planning to go to many different places. You can just bring the pass to the ticket vendor and they'll exchange it for a seat. But on bad days, they would be all sold out and depending on how desperate you are, you might have to stand for the whole trip, but more about that in a later post.

And yes, the two gimbaps were my lunch. We went straight after class and wanted to be there asap.

We passed by a lot of the rural parts of Korea during the ride.

도착했습니다!!

Our first stop was to fill our empty tummies. So we went to the famous Jagalchi Fish Market.

Believe it or not, I actually enjoyed this a lot!

We got this for free!! Hahaha the power of negotiation!

I'm no food expert, but I actually enjoyed the seafood more back in Seoul. The things we ate didn't seem very fresh. Or maybe it was because the owners knew we were foreign little kids and knew nothing so they scammed us >.<

BIFF Square - where the first Busan International Film Festival was held (it has now been moved to somewhere near Haeundae Beach, which I will talk about in another post). This street is now filled with street food vendors and stores.

The famous Ssiat Hotteok of Busan - the difference between the Busan ones and the ones in Seoul is that they put seeds inside, which neutralizes the sweetness of the Hotteok itself.

Hand prints of the famous people that was here for the movie festival!

We were craving for something sweet, so we chose a random cake shop. I don't know if it was because it's actually really good, or because I was really craving cake, but they were SO GOOD.

I also "met" Ren from Nu'est, for those who follow Kpop. Just kidding, I just saw his picture with the owner of the cake shop.